Class 6 Social Science Chapter 14: Economic Activities Around Us

Where this chapter begins

The last chapter split every activity into two groups by asking whether payment changed hands. This one takes only the paid group and asks a second question of it: what sort of work is this? The answer turns out to have three possible values, and the whole chapter is about them.

Monetary value

One word carries over. Monetary value means worth that can be counted in money, and an activity that creates it is an economic activity. That is the group this chapter sorts further.

How the list got so long

There is a reason a classification is needed now, and it is a change over time. Once, most people worked at a short list of things: growing crops, keeping livestock, making tools, firing pottery and weaving cloth. Five sorts of work would almost have covered how a whole society earned its living.

And today

Today the list has no end. People build computers, mobile phones and drones. They work in banks, schools and hotels. They drive vehicles of every kind, make furniture, tailor clothes by machine, write software, and repair refrigerators and washing machines.

Why that matters

A list that long cannot be held in the head at all. Sorting it is what lets you see how the parts work and how they are joined to one another, which is the reason the chapter gives for classifying anything.

Economic sectors

Some activities resemble one another, and the chapter says those can be gathered together on that basis. Each such grouping is an economic sector: a broad band of activities that together carry a country's prosperity. The word broad is fair warning. A sector is not a job, or a place, or an industry. It is much wider than any of those.

How many there are

Three. They are called the primary sector, the secondary sector and the tertiary sector, and every economic activity in the chapter belongs to one of them. The names are dull on purpose; they simply mean first, second and third.

The primary sector

Primary activities are those where people lean directly on nature to produce goods. The word directly is what carries the definition, and it is worth holding on to, because the next sector is defined by not being direct.

Another way to say it

The primary sector takes raw material straight out of nature. Farming, fishing, forestry and the rest. Nothing has been worked on yet; it is being gathered, grown, caught or dug.

The chapter's examples

Growing grain and vegetables on farms. Collecting wood from forests. Taking coal out of mines. Eggs gathered in a poultry shed. Fish lifted from a fishery. Every one of them has nature at the far end of it, and in every one the person is reaching that far end themselves, with nobody in between.

The common five

The chapter names five as the most common: agriculture, mining, fishing, raising livestock and forestry. If you can recall those five you have the sector.

The pictures it shows

Five again, and they are worth noticing because two are not what most people picture. Greenhouse farming, mining, fish farming, forestry and raising livestock.

Why fish farming is interesting

A fishery is not a boat on the open sea. The fish are being raised on purpose, in a pond somebody dug for them and keeps stocked. It still counts as primary, because what comes out of it is a living thing taken straight from nature, and nothing has been done to change what it is.

Greenhouse farming, likewise

A greenhouse is a built structure with glass and controlled air. It still counts as primary, because the crop inside it is being grown rather than processed. Machinery in the picture does not change the sector.

The test to carry forward

Ask two questions, in this order. What does the activity produce, and where did that thing come from? If it came out of the ground, the water, a forest or an animal, and nothing has yet been done to change its form, the activity is primary. Notice that neither question asks where the work was done, or what equipment was used to do it.

Scenario:

A class is told that once, nearly everybody worked at farming, livestock, tool-making, pottery and weaving. Imran says life must have been simpler. Their teacher asks the class to name who does those five things now. The children find most are still done, but by far fewer people and often elsewhere. The class then asks where everybody else went, and the answer is into work that did not exist before. Imran sees that the change is not that the old work stopped. It continued with fewer hands, and the hands freed from it went into kinds of work the earlier list had no room for.

Analysis:

The first sector did not shrink by disappearing. Fewer people now produce what nearly everybody once produced, and that is what made other sectors possible.

Activity:

Ask an older relative what their grandparents did for work. Write whether that work still exists near you and who does it.

Title:

Trace four things back to nature

What You Notice:

Almost nothing within reach is still in the form it was gathered in, which is why a second sector is needed at all.

Safety:

None needed.

Greenhouse farming counts as primary even though it uses a built structure with glass and controlled air.

Fish farming is a primary activity, though the pond was dug and the fish were put there deliberately.

The chapter's reason for classifying is not tidiness. It is to see how the parts are joined to one another.

The three sectors — First, second, third — Primary, secondary and tertiary are only Latin for one, two and three. The names say nothing about importance.

Spotting a primary activity — Ground, water, forest or animal — If the thing produced came from one of those four and has not been changed in form, the activity is primary.

What the second sector does

Secondary activities are those in which people depend on what the primary sector has produced, and change it into goods. Two things are being claimed at once: the material comes from somewhere else, and its form does not stay as it was.

Why that follows from the first sector

The primary sector was defined by depending on nature directly. This one depends on nature too, but at one remove, through whatever the primary sector handed over. That is the whole difference between them.

Three kinds of work inside it

The chapter puts three rather different things in this sector, and it is worth separating them. Construction. Utilities. Manufacturing.

Construction

Putting up buildings, laying roads, and so on. Nothing is being made in a factory here, and no production line runs. But stone, steel, cement and timber are all being worked into something they were not before, which is the same shape of change that goes on inside a factory.

Utilities

Supplying water, electricity, gas and other such necessities. This one surprises almost everybody, because supplying water sounds like a service, and services are the third sector's business. The chapter places utilities here all the same, and it is worth learning as an exception rather than reasoning it out each time.

Manufacturing

Taking what the primary sector produces and working it, in a factory or a production unit, into a different form that can be sold on or put to use. This is the case most people picture first when the sector is mentioned, and it is the one the chapter spends most of its examples on.

Six examples worth learning

Grain from fields milled into flour. Oil pressed out of groundnut. Tea leaves processed to give tea. Wood from the forest turned into furniture and paper. Cotton made into clothes. Iron ore turned into steel, and steel into cars and trucks.

What every one of those shares

Look at the shape of each. Something enters in one form and leaves in another. Grain is not flour, a groundnut is not oil, a tree is not a chair, and ore is not a car. The change of form is the test.

The ore-to-automobile chain

That last example is longer than the others and deserves attention. Iron ore comes out of the ground, which is primary. It is turned into steel, which is secondary. The steel is then made into cars and trucks, which is secondary again.

A stage does not have to be the last one

There is a lesson hidden in that chain. An activity is secondary whether it produces a finished article or something that will be worked on again. Steel is not the end of anything, and making it still counts.

How much is actually made

The chapter gives India's automobile production for the year 2022, and the figures are worth reading carefully, because the largest number is attached to the smallest vehicle.

The four figures

Passenger vehicles such as cars: forty-five lakh. Commercial vehicles such as trucks: ten point three lakh. Three wheelers: eight point six lakh. Two wheelers: two crore.

Reading them properly

The figures are written in two different units, which is the trap. A crore is a hundred lakh, so two crore is two hundred lakh. On that reckoning two wheelers outnumber cars more than four times over, and they outnumber trucks by roughly twenty to one. The source given is the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

Every one of those is secondary

Whatever the vehicle, the activity that produced it is a secondary one. Steel, rubber, glass and plastic went in, and a machine came out. Nothing in that list was gathered from nature in the shape it was sold in.

The question to ask

For any activity, ask two things. Did the material it works on arrive from somewhere else? And does it leave in a different form from the one it came in? Two yeses make the activity secondary. Notice that neither question asks about a factory, which is why laying a road qualifies and picking cotton does not.

Scenario:

A class traces a cotton shirt back as far as it can. Shop, factory, spinning mill, field. Rohit says the factory made the shirt. Their teacher asks what the factory started with. Thread, which came from cotton, which came from a field. The class marks where the form changed rather than where something new appeared. Cotton became thread and thread became cloth, and at no point was any new material created. Sana writes the conclusion. The second sector depends entirely on what the first produced, because changing the form of something requires that the something already exists.

Analysis:

Tracing the shirt backwards reaches a field, not a factory. The second sector changes form and cannot begin without the first sector's output.

Activity:

Trace one object you own back to a raw material. Mark each point where its form changed.

Title:

Find the change of form

What You Notice:

Most kitchen items have passed through the second sector at least once, and several have passed through it twice, as ore does on its way to a truck.

Safety:

Do not open or taste anything without an adult's leave.

India produced two crore two wheelers in 2022, which is more than four times its output of passenger vehicles.

Supplying water is placed in the second sector, though it sounds much more like a service.

Making steel is secondary even though steel is not a finished article and will be worked on again.

The three kinds of work — Build, supply, make — Construction puts things up, utilities supply water and power, and manufacturing turns material into goods.

The test for the sector — Came from elsewhere, leaves different — If the material arrived from another sector and its form has changed by the end, the activity is secondary.

The third definition

Tertiary activities are all those that give support to the people working in the first two sectors. That is a definition of quite a different shape from the other two, and the difference is worth pausing on. It does not say what the activity produces. It says who it helps.

Why the shape is different

The first sector was defined by its source, which is nature. The second was defined by what it does to a material, namely change its form. The third produces no material whatever, so there is no source to point at and no change to describe. All that is left to define it by is what it is for.

The warning the chapter gives

These include services we may not be able to see, which still play a very important role. That sentence exists because an invisible contribution is easy to undervalue, and the rest of the topic is spent making it visible.

The first example

A truck driver carries grain and vegetables away from the farm, to a factory or else to the market. Nothing has been grown on that journey and nothing has changed form. Yet without it, the farm's output stays exactly where it was, and the factory has nothing at all to work on.

The second

Fruit and vegetable vendors sell the farm's produce to households. Again nothing is grown or made. The service is that the produce reaches the person who will eat it.

The professions

Doctors and nurses, teachers, lawyers and pilots all give their services to whoever has need of them. Five occupations, and as work they could hardly be more unlike one another. The only thing they share is that each one serves somebody.

The people who mend things

Technicians who mend and service electronic goods, phones and televisions among them. Mechanics who put vehicles right, cars and tractors alike. Electricians who keep the supply of electricity running.

What repair work shows

A mechanic mending a tractor is supporting a farmer, and a farmer is in the first sector. That is the definition working exactly as written: support given to somebody engaged in another sector. Nothing was grown and nothing was made, and the tractor now runs.

The chapter's own summary of them

Their services make our lives easier. It is a modest sentence for a sector that turns out to contain a great deal.

The longer list

Communication by mobile phone and by internet. Software development. And services at hotels and restaurants, at banks and schools, at hospitals and airports, at shops and at warehouses. It is a long list, and it is meant to be.

Warehouses

The chapter stops to explain that word, which is a sign it expects trouble. A warehouse is a large building where goods are kept before they are sold, used, or let out to shops. Storage counts as a service too, even though nothing whatever happens to the goods inside it.

Its other name

The tertiary sector is also called the service sector, and that name is the more descriptive of the two. If you forget the definition, the other name carries most of it.

The three tests side by side

Ask where the product came from, and you can settle the first sector. Ask whether its form changed, and you can settle the second. Ask whether the work supports somebody else's work, and you have the third. Three questions cover every activity in this chapter.

A common confusion

Software development sits here, though writing software certainly feels like making something, and people do speak of building it. What results is not a material good, and it serves whoever uses it. So the chapter places it among the services rather than in the second sector.

Why this sector grows

Look back at the modern list from the first topic: banks, schools, hotels, software, repairs, transport. Almost every new kind of work on it belongs to this third sector, which is why it has grown so much.

Scenario:

A class is asked to name what a bus driver produces. Nobody can name an object. Arjun concludes the work produces nothing. Their teacher asks the class to remove the buses for a week and list what fails. Children cannot reach school, goods cannot reach shops, and workers cannot reach jobs. The list is long. The class sees that the driver produces no object and makes a great deal of other work possible. Arjun revises his answer. The third sector is defined by whom it supports rather than by what it makes, which is why looking for an object was the wrong test.

Analysis:

Arjun applied a test from the first two sectors to the third. Removing the service for a week is what makes output visible when nothing material is produced.

Activity:

Name three services you used this week. For each, write what would fail without it.

Title:

Follow one vegetable

What You Notice:

Most of the people on a list like this turn out to be in the third sector, and the chain breaks wherever one of them is removed.

Safety:

None needed.

Storing goods in a warehouse counts as a service, although nothing at all happens to the goods inside it.

A mechanic mending a tractor is supporting a farmer, which is the tertiary definition working exactly as written.

Software development is placed here, because what it makes is not a material good.

The three tests — Source, form, support — Where did it come from gives the first sector. Did its form change gives the second. Does it support somebody's work gives the third.

The sector's other name — Tertiary is service — If the definition slips away, the second name carries most of it: this is the sector that serves.

What this last part is for

The three sectors have been defined one at a time, each with its own test. Now the chapter shows all three working together on a single product, because that is the point of having classified anything in the first place. It takes a real example, from Anand district in Gujarat, and follows it from a cowshed to a shop counter.

The morning as it is now

Farmers there begin the day with milk pails clinking and their cows and buffaloes calling. They milk the animals and sell the milk to the dairy nearby. A dairy is simply a place where milk is gathered and kept.

How they are paid

At the end of the month they are paid for that milk, and the amount depends on two things: how much they gave, and how good it was. Quantity and quality together.

But not eighty years ago

None of that arrangement existed in the early nineteen forties, and the difference is what the story is about. Then, farmers in Anand sold their milk to villages round about.

The daily problem

They had to cycle or walk to those villages, under a scorching sun. In heat milk turns and curdles within hours, so the selling had to be done quickly, whatever price was offered. A great deal of effort produced a very small amount of money. That is the position the story begins from.

The middlemen

So they came to depend on middlemen: people who buy from producers and sell on to consumers, charging for that service. These middlemen bought milk in bulk at meagre prices and sold it in the market.

What the farmers felt

Cheated, and harassed. The chapter uses both words and does not soften either. That is the position a farmer is in when bargaining alone, holding something that will be worthless by tomorrow. Refusing a low price was not a real choice.

Going to Sardar Patel

One day the farmers went, together, to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a prominent national leader, and put their problems to him. His advice was to form a cooperative and stop depending on middlemen.

What a cooperative is

A group of people who come together of their own accord, formally, to meet needs both economic and social. The members own it, and decisions are taken by them collectively.

What that would let them do

Buy and sell milk as a group, and run the whole operation themselves: collection, processing and distribution. Nobody would stand between the farmer and the market.

AMUL

The farmers took the advice. Anand Milk Union Limited was set up in 1946. Two men led it. Tribhuvandas Patel was a lawyer, and had been a freedom fighter. Dr Varghese Kurien was an engineer, who had been working at a dairy factory in Mumbai before he came.

What changed

It brought farmers together, women among them, and gave them control over producing and selling milk. They made their own decisions on every matter, including pasteurisation, which means heating milk to a set temperature so that harmful bacteria die. The tasks were shared out among everybody, and incomes rose gradually. They no longer needed the middlemen at all.

Growing into a factory

As more farmers joined, the milk collected grew so large that they decided to make other things from it. They set up a factory at Anand and began producing butter and milk powder.

Today

Many processing plants and factories across India. A wide range of products. Selling through small and large retail shops everywhere, and exports to several countries besides. Retail means selling in small quantities to whoever will use the goods.

Now name the sectors

Milking the cows to sell the milk is primary, because the milk comes straight from a natural source. Turning it into powder, ghee, cheese and butter is secondary. Moving it by lorry, rail, air and ship, and trading and retailing it, is tertiary.

The same shape in a textbook

The chapter makes the point twice. Pulp is taken from trees, paper is made from the pulp, and the paper is printed into the books you study. None of it would have happened without all three sectors working together.

Scenario:

Twenty-two families in a hill village grow oranges. For years each family carried its own fruit down to the roadhead. There they sold to whichever trader was waiting, at whatever price he offered. Oranges bruise within a day or two. Nobody could afford to refuse and walk back up the hill. In 2021 the families formed a body of their own. Every family joined by choice, and each holds one share. Prices and plans are settled at a meeting, with one vote to a household. They now grade the fruit together. The smaller oranges used to be thrown away. Now they go to a shed at the roadhead. There they are pressed into juice and bottled. A hired lorry takes the boxed fruit and the bottles to two towns. Three shops there sell them to families. A small quantity now goes to a buyer abroad.

Analysis:

Every element of this has appeared in the chapter already. The body the families formed is a cooperative. Membership is voluntary, the members own it, and they decide collectively, one vote to a household. The traders at the roadhead were middlemen, buying from producers to sell on. The families were weak against them for the reason the Anand farmers were weak. A product that spoils in a day leaves no room to bargain. All three sectors are here on one product. Growing and picking the oranges is primary, since the fruit comes straight from nature. Pressing and bottling juice is secondary, because the form has changed. It is also the Anand pattern of processing what would be wasted. The lorry, the shops and the sale abroad are tertiary.

Activity:

Find one thing grown or made near where you live. Draw three boxes across a page, label them primary, secondary and tertiary, and write into each box what happens to that thing at that stage. If a box comes out empty, write underneath why that stage is missing, and who would do it if it existed.

Dr Varghese Kurien was an engineer, and had been working at a dairy factory in Mumbai before Anand.

Tribhuvandas Patel, who led the cooperative with him, was a lawyer and a freedom fighter.

The cooperative began making butter and milk powder only because the milk collected had grown too large to sell as milk.

The milk's journey — Cow, factory, lorry — Milking is primary, turning it into butter and powder is secondary, and carrying and selling it is tertiary.

Why the cooperative worked — Own it, and decide it — The members owned the body and took the decisions, so nobody stood between them and the market.