Pratap lost his young son due to a pothole accident some years ago. He decided to turn his pain into a purpose and now social media users are calling him a hero without a cape. For the last three years. Pratap has been filling up potholes in the city to ensure that no one else suffers the same fate. Pratap also starts planting trees in the city as he believes that environment is not simply for use by human beings but needs to be respected and valued. For this, he takes inspiration from a very famous movement in the Uttarakhand region which aimed to conserve forests. He also starts helping the poor in the community and observes that these poor people believe that they will continue to remain poor. Such beliefs have been passed on from one generation to another. He decides to change these beliefs by developing an advertisement in which he shows a pressure cooker that saves fuel and hence can help save money.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Spiritual perspective
Option (1) Minimalist perspective — Incorrect. This view assumes that the physical environment has minimal or negligible influence on human behaviour, health and well-being; people and the environment exist side by side as parallel components. Pratap believes the environment matters a great deal.
Option (2) Maximal perspective — Incorrect. There is no such perspective. Stokols described only three ways of looking at the human-environment relationship: the minimalist, the instrumental and the spiritual.
Option (3) Instrumental perspective — Incorrect. This view holds that the physical environment exists mainly for use by human beings, for their comfort and well-being. Pratap believes the opposite: for him the environment is not there only for human use.
Option (4) Spiritual perspective — Correct. This view sees the environment as something to be respected and valued rather than exploited. People recognise that they and the environment depend on each other, and that they will be happy only as long as the environment is kept healthy and natural. Pratap plants trees because the environment needs to be respected and valued, and he takes inspiration from the Chipko movement, which is an example of this traditional Indian view.
Note: Stokols’ three views of the human-environment relationship, including the spiritual perspective, were there in the chapter ‘Psychology and Life’ of the pre-rationalised NCERT, which NTA followed in 2022, and are not there in the NCERT book (2025-26).
NCERT (Pre-rationalised): “Different Views of the Human-Environment Relationship … A psychologist named Stokols (1990) describes three approaches that may be adopted to describe the human-environment relationship.
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