MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 25 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)'. An assertion-reason item asks two questions in sequence, and both have to be settled before any option can be chosen: is each statement true on its own, and if both are, does the reason actually explain the assertion. Take the truth of (A) first. In the classification of raw materials used in industrial location theory, a pure raw material is one that passes its entire weight into the finished product, so that manufacture involves no loss of weight; a gross or weight-losing raw material is one that does not. Cotton is the textbook example of the first kind, because the lint that enters a mill comes out almost entirely as yarn and cloth. That is what the printed assertion says in its awkward way — cotton is a pure raw material and is not weight-losing — and it adds two further properties, lightness and durability, both of which are true and both of which have locational consequences, since a light, non-perishable material is cheap to move and can be stored and carried a long way without spoiling. (A) is true. Now (R). The cotton textile industry is in fact found in both kinds of place: mills stand in the cotton-growing tracts and mills stand at the great market and port centres. As a description of where the industry has localised, (R) is accurate, so (R) is true as well. That disposes of options (3) and (4) and leaves the real question, which is the direction of explanation. (A) is a statement about the physical properties of a fibre. (R) is a statement about where factories are found. A property of a material can explain a pattern of location; a pattern of location cannot explain a property of a material. Precisely because cotton is pure, weight-retaining, light and durable, transport cost does not pin the industry to the cotton field, and the industry is left free to settle at the source or at the market as other advantages dictate — which is the freedom (R) records. In other words (A) explains (R), and not the other way about. Both statements are true and (R) is not the correct explanation of (A), so option (2).

• (1)Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A) — This is the option that collects most of the marks lost on assertion-reason items, because both statements really are true and both really are about the cotton textile industry, and a candidate who has verified their truth feels the work is done. Subject matter in common is not explanation. The test that separates option (1) from option (2) takes a few seconds: put the word 'because' between the two statements in the order the paper prints them and read the sentence aloud. 'Cotton is not a weight-losing pure raw material because the cotton textile industry is localised either in cotton-producing regions or near the market' is incoherent — where mills happen to stand can have no bearing whatever on how a fibre behaves during spinning. Read in the other direction the sentence is sound, and that is the signature of an item whose causal arrow points from the assertion to the reason. Whenever it does, the answer is option (2).
• (3)(A) is true but (R) is false — This option requires (R) to be false, and it is not. The cotton textile industry genuinely does show both patterns of localisation: in India there are mills in the cotton-growing tracts of Gujarat and Maharashtra and there are mills at the large port and market centres, where capital, labour, power and a ready market outweighed proximity to the fields. A candidate reaches for this option in one of two ways. Either he has decided that an industry which is free to locate anywhere must have no pattern at all, when in fact 'either at the source or at the market' is itself the pattern that freedom produces. Or he has treated (R) as an explanation, found that it fails as one, and marked it false — which confuses the second question the item asks with the first. A reason can be perfectly true and still be the wrong reason, and that possibility is what option (2) exists for.
• (4)(A) is false but (R) is true — This option requires (A) to be false, which would mean that cotton is a weight-losing or impure raw material. It is not: the lint delivered to a spinning mill emerges almost entirely as yarn and cloth. The candidate who chooses it is usually thinking of a real weight loss but locating it at the wrong stage. Cotton as picked is seed cotton, and ginning separates the lint from the seed, which removes a large fraction of the weight — and that is exactly why ginning is carried on in the growing tract, close to the fields, while spinning and weaving are not. Confusing the ginning stage with the textile stage is the standard route into this option. The other route is generalising from a genuinely weight-losing raw material such as sugarcane, which loses the bulk of its weight in milling and begins to lose sucrose within hours of cutting, and assuming every agricultural raw material behaves the same way.

The framework behind this question is the analysis of raw materials by their behaviour in manufacture, which is the core of Alfred Weber's least-cost theory of industrial location. Raw materials are first divided into ubiquities, available almost everywhere, such as water or common clay, and localised materials, found only at particular places. Localised materials are then divided into pure, which give their whole weight to the product, and gross or weight-losing, which do not. The measure that follows is the material index, the ratio of the weight of localised raw materials used to the weight of the finished product. Where that index is well above one, transport cost is minimised by manufacturing at the raw material rather than hauling waste to the market, and the industry is drawn to the source — sugar, which recovers only about a tenth of the cane's weight as sugar, and the smelting industries built on bulky ores are the standard cases. Where the index is at or below one there is nothing to save by staying at the source, and the industry is free to move towards the market or towards any other advantage. Cotton textiles sit in this second group: the material index is close to unity, so transport cost is much the same wherever the mill is placed along the route, and the location is decided instead by capital, labour, power, market access, and in the older Indian mills by a humid climate that reduced thread breakage. An industry as loosely tied as this is described as footloose.

This is the only assertion-reason item in the paper, and it is worth treating as a small, fixed procedure rather than as a general knowledge question, because the four options are always the same four and always in the same order: both true with the reason explaining the assertion; both true with the reason not explaining it; assertion true and reason false; assertion false and reason true. The procedure is therefore mechanical. Judge (A) alone. Judge (R) alone. If either fails, the answer is settled at once and nothing further needs thinking about. Only if both stand does the third question arise, and that third question is about direction, not about subject matter. The trap the commission relies on is that a candidate who has confirmed two true statements about the same industry feels he has finished, and marks option (1) without ever asking which statement causes which. Note too that the assertion here is printed with a negation in it — cotton is not a weight-losing raw material — and that the negation is not emphasised in any way on the page. Options (2) and (3) also carry negations of their own. In an item this dense with negatives, the safe method is to translate each statement into a plain positive sentence in the margin before judging it.

• A pure raw material passes its entire weight into the finished product, while a gross or weight-losing raw material loses part of its weight during manufacture; the distinction is the foundation of Weber's account of industrial location.
• The material index is the ratio of the weight of localised raw materials to the weight of the finished product. An index well above one pulls an industry towards the raw material; an index at or near one leaves it free to move towards the market.
• Cotton is the standard example of a pure raw material: the lint that enters a spinning mill emerges almost entirely as yarn and cloth, and being light and durable it can be stored and carried over long distances cheaply.
• The weight loss in the cotton chain happens at ginning, where the seed is separated from the lint, which is why ginning is tied to the growing tract while spinning and weaving are not.
• The four assertion-reason options are a fixed grammar: both true with the reason explaining the assertion, both true with the reason not explaining it, assertion true and reason false, assertion false and reason true. The second is the answer whenever both stand but the causal arrow runs from the assertion to the reason.

• Marking option (1) because both statements are true and concern the same industry, when shared subject matter is not the same thing as an explanatory link
• Failing to notice that the causal arrow runs from the assertion to the reason rather than from the reason to the assertion, which is exactly what option (2) is for
• Calling a reason false merely because it fails to explain the assertion, which mixes up the two separate judgements the item requires
• Locating the weight loss of cotton at the mill rather than at the ginnery, and so concluding that cotton is a weight-losing raw material

MPSC uses two shapes for this material. The first is theoretical, naming Weber, Losch or another theorist and asking what factor his model treats as decisive, or asking for the definition of the material index or of a pure raw material. The second is applied, naming an industry — sugar, cement, iron and steel, cotton textiles — and asking why it is located where it is, with the expected reasoning running through weight loss, perishability and transport cost. An assertion-reason wrapper can be placed around either, and when it is, the commission generally prints two true statements and hides the item in the direction of the link, since that costs nothing in factual difficulty and separates candidates who follow the procedure from those who do not. Sugar and cement are the standard weight-losing examples; cotton textiles are the standard footloose one, and the pair is worth holding together.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In Alfred Weber's theory of industrial location, a raw material that loses a large part of its weight during manufacture will tend to draw the industry towards which of the following ?

  • (a)The source of the raw material
  • (b)The market for the finished product
  • (c)A source of cheap labour
  • (d)A port suitable for export

  Answer(a) The source of the raw material — where the material index is well above one, hauling the raw material to the market means paying to transport the part that will be discarded in manufacture, so total transport cost is lowest if the processing is done at the source. Sugar and cement are the standard Indian examples. Cheap labour and port access do pull industries, but in Weber's scheme they are deviations from the least transport cost location, not the primary factor.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is the best example of a gross or weight-losing raw material in industrial location theory ?

  • (a)Cotton lint
  • (b)Sugarcane
  • (c)Raw silk
  • (d)Wool

  Answer(b) Sugarcane — only about a tenth of the weight of the cane is recovered as sugar, so the bulk of what is carried to a mill is discarded there, and the cane also begins to lose sucrose within hours of being cut. Both facts tie sugar mills to the cane fields. Cotton lint, raw silk and wool all pass substantially into the finished fabric and are light and durable, so none of them exerts the same locational pull.