Geography Quiz: Industries of India

The correct answer is D, the assertion is false but the reason is true. Ahmedabad is a very large cotton textile centre and is called the Manchester of India, but it is not the largest in the country; that place belongs to Mumbai, the old Cottonopolis, which grew first because of its port, its mills and its capital, and Maharashtra remains ahead of Gujarat in the industry. The reason, however, is a correct statement in itself: Ahmedabad lies in the black soil tract of Gujarat where cotton is grown in quantity, so raw material has never been a constraint there. Options A and B both treat the assertion as true, which it is not. Option C reverses the position by calling the reason false, although Gujarat is indeed a leading cotton-growing state.

The correct answer is D, agglomeration economies. When industries gather at one urban centre, each of them can use the roads, railways, power lines, water supply, banks, insurance offices, skilled workers, component suppliers and repair workshops that the others have brought into being, and the saving in cost that follows from this sharing is called an agglomeration economy. It is the main reason industry forms clusters rather than spreading evenly. Option A is wrong because rural economies is not a term for industrial clustering at all. Option B is wrong because amalgamation means the merger of two firms into one, which is a matter of ownership and not of location. Option C is wrong because urban economies describes the economic life of towns in general, a much wider idea than the specific saving this question asks about.

The correct answer is B, an agricultural rural hinterland. An industrial city does not stand alone: the country around it supplies food for its workers, agricultural raw material such as cotton, cane, oilseed and jute for its mills, and labour from the villages, while the city in turn sells manufactured goods and services back to that countryside. The land around a city is rural by definition, and in India it is largely agricultural, so the phrase is agricultural rural hinterland. Option A contradicts itself, since a hinterland cannot be both urban and the countryside surrounding an urban centre. Options C and D are wrong because a coastal or seaport hinterland describes the inland area served by a port, which applies only to coastal cities and not to industrially developed centres generally.

The correct answer is C, the erstwhile Soviet Union. Of the three integrated plants taken up in the Second Five Year Plan, Bhilai in what is now Chhattisgarh was built with Soviet help, and the later plant at Bokaro in Jharkhand came up with Soviet help as well, so the two Soviet plants are Bhilai and Bokaro. Option A is wrong because German collaboration built Rourkela in Odisha, the plant most often confused with Bhilai in this question. Option B is wrong because British collaboration built Durgapur in West Bengal. Option D is wrong because no integrated public sector steel plant of that period was built with Japanese help; Japan's role in Indian industry came later and mainly through the automobile sector. Remember the trio as Rourkela with Germany, Durgapur with Britain and Bhilai with the Soviet Union.

The correct answer is B, Odisha. Rourkela stands in the Sundargarh district of Odisha, on the Brahmani river, and was built in the Second Five Year Plan with German collaboration; it drew iron ore from the Odisha deposits, coal from the Jharia belt and limestone from Purnapani. Option A is wrong because Jharkhand has Jamshedpur, which is a private plant of 1907, and Bokaro, a public sector plant built with Soviet help. Option C is wrong because Chhattisgarh has Bhilai, also Soviet-aided, which is the plant most often interchanged with Rourkela in examination questions. Option D is wrong because West Bengal has Durgapur, built with British collaboration, along with the older Burnpur works of the Indian Iron and Steel Company. All four states lie in or beside the same mineral belt, which is what makes the question worth asking.

The correct answer is C, Sakchi, now Jamshedpur. The Tata Iron and Steel Company set up its works there in 1907, choosing the site because iron ore, coal, manganese and limestone all lay within a short distance in the Chota Nagpur region, water was available from the Subarnarekha and Kharkai rivers, and the railway ran to the port of Kolkata. Option A is wrong because the Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Works at Bhadravati in Karnataka came later and is known for using hydel power instead of coking coal. Option B is wrong because the Indian Iron and Steel Company's plant at Burnpur in West Bengal also belongs to a later stage. Option D is wrong because Durgapur is a public sector plant of the Second Five Year Plan, built with British collaboration after independence.

The correct answer is B, Bombay. The first successful cotton textile mill began work there in 1854, and the city had every advantage the industry needed: cotton from the black soil of the Deccan, a port through which machinery arrived, capital from its merchants, a humid climate that suited spinning, and workers from the surrounding districts. Option A is wrong because Ahmedabad's mills came a little later, though the city grew into such a centre that it is called the Manchester of India. Option C is wrong because Coimbatore's rise belongs to the twentieth century, when hydel power from the Western Ghats made it the Manchester of South India. Option D is wrong because Kanpur developed as a cotton, woollen and leather centre of northern India, but not as the site of the first mill.

The correct answer is C, West Bengal. Rishra stands on the Hugli near Kolkata, and the mill set up there in 1855 began an industry that is still packed into a narrow belt along that river. The reasons are geographical: raw jute grows in the delta, the river gives cheap water transport and the soft water needed for processing, coal comes from Raniganj and Jharia, and Kolkata provides the port, the banks and the insurance offices. Option A is wrong because Bihar supplied labour to these mills but not the first mill. Option B is wrong because Odisha has no such concentration of jute manufacture. Option D is wrong because Assam grows jute in quantity yet the manufacturing stayed downstream in Bengal, which is exactly the distinction between the growing area and the industrial belt that examiners test.

The correct answer is B, Coimbatore. The city has a very large number of cotton textile mills and hosiery units, helped by cotton grown nearby, the hydel power of the Western Ghats and a long tradition of engineering workshops that make textile machinery, and so it is called the Manchester of South India, as Ahmedabad is the Manchester of India. Option A is wrong because Chennai is called the Detroit of India for its automobile industry. Option C is wrong because Madurai is known as the temple city and for its handloom weaving rather than for mill industry on this scale. Option D is wrong because Bengaluru is the Silicon Valley of India, a name earned by information technology, and also has aircraft, machine tool and electronics units in the public sector.

The correct answer is B, footloose industries. Because their raw material is light, valuable and easy to move, and because they need little power or water, such units are free of the usual pulls of ore, coal and bulky material; electronics, computer assembly, diamond cutting and software are the standard examples, and they depend mainly on skilled labour and good communications. Option A is wrong because basic or key industries, such as iron and steel, supply other industries with their raw material and are strongly tied to minerals. Option C is wrong because a cottage industry is defined by its scale and its household organisation, not by its freedom of location. Option D is wrong because heavy industries handle bulky material and are the very opposite of footloose, being drawn to the mine, the coalfield or the port.

The correct answer is C, sugar. An agro-based industry uses a farm product as its raw material, and sugar is made from sugarcane, which is why the mills stand in the cane belts of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu; cotton textiles, jute, vegetable oil, tea and paper from bagasse belong to the same class. Option A is wrong because cement is mineral-based, resting on limestone, coal and gypsum. Option B is wrong because aluminium smelting is mineral-based as well, using bauxite, and is besides tied to cheap electricity. Option D is wrong because petrochemicals are based on mineral oil and natural gas and grow up beside refineries. The habit worth forming is to ask where the raw material comes from, the field, the mine, the forest or the sea.

The correct answer is A, Bhadravati in Karnataka. The works, begun in the time of the Mysore state and later named after Sir M. Visvesvaraya, lies on the Bhadra river and is remembered in geography as the plant that uses electricity generated from water power, along with charcoal from the nearby forests, because the region has no coking coal of its own. Option B is wrong because Salem in Tamil Nadu is a special and stainless steels plant of a later period. Option C is wrong because Vijayanagar in Karnataka is a modern plant built with indigenous technology, and although it lies in the same state it is a different site. Option D is wrong because Visakhapatnam is the coastal plant that works on imported coking coal landed at its own port.