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Class 10 Geography: Resources and Development, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on Chapter 1, Resources and Development, of the NCERT Class 10 Geography textbook, Contemporary India II. Each has a worked answer and the textbook page it comes from. They ask you to classify one resource in every way the chapter uses, decide when sunshine becomes a developed resource, work with the land-use figures, sort fields into the right fallow class, find the gross cropped area of a farm, explain why a few centimetres of lost topsoil matter, and connect Gandhiji's idea of production by the masses to who holds resources. Try each one on paper before you open the answer.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every number was re-computed by a test script and every answer was checked against the textbook page it cites, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (Contemporary India II, Class X, Chapter 1, printed pages 1 to 12):

Kinds of resources

Question 1. The groundwater under a village is pumped up by many farmers through their own tube wells. Classify this groundwater in all four ways the chapter uses: by origin, by exhaustibility, by ownership and by status of development.

Answer: abiotic; renewable only if it is not pumped faster than rain refills it; a community resource that individuals draw on; a developed stock where it is already being pumped. (a) Origin: water is not living, so it is abiotic. (b) Exhaustibility: rain can refill groundwater, so it is renewable, but if it is pumped out faster than it is refilled, the water level keeps falling and it behaves like a resource that can run out. (c) Ownership: each tube well belongs to one farmer, but the water under the ground is shared by the whole village, so it is best seen as a community resource that individuals use. (d) Status: water that is being pumped and used is developed. (Classification of resources, page 1; Fig. 1.2 on the same page shows water as a renewable, flowing resource. The point that overuse can make a renewable resource run short, and the ownership reasoning, are our own.)

Question 2. Rajasthan receives strong sunshine on most days of the year. A village there has no solar panels yet. Is its sunshine a potential or a developed resource? What would change that?

Answer: potential now; it becomes developed once it is surveyed and put to use with the right technology. This edition of the chapter lists the four classes without defining them; by the usual meaning, a potential resource exists in a region but is not yet being used, and a developed resource has been surveyed and is in use. The sunshine over the village is real and plentiful, but no one is turning it into electricity, so for this village it is a potential resource. Once the solar energy is measured, panels and the money to set them up are in place, and the village uses the electricity, it becomes developed. This is why the chapter says resources also need technology and institutions, not only nature. (The classes by status of development, page 1, and the role of technology and institutions, page 3; Rajasthan's solar and wind energy, page 3. The meanings of potential and developed, and applying them to one village, are our own explanation, not the chapter's text.)

Using the land

Question 3. Use the chapter's figures to estimate India's net sown area in 2019-20 in million square kilometres. Why must you multiply by 0.93 first?

Answer: about 1.39 million sq km. The land-use percentages are percentages of the reporting area, not of the whole country, and land-use data covers only 93 per cent of India's 3.28 million sq km. So the reporting area is 0.93 × 3.28 ≈ 3.05 million sq km, and the net sown area is 0.4564 × 3.05 ≈ 1.39 million sq km. Taking 45.64 per cent of the full 3.28 million sq km would count land that was never surveyed. (Geographical area and the 93 per cent reporting area, page 5; net sown area in 2019-20, Fig. 1.4, page 5. The calculation is our own.)

Question 4. The National Forest Policy wants 33 per cent of India's geographical area under forest. In 2019-20, forests were 23.41 per cent of the reporting area. Roughly what percentage of the whole geographical area was that, and about how many more sq km of forest would be needed to reach the target?

Answer: about 21.8 per cent of the geographical area; about 0.37 million sq km more. Forests were 23.41 per cent of a reporting area that is 93 per cent of the country, so they were 0.2341 × 0.93 ≈ 21.8 per cent of the geographical area, not 23.41 per cent. In area, that is 0.2341 × 0.93 × 3.28 ≈ 0.71 million sq km. The target is 0.33 × 3.28 ≈ 1.08 million sq km, so about 1.08 − 0.71 = 0.37 million sq km more forest would be needed. (Forest share, Fig. 1.4, page 5; the 33 per cent target and the reporting area, page 5. The conversion is our own step.)

Question 5. Three fields in one village. Field A grew a crop last year but nothing has been sown this agricultural year. Field B has not been cultivated for the past three agricultural years. Field C has lain uncultivated for seven years, though it could be farmed. Put each field in the correct land-use class.

Answer: A current fallow, B fallow other than current fallow, C culturable waste land. Current fallow means land left without cultivation for one agricultural year or less, so Field A is current fallow. Land that has not been farmed for between one and five agricultural years is fallow other than current fallow, so Field B (3 years) belongs there. Land that could be farmed but has not been farmed for over five agricultural years is culturable waste land, so Field C (7 years) belongs there. (Land utilisation classes, page 4.)

Question 6. A farmer has a 4-hectare farm. In the kharif season she grows rice on 3 hectares; in the rabi season she grows wheat on all 4 hectares. What are the farm's net sown area and gross cropped area for the year?

Answer: net sown area 4 ha; gross cropped area 7 ha. The net sown area counts each piece of land that carried a crop only once, so it is the whole 4 hectares (every part of the farm was sown at least once). Three hectares were sown twice in the same agricultural year. The gross cropped area adds the area sown more than once to the net sown area: 4 + 3 = 7 hectares. (Net sown area and gross cropped area, page 4. The farm is our own example.)

Soil, and sharing resources

Question 7. After the trees on a hillside are cut down, heavy monsoon rain washes about 2 cm of topsoil off the slope in a single season. A villager says, "Soil keeps forming anyway, so it will soon grow back." Use the chapter to explain why this loss is so serious.

Answer: soil that is lost in one season takes an extremely long time to form again, so for people alive today it is gone. The chapter says it takes millions of years for soil to form up to a few centimetres in depth. Losing 2 cm in a single monsoon is therefore losing, in a few months, soil that nature built over a very long time. Normally soil formation and erosion keep roughly in balance, but cutting the trees disturbs that balance: nothing holds the soil, and the rain washes it away much faster than it can form. (How slowly soil forms, page 6; erosion caused by deforestation and the balance between soil formation and erosion, page 10; Comparing the two speeds is our own step.)

Question 8. Gandhiji wanted "production by the masses" in place of "mass production". Compare a village where a hundred families each run a small pottery with a town where one large factory makes the same number of pots. Which is closer to his idea, and how does it connect to the chapter's worry about resources piling up with a few people?

Answer: the hundred small potteries are closer to his idea, because the clay, the work and the earnings are spread over many families. In the village, each family uses its own share of clay and fuel and keeps the income from its pots, so the resources and the money stay with many people. In the factory town, the owner of one big factory controls the clay, the machines and most of the profit, while the workers earn wages. The chapter warns that resources gathered in a few hands divide society into rich and poor, and Gandhiji's answer was production by the masses. (Accumulation of resources in few hands, page 2; Gandhiji on greed and production by the masses, page 4. The two-village comparison is our own example.)

Map work for this chapter

For this chapter, the 2026-27 curriculum's map list has one item: identify the major soil types on an outline map of India (CBSE Social Science curriculum 2026-27, PDF page 7). The textbook's map India: Major Soil Types (page 8) shows six kinds: alluvial, black, red and yellow, laterite, arid, and forest and mountainous soils. Two anchors make the rest easier to place. Almost the whole of the northern plains is alluvial (page 7). Black soil covers the Deccan trap, the lava-built north-west of the Deccan plateau (page 7).

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Sources

All opened and read on 3 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook; printed page = PDF page + 0.

The facts and figures are from the textbook pages above. The questions and worked answers are our own. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the textbook.

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