Consider the following statements with reference to the Cotton textile industry in India: 1. Cotton textile industry has, over time, spread to other parts of the country, beyond Gujarat and Maharashtra. 2. Raw cotton is not a weight-losing raw material. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Statement 2 explains statement 1, and seeing that connection is the whole value of the question. A raw material is called pure when it gives up its entire weight to the product; it is called gross or weight-losing when a large part of it is discarded during manufacture. Ginned raw cotton is the classic pure material — the lint that reaches the mill is spun into yarn and woven into cloth with almost nothing thrown away, so a tonne of cotton makes close to a tonne of fabric. That has a direct consequence for where the mill can stand. If the material lost most of its weight in processing, transporting it any distance would be wasteful and the industry would be pinned to the growing area, which is what happens with sugarcane and with iron ore. Since cotton loses nothing, the freight bill is the same whether you move the cotton to the mill or the cloth from it, and the industry is released to go wherever labour, power, capital and market are favourable. Statement 1 records what followed. The mills began in the cotton-growing belt of Maharashtra and Gujarat, at Mumbai and Ahmedabad, and then spread — to Coimbatore and Madurai in Tamil Nadu, to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, to Kolkata, Nagpur, Sholapur, Indore and Delhi.

• (a)1 only — Accepts the spread and denies the reason for it. If cotton were weight-losing, the spread described in statement 1 would have been uneconomic, and the industry would have stayed where the crop grows.
• (b)2 only — Denies something that is a matter of record. Coimbatore, Madurai, Kanpur, Kolkata and Delhi all became cotton textile centres well outside the western cotton belt.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Rejects both a documented geographical fact and a standard definition. Cotton is the textbook example of a pure raw material in every treatment of industrial location.

Where a factory can profitably stand depends heavily on what happens to the weight of its raw material. Alfred Weber put this on a footing with the material index — the weight of localised material divided by the weight of the product. Above one, the material is weight-losing and the pull is towards the source: sugar mills sit in the cane fields, iron and steel plants near ore and coal. Around one, the material is pure and the industry is free to locate at the market or wherever costs are lowest. Cotton textiles sit in the second case, which is why the Indian industry could travel so far from the cotton fields.

The contrast that makes this stick is sugar. Sugarcane loses roughly nine-tenths of its weight when crushed, and its sucrose starts converting the moment it is cut, so a mill has to be within a short haul of the fields and the industry is locked into the cane belt of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Cotton behaves in the opposite way. Seed is separated at the ginning stage close to the fields, and the lint that travels onward becomes yarn and then cloth with next to no loss. So a mill in Coimbatore, hundreds of kilometres from the black-soil cotton tracts, pays no penalty in freight for its distance and gains cheap power, skilled labour and a humid climate that suits spinning. The examiner has paired a fact about pattern with a fact about cause and asked whether you can see they are the same statement told twice.

• A pure raw material contributes its full weight to the product; a gross or weight-losing material does not, and pulls industry towards its source.
• Ginning removes the seed near the growing area, so what reaches the mill is lint that becomes yarn and cloth with almost no loss of weight.
• India's first modern cotton mill was set up at Bombay in 1854, and Ahmedabad followed soon after; both stand in the cotton-growing west.
• The industry later spread to Coimbatore, Madurai, Kanpur, Kolkata, Nagpur, Sholapur, Indore and Delhi, far from the cotton tracts.
• Sugar and iron and steel are the standard weight-losing counterexamples, tied respectively to the cane fields and to ore and coal.

• Assuming any agro-based industry must sit beside its crop. That holds for sugar and for jute, and not for cotton.
• Confusing ginning with spinning. Weight is lost at the ginnery near the fields, not at the mill.
• Treating the two statements as independent. The second is the explanation of the first, so rejecting one while keeping the other is hard to defend.

As a two-statement item on industrial location, as a which-industry-is-weight-losing question, or as a place-to-industry matching item testing where the mills actually are.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Sugar mills in India are concentrated in the cane-growing tracts mainly because sugarcane

  • (a)is a pure raw material
  • (b)loses a large part of its weight and its sucrose content after harvesting
  • (c)cannot be transported by rail
  • (d)is grown only in two states

  Answer(b) loses a large part of its weight and its sucrose content after harvesting — crushing discards most of the cane's weight and the sugar begins to decline once it is cut, so the mill must be close to the fields.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India's first modern cotton textile mill was established in 1854 at

  • (a)Ahmedabad
  • (b)Bombay
  • (c)Kanpur
  • (d)Coimbatore

  Answer(b) Bombay — the industry began in the cotton-growing west and only later spread to Ahmedabad, Kanpur and the southern centres.