Dr.

Shashi Bhushan

Kalindi College, Depatment of Geography

University of Delhi, India

Email Id: shashi.jnu86@gmail.com

Contact Number:+919953514250

Service sector also known as tertiary sector includes all branches of human activity whose
core is to provide services, thus providing a work, knowledge, financial resources,
infrastructure, goods or their combination.

The service sector includes, in fact, all organizations (other than manufacturing

organizations, industrial raw materials and agriculture) that by their subject of their work
or entrepreneurship fit in at least one of the services branch:

 Trade and procurement

 Transport, Shipping and Transportation
 Storage
 Tourism
 Accommodation and Hospitality
 Financial Services (Financial Sector)
 Media, information and promotion
 Information and communication services
 Education
 Health and social care
 Real estate and infrastructure
 Entertainment, Culture and Sport
 Advice, Legal and Expert Services
 Crafts and repairs
 Public administration

 A special subset of service sector is public sector, which includes all services financed
with public funds (so-called public services).
 For more detailed breakdown of service sector into individual branches and into
individual economic activities, there are used different classifications of human activities.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the CIA World Factbook, the following
countries are the largest by service or tertiary output as of 2016: 

1. United States: $14.76 billion

2. China: $5.7 billion
3. Japan: $3.5 billion
4. Germany: $2.4 billion
5. United Kingdom: $2.1 billion
6. France: $1.9 billion
7. Italy: $1.4 billion
8. Brazil: $1.3 billion
9. Canada: $1.1 billion
10. India: $1.0 billion

11. Service sector can be broadly divided into two parts:

12. (A) Economic Services:

13. It includes the following items, such as;

14. (i) Transport, Storage and Communication:

15. There are various types of transport, such as rail transport, road transport, water transport,

air transport. Indian railway system is first in Asia and fourth in the world after USA,

Russia and Canada. Storage service is provided by both government and private. Central

Warehousing Corporation (CWC), the Food Corporation of India (FCI) etc. are the

government units which provide storage facilities.

16. Again, there are several cold storage facilities mainly provided by private authorities.

Communication is a vital service of an economy. It includes postal and telegraph,

telecommunication, information and broadcasting etc. In India postal department includes

several new schemes like Speed Post, Express Post, E-Post, Media Post, Satellite Post

etc. Indian telecommunication network is one of the largest in Asia. It provides land

phone, mobile phone and e-mail services.

17. (ii) Trade, Hotels and Tourisms:

18. Trade service comprises both domestic and foreign trades. Domestic trade means trade

between the different states and cities within the country. On the other hand, foreign trade

means trade between different countries. It includes both exports and imports. There are

several public sector units like State Trading Corporation (STC), Minerals and Metals
 Trading Corporation (MMTC), Special Economic Zones (SEZ) etc giving sufficient

support to increase the foreign trade in India.

19. Nowadays, several private sector units are also taking part to enlarge international trade.

Hotel industries are mainly run by private entre preneurs. However, both government and

private bodies are equally responsible to increase tourism service in India.

20. (iii) Banking and Insurance Services:

21. Development of banking service is the major indicator of economic growth. In India,

banking network is spread all over the country. For the flourishment of other service

sectors, banking sector plays a very vital role.

22. In India, apart from the Central Bank, i.e., Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all the

commercial banks including both public and private sector banks are performing a true

role for the country’s development. Public sector banks include SBI, PNB, UBI, UCO

Bank etc. and private banks include HDFC, HSBC, AXIS Bank etc. In-spite of these,

there are several non-banking financial institutions like NABARD, ICICI, IDBI etc.

Moreover, there are several public insurance units like LIC, GIC etc. and private

insurance units like Tata AIG, Biria Sunlife etc.

(B) Social Service:

23. It includes following items, such as;

24. (i) Education:

25. After Independence, education system has increased tremendously. General education

facilities have increases in good number. There are sharp increase in the number of

primary, middle, high and higher secondary schools. A decent number of students have

enrolled in the schools. Not only that, number of colleges, deemed universities and

universities have also risen to a large extent.

26. Moreover, technical and professional education institutions are also increasing rapidly.

Medical colleges, engineering colleges, agriculture colleges and business schools etc. are

also growing rapidly in India. All these have increased the standard of education system

in India.
27. (ii) Health:

It is an important service sector of India. The health service includes number of hospitals,

dispensaries, community health services, primary health centres, number of doctors,

nurses, beds in hospitals along with the number of doctors per 1000 population. Both

private and public sectors are working together to improve the health services in urban

and rural parts of India. After Independences medical facilities have improved in India.
28. (iii) Administration:

29. In India administrative service has also increased at a rapid pace. After Independence, the

offices of BDO (Block Development Office), DM (District Magistrate), IAS (Indian

Administrative Service), IPS (Indian Police Service), IFS (Indian Forest Service) and

Judicial Courts have increased to operate smooth functioning of civil services in India.