Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Indian Ocean has become the Military bases of many big powers.
Reason (R) : There is stron

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Indian Ocean has become the Military bases of many big powers.
Reason (R) : There is strong geo-political benefits in Indian Ocean and adjacent countries.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :
Codes :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A). Assertion (A) is a matter of record: Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago is a major United States facility on British-administered territory in the middle of the ocean; Djibouti, at the mouth of the Red Sea, hosts American (Camp Lemonnier), French and Japanese bases and China's first overseas military support base, opened in 2017; France maintains forces on Reunion and Mayotte; and the US Fifth Fleet works out of Bahrain in the Gulf. Reason (R) is also true — the Indian Ocean carries the world's busiest energy sea lanes through the Straits of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb and Malacca, and its rim holds West Asian oil, African minerals and fast-growing markets. Be honest about the difficulty here: many candidates read (R) as exactly why the bases exist and mark (a), and the causal link is arguable. The commission's key marks (b), treating (R) as a general statement of regional value rather than the specific cause of base-building — the direct reasons being the need of distant powers for forward logistics, refuelling and sea-lane protection far from their home waters, and the absence of any single dominant resident navy. Since the key is what awards the mark, (b) is the answer to reproduce.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The natural reading for most candidates, and the reason this item is disputed — but the official key rejects it. The assertion-reason discipline is that (R) must supply the mechanism behind (A), not merely be a true sentence standing next to it, and the key holds that 'strong geo-political benefits in the Indian Ocean and adjacent countries' names a value, not a cause.  (c) (R) is not false. The geopolitical importance of the Indian Ocean and its rim is beyond dispute — a very large share of the world's seaborne oil and container traffic passes through its narrow chokepoints, and its littoral includes the Gulf's energy exporters.  (d) (A) is not false either. Foreign military facilities in and around the Indian Ocean are openly documented — Diego Garcia, the cluster of bases in Djibouti and the French presence on Reunion are the standard examples.

Concept: The Indian Ocean is the world's principal energy highway, and it is unusual in being almost closed: traffic must funnel through a handful of narrow chokepoints — the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Strait of Malacca and, going the long way round, the Mozambique Channel and the Cape route. Because most of its rim states are developing countries and none of them can police the whole basin, powers from outside the region have long maintained bases and access agreements there. India's own answers to this reality are institutional rather than territorial: the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (2008), the Indian Ocean Rim Association, the SAGAR vision of 2015, the Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region at Gurugram (2018), and logistics or access arrangements with partners.

State PCS 2019 Q120 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q120 — Geography PYQ with Answer