Articles
Governance at State Level
India is a Federation having governments at two levels i.e. State level and Union or Central level. The three branches of government - executive, legislature and judiciary exist and function at both the levels.
Read more …Local Governments
Local Government is a government of the local people. Being located nearest to the local people, local government institutions are under constant observation of the society. It is said that Local Government provides services to the individual from "cradle to the grave."
Read more …India - A Welfare State
India is described as a Welfare State. It is a concept of government in which the State plays a key role in the protection and promotion of economic and social well-being of its citizens. A Welfare State is based on the principles of equality of opportunity and equitable distribution of wealth.
Read more …Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties
In a Democratic Country like India certain basic and fundamental rights have been granted to every citizen, but in many parts of the world people are still struggling for these rights. This lesson aims at studying Fundamental Rights and Duties enshrined in the Constitution of India.
Read more …Constitutional Values of India
Constitution is a legal document which determines the structure of the government and direction to which society is to move on. A democratic constitution represents consensus among the people on certain rules, principles, procedures and ideals and guides the social and political institutions.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Emerging Modes of Business
The world of business is changing. e-business and outsourcing are the two most obvious expressions of this change. The trigger for the change owes its origin to both internal and external forces.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Electoral Politics
Elections take place regularly in any democracy. Elections is a mechanism by which people can choose their representatives at regular intervals and change them if they wish to do so.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Morphology of Flowering Plants
Flowering plants exhibit enormous variation in shape, size, structure, mode of nutrition, life span, habit and habitat. They have well developed root and shoot systems. Root system is either tap root or fibrous. Generally, dicotyledonous plants have tap roots while monocotyledonous plants have fibrous roots. The roots in some plants get modified for storage of food, mechanical support and respiration.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Complex Numbers and Quadratic Equations
The equation x2 + 1 = 0 has no real solution as x2 + 1 = 0 gives x2 = -1 and square of every real number is non-negative.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Chemical Bonding and Molecular Structure
Kössel’s first insight into the mechanism of formation of electropositive and electronegative ions related the process to the attainment of noble gas configurations by the respective ions. Electrostatic attraction between ions is the cause for their stability. This gives the concept of electrovalency.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Laws of Motion
First law of motion: An object continues to be in a state of rest or of uniform motion along a straight line unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Tertiary and Quaternary Activities
When you fall ill you go to your family doctor or you call a doctor. Sometimes your parents take you to a hospital for treatment. While in school, you are taught by your teachers. In the event of any dispute, legal opinion is obtained from a lawyer.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Secondary Activities
All economic activities namely primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary, revolve around obtaining and utilising resources necessary for survival. Secondary activities add value to natural resources by transforming raw materials into valuable products.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Primary Activities
Human activities which generate income are known as economic activities. Economic activities are broadly grouped into primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary activities.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Population - Distribution, Density, Growth and Composition
The people are very important component of a country. India is the second most populous country after China in the world with its total population of 1,210 million (2011). India’s population is larger than the total population of North America, South America and Australia put together.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: International Trade
International Trade is mutually beneficial as no country is self-sufficient. India’s international trade has undergone a sea change in recent years in terms of volume, composition as well as direction.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Transport and Communication
The use of transport and communication depends upon our need to move things from place of their availability to the place of their use.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Mineral and Energy Resources
Metallic minerals are the sources of metals. Iron ore, copper, gold produce metal and are included in this category. Metallic minerals are further divided into ferrous and non-ferrous metallic minerals.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Water Resources (Class 12)
India accounts for about 2.45 per cent of the world’s surface area, 4 per cent of the world’s water resources and about 16 per cent of the world’s population. The total water available from precipitation in the country in a year is about 4,000 cubic km.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Land Resources and Agriculture
Land-use records are maintained by land revenue department. The land use categories add up to reporting area, which is somewhat different from the geographical area. The Survey of India is responsible for measuring geographical area of administrative units in India. Have you ever used a map prepared by Survey of India?
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Interior of the Earth
What do you imagine about the nature of the earth? Do you imagine it to be a solid ball like cricket ball or a hollow ball with a thick cover of rocks i.e. lithosphere? Have you ever seen photographs or images of a volcanic eruption on the television screen?
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Movements of Ocean Water
The ocean water is dynamic. Its physical characteristics like temperature, salinity, density and the external forces like of the sun, moon and the winds influence the movement of ocean water. The horizontal and vertical motions are common in ocean water bodies. The horizontal motion refers to the ocean currents and waves. The vertical motion refers to tides.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Atmospheric Circulation and Weather Systems
Air expands when heated and gets compressed when cooled. This results in variations in the atmospheric pressure. The result is that it causes the movement of air from high pressure to low pressure, setting the air in motion. You already know that air in horizontal motion is wind.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Composition and Structure of Atmosphere
The atmosphere is composed of gases, water vapour and dust particles. The proportion of gases changes in the higher layers of the atmosphere in such a way that oxygen will be almost in negligible quantity at the height of 120 km. Similarly, carbon dioxide and water vapour are found only up to 90 km from the surface of the earth.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Landforms and their Evolution
After weathering processes have had their actions on the earth materials making up the surface of the earth, the geomorphic agents like running water, ground water, wind, glaciers, waves perform erosion. It is already known to you that erosion causes changes on the surface of the earth. Deposition follows erosion and because of deposition too, changes occur on the surface of the earth.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Natural Hazards and Disasters
Change is the law of nature. It is a continuous process that goes on uninterruptedly involving phenomena, big and small, material and non- material that make our physical and socio-cultural environment. It is a process present everywhere with variations in terms of magnitude, intensity and scale.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Natural Vegetation
Natural vegetation refers to a plant community that has been left undisturbed over a long time, so as to allow its individual species to adjust themselves to climate and soil conditions as fully as possible. India is a land of great variety of natural vegetation.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Climate (Class 11)
The monsoon regime emphasises the unity of India with the rest of southeast Asian region. This view of broad unity of the monsoon type of climate should not, however, lead one to ignore its regional variations which differentiate the weather and climate of different regions of India.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Structure and Physiography
Do you know that our earth also has a history. The earth and its landforms that we see today have evolved over a very long time. Current estimation shows that the earth is approximately 460 million years old.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Globalisation
In this final chapter of the book we look at globalisation, something that has been referred to in many chapters of this book and textbooks of many other subjects. We begin by analysing the concept of globalisation and then examine its causes.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Contemporary South Asia
When India and Pakistan joined the club of nuclear powers, this region suddenly became the focus of global attention. The focus was, of course, on the various kinds of conflict in this region: there are pending border and water sharing disputes between the states of the region. Besides, there are conflicts arising out of insurgency, ethnic strife and resource sharing.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Security in the Contemporary World
We hear that an issue is a security issue and that it is vital for the well-being of the country. The implication is that it is too important or secret to be debated and discussed openly.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: International Organisations
The potential reform of the United Nations Security Council is an interesting case of the reform process and its difficulties. We then turn to India’s involvement in the UN and its view of Security Council reforms. The chapter closes by asking if the UN can play any role in dealing with a world dominated by one superpower.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Challenges of Nation Building
At the hour of midnight on 14-15 August 1947, India attained independence. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of free India, addressed a special session of the Constituent Assembly that night.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Recent Developments in Indian Politics
First the most crucial development of this period was the defeat of the Congress party in the elections held in 1989. The party that had won as many as 415 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984 was reduced to only 197 in this election. The Congress improved its performance and came back to power soon after the mid-term elections held in 1991.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Regional Aspirations
1980s may be seen as a period of rising regional aspirations for autonomy, often outside the framework of the Indian Union. These movements frequently involved armed assertions by the people, their repression by the government, and a collapse of the political and electoral processes.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Rise of Popular Movements
Three decades after Independence, the people were beginning to get impatient. Their unease expressed itself in various forms. In the previous chapter, we have already gone through the story of electoral upheavals and political crisis. Yet that was not the only form in which popular discontent expressed itself. In the 1970s, diverse social groups like women, students, Dalits and farmers felt that democratic politics did not address their needs and demands.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: India's External Relations
India was born in a very trying and challenging international context. The world had witnessed a devastating war and was grappling with issues of reconstruction; yet another attempt to establish an international body was underway; many new countries were emerging as a result of the collapse of colonialism; and most new nations were trying to come to terms with the twin challenges of welfare and democracy. Free India’s foreign policy reflected all these concerns in the period immediately after Independence.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Constitution: Why and How?
What is a constitution? What are its functions? What role does it perform for a society? How does a constitution relate to our daily existence?
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Secularism
Though Jews faced discrimination for centuries throughout Europe, in the present state of Israel, Arab minorities, both Christian and Muslims, are excluded from social, political and economic benefits available to Jewish citizens. Subtle forms of discrimination also continue to persist against non-Christians in several parts of Europe.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Nationalism
If we were to take a quick poll of what people commonly understand by the term nationalism we are likely to get responses which talk about patriotism, national flags, sacrificing for the country, and the like.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Citizenship
Citizenship has been defined as full and equal membership of a political community. In the contemporary world, states provide a collective political identity to their members as well as certain rights.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Rights
A right is essentially an entitlement or a justified claim. It denotes what we are entitled to as citizens, as individuals and as human beings. It is something that we consider to be due to us; something that the rest of society must recognise as being a legitimate claim that must be upheld.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Social Justice
Just as we intuitively understand what love means even if we cannot explain all its different shades of meaning, we also have an intuitive understanding of justice even though we may not be able to define it precisely. In that sense justice is a lot like love.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Local Governments
In a democracy, it is not sufficient to have an elected government at the centre and at the State level. It is also necessary that even at the local level, there should be an elected government to look after local affairs.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Federalism (Class 11)
Political maps of India have changed dramatically over the years. Boundaries of States have changed, names of States have changed, and the number of States has changed. When India became independent, we had a number of provinces that the British government had organised only for administrative convenience.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Judiciary
Many times, courts are seen only as arbitrators in disputes between individuals or private parties. But judiciary performs some political functions also. Judiciary is an important organ of the government.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Legislature
You have already studied the importance of elections and the method of election adopted in India. Legislatures are elected by the people and work on behalf of the people.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Executive
Legislature, executive and judiciary are the three organs of government. Together, they perform the functions of the government, maintain law and order and look after the welfare of the people.
Read more …NCERT Chapter Summary: Bricks, Beads and Bones
The Harappan seal is possibly the most distinctive artefact of the Harappan or Indus valley civilisation. Made of a stone called steatite, seals like this one often contain animal motifs and signs from a script that remains undeciphered.
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