Class 10 Ch-6 Work, Life and Leisure – Important questions

Short Answer Type Questions

Q1:  What steps were taken to clean up London?

 Ans:

1. Attempts were made to decongest localities, green the open spaces reduce pollution and landscape the city.
2. Large blocks of apartments were built.
3. Demands were made for ‘New Lungs’ for the city and the idea of green belt around London was offered.

Q2:  Give three reasons why the population of London expanded from the middle of the 18th century?

 Ans:

1. Industrialization was the most important factor which attracted people to London.
2. The textile industry of London attracted a large number of migrants.
3. The city of London attracted people from all walks of life like clerks, shopkeepers, soldiers, servants, laborers, beggars etc.

Q3: How did people entertain themselves in the ‘chawls’?

Ans:

1. Magicians, Monkey players or acrobats used to perform their acts on the streets.
2. The Nandi bull used to predict the future.
3. Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.

Q4: Explain the social change in London which led to the need for underground?

 Ans:

1. British built houses, single-family cottages outside the central London.
2. Now people found it difficult to walk to their work and this led to the development of underground railways.
3. By 1880, the expended train services were carrying 40 million passengers in a year.

Q5:  What was the status of the women folk in the conservative industrial towns?

Ans:

1. Women of upper and middle classes faced the higher level of isolation, although their lives were made easier by maids.
2. Women who worked for wages had some control over their lives, particularly among the lower social classes.
3. As women lost their industrial jobs and conservative people railed against their presence in public plans, women were forced to withdraw into their homes.

Q6: How did the development or expansion of Bombay differ from London?

Ans:

1. London had an average density of 8 persons per house, whereas the density in the Bombay was as high as 20.
2. Bombay was not grown in a planned way whereas London grew according to plan.
3. Bombay was an over-crowded city where a person had only 9.5 square yards of space whereas in London it was around 155 square yards per person.

Q 7: Describe any three measures which were taken to decongest London in the 19th and 20th century.

Ans:

1. Many attempts were made to decongest localities, open the green spaces, reduce pollution and landscape the city.
2. To solve the housing problem Large blocks of apartments were built similar to those in New York and Berlin which too faced the similar housing problem.
3. Rent control was introduced in Britain during the first world war to ease the impact of the severe housing shortage

Q8: Write any three historical processes which have shaped modern cities in decisive ways.

Ans:

1. The rise of the industrial revolution.
2. The establishment of colonial rule over maximum areas of the globe.
3. The developments of the ideas of democracy were also responsible to give a shape to the modern cities.

Q9: Describe three features of the big modern city of Calcutta fascinated the Gods as described in the novel written by Durgacharan Roy? Explain

Ans:

1. Durgacharan Roy wrote a novel, Debganer Martye Aagaman, in which Brahama, Varun and some other gods visit Calcutta.
2. They were wonder struck by the big modern city, the train, the large ships on the river Ganges, factories belching smoke, bridge and monuments and a dazzling array of shops selling a wide range of commodities.
3. Gods were disturbed by another aspect of city life-its cheats and thieves, its grinding poverty and the poor quality of housing for many.

Long Answer Type Questions

Q1: ‘Bombay was a prime city if India’. Justify by giving examples.

Ans:

1. It was the major outlet for cotton textile from Gujarat.
2. It functioned as a major port city.
3. It was an important administrative centre in western India.
4. It soon emerged as a major industrial centre.
5. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought the west close to Bombay.

Q2:  Describe the life in Chawls?

Ans:

1. Chawls were the multistoried structure built and owned by private landlords such as Merchants, bankers and building contractors.
2. Each chawl was divided into smaller one-room tenements which had no private toilets.
3. Many families could reside at a time in a tenement.
4. People had to keep the window of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to the close proximity of filthy gutters, buffalo stables etc.
5. Though the water was scarce and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the top observers found that houses were kept quite clean.

Q3: Explain the lifestyle of workers of the mid-19th century in Britain?

  Ans:

1. In most of the industries, the demand for labour was seasonal.
2. The workers were getting very low wages.
3. Factories employed large numbers of women.
4. Most of the workers were living in slums. Factories or workshop owners did not house the migrant workers.
5. For the poor workers, the street often was the only place for rest, leisure and fun.

Q4:  Describe the problems of traveling in the underground railway?

                                             Or

 Why was the underground railway criticized in London? Explain the reasons.

 Ans:

1. People were afraid to travel underground.
2. The Compartments were overcrowded and polluted by smoke.
3. The atmosphere was a mixture of sulphur, coal and dust with fuel fumes from the gas lamps.
4. Many felt that the iron monsters added to the mess and unhealthiness of the city.
5. Suffocation due to lack of oxygen supply and heat.

Q5: What form of entertainment came up in nineteenth-century England to provide leisure activities for the people?

Ans:

1. For the wealthy Londoners, there as the annual London Season where the elite groups could enjoy several cultural events such as the opera, classical music performances and the theatre etc.
2. Working classes too had their own means of entertainment. They used to meet in pubs and enjoy a drink, exchange news and discuss political events.
3. In the 19th century, the established of libraries, museums and art galleries provided entertainment to the common people.
4. To some other, music halls and later on cinema houses became a source of mass.
5. To some others, especially the industrial workers, spending holidays by the sea-shore and enjoying both the sun and the bracing winds also proved a great source of entrainment and leisure.

Q6: Describe the steps taken to solve the problem of housing in Bombay.

Ans:-

1. Chawls were the multi-storeyed structure which had been built in the native parts of the town. These houses were largely owned by private landlords, such as merchants, bankers and buildings.
2. The city of Bombay Improvement Trust was established in 1898. It focused on clearing poorer homes out of the city centre.
3. In 1918, a Rent act was passed to keep rents reasonable. But it had the opposite effect of producing a severe housing crisis since landlords withdrew houses from the market.
4. The city of Bombay developed massive reclamation projects. Reclamation refers to the reclaiming of marshy or submerged area or other wastelands for settlements.
5. The seven island of Bombay were joined into one land mass only over a period of time. The earliest project began in 1784.

Q7: Describe any five features of land reclamation in Bombay.

Ans:

1. A project was launched in 1754 to join the seven islands of Bombay into one landmass.
2. Then the Governor of Bombay. William Hornby approved the building of the great sea wall to prevent the Hooding of The low lying areas of Bombay.
3. In 1864. the Back Bay Reclamation Company won the right to reclaim the western foreshore from the tip of Malabar Hill to the end of Colaba Most of the hills were levelled by the company to construct buildings.
4. By the 1870s, although most of the private companies closed down due to the mounting cost, the city had expanded to about 22 square miles.
5. The Bombay Port Trust also launched a reclamation project to build a dry dock between 1914 and 1918 The Trust used the excavated earth to create the 22 acres Ballard Estate. Subsequently, the famous Marine Drive of Bombay (Mumbai) was developed.