Why Social Science? and Locating Places on the Earth

This page covers fees101.pdf of NCERT's new Class 6 textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond (first edition 2024, written under the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023). The PDF has 26 pages: the unnumbered Introduction, ‘Why Social Science?’ (book pp. 1–6) and Chapter 1, ‘Locating Places on the Earth’ (pp. 7–26), the first chapter of Theme A, India and the World: Land and the People. The book's contents page and running heads confirm this; the catalogue lists only the Introduction's title, so both parts are covered here. The new book has its own style: each chapter opens with a quotation and ‘The Big Questions’; inside are ‘Let's explore’ activity boxes and ‘Don't miss out’ fact boxes; it ends with ‘Before we move on…’, ‘Questions, activities and projects’ and a blank ‘Noodles’ (notes and doodles) page. Every such box is read below. We use six concept sections — one for the short Introduction and five for Chapter 1 — without padding. Numbers are checked with asserts. No maps: the book's maps of India and of world time zones become tables; our globe and time drawings are schematic grids without coastlines or boundaries. Facts beyond the book are marked Beyond NCERT (†). Debates — what social science is, themes v subjects, the prime meridian, one time zone or two — are attributed positions side by side, with no verdict.

• How this relates to UPSC, honestly: the Introduction is not examined (the book itself says the Introduction carries no evaluation). Chapter 1 is the base of a long run of Prelims questions on longitude and time — IST's meridian, local time at Shillong, time differences from longitude, the Date Line — mostly 1980–2000, with a city-longitude question in 2018.
• Senior chapters: kegy101 (India — Location: India's extent, the IST meridian through Mirzapur, the two-hour gap between Gujarat and Arunachal); kegy201 (Geography as a Discipline — why geography is a social and a natural science); kegy202, kegy208 (the Earth's shape, latitude and insolation); kesy101, kesy105 (what sociology is and its methods).
• Next: fees102 (Oceans and Continents) and fees103 (Landforms and Life) complete Theme A.
• UPSC from this chapter: seventeen Prelims questions (1980–2018) on the Date Line, local and standard time, IST, the antipode and Delhi's longitude, and one on the Survey of India. No Mains question. List at the end, with key notes.

• Why Social Science? To understand human societies and help build a better future; it uses scientific methods where possible but is not a science like physics; taught in five themes (A–E), not subjects, in the Middle Stage.
• A map is a drawing of an area seen from above; atlas = a book of maps; kinds — physical, political, thematic; components — distance (scale), direction, symbols.
• Directions: four cardinal (N, E, S, W) and four intermediate (NE, SE, SW, NW); symbols for India fixed by the Survey of India.
• Globe best represents the nearly spherical Earth. Latitude: 0° (Equator) to 90°N/S; parallels shrink poleward. Longitude: 0° (Prime Meridian, Greenwich, 1884) to 180°E/W.
• India's own prime meridian: madhya rekhā through Ujjayinī (Ujjain), where Varāhamihira worked ~1,500 years ago; India ≈ 8°–37°N, 68°–97°E.
• 15° = 1 hour (360° ÷ 24); east is ahead. IST = GMT + 5 h 30 min; time zones follow borders; Russia 11 zones, USA 6; International Date Line ≈ 180° — east: subtract a day, west: add one.

The Introduction opens with two photographs and a ‘Let's explore’ box asking what we notice and what questions they raise. We live in the 21st century, a ‘particularly challenging time’: rapid technological progress on one hand; wars, armed conflicts, rising social tensions and a natural environment ‘under great stress’ on the other — an age of great possibilities and great challenges. People everywhere ask how to solve humanity's problems, live in peace and harmony, and protect the Earth for all species. The questions are simple; the answers are not, because societies are diverse and complex — so we must first understand our world and human societies: ‘that is what Social Science is all about’. It is not a ‘science’ like physics or chemistry: it uses scientific methods wherever possible, but human society is too diverse for set procedures and fixed results. It has many subdisciplines — geography, history, political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, psychology — studied separately in the Secondary Stage; in the Middle Stage the book uses five themes instead: A India and the World: Land and the People; B Tapestry of the Past (‘the key to understanding the present’, a source of identity, and a way to learn where people went wrong); C Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions; D Governance and Democracy (India as ‘the world's largest democracy’; rights and duties, or dharma); E Economic Life Around Us. Social science is also ‘the art of asking the right questions’ — hence ‘The Big Questions’ at the start of every chapter — and it is deliberately multidisciplinary (chess and Tamil poetry in geography, the sari in cultural heritage, sevā and festivals in economics). It uses the past to make sense of the present and prepare a better future: ‘an exploration and an adventure’.

Chapter 1 opens with a quotation from Āryabhaṭa (about 500 CE) describing the Earth as a sphere standing in space, made of water, earth, fire and air and surrounded by all creatures, and with The Big Questions: what a map is and its components; what coordinates are and how latitude and longitude mark a location; how local and standard time relate to longitude. A map of an imaginary small city (Fig. 1.1) sets a game: from the railway station, how do you reach the bank? A map is ‘like a treasure guide’. It is a representation, or drawing, of an area — small (a village), bigger (a district or State) or very large (India, the world) — viewed from the top. An atlas is a collection of maps. Kinds: physical (natural features — mountains, oceans, rivers), political (countries, States, boundaries, cities) and thematic (one kind of information). Three components: distance, shown by the scale (suppose 1 cm = 500 m for the city; on the India map in Fig. 5.2, a 2.5 cm ruler stands for 500 km); direction — the four cardinal directions north (top), east, south, west, clockwise, and the intermediate directions NE, SE, SW, NW (most maps just show an arrow marked ‘N’); and symbols, which let many details fit in little space. Different countries use different sets; in India the Survey of India, a government body, has fixed a standard set (Fig. 1.2).

Mapping the Earth is harder because it is nearly a sphere — ‘slightly flattened at the poles’ — and a sphere cannot be flattened on paper without tearing, as a peeled orange shows. A globe, a sphere with a map drawn on it, represents the Earth's geography better than a flat map. Coordinates: two values fix a location — the 7th shop in the 5th row; a chess square such as d4 (white's common opening moves the queen's pawn from d2 to d4). On the globe: the North and South Poles are the fixed points as it spins; the Equator lies halfway between. Latitude measures distance from the Equator; a line east–west, parallel to the Equator, is a parallel of latitude, a circle that grows smaller towards the poles — the Equator is the largest. The Equator is 0°, the poles 90°N and 90°S. Latitude links to climate: hot (‘torrid’) near the Equator, more moderate (‘temperate’) further away, cold (‘frigid’) near the poles. The shortest lines from pole to pole are meridians of longitude — half-circles, all of the same length. Longitude is measured from the Prime Meridian (0°) through Greenwich in London, adopted as the international standard by ‘some nations’ in 1884; it runs 0°–180° east or west — New York about 74°W, Delhi 77°E, Tokyo 140°E. 180°E and 180°W are the same line, written 180°. Latitude and longitude together are a place's two coordinates — ‘Delhi lies at 29°N latitude and 77°E longitude’ (rounded). All the lines form the globe's grid. The Prime Meridian divides the Earth into Western and Eastern Hemispheres; the Equator into Northern and Southern.

A ‘Don't miss out’ box notes that Greenwich was not the first prime meridian. Centuries before Europe, India had one: the madhya rekhā (‘middle line’) through Ujjayinī (Ujjain), a reputed centre of astronomy for centuries, where the astronomer Varāhamihira lived and worked some 1,500 years ago. Indian astronomers knew latitude and longitude and the need for a zero meridian; the Ujjayinī meridian was the reference ‘for calculations in all Indian astronomical texts’. A map (Fig. 1.5) shows ancient cities that texts place on this meridian, at about 75.8°E — some lie very close to it and some a little away, because measuring longitude needed accurate timekeeping, less precise then. Another map (Fig. 1.6, from the Survey of India) shows India with a few parallels and meridians: India lies roughly from 8°N to 37°N and 68°E to 97°E.

Rotate the globe with a desk lamp as the Sun: it is morning in some places, midday, evening or night in others — so measuring longitude also measures time. The Earth spins west to east, a full turn (360°) in 24 hours: 15° per hour (15 × 24 = 360). Moving east from the Prime Meridian, add an hour of local time per 15° (noon at Greenwich = 1 pm at 15°E, 2 pm at 30°E); moving west, subtract (11 am at 15°W, 10 am at 30°W). Fig. 1.7 draws this as coloured 15° bands. A ‘Let's explore’ box: two friends on the phone — the one in Tinsukia (Assam) says the Sun has set; the one in Porbandar (Gujarat) still has daylight; with a 30° difference, local time differs by 2 hours. Many local times are inconvenient, so most countries adopt a standard time based on a meridian passing through them: Indian Standard Time (IST) is 5 hours 30 minutes (5.5 hours) ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Standard times are organised in time zones, broadly 15° wide but with crooked edges that follow international borders (Fig. 1.8). A ‘Don't miss out’ box: big countries have several zones — the USA six, Russia 11, so crossing Russia you would reset your watch 10 times. Opposite the Prime Meridian, at about 180°, is the International Date Line, where the +12 and −12 zones meet: crossing it eastward you subtract a day (Monday → Sunday), westward you add a day; it bends in places so as not to split countries into two dates.

Every ‘Let's explore’ box, in page order.

Eight questions, including a crossword. Try first, then open.

Numbers

One-liners

• Social science studies human societies to help build a better future.
• It uses scientific methods where possible but is not a science like physics.
• This book teaches social science through five themes, not separate subjects.
• A map is a drawing of an area seen from above; an atlas is a collection of maps.
• The three components of a map are distance, direction and symbols.
• India's standard map symbols are fixed by the Survey of India.
• A globe represents the Earth better than a flat map.
• Latitude is distance from the Equator; longitude is distance from the Prime Meridian.
• Parallels shrink towards the poles; meridians are equal half-circles.
• India's ancient prime meridian passed through Ujjayinī.
• The Earth turns 15° an hour, so longitude tells local time.
• IST is 5 h 30 min ahead of GMT; the Date Line is near 180°.

Traps to avoid

• The Equator is a parallel of latitude — the longest one.
• All meridians are the same length; parallels are not.
• Latitude goes to 90°; longitude goes to 180°.
• East is ahead in time; west is behind.
• Crossing the Date Line eastward subtracts a day; westward adds one.
• Time-zone boundaries follow borders, not straight meridians.
• The Ujjayinī meridian (≈ 75.8°E) is not the IST meridian (82.5°E).
• Delhi and Bengaluru share almost the same longitude — same local time, different latitudes.
• The book's map components are distance, direction and symbols — not ‘scale, legend, title’.
• Fig. 1.6's caption reads ‘from to 8°N’ — a typing slip.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: the Date Line (1980; the ship crossing 180° in 1999); local times from longitude (1980 Greenwich–Tokyo; 1981 45°E and 60°W; 1990 2 h 20 min → 35°; 1994 noon at 82°30′E; 1998 6 a.m. tea at 90°W; 1997 reversed rotation); IST's meridian (1988) and Shillong's local time (1999); ‘X = GMT’ (1992); the antipode (1994); first sunrise at 92°30′E (2000); why the USSR had many local times (1981); the city on Delhi's longitude (2018); and who prepares topographical maps (1984). Practise the four-minute rule until it is automatic.
• Elsewhere: which places use GMT as standard time (1993) and the order of countries' standard times (1995) need an atlas of time zones; the strait nearest the Date Line (2008) and countries with more than four time zones (2025, overseas territories) sit with world geography; Tropic of Cancer and Equator questions with kegy101 and world-geography chapters.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• From this chapter: no Mains question tests it directly. The one-or-two time zones debate can appear as a GS1 or essay example — use the attributed positions (Union Government; Assam's tea gardens; CSIR–NPL scientists) without a verdict.
• Keep answers neutral and exact: degrees, minutes and years as in the book or marked †; no characterisation of any present-day party or government.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.