CBSE CLASS 10 SST ECONOMICS - -CHAPTER 2 SECTORS OF THE INDIAN ECONOMY SECTORS OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES [SIMPLIFICATION]

CHAPTER 2

SECTORS OF THE INDIAN ECONOMY

 

SECTORS OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES

Let us look at these pictures.

You will find that people are engaged in various economic activities.

Some of these are activities producing goods.

Some others are producing services.

These activities are happening around us every minute even as we speak.

How do we understand these activities?

One way of doing this is to group them (classify them) using some important criterion.

These groups are also called sectors.

We begin by looking at different kind of economic activities.

There are many activities that are undertaken by directly using natural resources.

Take, for example, the cultivation of cotton.

It takes place within a crop season.

For the growth of the cotton plant, we depend mainly, but not entirely, on natural factors like rainfall, sunshine and climate.

The product of this activity, cotton, is a natural product.

Similarly, in the case of an activity like dairy, we are dependent on the biological process of the animals and availability of fodder etc.

The product here, milk, also is a natural product.

Similarly, minerals and ores are also natural products.

When we produce a good by exploiting natural resources, it is an activity of the primary sector.

Why primary?

This is because it forms the base for all other products that we subsequently make.

Since most of the natural products we get are from agriculture, dairy, fishing, forestry, this sector is also called agriculture and related sector.

 

The secondary sector covers activities in which natural products are changed into other forms through ways of manufacturing that we associate with industrial activity.

It is the next step after primary.

The product is not produced by nature but has to be made and therefore some process of manufacturing is essential.

This could be in a factory, a workshop or at home. 

For example, using cotton fibre from the plant, we spin yarn and weave cloth.

Using sugarcane as a raw material, we make sugar or gur.

We convert earth into bricks and use bricks to make houses and buildings.

Since this sector gradually became associated with the different kinds of industries that came up, it is also called as industrial sector.

 

After primary and secondary, there is a third category of activities that falls under tertiary sector and is different from the above two.

These are activities that help in the development of the primary and secondary sectors.

These activities, by themselves, do not produce a good but they are an aid or a support for the production process.

For example, goods that are produced in the primary or secondary sector would need to be transported by trucks or trains and then sold in wholesale and retail shops.

At times, it may be necessary to store these in godowns.

We also may need to talk to others over telephone or send letters (communication) or borrow money from banks (banking) to help production and trade.

Transport, storage, communication, banking, trade are some examples of tertiary activities.

Since these activities generate services rather than goods, the tertiary sector is also called the service sector.

Service sector also includes some essential services that may not directly help in the production of goods.

For example, we require teachers, doctors, and those who provide personal services such as washermen, barbers, cobblers, lawyers, and people to do administrative and accounting works.

In recent times, certain new services based on information technology such as internet cafe, ATM booths, call centres, software companies etc have become important.