CBSE Class 12 Geography Tertiary and Quaternary Activities Notes

Tertiary Activities

Tertiary activities are related to service sector. Here skilled people are needed who provide services to people against payment of fees. For example, doctors give treatment, teachers teach children in schools and lawyers provide legal services in case of dispute. Manpower is the main component of tertiary activities as services are provided by professionally trained experts, skilled labourers and consultants. Theoretical knowledge and practical training is required in service sector occupations such as health, education, law, governance and recreation, etc. Tertiary activities involve both production as well as exchange

(i) Production Production includes provision of services (providing services) that are consumed by the people (used by people). The output is measured directly in terms of wages and salaries.
(ii) Exchange It involves all those facilities that are used to overcome distance, e.g. trade, transport and communication facilities.
Thus, tertiary activities involve the commercial output of services rather than the production of tangible goods. Common examples of tertiary activities included work of a plumber, electrician, technician, barber, driver, cashier, publisher etc.

Types of Tertiary Activities

Tertiary sector includes a number of activities i.e. trade, transport, communication and services.

Trade and Commerce
Trade is generally associated with buying and selling of goods and items which are produced in industries. It includes services like retail and wholesale trading or commere which are mainly carried out to gain profit.
Trading is carried out in towns, cities and big villages which are known as trading centres. Trading centres may be divided into rural and urban marketing centres

Rural Marketing Centres
The characteristics of these centres are
- These centres are quasi-urban centres (apparently urban centres).
- These centres are of rudimentary1 type (being in the earliest stages of development) or very basic centres.
- Personal and professional services are not well developed here.
- These centres provide facility for local collecting and distributing centres.
- These centres may include mandis (wholesale markets) and retailing areas.
- These are not like urban centres but provide the goods and services which are demanded by rural people.

Periodic Markets in Rural Areas

The characteristics of these markets are

- These are organised at those places where no regular market is found.
- People come to these weekly and bi-weekly markets from surrounding areas to meet their temporally accumulated demands.
- These markets are scheduled for specific dates and move from area to area.
- It keeps the shopkeepers busy all the year round, as they serve a large area by movement.

Urban Marketing Centres
The characteristics of these centres are
- These centres provide more specialised urban services.
- These markets provide both ordinary as well as specialised goods and services required by people.
- They offer manufactured goods as well as many specialised markets. For example, markets for labour, housing and semi or finished products, educational institutions and professionals such as teachers, lawyers, consultants, physicians, dentists and veterinary doctors, etc.

Retail Trading
This business activity is mainly concerned with the direct selling of goods to the consumers.

There are two types of retail trading
(i) Fixed Store Retail Trading Most of the trading is done by fixed establishments or stores. These stores are only for the purpose of selling.
(ii) Non-store Retail Trading Selling is done by non-store or non-fixed stores. For example, through street peddling, handcarts, trucks, door-to-door, mail-order, telephone, automatic vending machines and internet.

Wholesale Trading
It is a bulk business which is done through a number of intermediary merchants and supply houses except retail stores. In this type of trading, some large stores and chain stores are able to buy directly from the manufacturers.

Most retail stores obtain their supply from an intermediary source. Many a times, retailers get extended credit from wholesalers to such an extent that they operate mainly on the wholesaler’s capital.

Transport

Transport is an important service by which people, materials and manufactured goods are physically carried from one location to another. The basic aim of this organised industry is to cater the demand of mobility. Transport system assists in the production, distribution and consumption of goods by providing efficient transport network to modern society. Transportation significantly enhances the value of goods at every stage. Transport distance can be measured as

- Kilometre Distance It is the actual distance of route length measured in km or miles.
- Time Distance It is the time taken to travel on a particular route.
- Cost Distance It is the cost or the expense of travelling on a route.

Factors Affecting Transport

Factors that affect transport are
Demand The size of population influences the demand for transport. The bigger the size of population, the higher is the transportation demand.
Routes This depends on the following factors
- Location of cities
- Towns and villages, industrial centres and raw materials.
- Pattern of trade between them.
- Native of the landscape between them.
- Type of climate
- Funds available for overcoming problems along the length of the route.

Communication

The communication services include many aspects like transmission of words and messages, facts and ideas. The invention of writing made it possible to preserve messages. It helped to make communication dependent on means of transport. The messages were carried by hand, animals, boat, road, rail and air. Due to this reason, all forms of transport are also referred as lines of communication2.

The latest technological innovations like mobile telephony, and satellites made communication more strong and made it independent of transport. Despite this fact, still all the old forms of communication systems have not been fully delinked from transport because of their cheapness. This is the reason that even today very large volumes of mail continue to be handled by post offices all over the world. When transport systems are efficient, these type of communications are easily desseminated or circulated.

Telecommunications
It is the latest form of communication system which is linked to the development of modern technology.
The characteristics of telecommunication are
- Communication services have been revolutionised by telecommunication because of the speed with which messages are sent.
- It saved time of people and reduced it from weeks to minutes.
- Mobile telephony, a latest advancement has made communication direct and instantaneous at any time and from anywhere.
- The older forms of telecommunications like telegraph, morse code and telex have almost become obsolete.

Mass Media
It is a new revolutionary form of communication. It has become
vital for advertising and entertainment. Its examples are
- Radio and Television These forms of mass media help to telecast or relay news, pictures and telephone calls to a large number of audiences around the world.
- Newspapers Newspapers, magazines, newsletters are examples of print media. These cover news and events happening in all corners of the world.
- Satellite Communication It relays information of the earth as well as from space.
- The Internet Due to its vast usefulness, the internet has truly revolutionised the global communication system.

Services

It means to provide assistance to someone. Services exists at different levels. Some services are provided to industry, some to people and some to both industry and people, e.g. the transport systems. Services are provided to individual consumers who can afford to pay for them. Services can categorised into two levels
(i) Low Order Services These include grocery shops and laundries. These services are common and widespread.
(ii) High Order Services These include accountants, consultants and physicians. These services are highly specialised and not so common as compared to low order services.

Types of Services

Services can be classified under following categories
- Government Aided Services These include making and maintaining highways and bridges, maintaining fire-fighting departments and supplying or supervising education and customer care. These services are supervised or performed by government and government companies.
- Infrastructural Development Services These include transport, telecommunication, energy and water-supply. A number of corporations have been established by State and Union legislation to supervise and control the marketing of such services.
- Professional Services These services include health care, engineering, law and management. These are provided by both public as well as private players.
- Services based on the Market These include recreational and entertainment services. Their location depends on the market. Multiplexes and restaurants find location within or near the Central Business District (CBD)3 due to availability of high class consumers. Whereas, a golf course would choose a site outside the CBD due to a number of factors like availability of vast land area as well as low cost of land, as compared to CBD.
- Personal Services Personal services are provided by domestic workers. These workers help people to facilitate their work in daily life. These are unskilled workers often migrating from rural places to urban areas in search of livelihood. They are generally engaged in domestic services to provide help in daily house chores. These include housekeepers, cooks and gardeners etc. This is an unorganised service sector. For example, Mumbai dabbawala (Tiffin) service. It provides tiffins to about 1,75,000 customers all over the city.

People Engaged in Tertiary Activities

Every society is served by a number of services, thus people are engaging more in this sector day by day. But this situation is different in developed and developing countries. For example, the proportion of workers employed in service sector is higher in developed countries.
Whereas, the proportion of workers employed in this sector is comparatively low in less developed countries. The employment in this sector is showing an ever increasing trend, while it has remained unchanged or is decreasing in the primary and secondary activities.

Difference between Tertiary and Secondary Activities

The main difference between the two is that tertiary activities deal with the different services provided by experts with the help of specialised skills, experience and knowledge.
On the other hand, secondary activities deal with the manufacturing and processing of raw materials into finished goods for consumption of people and other industries. The manufacturing is done with the help of production techniques, machinery and factory processes. Unlike secondary sector, tertiary activities are not directly connected with the processing of any physical raw material.

Tourism : An Important
Tertiary Activity

It means travel which is done for purpose of recreation rather than business. It has emerged as the world’s largest tertiary activity in terms of total registered jobs and total revenue. About 40 per cent world’s total GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is generated by this sector providing over 250 million jobs worldwide. Moreover, many local people are employed to provide services like accommodation, meals, transport, entertainment and special shops to serve the tourists.

Factors Affecting Tourism
Some of the factors that affect tourism are
- Demand The last century has recorded an increasing demand for holidays and recreational activities. The living standard of people is becoming more advanced and their leisure time has become essential due to the nature of work.
Thus, due to these reasons demand for tourism is increasing.
- Transport With the development of transport sector, the demand for tourism has also increased. The easy accessibility to tourist locations and places encourage people to visit them. Today air travel is considered the fastest mode of transport to go anywhere in the world within few hours from home. Besides, the emergence of package holiday has also reduced the costs.

Tourist Regions
There are different types of tourist places such as
- The Warmer Places These are favourable places especially for those tourists who live in colder regions. For example, places around theMediterranean coast and theWest coast of India.
- The Winter Sports Regions These are found in mountainous areas and scenic landscapes and national parks region which are scattered across the world. For example, snow capped mountain slopes of Switzerland and Himalayas etc.
- Historic Towns These towns and cities are prominent for the monuments, heritage sites and cultural activities.They attract foreigners as well as native tourists.

Tourist Attractions
The factors responsible for tourist attractions are
- Climate The climatic conditions of any region decides the demand for tourism. People from colder regions want to visit those places where climate is warm and sunny for beach holidays.
Climate is one of the main reasons that tourism has flourished in Southern Europe and Mediterranean region. The climate in the Mediterranean region is relatively warmer as compared to other parts in Europe. It offers higher temperatures, long hours of sunshine and low rainfall throughout the holiday season.
People going for winter holidays have specific climatic requirements such as higher temperatures than their homelands or higher snow cover for winter sports such as skiing.
- Landscapes People often like to explore areas which have natural scenic beauty and that are not much altered by human activities. For example, mountains, lakes, spectacular sea coasts and landscapes.
- History and Art Many people like to visit areas which are famous for their history and art. For example, ancient or picturesque towns, archaeological sites which have castles, palaces, churches, battle fields, excavation sites etc.
- Culture and Economy People who take interest in towards art and culture are attracted most to such places having traditions and varying colours of customs. If a region provides for the needs of tourists at a cheap cost, it is likely to become very popular.
For example, home stay have become a profitable business for local people who provide accommodation at cheaper cost to tourists such as heritage homes in Goa, Madikere and Coorg in Karnataka.

Medical Tourism

When medical treatment is combined with international tourism activity, it is known as medical tourism. The growing medical facilities in India during last few decades have made the country a favourable destination for medical tourists. But still it is not as much advanced as USA, where each year millions of surgeries are performed. Medical tourism brings a lot of benefits to developing countries like India, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia.

The medical tourism is important as
- It helps country in earning foreign exchange.
- It contributes in GDP of the country by generating income.
- Medical tourism affects positively the growth of particular sector by creating demand.
- It generates employment.
- It provides country a solid medical infrastructure and skilled manpower.
- The increasing rate of medical tourists also influences other medical related sectors like pharmaceutical, biotechnology, etc.

Besides medical tourism, outsourcing of medical test and Data Interpretation has also become a new trend. Hospitals in India, Switzerland and Australia have been performing medical services like reading radiology images, to interpretingMagnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) and ultrasound tests. Outsourcing holds tremendous advantages for patients, if it is focused on improving quality or providing specialised care.

Quaternary Activities

People Engaged in Quaternary Activities
These activities centre around research, development and may be seen as an advanced form of services involving specialised knowledge and technical skills. Quarternary activities involve collection, production and distribution of information. The service sector which is knowledge oriented comes under quaternary activities. For example, a medical transcriptionist4 and a CEO of an MNC (Multi-National Company) work under this sector. They are highly specialised professionals with deep knowledge in their particular field.

The Quaternary Sector
The quaternary sector along with the tertiary sector has replaced most of the primary and secondary employment as the basis for economic growth. Over half of all workers in developed economies are in the Knowledge Sector.
There has been a very high growth in demand for and consumption of information-based services from mutual fund managers to tax consultants, software developers and statisticians. Personnel working in office buildings, elementary schools and university classrooms, hospitals and doctors’ offices, theatres, accounting and brokerage firms belong to this category of services.

Quinary Activities

Quinary activities are services that focus on the creation, re-arrangement and interpretation of new and existing idea; data interpretation and the use and evaluation of new technologies.
People engaged in this sector are at the highest level of decision-making or policy making and are referred as gold collar professionals5. They are considered as a sub-division of tertiary sector, representing special and highly paid skills of senior business executives, government officials, research scientists, financial and legal consultants, etc. Though they are very less in numbers but they are highly important for advanced economies.

Trends in Quinary Activities
There are some new trends in quinary services like Knowledge Processing Outsourcing (KPO) and home shoring. Home shoring is an alternative to outsourcing.

Outsourcing
Outsourcing means giving work to an outside agency to improve efficiency and reduce costs. When outsourcing involves transferring work to overseas locations, it is described by the term off-shoring6.
Business activities that are outsourced include Information Technology (IT), human resources, customer support and call centre services and at times also manufacturing and engineering. It has resulted in the opening up of a large number of call centres in India, China, Eastern Europe, Israel, Philippines and Costa Rica. It has generated new jobs in these countries. Outsourcing is coming to those countries where cheap and skilled workers are available.
Many outsourcing countries are facing resistance from job-seeking youths in their respective countries. The reason behind continuous flow of outsourcing is the minimum cost required to operate offices in developing countries with maximum profit.
For example, Data processing can be easily carried out in Asian, East European and some African countries. They provide skilled IT staff with good English language skills working at lower wages as compared to developed countries.

4 Medical Transcriptionist It is also known as MT. It is allied health profession which deals in the process of transcription, or converting voice-recorded reports as dictated by physicians or other healthcare professionals into text format.
5 Gold Collar Professionals They are highly skilled persons who perform topmost work like policy making and creating new ideas.
6 Off-Shoring Off-shoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another. The business process may include an operational process such as manufacturing or supporting process such as accounting.

A company based in Hyderabad or Manila could work for a project of an MNC based in USA or Japan. Apart from this, the overhead costs are also lower in these countries, which makes the operation more profitable.

Knowledge Processing Outsourcing (KPO)
KPO is different from BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing), because it involves highly skilled professionals. KPO is mainly information based knowledge outsourcing. It is very important because it enables companies to create additional business opportunities.
For example, Research and Development (R and D) activities, e-learning, business research, Intellectual Property (IP) research, legal profession and the banking sector.

The Digital Divide

Digital Divide basically describes the uneven development of Information and Communication Technology industry in the world. There are wide ranging economic, political and social differences between developed and developing countries and even among the developing countries.
The main deciding factor of differences in establishment and development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in countries is that how actively countries can provide ICT access and benefits to its citizens. In the present modern world, developed countries are showing a positive growth and development in ICT industries, whereas developing countries are showing a steady or declining trend in ICT industry. This major difference between the two region is known as the digital divide.
Digital divide can also be traced within countries. For example, in the countries like India or Russia, digital divide is found between metropolitan cities and rural areas. In these countries, metropolitan centres have relatively better connectivity and access to the digital world, than the peripheral rural areas.