Low-order and high-order services
Topic: Tertiary, Quaternary and Quinary Activities · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 6 "Tertiary and Quaternary Activities"
Meaning
Services can be ranked by how specialised they are. Low-order services, such as grocery shops and laundries, are common, found almost everywhere and used often. Each one needs only a few customers nearby to survive. High-order services, such as accountants, consultants and specialist doctors, are specialised and fewer in number. They need many customers, so each one serves a much larger area and people travel far to reach them. This explains why villages have small shops while only big cities have specialist services.
Example
A village in Bihar may have its own grocery shop (low-order). For a heart specialist (high-order), people from that village may travel to Patna or even to AIIMS in New Delhi.
Don't confuse with
- Unskilled vs skilled work: "order" here is about how specialised a service is and how large an area it serves. It is not about how hard the work is.