New Beginnings: Cities and States | Social Science Grade 7 CBSE

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Explore cities and states

A food surplus let some people leave farming to make things and trade, so towns grew and early states took shape. Tap each card to see how cities, janapadas and mahajanapadas came to be — and how they were ruled.

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The three big ideas

Long ago, almost everyone in a village had to farm just to grow enough to eat. Things changed when farmers learned to grow a surplus — more food than they needed.

With extra food stored up, not everyone had to farm.
Some people could become craftspeople and traders instead.
As such people gathered together, towns and cities grew.

So a city is much more than a big village: it is a place of many people, specialised work, markets and trade. Use the explorer above to see each idea.

As people settled down, they formed early realms:

A janapada was a realm or territory where a people (jana) settled and set down roots.
Over time, some janapadas grew larger and more powerful, becoming mahajanapadas (around the 6th century BCE).
Among these, Magadha became especially powerful.

This is how small settled realms slowly grew into bigger, stronger states.

Inside these early cities and states, daily life was busy and varied:

Specialised crafts: potters, weavers, metalworkers and more.
Trade grew between places, and people began to use coins for buying and selling.
States were ruled in different ways: some were monarchies (ruled by a king), while some were ganas or sanghas (ruled by an assembly of many people).

Worked example. What let cities grow — everyone doing the same farming, or a food surplus that freed people for crafts and trade?

If everyone must farm, no one is free to make things or trade. But when farmers grow a surplus, some people are freed to become craftspeople and traders → these people gather in one place → a town or city grows. So the answer is a food surplus that freed people for crafts and trade.

Common mistake: thinking a city is just a big village. A city is not only bigger — it has specialised crafts, trade, and often planning and an administration to run it.

Where you'll meet it

Cities and trade, then and now

Modern cities still run on specialisation

No city feeds itself by farming. People do specialised jobs — doctors, drivers, shopkeepers, coders — and depend on others (and on farms outside) for food. Just like early cities, a modern city works because people specialise and trade.

Why some places became trade centres

Places where many roads or rivers met, or where goods could be bought and sold easily, became important market and trade centres. That is why some towns grew big and rich while others stayed small — and the same is true of busy market cities today.

Check yourself

Competency quiz

Modelled on the competency-based pattern — MCQ, assertion–reason and a case study, testing whether you can use the ideas, not just recall them.

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New Beginnings:Cities and States