NOTES FOR THE TEACHER CHAPTER : SECTORS OF THE INDIAN ECONOMY An economy is best understood when we study its components or sectors. Sectoral classification can be done on the basis of several criteria. In this chapter, three types of classifications are discussed: primary/secondary/tertiary; organised/ unorganised; and public/private. You can create a discussion about these types by taking examples familiar to the students and relate them to their daily life.
It is important to emphasise the changing roles of sectors. This can be highlighted further by drawing attention of the students to the rapid growth of service sector. While elaborating the ideas provided in the chapter, the students may need to be familiarised with a few fundamental concepts such as Gross Domestic Product, Employment etc. Since the students may find this difficult to understand, it is necessary to explain to them through examples.
Several activities and exercises are suggested in the chapter to help the students understand how a person’s activity could be placed — whether in the primary, secondary or tertiary, organised or unorganised, and public or private sector. You may encourage the students to talk to various working people around them (such as shop owners, casual workers, vegetable vendors, workshop mechanics, domestic workers etc.) to know more about how they live and work. Based on such information, the students can be encouraged to develop their own classification of economic activities. Another important issue to be highlighted is about the problems caused by the changes in the roles of sectors.
The chapter has taken the example of unemployment and what the government can do to solve it. The declining importance of agriculture and growing importance of industry and services should be related to the experience of the children by taking more examples that they may observe in their day-to-day life. Information derived from the media could be used for this purpose. You may encourage the students to bring important cuttings and stories from newspapers, which could be prominently displayed in storyboards, and encourage the class to discuss these issues.
While discussing the unorganised sector, the key issue of protecting the workers engaged in the sector should be highlighted. You may also encourage the students to visit persons and enterprises in the unorganised sector and get a first hand experience from real life situation. Sources for Information The GDP data used in this chapter pertaining to Gross Domestic Product at Factor Cost by Industry of Origin at – prices is taken from Real Time Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy. It is a valuable source of GDP and other information relating to the Indian economy.
For evaluation purposes, particularly to develop the analytical ability of learners, teachers can refer to this report through the Internet to get data for different years. Due to change in methodology, latest data is not used in the chapter. The employment figures are based on data taken from the five-yearly surveys on employment and unemployment conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) now known as National Statistical Office (NSO). NSO is an organisation under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India.
The website you can log onto is: http:/mospi.gov.in. Employment data is also available from other sources such as Census of India.