NCERT Solutions for Class 9th Social Science Chapter 1 Social Science in Everyday Life — In-text Questions

Because where people settle depends on what the land offers and where the work is — and neither is spread evenly across the country.

• The land itself (Geography). Level, fertile, well-watered plains can be farmed almost anywhere on them. Farming families therefore spread out and live close to their own fields, which produces a scatter of small villages. Hills, deserts and dense forests support far fewer people, so settlements there are smaller and further apart still.
• Where the work is (Economics). Factories, ports, wholesale markets, offices, hospitals and colleges cannot be spread thinly — they work only when many people, suppliers and customers sit close together. Jobs in industry, trade and services therefore concentrate in a few places, and those places become crowded.
• Decisions already made (History and Political Science). A city usually stands where something once made that exact spot valuable — a river crossing, a fort, a temple town, a railway junction, a harbour. Roads, water supply, schools and administration were then built there, which pulled in still more people. Growth feeds on itself.

Because communities have long and largely separate histories, and language and custom are learnt from the generation before rather than invented afresh.

• Separation over time. Groups settled in different regions long ago. Distance, hills, rivers and forests limited daily contact, and speech that is not in constant contact drifts apart. Given enough centuries, related speech becomes separate languages.
• Contact and mixing. Migration, trade routes, pilgrimage and rule by different dynasties brought new words, foods, crafts and practices to some regions and not to others.
• Transmission. The chapter notes that our lives are shaped by "the traditions and ideas passed down through generations". Festivals, dress, cuisine, songs and ways of worship are learnt at home and in the neighbourhood, so they persist even when other things change.
• The environment. The Pañchamahābhūtas idea on page 3 makes precisely this point — the environment influences "settlement patterns, occupations, architecture, food habits, and health practices". A fishing coast, a rice delta and a dry plateau will not develop the same festivals or the same houses.

Because a region tends to do what it can do better and more cheaply than its neighbours, and that depends on its physical endowment, its location and its history.

• Physical endowment. Deep soil, a dependable water supply, level ground and a long warm growing season make farming rewarding. A region without these — rocky, dry, steeply sloping — cannot live off crops alone and must earn its living some other way.
• Raw materials and energy. Industry grows where the materials it eats are near at hand or cheap to bring in — minerals, cotton, cane, timber — together with power, water and transport.
• Location and access. Trade concentrates where routes meet: a harbour, a river crossing, a highway or rail junction, a border town. Goods must be able to arrive and leave cheaply.
• Skills, capital and policy. Industry also needs trained workers, banks willing to lend, and roads, ports and power built by public authorities. Once a region has these, more firms come, and the advantage deepens.

Through institutions and procedures laid down in the Constitution, not by any one person's wish. Political Science is the study of exactly this — of "how and why power is distributed, decisions are made, and policies are implemented".

1. A problem is recognised — from data, from reports, from public demand or from an election promise.
2. Elected representatives and ministers take it up. They are accountable to the voters who elected them, which is why public opinion matters between elections as well as at them.
3. Departments and officials examine it — costs, legal powers, who gains, who loses, whether it can actually be delivered.
4. A law or policy is framed and approved, and money for it is allotted in the budget.
5. It is implemented and reviewed through the administrative machinery, and can be challenged, amended or reversed.

Decisions are also taken at more than one level. The Union, the States and local bodies each have their own sphere. The chapter's own example is the Panchayati Raj system, which "embodies grassroots democracy by giving citizens a voice in local development planning".

Because in those regions too much water arrives too quickly for the land to carry it away. Both natural conditions and human decisions push a region towards that state.

Human decisions add to it: building on floodplains and natural drainage channels; paving over ground that once soaked up rain; clearing tree cover and filling wetlands upstream; and embankments or drains that are not maintained.

Because a crop needs the right physical conditions and a working chain from field to market. Take away either and farming struggles.

• Soil. Deep, fertile soil holds nutrients and moisture; thin or salty soil does not.
• Water. Dependable water matters more than plentiful water. A region with moderate rain but assured irrigation can out-produce a region with heavy but erratic rain.
• Temperature and growing season. Each crop has a temperature range and a length of season it needs; where the warm season is short, fewer crops can be raised in a year.
• Slope. Level land can be ploughed, irrigated and harvested by machine; steep land loses its topsoil to erosion.
• Inputs and markets. Good seed, credit, storage, a road to the mandi and a price worth the effort. A harvest that cannot be stored or sold is not a livelihood.

By making the conditions that everyday life is built around less dependable. The chapter lists climate change on page 11 among the complex issues Social Science will help societies address, alongside sustainable development, social harmony and the equitable use of resources.

• Farming and food. When rain arrives late, stops early or falls in fewer, heavier bursts, sowing and harvesting dates that worked for generations stop working. Yields swing, and so do farm incomes and food prices.
• Water. Rivers, wells and reservoirs depend on rainfall and snowmelt. Less reliable supply means shortages in the dry months and disputes over sharing.
• Health and work. Longer, hotter spells are hardest on people who work outdoors, on the elderly and on the very young, and they change the range of some diseases.
• Coasts and settlements. Stronger storms and rising seas threaten low-lying coastal land, homes and livelihoods such as fishing.
• Money and movement. Relief and rebuilding cost public money that would otherwise have gone to schools, roads or hospitals; and where a livelihood fails repeatedly, people migrate.