NCERT Solutions Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 6 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 14: Economic Activities
Around Us

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

195 – 208 10 15 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 26 pages

Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 6 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 14: Economic Activities
Around Us
Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us from the
NCERT textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond. Every question of this last chapter of the book is answered
— The Big Questions, both THINK ABOUT IT boxes, all three LET’S EXPLORE boxes (including the full
labelling of Fig. 14.1 on page 206), the in-text question about AMUL’s products on page 204, the DON’T MISS
OUT question on milk cooperatives, Before we move on… and all three Questions, activities and projects
— with a three-sector diagram, a farm-to-consumer flow chart of the AMUL milk chain, and tables of real
Indian crops, factories, mines and services sorted sector by sector.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6) 195 – 208

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

10 15

MEDIUM

English

The Big Questions — Page 195
Chapter opening

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 How are economic activities classified?

ANSWER

Economic activities are classified into three economic sectors — the primary sector, the
secondary sector and the tertiary sector. Page 196 gives the rule: “Some economic activities
share similar characteristics and based on this, they can be grouped together or classified into
broader groups called economic sectors. The three main types of economic sectors are primary,
secondary and tertiary economic sectors.”

Primary — takes raw material directly from nature

Secondary — transforms that raw material into a new product

Tertiary — provides the services that support the other two

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The three economic sectors

PRIMARY SECTOR SECONDARY SECTOR TERTIARY SECTOR
straight from nature turns it into something new services for the other two

• Wheat farming in Punjab • Flour mills, sugar mills • Indian Railways, trucks
• Coal mining at Jharia • Cotton mills, Coimbatore • Banks, post office, UPI
• Marine fishing off Kochi • Steel plant at Bhilai • Mandis, shops, warehouses
• Dairy cattle at Anand • Cars made at Manesar • Doctors, nurses, teachers
• Poultry farms, egg trays • Building roads, bridges • Mobile and internet
• Forestry — bamboo, sal • Water and power supply • Software, Bengaluru

Tertiary services run in both directions
trucks, banks, traders and phones carry goods, money and news between every sector

One test to place any activity: does it take from nature, change what was taken, or serve those who do?

Cotton in a Vidarbha field → cloth in a Surat mill → a shirt sold in your town’s market

The three sectors of the Indian economy, with real examples in each. The tertiary sector is drawn
across the bottom because its services touch all three.

Why the classification was needed at all. Page 196 explains that long ago “most people were
involved in activities such as agriculture, livestock rearing, production of tools, pottery and
weaving cloth”. Today people manufacture computers, mobile phones and drones, work in
banks, schools and hotels, drive vehicles, make furniture, stitch clothes on machines, create
software and repair refrigerators. With so many kinds of work, “classifying all these activities
helps us to understand how they function and the links they have with each other”.

Tip: the tertiary sector is also called the service sector, because it produces services
and not goods. If you cannot pick up the output and carry it home, it is almost
always tertiary.

Q2 What differentiates these activities to be grouped into sectors?

ANSWER

The difference is what each activity does with the raw material of nature. That single
question — where does the material come from, and what does this activity do to it? — puts every
activity in its place.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

SECTOR WHAT THE ACTIVITY THE BOOK’S DEFINITION INDIAN EXAMPLE,
DOES STEP BY STEP

Primary Takes the raw material “Those economic activities in which A farmer in Vidarbha picks
directly out of nature. people are directly dependent on cotton from his field
Nothing is made — it is nature to produce goods” (page 196)
grown, caught, dug out or
reared

Secondary Changes the form of that Activities “in which people are A mill in Coimbatore spins
raw material into a new, dependent on outputs of the primary the cotton into yarn, weaves
more useful product sector and transform them to cloth and a unit in Tiruppur
produce goods” (page 199) stitches a T-shirt

Tertiary Makes no goods at all. It Activities “that provide support to A truck carries the T-shirts, a
provides a service that the people involved in primary and bank lends money to the unit,
other two sectors cannot do secondary activities” (page 201) a shop sells the shirt to you
without

Three quick tests you can use in an exam.

1. Is nature the direct supplier? If the worker deals with soil, water, forest, mine or animal, it
is primary. Sowing paddy, tapping rubber in Kerala, extracting iron ore at Bailadila, rearing
sheep in Rajasthan.
2. Has the material changed form? Sugarcane is primary, but the sugar made from it in a
Kolhapur mill is secondary. Iron ore is primary, the steel from Bhilai is secondary. The book
also puts construction and the supply of water, electricity and gas here.
3. Is the output a service, not a thing? Then it is tertiary — transport, trade, banking,
communication, healthcare, teaching, repairing, storing, insuring, software.

Why the same product appears in all three sectors: because a sector is not a
thing, it is a stage of work. Milk is primary when the farmer draws it from the cow,
secondary when the dairy turns it into ghee, and tertiary when a truck carries the
ghee to a shop. Ask what the person is doing, not what the object is.

Q3 How are the three sectors interconnected?

ANSWER

They are links in one chain: the primary sector supplies, the secondary sector transforms,
and the tertiary sector moves, finances and sells — and none of them can work without
the other two. Page 202 says the three sectors “play an important role in the process of
conversion of natural raw materials into finished products for final consumption”.
Follow one glass of milk from a village in Anand district, Gujarat, to your breakfast table.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Usl AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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From farm to plate: the AMUL milk chain
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1. The farmer milks the cow 2. Village collection centre
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3. Chilled tanker to Anand

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morning and evening, at home milk weighed and tested for fat before the milk can curdle

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PRIMARY TERTIARY TERTIARY

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6. Retail stores and shops 5. Lorries, rail, air, ships 4. The dairy factory

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parlours, kirana shops, to towns, cities, villages — pasteurising, butter, ghee,
and cold cabinets and exports to other countries cheese, milk powder

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TERTIARY TERTIARY SECONDARY

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7. Milk on your table

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the end consumer

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The money you pay travels back down the chain — at the end of the month it reaches the farmer

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Break any one link and the whole chain stops
No cows — no milk. No factory — the milk spoils. No trucks or shops — the ghee never leaves Anand.

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The AMUL chain of the chapter, sector by sector. Green is primary, orange is secondary, blue is tertiary

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— and notice how many of the steps are services.
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The chapter’s own summary of this chain (pages 204–205). Milking the cows is “a primary

(cows/livestock)”. Turning it “from one form (liquid) into another — milk e
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sector economic activity because the product (milk) is derived directly from a natural source
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in the factories is a secondary activity. And “transportation,gtrading
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Why interdependence, and not just a queue: the arrows do not point one way
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only. The dairy needs the farmer’s milk, but the farmer also needs the dairy —
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without it his milk curdles and is worth nothing. The trucks need goods to carry, and

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the goods need the trucks to be worth carrying. Each sector is at once a customer
and a supplier of the other two. Page 207 puts it exactly: nothing “would have been
possible, had it not been for all three sectors working together.”
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a s em ABOUT IT — Page 199
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Primary activities you have seen, and the natural resources they use

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Can you think of any primary activities that you may have seen in the past? What
are the natural resources used in these activities? Name two of them and discuss
your experiences with your classmates.

ANSWER

This is a “look around you” question, so the best answers come from what you have
actually seen — from a train window, on a village visit, at a beach, on the way to school. Write
down the activity, then ask what part of nature it takes from. Every primary activity has a natural
resource sitting behind it.
Sample answer:

PRIMARY WHERE NATURAL RESOURCES WHAT THE WORKER
ACTIVITY I USED ACTUALLY DOES
HAVE SEEN

1. Paddy In the fields beside Soil and water (canal or tube- Ploughs the wet field, plants the
transplanting the road to my well), and sunlight; the seed seedlings by hand in rows, floods
grandmother’s village itself comes from the earth the field, weeds it and harvests
after about four months

2. Fishing from a At the harbour on the The sea and the fish that live in Sails out before dawn, casts and
small boat coast, early in the it — a living natural resource hauls nets, sorts the catch into
morning that renews itself if it is not baskets of ice and sells it at the
overfished landing centre

Other primary activities you may have seen. The chapter’s own photographs on page 198
show greenhouse farming, mining, fish farming (fishery), forestry and raising livestock.
Add to those:

Grazing goats or sheep on a hillside — the resource is grass, land and the animals
themselves.
A poultry farm collecting eggs — the resource is livestock; the feed comes from grain grown
in fields.
A stone quarry at the edge of a town — the resource is rock and mineral in the earth.
Tapping toddy or rubber from trees in Kerala, or collecting tendu leaves and honey in the
forests of Chhattisgarh and Odisha — the resource is the forest.
Beekeeping beside a mustard field in Rajasthan — the resource is flowers, bees and land.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Check it yourself: if you can name the exact bit of nature the worker takes from —
this soil, this river, this mine, this herd — the activity is primary. If the worker is
dealing with something another person already produced, it is not.

Why this matters: nearly half of all working people in India still earn their living in
the primary sector, mostly from farming. Everything the secondary and tertiary
sectors do begins with what these workers take from nature — which is also why
looking after soil, water, forests and fish stocks is not a separate “environment” topic
but an economic necessity.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 200
Two more economic activities in the secondary sector

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Now that we have seen some examples of secondary sector activities, can you
name two more economic activities in the secondary sector?

ANSWER

Two clear examples, with the transformation spelled out.

1. Sugar making — sugarcane from the field (primary) → crushed, boiled and crystallised

in a sugar mill → sugar

2. Cement making — limestone from a quarry (primary) → burnt in a kiln and ground →

cement

Why each one is secondary. In both cases the worker starts with something the primary sector
has already taken from nature and changes its form into a new product that can be sold or
used. Sugarcane cannot be spooned into tea; sugar can. Limestone cannot hold a wall together;
cement can.
Many more you can use — every one of them takes a primary product and remakes it:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

SECONDARY RAW MATERIAL PRODUCT MADE AN INDIAN CENTRE FOR
SECTOR ACTIVITY (PRIMARY) IT

Sugar milling Sugarcane Sugar, jaggery, Kolhapur (Maharashtra), Meerut
molasses (Uttar Pradesh)

Cement manufacture Limestone Cement Chittorgarh (Rajasthan), Gulbarga
(Karnataka)

Jute milling Raw jute Gunny bags, sacking, Hooghly riverside, West Bengal
jute mats

Leather goods Animal hides Shoes, bags, belts Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Chennai
(Tamil Nadu)

Paper making Wood pulp, bamboo, Paper and cardboard Ballarpur (Maharashtra),
recycled paper Nepanagar (Madhya Pradesh)

Handloom weaving Silk or cotton yarn Banarasi sarees, Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh),
Pochampally ikat Pochampally (Telangana)

Bakery and food Wheat flour, fruit, milk Bread, biscuits, jam, Small units in almost every town
processing papad, pickles

Building construction Stone, sand, cement, Houses, roads, Everywhere — the book lists it
steel bridges, schools under secondary on page 199

Careful: do not answer “selling sugar” or “transporting cement”. Those are tertiary.
A secondary answer must involve making or building something.

In-text Question — Page 204
The cooperative’s wide range of products

Q1 Today, the cooperative has a wide range of products made at many milk processing
plants and factories all over India. Can you name a few?

ANSWER

Yes — walk into any dairy shop and almost everything on the shelf is a product of this
cooperative. All of them begin as the same thing: milk drawn from a cow or buffalo on a
farmer’s doorstep.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

KIND OF EXAMPLES YOU WILL RECOGNISE WHAT IS DONE TO THE MILK
PRODUCT

Liquid milk Toned milk, double toned milk, full cream milk, Pasteurised and packed in pouches or
flavoured milk cartons

Fats Butter, ghee, cream The fat is separated from the milk and
churned

Dried products Milk powder, infant food, dairy whitener The water is dried out so the milk keeps
for months

Cheese and paneer Processed cheese, cheese slices, paneer The milk is curdled and the solids
pressed

Fermented products Dahi (curd), buttermilk, lassi, shrikhand A culture is added and the milk is set

Sweets and frozen Ice cream, chocolate, gulab jamun, rasgulla, peda Milk solids are cooked, sweetened or
foods frozen

The chapter names the first two itself. When the cooperative’s milk collection grew too large
to sell as milk alone, “they set up a factory in Anand, and began to produce butter and milk
powder” (page 204). Everything else on the list grew out of that first factory.

Why a cooperative makes so many things: milk spoils in hours, but ghee lasts
months and milk powder lasts a year. Every extra product is one more way to save
milk that would otherwise be wasted — and each processing step is value addition,
so the farmer’s milk earns more than it would have as plain milk. That is why the
same litre can end up as butter in Bhopal or milk powder in a ship bound for another
country.

Did you know? India has been the world’s largest producer of milk for the last thirty
years. The change began with cooperatives like this one, and the nationwide
programme built on the Anand pattern was called Operation Flood — often
remembered as the White Revolution.

DON’T MISS OUT — Page 205

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Usl AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Cooperatives that brought prosperity to a community
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DON’T MISS OUT

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a s emlike AMUL, there are many other milk cooperatives under brands such as
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Nandini from Karnataka, Mother Dairy from Delhi-NCR, Aavin from Tamil Nadu,
Vijaya from Andhra Pradesh, Kevi from Nagaland, Sudha from Bihar, Verka from

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Punjab, etc. Can you name one cooperative around you that has helped groups like
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farmers, persons with disabilities, and women, to come together and has brought
prosperity to their lives? gl
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Answer with a cooperative from your own district if you can — ask at home,
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a s em says who its members are, and says what changed in their lives.
cooperative,
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Lijjat Papad. It began in 1959 in Mumbai with seven women and ₹80 of borrowed money. Today,
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for a factory job still earns her ownla s e in the earnings, so a woman who could not leave home

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income. Many members in my town have used that income
to pay their children’s school fees.
Well-known Indian cooperatives you could name instead:
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

COOPERATIVE WHERE WHO ITS MEMBERS WHAT IT CHANGED
ARE

Amul Anand, Gujarat Milk farmers, a great many Ended the hold of middlemen; farmers
of them women now own the factories that process
their own milk

Nandini (KMF) Karnataka Village milk producers Daily milk payments reach lakhs of
rural households

Sudha Bihar Dairy farmers of the Bihar A steady market for milk in districts
milk unions with very small landholdings

Aavin Tamil Nadu Village dairy cooperative Milk collection centres within walking
societies distance of the herd

Verka Punjab Milk producers of the A second income beside wheat and
Punjab unions paddy farming

Kevi Nagaland Dairy farmers in the hills A cash income in a region with little
organised industry

Lijjat Papad Started in Mumbai, Women members, who are Work that can be done from home, and
now nationwide also the owners an income of one’s own

SEWA Ahmedabad, Women vendors, weavers, Savings, bank loans and fair prices for
cooperatives Gujarat waste-pickers, home workers who had none
workers

IFFCO Nationwide Farmers’ cooperative Fertiliser produced and supplied by the
societies farmers’ own organisation

Why a cooperative helps groups that are otherwise ignored: alone, one farmer
with ten litres of milk has no bargaining power at all — she must take whatever price
is offered before the milk spoils. Ten thousand such farmers together own a chilling
plant, a laboratory, a fleet of tankers and a brand. The cooperative does not give
them charity; it gives them scale. That is exactly what Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel told
the farmers of Anand to do.

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 207

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The stages of the process shown in Fig. 14.1

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Observe the different stages of the process shown in Fig. 14.1 on page 206 and
discuss them with your fellow classmates.

1 2 3

A worker felling a tree A grab-loader stacking A crane loading logs
with a power saw cut logs in the yard on to a waiting truck

5 4

A mill machine rolling A loaded logging truck
out a sheet of paper on the highway

6 7 8

A forklift taking paper A press printing A family buying books
into the printing press coloured sheets at a bookshop counter

Fig. 14.1

Fig. 14.1, page 206 — the eight-stage flow chart of how a textbook is made, redrawn
with the arrows and the blank labelling line printed under each panel. Each panel’s
picture is described in words here; see the textbook for the artwork.

ANSWER

Fig. 14.1 follows your own textbook backwards to the tree it came from. Read the eight
pictures in order and you have the whole journey — “the transformation of pulp (wooden fibre
of a tree) into paper and, after printing, into textbooks” (page 206).

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

STAGE WHAT THE PICTURE SHOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING

1 A worker felling a tree with a power saw Timber is taken from the forest — the raw material of paper

2 A machine lifting and stacking cut logs The logs are gathered and piled at the collection yard

3 A loader placing logs on a waiting truck The timber is loaded for its journey out of the forest

4 A long truck carrying logs down a The logs travel to the paper mill, perhaps hundreds of
highway kilometres away

5 A huge machine rolling out a sheet of In the mill, wood is turned into pulp and the pulp into paper
white paper on giant rollers

6 A forklift carrying cartons into a Reams of paper are delivered and stacked at the press
printing press

7 A printing machine running coloured The pages of the book are printed, folded, bound and given a
sheets cover

8 A family buying books at a shop counter The finished textbook is sold and reaches the student

Points worth discussing with your classmates:

Count the hands. A logger, a machine operator, a driver, mill workers, a forklift driver,
printers, binders, a shopkeeper — at least eight different people worked on the book in your
bag, and not one of them ever met you.
Notice how often the material simply moves. Four of the eight pictures are transport or
handling. Nothing is made in them, yet without them nothing would arrive.
Notice where the value grows. A log is worth little; paper is worth more; a printed and
bound textbook is worth much more still. Each stage of work adds value.
Trees are a renewable resource — but only if replanted. The DON’T MISS OUT box on the
same page adds the reason: recycling one tonne of paper saves 17 trees and 2.5 cubic
metres of landfill space, and uses 70 per cent less energy and water than making new paper
from wood pulp.
Ask what could break. A strike at the mill, a landslide on the highway, or a power failure at
the press — any one of them and the book is not printed in time.

The point the chapter draws from this figure (page 207): “None of the activities
that were part of the process – from extracting pulp from the trees to making paper
and finally producing the books would have been possible, had it not been for all
three sectors working together.”

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 207

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Labelling the pictures of Fig. 14.1 as primary, secondary or tertiary

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Label the pictures in the illustration shown in Fig. 14.1 on page 206 as: 1. Primary
sector 2. Secondary sector 3. Tertiary sector

1 2 3

A worker felling a tree A grab-loader stacking A crane loading logs
with a power saw cut logs in the yard on to a waiting truck

5 4

A mill machine rolling A loaded logging truck
out a sheet of paper on the highway

6 7 8

A forklift taking paper A press printing A family buying books
into the printing press coloured sheets at a bookshop counter

Fig. 14.1

Fig. 14.1, page 206 — the eight-stage flow chart of how a textbook is made, redrawn
with the arrows and the blank labelling line printed under each panel. Each panel’s
picture is described in words here; see the textbook for the artwork.

ANSWER

Here is every picture of Fig. 14.1 labelled, in the order the arrows run. Write the label on the
line printed under each picture in your book.

Page 13 of 26

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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PICTURE WHAT IT SHOWS LABEL WHY

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Cutting down the tree with Primary
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Timber is taken directly from nature — this is

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sector forestry

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stacking the logs sector has not been changed in any way

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Buying the book at a shop Tertiary Retail trade — selling in small quantities to the end

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Two primary steps, two secondary steps, four tertiary steps — and the chain works only if all eight happen.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

If your teacher counts picture 3 as primary: that is defensible too — loading at
the forest site can be treated as the last step of harvesting the timber. What must
never change is the reasoning: taking from nature is primary, changing the form is
secondary, moving or selling is tertiary. Say why you chose your label and your
answer is complete.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 208
The economic activities of your own neighbourhood

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 List the economic activities in your neighbourhood and label them appropriately as
primary, secondary or tertiary. Draw arrows to show how they are connected to
each other. In what ways are they dependent on each other? What would happen if
one of the activities ceased to exist?

ANSWER

How to do this properly. Walk one road near your home with a notebook and write down every
place where somebody earns money — a field, a workshop, a shop, a clinic, a bus stand. Then
put P, S or T beside each one. Finally join them with arrows: draw the arrow from the activity that
supplies to the activity that uses.
Sample answer (a small town in Maharashtra — replace the names with your own):

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IN MY SECTOR IT RECEIVES FROM IT SUPPLIES TO
NEIGHBOURHOOD

Sugarcane and jowar fields Primary Seed and fertiliser shop; The sugar mill; the flour mill;
tractor hire; canal water the vegetable market

Buffalo shed and milk collection Primary Fodder from the fields; the The dairy plant; households;
centre veterinary clinic the tea stall

Sugar mill on the town’s edge Secondary Sugarcane from the fields; Wholesale traders; sweet
electricity; workers shops; the bakery

Flour mill (chakki) Secondary Wheat and jowar from Every household; the bakery
farmers

Tailoring shop Secondary Cloth from the cloth Families, school children, the
merchant; sewing uniform order for our school
machines

Masons building a new house Secondary Cement, sand, bricks, steel The family that will live in
from the hardware shop the house

Tempo and tractor-trolley transport Tertiary Diesel from the petrol Farmers, the mill, every shop
pump; the repair garage in the market

Weekly market and kirana shops Tertiary Goods from farms, mills Every household in the town
and wholesalers

Bank branch and post office Tertiary Deposits from families Loans to farmers and
and traders shopkeepers; money transfers

Primary Health Centre and school Tertiary Salaries, medicines, Healthy, educated workers
books, electricity for every other activity

Mobile repair and cyber café Tertiary Spare parts from the city; Farmers checking prices,
internet connection students, shopkeepers

The arrows, in words. Fields → sugar mill → traders → shops → families. Fields → flour mill →
bakery → shops. Buffalo shed → milk centre → dairy → shops. And running across all of them:
transport → everywhere, bank → everywhere, school and health centre → the workers of every
activity.
In what ways are they dependent on each other?

The secondary sector needs the primary sector for raw material. No cane in the fields,
no sugar in the mill.
The primary sector needs the secondary sector for a market and for tools. Without the
mill the cane rots; without the hardware shop and the tractor factory there is no plough,
pump or pipe.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Both need the tertiary sector to reach anybody. Tempos carry the cane, the bank lends
the farmer money in June and is repaid in March, the mobile phone tells him the price at the
mandi.
The tertiary sector needs the other two to have anything to carry, finance or sell. A
shop with empty shelves is not a shop.

What would happen if one activity stopped?

IF THIS …THIS HAPPENS FIRST …AND THEN
STOPPED…

The farms The sugar mill and flour mill have Mill workers lose wages, shops lose customers, food
nothing to process and shut down has to be bought in from far away at a higher price

The sugar mill Farmers cannot sell their cane, and The crop is wasted, farm incomes collapse,
cane cannot be stored transporters lose their loads

Transport Cane never reaches the mill and Both the farm and the factory stop even though
sugar never leaves it neither of them has failed

The bank No loans for seed, fertiliser or a new Sowing shrinks, the tailor cannot expand, and
sewing machine moneylenders charge much more

The school and Illness is untreated and children stop Every other activity slowly weakens, because it is
health centre studying people who run them

The lesson to write at the end of your answer: the activities of a neighbourhood
are not a list, they are a net. Cut one thread and the strain falls on all the others.
That is exactly what the chapter means by interdependence between sectors.

Before we move on… — Page 208
The chapter in two points

BEFORE WE MOVE ON…

Q1 In this chapter, we learnt about the three sectors of economic activities.

ANSWER

The three sectors, side by side, in the book’s own words. If you can fill this table from
memory, you have the chapter.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

PRIMARY SECTOR SECONDARY SECTOR TERTIARY SECTOR

What it does People are “directly People “are dependent on Activities “that provide support to
dependent on nature to outputs of the primary sector people involved in primary and
produce goods” and transform them to secondary activities”
produce goods”

Definition in “Extraction of raw “Processing of raw materials “Provision of services which
the margin materials directly from derived from primary sector complement both primary and
nature such as farming, into products for sale or secondary sectors, such as
fishing, forestry, etc.” consumption” transportation, banking, and
management of business”

Output Raw material — grain, Manufactured goods, Services — nothing you can pick up
milk, fish, timber, coal, buildings, roads, and utilities and carry
ore such as water, electricity and
gas

The book’s Agriculture, mining, Construction, manufacturing, Healthcare, trade and logistics,
pictures fishing, raising livestock, water supply, solar power, communication, banking,
(page 197) forestry electricity production transportation

Other names — Industrial sector Service sector (page 201)

An Indian Tea leaves plucked in Leaves processed into tea in a Tea packed, railed to Delhi and sold
example Assam factory at Jorhat in a shop

One line for revision: the primary sector produces, the secondary sector processes,
the tertiary sector serves.

Q2 The various examples and illustrations helped to understand the difference as well
as the interdependence between the three types of economic activities or sectors —
primary, secondary and tertiary.

ANSWER

The chapter proves interdependence twice, with two long examples.

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co m
m.
EXAMPLE PRIMARY SECONDARY TERTIARY

mFarmers rear cows and l a se
.co buffaloes and milk them wella
g
The AMUL In the factories the milk is “AMUL uses lorries and trucks, as
dairy
a s em “processed and converted as railway, air and shipping

gl district,
aAnand
cooperative — “the product (milk) is from one form (liquid) into services” and “has set up retail
derived directly from a another — milk powder, ghee, stores” — “transportation, trading
Gujarat (pages natural source” cheese, butter” and retail is a tertiary activity”

co m
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202–205)

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e is made into paper at the
sPulp
l a
ag mill, and the paper is printed
Your own Trees are felled and the Loading, trucking, warehousing
textbook logs collected in the and the bookshop that finally sells
Fig. 14.1, page forest and bound into books the book
206
co m
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o m g l
c the secondary stage is the only one that changes theamaterial; a
What the two examples have in common. In both, the chain starts in nature and ends in a
home; in .both,
e m
as stage appears again and again in between. Take out any one sector and the chain
and in both, the

g l
tertiary
a simply stops — a cow gives milk that curdles, a factory stands idle for want of milk, or ghee sits
in a warehouse in Anand and never reaches Assam.
m a s
m .co agl
l a se
Why the AMUL story is more than an economics example: it also shows who owns
a g
the chain. Before 1946, the farmers held only the primary stage and the middlemen
took the profit of the rest. As a cooperative the same farmers took over “the entire

. com
operation of milk collection, processing and distribution themselves”. Nothing about

m
the three sectors changed — but the people who kept the earnings
a s em did. That is why
. a gl
coincome “rose gradually” and why the story is worth telling.
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Questions, activities and projectsm
— Page 208
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End-of-chapter exercise

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Q1 What is the primary sector? How is it different from the secondary sector? Give two

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examples.

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m l as
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emThe primary sector is the group of economic activities in which people depend directly on
ANSWER

a s
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nature to produce goods. Page 196 defines it as “the group of activities that involves extraction
of raw materials directly from nature such as farming, fishing, forestry, etc.”, and the text adds
s e m
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that in these activities “people are directly dependent on nature to produce goods”.

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Primary = take it out of nature as it is

Secondary = change its form into a new product

How the two sectors differ:

BASIS OF PRIMARY SECTOR SECONDARY SECTOR
DIFFERENCE

1. Source of material Nature itself — soil, water, forest, The output of the primary sector
mine, livestock

2. What happens to It is grown, caught, reared or Its form is changed — processed, manufactured or
the material extracted. Its form is not changed assembled into a new product

3. Nature of output Raw material — wheat, milk, fish, Finished or semi-finished goods — flour, ghee,
cotton, timber, iron ore cloth, furniture, steel; also buildings, roads and
utilities

4. Where the work is Fields, forests, mines, rivers, seas, Mills, factories, workshops, production units,
done farms construction sites

5. Dependence Depends on nature — on rain, soil, Depends on the primary sector for its raw material,
season and the stock of fish or and on machines and power
minerals

6. Value The output is worth comparatively Value is added — the product sells for more than
little as it stands the raw material cost

Two examples of each, as a pair, so the difference is visible:

1. Growing cotton in the black soil of Vidarbha or Gujarat is a primary activity — the farmer
takes the fibre from the plant. Spinning that cotton into yarn and weaving it into cloth in
a mill at Coimbatore is a secondary activity — the cotton has become a different thing.
2. Mining iron ore at Bailadila in Chhattisgarh is a primary activity — the ore is dug out of the
earth. Making steel from that ore at the Bhilai plant, and then cars from the steel, is a
secondary activity.

Two more pairs from the chapter itself if you need them: growing grain (primary) →
grinding it into flour in a mill (secondary); collecting wood from the forest (primary)
→ making furniture and paper from it (secondary).

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 How does the secondary sector depend on the tertiary sector? Illustrate with a few
examples.

ANSWER

A factory can make goods, but it cannot move them, pay for them, sell them or be told
what to make. All of that is done by the tertiary sector — which is why no factory in India
runs without it.

TERTIARY WHAT IT DOES FOR THE EXAMPLE
SERVICE FACTORY

1. Transport Brings raw material in and carries finished The Bhilai steel plant would stop within days
goods out without the railway that hauls iron ore from
Bailadila and coal from the Jharia coalfield

2. Trade and retail Sells what the factory makes; without a Cars assembled at Manesar are sold through
buyer, production is pointless thousands of dealers and showrooms; AMUL’s
butter reaches you through retail stores

3. Banking and Lends money to build the plant and buy A knitwear unit in Tiruppur borrows from a
insurance raw material; insures the goods against bank to buy yarn months before the shirts are
fire, theft and accident paid for

4. Warehousing and Stores the output until it is sold — page Cold stores at Nashik and along the highways
cold storage 201 defines warehouses as buildings “used hold processed food and dairy products
for storing products before they are sold” between factory and shop

5. Communication Carries orders, designs and payments; runs A garment exporter emails designs to buyers
and software the machines and the accounts abroad; software from Bengaluru and
Hyderabad tracks every consignment

6. Education and Trains the engineers, technicians and ITIs and engineering colleges supply the fitters
healthcare workers, and keeps them well enough to and machinists of every pharmaceutical unit in
work Hyderabad and Baddi

7. Repair and Keeps the machines running; a broken Mechanics and electricians — “electricians,
maintenance machine makes nothing who ensure regular supply of electricity”, as
page 201 says

One example followed all the way through — a sugar mill at Kolhapur.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Tractor-trolleys and bullock carts bring the cane in from the fields — transport

A bank lends the mill money to pay farmers before the sugar is sold — banking

Trucks and railway wagons carry the sugar to wholesale markets — transport
Wholesalers and kirana shops sell it to households — trade and retail

Phones and computers carry the orders and record the payments — communication

Why the dependence runs both ways: the tertiary sector needs the secondary
sector just as badly. A truck with nothing to carry earns nothing; a shop with nothing
to sell closes; a bank with no factory to lend to has no borrower. Each is the other’s
customer. That mutual need is exactly what the chapter means by interdependence.

Q3 Give an example of interdependence between primary, secondary and tertiary
sectors. Show it using a flow diagram.

ANSWER

Example: the journey of cotton from a field in Vidarbha to the shirt you wear. It passes
through all three sectors, and each one hands the work on to the next.

From a cotton field to a shirt: the three sectors at work

1. The farmer grows and picks cotton
black soil of Vidarbha, Maharashtra
PRIMARY SECTOR
banks, phones and trucks serve every single stage

2. Trader and truck take it to the mill
the money you pay travels back to the farmer

mandi, weighbridge, lorry, bank payment
TERTIARY SECTOR

3. Mill spins yarn, weaves cloth, stitches
Coimbatore and Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu
SECONDARY SECTOR

4. Warehouse, transport, shop, advertising
railway wagon, godown, showroom, online order
TERTIARY SECTOR

5. You buy and wear the shirt
the end consumer

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The cotton-to-shirt chain. Goods move down the diagram, money moves back up it, and tertiary
services touch every stage.

How each sector depends on the others in this chain:

The mill depends on the farmer — no cotton in the field, no yarn in the mill.
The farmer depends on the mill — with no buyer, his cotton would lie in the house unsold
and he would earn nothing.
Both depend on transport, banks and traders — the cotton must be carried, weighed,
paid for and insured, and the shirt must reach a shop before anybody can buy it.
The transporter and the shopkeeper depend on the first two — a lorry with nothing to
carry and a shop with nothing to sell both earn nothing.
All three depend on the tertiary sector for people — schools, ITIs and hospitals produce
the farmers, fitters, drivers and salespeople the chain runs on.

You may use the chapter’s own example instead. The AMUL chain works exactly
the same way: farmer milks the cow (primary) → tanker carries the milk to
Anand (tertiary) → factory makes butter, ghee and milk powder (secondary) →
lorries, rail, ships and retail stores (tertiary) → your kitchen. Or the textbook chain
of Fig. 14.1: tree felled (primary) → hauled to the mill (tertiary) → paper made and
printed (secondary) → sold in a shop (tertiary).

What the flow diagram is really showing: value being added at every stage. Raw
cotton is worth a few rupees a kilogram; as yarn it is worth more, as cloth more still,
and as a finished shirt in a shop it is worth many times the price of the cotton. Each
sector adds part of that value by its work — which is why a country needs all three,
and why the loss of any one of them makes everybody in the chain poorer.

Chapter at a glance
The chapter’s one idea: every economic activity in the country can be sorted into three
sectors — primary, secondary and tertiary. Kauṭilya’s Arthaśhāstra opens the chapter —
“The root of prosperity is economic activity, the lack of it brings material distress.” Page 196
explains the sorting: “Some economic activities share similar characteristics and based on
this, they can be grouped together or classified into broader groups called economic
sectors.”
Primary sector — work done directly with nature. “Those economic activities in which
people are directly dependent on nature to produce goods are known as primary activities”
(page 196). The margin adds that it “involves extraction of raw materials directly from

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nature such as farming, fishing, forestry, etc.” Growing wheat in Punjab, cutting timber in a
co m
se m.
Chhattisgarh forest, digging coal at Jharia, netting fish off Kochi, collecting eggs at a poultry

o m l a
g produces. Page 199:
.c sector — work that transforms what the primary sector
farm — all primary.

m a
se “in which people are dependent on outputs of the primary sector and transform
Secondary
l a
ag
activities
them to produce goods”. It covers manufacturing in factories, the construction of buildings

m
and roads, and utilities like water, electricity and gas. Grain becomes flour in a mill,

. co ag
m
groundnut becomes oil, tea leaves become tea, wood becomes furniture and paper, cotton

l a se
becomes cloth, and iron ore becomes the steel of a car.
g keep the other two running. Page 201: “All those
Tertiary sector — the servicesathat
economic activities that provide support to people involved in primary and secondary

c o m
.
activities are called tertiary activities.” The truck driver who carries grain from the farm to

s e m technicians,
the factory, the vegetable vendor, doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, pilots,

. c
mechanics,
a la hotels, warehouses
om electricians, banks, mobile and internet services, software,
g
andmshops. This sector is also called the service sector.
l a se AMUL story shows all three sectors working as one chain. Before the 1940s, farmers
a g The
of Anand district in Gujarat cycled through the heat to sell milk before it curdled, and

m a s
.co agl
depended on middlemen who bought “in bulk at meagre prices”. On Sardar Vallabhbhai

se m
Patel’s advice they formed a cooperative; AMUL was set up in 1946 under Tribhuvandas

g l a
Patel and Dr. Varghese Kurien. Milking the cow is primary, making butter and milk powder
a
in the Anand factory is secondary, and the trucks, retail stores and exports are tertiary.
Fig. 14.1 on page 206 makes the same point with your own textbook. A tree is felled and

. c om
the logs collected (primary), the logs are hauled to a mill (tertiary), pulp becomes paper and
the paper is printed into books (secondary), and forklifts, trucks andethe
s m bookshop bring the
m l a
coto you (tertiary). Page 207 states the moral: “None of theagactivities
.
book … would have been

a sempossible, had it not been for all three sectors working together.”
agl Interdependence is the real lesson. No sector can survive alone. A cotton farmer with no
mill has an unsold crop; a mill with no farmer has no cotton; both are useless without
se m
com
trucks, banks and shops. That is why the chapter ends by asking you to draw arrows
g l a
m . a
ase
between the activities of your own neighbourhood and to ask what would happen if one of

agl
them stopped.

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.co a g l
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Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Monetary “Value of something that can be measured Page 195, Activities that create it are
value in terms of money” margin economic activities — the link
back to Chapter 13

Economic “Broad groups that include various activities Page 196, Three of them — primary,
sectors that help with the economic prosperity of a margin secondary and tertiary
nation”

Primary sector “The group of activities that involves Page 196 Directly dependent on
extraction of raw materials directly from nature — agriculture,
nature such as farming, fishing, forestry, mining, fishing, raising
etc.” livestock, forestry

Secondary “The group of activities that involves Page 199, Also includes construction
sector processing of raw materials derived from margin and utilities like water,
primary sector into products for sale or electricity and gas
consumption”

Tertiary sector “The group of activities that involves the Page 201, Also called the service
provision of services which complement margin sector — you often cannot
both primary and secondary sectors, such as see the work, but you feel it
transportation, banking, and management of
business”

Cooperative “A group of people who voluntarily come Page 203, AMUL, 1946 — the farmers
together to meet their economic and social margin themselves are the owners
needs in a formal way. They own the
cooperative and decisions are taken by the
members collectively”

Middlemen “Persons who buy goods from producers Page 203, The Anand farmers “felt
and sell them to consumers. The middlemen margin cheated and harassed” by
charge a fee for this service” them before the cooperative

Pasteurisation “A process by which milk is preserved Page 204, A secondary sector activity
through heating to a specific temperature to margin — it changes the milk itself
kill harmful bacteria”

Factory “Building or group of buildings where Page 204, AMUL’s first factory at Anand
goods are manufactured, or various margin made butter and milk
components are put together, to make a final powder
product”

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14 Economic Activities Around Us AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Warehouses “Large buildings used for storing products Page 201, Storage is a service — a
before they are sold, used or rented out to margin tertiary activity
shops”

Retail “The sale of goods in small quantities for Page 204, The shop at the end of the
use by the end consumer rather than for margin chain — tertiary
resale”

Export “Goods and services that are produced in Page 204, AMUL sells “to several
one country and sold to buyers or margin countries around the world”
consumers in another country”

Page 26 of 26