NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 130 of 146

Correct — D, Raniganj paired with the iron and steel industry. Raniganj, in Paschim Bardhaman district of West Bengal, is a coal town. Its coalfield was worked commercially from 1774 and is the oldest in India, and coal is what the name stands for in every geography text. The iron and steel works of that same industrial belt are somewhere else — the IISCO Steel Plant is at Burnpur, a neighbourhood of Asansol city in the same district, and the other big works is at Durgapur. The pair is wrong not because the region has no steel, but because the town named is the coal town, not the steel town. The other three pairings all hold, so this is the one that is not correctly matched.

• (a)Saharanpur : Paper industry — This pairing holds, so it is not the answer. Star Paper Mills, an integrated pulp and paper mill established in 1938, has its works at Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. Saharanpur is separately famous for hand-carved wooden artefacts, which is what makes candidates hesitate over the paper pairing, but the paper mill is real.
• (b)Chanderi : Cotton textile industry — Chanderi, in Ashoknagar district of Madhya Pradesh, is a famous centre of sari production, and Chanderi saris are woven in three fabrics — pure silk, Chanderi cotton, and silk cotton. The cotton textile pairing is sound, and the cloth carries a geographical indication.
• (c)Bhadohi : Carpet industry — Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh is home to the largest hand-knotted carpet weaving hub in South Asia, and carpet manufacturing is the main business of the town. This is one of the most securely matched pairs on the list.

Indian geography papers keep a standing list of towns that are shorthand for a single industry — Saharanpur for paper and wood carving, Chanderi and Maheshwar for handloom cloth, Bhadohi and Mirzapur for carpets, Moradabad for brassware, Firozabad for glass bangles, Tirupur for knitted garments, Ludhiana for hosiery, Jharia and Raniganj for coal, Burnpur and Durgapur for steel. The examiner builds the question by taking one town off that list and moving it to the wrong row.

The trap here is regional adjacency. Raniganj sits inside the Asansol industrial belt, only a short distance from Burnpur where IISCO's steel plant stands, so a candidate who remembers the belt without remembering the towns will read the pair as correct. The discipline is to ask what a town is famous for on its own account, not what its neighbourhood contains. The same discipline defends the first option in the other direction — Saharanpur is best known for wood carving, so a candidate may reject the paper pairing too quickly, when in fact the town has had a large paper mill since 1938. In a question with only one wrong pair, be sure the pair you strike out is wrong on its own facts rather than merely unfamiliar.

• Raniganj in Paschim Bardhaman district, West Bengal, is India's oldest commercially worked coalfield, mined from 1774.
• The IISCO Steel Plant of that belt is at Burnpur, a neighbourhood of Asansol city in the same district, not at Raniganj.
• Star Paper Mills, an integrated pulp and paper mill established in 1938, is located at Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
• Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh hosts the largest hand-knotted carpet weaving industry hub in South Asia, and Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh is a noted centre of sari production.

• Accepting a town-industry pair because a neighbouring town in the same belt has that industry.
• Rejecting a pairing merely because the town is better known for something else, as Saharanpur is for wood carving.
• Confusing Raniganj the coalfield with Burnpur or Durgapur, the steel towns of the same district and region.

Asked as a negative matching item — three sound town-and-industry pairs and one in which a coal town has been given a steel industry.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is India's oldest commercially worked coalfield?

  • (a)Jharia
  • (b)Raniganj
  • (c)Talcher
  • (d)Singrauli

  Answer(b) Raniganj — mining there began in 1774, well before the other fields were opened.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh is best known for which industry?

  • (a)Glass bangles
  • (b)Brassware
  • (c)Hand-knotted carpets
  • (d)Leather goods

  Answer(c) Hand-knotted carpets — the town is the largest hand-knotted carpet weaving hub in South Asia.