FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY- (CLASS-XII NCERT) TERTIARY AND QUATERNARY ACTIVITIES

Tertiary activities

  • involve the commercial output of services rather than the production of tangible goods.
  • They are not directly involved in the processing of physical raw materials. Common examples are the work of a plumber, electrician, technician, launderer, barber, shopkeeper, driver, cashier, teacher, doctor, lawyer and publisher etc.
  • The main difference between secondary activities and tertiary activities is that the expertise provided by services relies more heavily on specialised skills, experience and knowledge of the workers rather than on the production techniques, machinery and factory processes.

TYPES OF TERTIARY ACTIVITIES

1. Trade and commerce 

  • Trade is essentially buying and selling of items produced elsewhere.
  • The towns and cities where all these works take place are known us trading centres or collection and distribution points
  • Trading centres may be divided into rural and urban marketing centres.
  • Rural marketing centres cater to nearby settlements.
  • These are quasi-urban centres. They serve as trading centres of the most rudimentary type. Here personal and professional services are not well-developed.
  • Periodic markets in rural areas are found where there are no regular markets and local periodic markets are organised at different temporal intervals.
  • These may be weekly, bi- weekly markets from where people from the surrounding areas meet their temporally accumulated demand.
  • Urban marketing centres have more widely specialised urban services. They provide ordinary goods and services as well as many of the specialised goods and services required by people.

Retail Trading

  • This is the business activity concerned with the sale of goods directly to the consumers. Most of the retail trading takes place in fixed establishments or stores solely devoted to selling. Street peddling, handcarts  , trucks, door-to-door, mail-order, telephone, automatic vending machines and internet are examples of non-store retail trading.

Wholesale Trading 

  • Wholesale trading constitutes bulk business through numerous intermediary merchants and supply houses and not through retail stores.
  • Some large stores including chain stores are able to buy directly from the manufacturers. However, most retail stores procure supplies from an intermediary source.
  • Wholesalers often extend credit to retail stores to such an extent that the retailer operates very largely on the wholesaler‘s capital.

Transport 

  • Transport is a service or facility by which people, materials and manufactured goods are physically carried from one location to another.
  • At every stage in this complex system, the value of the material is significantly enhanced by transportation.
  • Isochrone lines are drawn on a map to join places equal in terms of the time taken to reach them.

Factors Affecting Transport 

  • Demand for transport is influenced by the size of population. The larger the population size, the greater is the demand for transport.
  • Routes depend on: location of cities, towns, villages, industrial centres and raw materials, pattern of trade between them, nature of the landscape between them, type of climate, and funds available for overcoming obstacles along the length of the route.

Communication 

  • Communication services involve the transmission of words and messages, facts and ideas.

Telecommunications

  • The use of telecommunications is linked to the development of modern technology. It has revolutionized communications because of the speed with which messages are sent. The time reduced is from weeks to minutes.
  • Radio and television also help to relay news, pictures, and telephone calls to vast audiences around the world and hence they are termed as mass media.
  • They are vital for advertising and entertainment. Newspapers are able to cover events in all corners of the world.
  • Satellite communication relays information of the earth and from space.
  • The internet has truly revolutionized the global communication system.

Services

  • Services occur at many different levels. Some are geared 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. For example, the gardener, the launderers and the barber do primarily physical labour. Teacher, lawyers, physicians, musicians and others perform mental labour.

PEOPLE ENGAGED IN TERTIARY ACTIVITIES

  • Today most people are service workers. Services are provided in all societies. But in more developed countries a higher percentage of workers is employed in providing services as compared to less developed countries.
  • The trend in employment in this sector has been increasing while it has remained unchanged or decreasing in the primary and secondary activities.

SOME SELECTED EXAMPLES

1. Tourism

  • Tourism is travel undertaken for purposes of recreation rather than business.
  • It has become the world single largest tertiary activity in total registered jobs (250 million) and total revenue (40 per cent of the total GDP).
  • Tourism fosters the growth of infrastructure industries, retail trading, and craft industries (souvenirs).

Tourist Regions

  • The warmer places around the Mediterranean Coast and the West Coast of India are some of the popular tourist destinations in the world.
  • Others include winter sports regions, found mainly in mountainous areas, and various scenic landscapes and national parks, which are scattered. Historic towns also attract tourists, because of the monument, heritage sites and cultural activities.

Factors Affecting Tourism

  • Demand : Since the last century, the demand for holidays has increased rapidly. Improvements in the standard of living and increased leisure time, permit many more people to go on holidays for leisure.
  • Transport : The opening-up of tourist areas has been aided by improvement in transport facilities. Travel is easier by car, with better road systems. More significant in recent years has been the expansion in air transport.

Tourist Attractions

1. Climate

2. Landscape

3. History and Art

4. Culture and Economy

Medical Services for Overseas Patients in India

  • About 55,000 patients from U.S.A. visited India in 2005 for treatment. This is still a small number compared with the millions of surgeries performed each year in the U.S. healthcare system.
  • India has emerged as the leading country of medical tourism in the world. World class hospitals located in metropolitan cities cater to patients all over the world. Medical tourism brings abundant benefits to developing countries like India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
  • Beyond medical tourism, is the trend of outsourcing of medical tests and data interpretation.
  • Hospitals in India, Switzerland and Australia have been performing certain medical services – ranging from reading radiology images, to interpreting Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) and ultrasound tests.
  • When medical treatment is combined with international tourism activity, it lends itself to what is commonly known as medical tourism.

Quaternary activities

  • It involve some of the following: the collection, production and dissemination of information or even the production of information.
  • Quaternary activities centre around research, development and may be seen as an advanced form of services involving specialised knowledge and technical skills

Quinary sector

  • The highest echelons of decision-makers and policy influencers engage in quinary activities, distinct from the knowledge-based industries commonly associated with the quinary sector. Quinary activities encompass strategic decision-making, often involving significant societal or organizational impact. In this realm, the incorporation of Angel Numbers could serve as a unique and spiritually meaningful approach to decision-making. The use of Angel Numbers may offer an additional layer of guidance or insight to these influential figures, aligning their actions with a sense of purpose and spiritual awareness. This infusion of numerological considerations into high-level decision-making processes might contribute to a holistic and purpose-driven approach within the quinary sector.

  • Quinary activities are services that focus on the creation, re-arrangement and interpretation of new and existing ideas; data interpretation and the use and evaluation of new technologies.
  • Often referred to as gold collar‘ professions, they represent another subdivision of the tertiary sector representing special and highly paid skills of senior business executives, government officials, research scientists, financial and legal consultants, etc.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE 

  • Opportunities emerging from the Information and Communication Technology based development is unevenly distributed across the globe. There are wide ranging economic, political and social differences among countries.
  • How quickly countries can provide ICT access and benefits to its citizens is the deciding factor.
  • While developed countries in general have surged forward, the developing countries have lagged behind and this is known as the digital divide. Similarly digital divides exist within countries. For example, in a large country like India or Russia, it is inevitable that certain areas like metropolitan centres possess better connectivity and access to the digital world versus peripheral rural areas.

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