Q.Mark
Of the eight workers, three are self-employed (saloon owner, handloom weaver, cold-drinks shop owner), three are casual wage labourers (rice-mill worker, government typist, vegetable-loading worker — all paid on a day-to-day wage basis), and two are regular salaried employees (the SBI cashier and the private-hospital nurse — both paid a fixed wage on a regular basis by an established enterprise). NCERT prints no official answer key for this "Work These Out" activity; this classification follows §6.4's own three definitions.
The three categories, as the chapter defines them
- Self-employed — a person who owns and operates their own enterprise to earn a livelihood.
- Regular salaried employees — workers engaged by an enterprise and paid wages on a REGULAR basis (a fixed, ongoing salary), regardless of how permanent the underlying job feels.
- Casual wage labourers — workers casually engaged in the work of others (on a day-to-day, per-task basis) in return for a remuneration. The defining test is that the WAGE ITSELF is computed and paid on a day-to-day/casual basis, not whether the employment lacks permanence.
Working through each of the eight
- Owner of a saloon — self-employed: runs their own business.
- Worker in a rice mill, paid on a daily basis but employed regularly — casual wage labourer. This is the item the activity is really testing: "employed regularly" sounds like it should mean regular salaried, but the wage itself is computed and paid per day, which is exactly what makes a worker casual under the book's own definition — permanence of the job and the basis of pay are two different things.
- Cashier in the State Bank of India — regular salaried employee: a large, established institution paying a fixed monthly salary.
- Typist in a state government office, on a daily-wage basis but paid monthly — casual wage labourer, by the same logic as item 2: even though the money arrives monthly, the wage is calculated on a per-day rate, not a fixed salary — the disbursement cycle doesn't change the underlying wage basis.
- A handloom weaver — self-employed: typically owns the loom and sells their own cloth.
- Loading worker in a wholesale vegetable shop — casual wage labourer: informally engaged for loading work, paid per task/day.
- Owner of a cold drinks shop (selling Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Mirinda) — self-employed: owns and runs the shop.
- Nurse in a private hospital, monthly salary, working regularly for 5 years — regular salaried employee: a fixed monthly salary from an established employer, over a sustained period.
The two open discussion questions the book also asks alongside this activity
- Economists say casual wage labourers are the most vulnerable of the three categories — where are they found, and why? Casual labourers have no fixed employer, no job security and usually no social-security cover, and are concentrated in construction, agriculture and informal urban work — exactly the sectors where work (and pay) can vanish overnight.
- Do the self-employed necessarily earn more than casual or regular workers? Not necessarily — self-employment ranges from a prosperous shop owner to a subsistence-level vendor, so income within the category varies enormously; a regular salaried job, by contrast, usually comes with a more predictable (if not always higher) income plus social security.
Self-employed: saloon owner, handloom weaver, cold-drinks shop owner. Regular salaried employees: SBI cashier, private-hospital nurse. Casual wage labourers: rice-mill worker, government typist, vegetable-loading worker — all three paid on a day-to-day wage basis, which is the deciding test, not how permanent the job feels.
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