The teaching of social and political life should focus on: A. Study of…

Social science pedagogy, as reflected in NCERT's approach to teaching social and political life, aims to build informed democratic citizens. This requires two things together: knowledge of how political institutions actually function, and understanding of the basic principles that those institutions are meant to serve. Teaching either in isolation produces incomplete civic understanding.

Applying this here: teaching social and political life needs both the structural knowledge of institutions (A) and the conceptual grounding in basic principles (B), so the content focus must include both together.

• Only A (institutions) gives students knowledge of how bodies such as the legislature, executive, and judiciary are structured and function, without treating the underlying principles they serve.

• Only B (basic principles) gives students the underlying concepts, such as democracy, justice, equality, and rights, without grounding them in how institutions actually implement them.

• Neither A nor B leaves out both the institutional and the principle-based content, so it does not describe any focus for the teaching at all.

Since both institutional study and study of basic principles are needed together for meaningful social and political life education, the correct focus is 'Both A and B'.