All exercise questions (and the in-text questions) from the NCERT textbook India: People and Economy, Chapter 9, “Geographical Perspective on Selected Issues and Problems”, exactly as the English edition prints them, with a full model answer for each. Try your own answer first, then check it against this one.
1 Choose the right answers of the following from the given options
Q. Which one of the following river is highly polluted?
(a) Brahmaputra (b) Satluj (c) Yamuna (d) Godavari
Answer: (c) Yamuna. The chapter’s own case study material and Table 9.2 describe the Yamuna as heavily polluted, especially between Delhi and its confluence with the Chambal, and between Mathura and Agra, due to water extraction for irrigation, agricultural run-off and Delhi’s domestic and industrial waste.
Q. Which one of the following diseases is caused by water pollution?
(a) Conjunctivitis (b) Diarrhoea (c) Respiratory infections (d) Bronchitis
Answer: (b) Diarrhoea. The chapter states that diseases commonly caused by contaminated water include diarrhoea, intestinal worms and hepatitis. Conjunctivitis, respiratory infections and bronchitis are not water-borne diseases named in the chapter.
Q. Which one of the following is the cause of acid rain?
(a) Water pollution (b) Land pollution (c) Noise pollution (d) Air pollution
Answer: (d) Air pollution. The chapter states that air pollution can also cause acid rain, evidenced by rainwater analysis showing that the pH of the first rain after summer is always lower than that of later rains.
Q. Push and pull factors are responsible for:
(a) Migration (b) Land degradation (c) Slums (d) Air pollution
Answer: (a) Migration. The chapter describes rural-urban migration as being driven by factors like high demand for labour in urban areas (a “pull”) and low job opportunities in rural areas (a “push”), together with the unbalanced pattern of development between urban and rural areas.
2 Answer the following questions in about 30 words
Q. What is the difference between pollution and pollutants?
Answer: Pollution is the release of substances and energy from waste products of human activities into the environment, degrading its quality. Pollutants are the specific substances (like sulphur oxides, sewage, pesticide residue or excess noise) that cause this degradation.
Q. Describe the major source of air pollution.
Answer: Combustion of fossil fuels, mining and industries are the main sources of air pollution. These processes release oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead and asbestos into the atmosphere.
Q. Mention major problems associated with urban waste disposal in India.
Answer: In most cities other than the big metros, 30 to 50 per cent of waste generated is left uncollected, accumulating on streets and in open spaces, causing health hazards like typhoid, diphtheria, diarrhoea and cholera; untreated waste also ferments and releases toxic biogas, including methane.
Q. What are the effects of air pollution on human health.
Answer: Air pollution causes various diseases related to the respiratory, nervous and circulatory systems. It also produces urban smog, which is very harmful to human health, and can cause acid rain.
3 Answer the following questions in about 150 words
Q. Describe the nature of water pollution in India.
Answer: Surface water from rivers, canals and lakes is never completely pure; it carries small quantities of suspended particles and organic and inorganic substances, and becomes polluted when the concentration of these substances rises beyond the point where the water’s self-purifying capacity can cope. Water pollutants come from natural sources (erosion, landslides, decay of plants and animals) as well as human activities, and human-caused pollution, industrial, agricultural and cultural, is the real cause for concern, with industry the most significant contributor. Major water-polluting industries are leather, pulp and paper, textiles and chemicals, which discharge industrial wastes, poisonous gases, chemical residues and heavy metals, mostly into running water or lakes. Fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides used in agriculture are washed into rivers and also infiltrate the soil to reach groundwater, raising the nitrate content of surface water. Cultural activities such as pilgrimage, religious fairs and tourism add further pollution. Rivers like the Ganga and Yamuna are especially affected: the Ganga by industrial pollution and domestic waste from cities such as Kanpur and Varanasi, and the Yamuna by irrigation-water extraction and Delhi’s waste. About one-fourth of India’s communicable diseases are water-borne, including diarrhoea, intestinal worms and hepatitis.
Q. Describe the problem of slums in India.
Answer: Slums are residential areas of the least choice: dilapidated houses, poor hygienic conditions, poor ventilation, and a lack of basic amenities like drinking water, light and toilet facilities. Open defecation, an unregulated drainage system and overcrowded, narrow street patterns create serious health and socio-environmental hazards. Slums arise because people forced to migrate from rural areas in search of livelihood cannot afford proper housing due to high rents and high land costs, so they occupy environmentally degraded and incompatible land: the opposite extreme from the farm houses and high-income localities with well-developed infrastructure found in the same cities. Most of the slum population works in low-paid, high-risk-prone jobs in the unorganised sector; they remain undernourished, prone to disease, and unable to afford proper education for their children. Poverty makes them vulnerable to drug abuse, alcoholism, crime, vandalism, escapism, apathy and ultimately social exclusion. Dharavi in central Mumbai, described as Asia’s largest slum, is one such example, with a single main road (the misnamed ‘ninety-foot road’) and buildings where a single rented room may house a whole family. The Swachh Bharat Mission, part of the Government of India’s urban renewal mission, aims to improve the quality of life in urban slums.
Q. Suggest measures for reduction of land degradation.
Answer: Since land degradation results from soil erosion, waterlogging, salinisation and alkalinisation, brought on by both natural processes and unchecked human activity, the remedies must address both. Watershed management programmes, of the kind implemented in Jhabua district (Madhya Pradesh) with funding from the Ministries of Rural Development and Agriculture, recognise the linkage between land, water and vegetation, and combine natural resource management with community participation to restore degraded land: in the past five years, such a programme treated about 20 per cent of Jhabua’s area. At Petlawad block within Jhabua, the Bhil community itself revitalised common property resources by having each household plant and maintain a tree, planting fodder grass on pasture land, and adopting social-fencing of these lands for at least two years (and, even after that, no open grazing but stall feeding of cattle), resolving an encroachment dispute along the way by making the encroacher a member of their own user group and sharing the benefits with him. More broadly, the National Remote Sensing Centre’s classification of wastelands by the processes that create them (natural or human-made) helps target reclamation efforts, and afforestation, controlled grazing and community-based watershed management are the measures the chapter’s case studies point to as effective.
4 In-text questions (asked within the chapter)
Q. What do we throw away? Why? Where does our waste end up? Why do ragpickers sort out rubbish dumps? Does it have some value? Is our urban waste worth anything?
Answer: We throw away old and used articles such as pieces of metal, broken glassware, plastic containers, polythene bags, ash and old CDs, because they are broken or no longer useful to us. Household waste ends up on public lands or private contractors’ sites, and industrial waste in low-lying public grounds (landfill areas); in most cities other than the metros, 30 to 50 per cent of it is never collected and lies on streets and open spaces. Ragpickers sort the dumps because much of this waste still has value: metal, glass, plastic and paper can be sold for recycling. So urban waste is worth something: the chapter says wastes should be treated as a resource and used for generating energy and compost.
Q. Have you visited a slum? Visit a slum in your city, and write about the problems faced by slum dwellers.
Answer: This is a field activity. In your report, use the chapter’s points as headings: dilapidated houses and overcrowding; poor hygiene and ventilation; lack of drinking water, light and toilet facilities; open defecation, unregulated drainage and narrow crowded streets; low-paid, risky work in the unorganised sector; undernourishment and disease; children not getting proper education; and vulnerability to drug abuse, alcoholism and crime.
Q. Why are the children of slum-dwellers deprived of school education?
Answer: Most slum-dwellers work in low-paid, high-risk jobs in the unorganised sector, so they are poor, undernourished and often ill, and cannot afford proper education for their children. Children are often made to work or look after younger siblings to add to the family income, and poverty pushes families towards drug abuse, alcoholism and social exclusion, which further keeps children out of school.
Q. What happens if land is consistently used without managing its fertility?
Answer: The chapter’s own answer: land is degraded and its productivity declines. Land degradation is a temporary or permanent decline in the productive capacity of the land, and if the process of degradation goes unchecked, the land may be converted into wasteland.
Q1(iv) is the one students most often get wrong: “push and pull factors” is a standard geography term for migration, not for land degradation or slums, even though the chapter’s migration section discusses both rural push factors (low job opportunities) and urban pull factors (high labour demand) in the same breath as those other topics. Learn the two named diseases (diarrhoea, hepatitis) and the two named rivers (Ganga, Yamuna) as standalone facts, since they are the ones most often turned into separate one-mark questions.