To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities."
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Life in Mumbai
In the above sentence the speaker implies that study of major cities of a country can be very handy in understanding the social aspects of the society.
Social aspects can be unity among people of the country, religions which people of the country are following , credence of people in government etc. Considering the nature of already mentioned factors ,which can enlighten us about the social aspects of country ,the statement of the speaker seems cogent enough.
Society is made by interaction of people who have same origin and historical background.In India, Mumbai is considered cosmopolitan.Here ,we can get people almost from all
religions of India here.Basically four groups of people living are north Indians, locals(Mumbaikar) , Gujarati and Marwadi. Now , all these 4 groups of people have same origin but they follow different occupation.Having lack of Industrial opportunities in North, North-Indians tend to crack governmental exams to get job.Hence they are nature-wise studious .Mumbaikars have lots of industries around , so they tend to go for such jobs after 12th grade.generally Gujarati and Marwadi people are business class people and have good buisness qualities .These groups of people are cleverly frugal in money matters . As we can observe that occupation of people may be helpful in knowing their social behaviours.Similarly,Most of the characteristics of society can be observed by studying Mumbai which is a major city of India.Government has included the study of Mumbai in NCERT syllabus of 10th grade for the same reason.
The people living in Mumbai are of various religion also.Be it be Hindu, Muslims ,Sikh,cristian etc. all of them can be found in Mumbai.As all riots,rallies etc. relating religion generally happen in Mumbai, one can also infer the social bonding between people of different religion,their demands and their position in society.
During elections ,voting campaigns which are intended to attract people of a particular religion are more rigorous in cosmopolitan cities as it gets publicised through social media easily.
One can contradict the statement by giving example of country like Canada where people are grouped geographically religionwise.So, the correctness of the statement is also dependent on Country of which we're speaking.But, keeping in mind majority of countries like Russia, USA,India etc., it seems that the statement is cogent enough.