Chapter 17: Manufacturing Industries (Agro-Based)
The cane is cut before sunrise, because the day it is cut is the only day that matters. A stalk of sugarcane is mostly water and sugar, and from the moment the knife goes through it, the sucrose inside begins to break down. Leave the cut cane in the sun for a day and a half, and a share of the sugar the farmer grew has simply disappeared. Nobody stole it. It was lost to time.
This is why sugarcane is called a weight-losing crop, and why the whole geography of the sugar industry is built around a clock rather than a map of markets. The cane must reach the crushing rollers within twenty-four hours of harvesting. A mill sixty kilometres away with a good road may be closer, in the only sense that counts, than a mill twenty kilometres away with none.
So the factory goes to the field. Not because the owner prefers the countryside, but because the raw material cannot wait. Every agro-based industry in this chapter — sugar, cotton textile, silk — is shaped by what its raw material demands, and each one demands something different.
Diagram
Fig. 17.A1 Caption: Cut sugarcane loses sucrose from the moment it is harvested, so the mill must be close enough to crush it within a day. Brief: A cut cane field on the left, a loaded cart or truck on a road in the middle, a mill gate on the right; a clock face above the road marked to 24 hours; a downward arrow labelled ‘sucrose content falling’ running alongside the road, with the arrow of movement pointing from field to mill.
17.1 Industrialisation In India
India has made significant progress in its industrial development, and today it stands among the top ten industrialised countries in the world. Manufacturing means turning raw material into a finished product of greater value, and that is what an industry does. A country that only grows and digs sells cheaply; a country that also manufactures keeps the value at home.
India possesses all the necessary conditions for industrial development. Three of them are worth setting out separately, because they are the conditions every later section of this chapter will keep returning to. (a) The country has vast and diversified natural resources, so the raw material for many different kinds of industry is available within its own borders rather than having to be bought abroad. (b) Its large population provides labour, both the skilled worker who runs a machine and the unskilled worker who loads and carries. (c) That same population is also a huge market for manufactured goods, because whatever is produced still has to be sold to somebody.
Modern industries manufacturing almost all kinds of goods have now been set up. Self-reliance has been achieved in basic and capital goods — capital goods being the machines and equipment used to make other goods, rather than things bought and used up by a household. Besides the large scale sector, encouragement has also been given to the small, medium and cottage industries, so that industrial growth is not confined to a handful of very big factories.
17.1.1 Need For Rapid Industrialisation In India
India already manufactures a great deal, so why is the word ‘rapid’ used at all? The chapter gives seven reasons, and they are worth reading as an argument rather than as a list to be memorised. (a) India is predominantly an agricultural country, with more than 50 per cent of its population dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Agriculture cannot support the growing population, and only rapid industrialisation can solve the problem of rising unemployment. (b) Rapid industrialisation provides support and strength to our agricultural base, so the two sectors grow together rather than one at the cost of the other. (c) Industries produce the goods and equipment required for the defence of the country, which a country cannot safely depend on others to supply. (d) Industries are required to keep pace with the fast moving world in terms of advanced technology and know-how. (e) Rapid industrialisation is needed to make India self-reliant and independent for all its needs. (f) Some of the regions in India are economically far less developed than others, and expansion of industries in these areas is needed to counter the regional imbalance. The imbalance describes where investment has gone, not the ability of the people who live there. (g) Rapid industrialisation is required to maintain a favourable balance of trade, which is the difference between what a country sells abroad and what it buys — favourable when exports are worth more than imports.
All the above points emphasise the need to promote rapid industrialisation in India. Notice that none of them is really an argument about factories. Each one is an argument about people, land, security or trade, with industry as the answer rather than the subject.
17.2 Factors Affecting The Location Of Industries
Industries do not spread themselves evenly across a country. They concentrate in certain areas, which then become centres of industrial activity, while large stretches of land in between carry almost no manufacturing at all. The geographer’s question is never simply what is made, but why it is made here and not thirty kilometres away.
The location of an industry depends on two sets of factors, and the difference between them matters. Geographical factors are the ones given by the land itself — raw materials, power supply, water, transport, labour, market and climate — and they can be mapped. Commercial factors are the ones created by people and institutions — capital, bank and credit facilities, Government policies and organisational efficiency — and they can be changed by a decision in an office. A place with every geographical advantage and no capital will stay empty; so will a place with money and no water.
Flowchart
Fig. 17.A2 Caption: The location of any industry is decided by two sets of factors acting together, one given by the land and one created by people. Nodes: Location of an industry → geographical factors → raw materials / power supply / water / transport / labour / market / climate; Location of an industry → commercial factors → capital / bank and credit facilities / Government policies / organisational efficiency
17.2.1 Geographical Factors
Raw Materials
The decision regarding the location of a particular industrial activity is guided by the availability of raw materials in a particular area. The earliest industries in India developed near the sources of raw material, for the simple reason that carrying bulky material a long distance costs money before a single item has been sold. Availability of raw material nearby reduces the cost of transportation.
Three of the chapter’s own examples show the pattern. (a) The textile mills of Mumbai received their supply of cotton from Gujarat, the state lying immediately to the north along the same western coast. (b) The jute mills of the Hooghly region in West Bengal got their raw material from the delta region of the Ganga, where the jute is grown. (c) The iron and steel industry is located in the region where iron ore, limestone, manganese and coal are available, because it needs all four at once and each of them is heavy.
The nature of the raw material also decides the location of industries. Perishable raw materials have to be processed without loss of time before manufacturing, since every hour of delay destroys part of what the factory has bought. That is why sugar mills are located in areas of sugarcane production.
Water Supply
Water is required for the development of industries, as it is needed in the process of manufacturing and for cleaning, cooling and washing. All industries depend heavily on the availability of fresh water for one purpose or the other. (a) Iron and steel plants use large volumes of water for cooling. (b) Textile mills use it for bleaching and washing the cloth. (c) Paper and pulp, chemical, food processing, jute, leather and nuclear power industries all draw heavily on fresh water for one purpose or another.
These industrial units are therefore located at places where water is easily available. Note the word ‘fresh’. A coastal site may sit beside an ocean and still be short of the water an industry can actually use.
Energy
Uninterrupted energy is required to process raw materials into manufactured goods, and an industry that stops every time the power fails cannot hold a market. That is why the iron and steel industry is usually located near the coal resources, as it uses coal for smelting — the heating of ore to a temperature at which the metal separates out from the rock around it.
Similarly, the electro-metallurgical and electro-chemical industries, which need large amounts of power, are located where electricity is easily available. In the coal deficient peninsular region — the plateau country south of the northern plains — industries could develop by using hydel power instead of thermal power. The availability of energy in one form or the other is thus an important factor in deciding the location of a particular industry.
Transport
Transport is an essential prerequisite for industrial development, because transport facilities are required to carry raw materials to the manufacturing units and finished products to the market. An industry sits between two journeys, and both of them have to be cheap.
The availability of transport facilities has led to the development of industries near the port towns that are linked with rail and road to the hinterland, which is the inland area behind a port that the port serves and draws its trade from. A port with no rail line inland is only a harbour; a port with one is a doorway for a whole region.
Labour
The availability of both skilled and unskilled manpower is an important factor in the location of industries. The mobility of labour is also a significant factor, because workers who are able to move to where the work is will keep a growing industrial centre supplied. It is because of the mobility of cheap labour from the surrounding areas to Delhi and Mumbai that a large number of industries are located in these metropolitan cities.
Some of the small scale industries are traditionally associated with skilled labour, and the skill is held by the place as much as by the person. These include glasswork at Ferozabad, brasswork at Moradabad, utensils at Yamunanagar in Haryana, silk sarees at Varanasi and carpets at Mirzapur, the first two and the last two all lying in Uttar Pradesh.
Market
The existence of a market is the ultimate requirement of every industry, because whatever is produced needs to be sold. High demand and a satisfactory purchasing power — that is, buyers who not only want the goods but can afford them — provide the impetus to industrial development.
Sometimes the market is another industry rather than a household. Heavy chemical industries and machine industries are located in industrial areas because their products are required by other industries of the region. Petroleum refineries are established near the markets, as the transport of crude oil is easier than the transport of the many products made from it. Refineries using imported crude oil, however, are located near the ports.
Climate
Climate plays a significant part in the location of industries, especially agro-based industries, because the raw material of an agro-based industry is itself a crop and a crop answers to climate. For instance, the cotton textile industry is located in Maharashtra because the moist climate and black soil there are favourable for the growth of cotton.
An extreme type of climate, either too hot or too cold, is also not favourable for the location of industries. It works against the industry twice over: it limits the availability of raw materials, and it lowers the efficiency of the workers who have to labour in it.
17.2.2 Commercial Factors
The Role Of The Government
The government plays a significant role in the industrialisation process, especially in developing and under-developed countries, where private capital alone is rarely large enough for the task. The big industries which require large infrastructure and capital are set up by the government itself.
The government also makes the rules and regulations for running the industries and provides the basic facilities like land, water and electricity. Further, it is the government which makes policies and takes decisions to protect and encourage indigenous industries, meaning industries owned and run within the country rather than by firms based outside it.
Capital
Capital is required at every stage of setting up and running an industrial concern — buying the land, raising the building, installing the machinery, and paying for material and wages before any income comes in. Mostly financers and capitalists are available in major cities, and that is why most of the major cities are industrial centres.
These cities have good banking and credit facilities, which are necessary for setting up large-scale industries. A factory rarely begins with money already in hand; it begins with money borrowed against what it is expected to earn, and that borrowing can only happen where the lenders are.
17.3 Classification Of Industries
There is no single correct way to sort industries into groups, because a factory can be described from several directions at once. Industries can be categorised into groups on the basis of the raw materials used, size, location, nature of the finished product, and so on. Each basis answers a different question, and the same mill will appear in a different group depending on which question is being asked.
The whole scheme is easier to hold in the head as a branching tree than as a list.
Diagram
Fig. 17.1 Caption: The same industry can be placed in several of these groups at once, because each branch sorts industries by a different question. Brief: Reproduce the book’s classification chart as a branching tree from a single top box reading ‘Classification of Industries’; first level branches to raw material, product, investment and turnover, ownership and others; second level branches as printed — agro-based, mineral-based, animal-based and forest-based under raw material; light and heavy under product; micro, small, medium and large under investment and turnover; private sector, public sector, joint sector and co-operatives under ownership; location and market with village and cottage, and finished product with primary or basic, secondary or consumer, tertiary and ancillary, under others; all arrows pointing downwards from parent to child.
17.3.1 On The Basis Of Raw Material
Industries, on the basis of the raw material utilised, can be divided into four groups. (a) Agro-based industries depend on the raw material produced by the agricultural sector, and their products comprise mostly consumer goods. The major agro-based industries are the cotton, jute and textile industries, the sugar industry, the tea industry and the coffee industry. (b) Mineral-based industries use minerals, both metallic and non-metallic, as raw materials, and are based on ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgical processes — ferrous meaning the metals in which iron is the main element, and non-ferrous the metals in which it is not. The major mineral-based industries include iron and steel, heavy engineering and machine tool, cement, basic and light chemicals, and fertilisers. (c) Forest-based industries utilise forest resources like wood, rubber, lac and resin. (d) Animal-based industries utilise the raw materials provided by animals, such as woollens, silk, dairy products, hides, skin and leather, and poultry.
This first grouping is the one that matters most for a geographer, because it points straight back to the land. An industry’s raw material has to be grown, cut, dug or reared somewhere, and that somewhere pulls the factory towards it.
17.3.2 On The Basis Of Nature Of Products
On the basis of the nature of the products they make, industries are divided into heavy and light industries, and the difference is not only one of size.
Heavy industries produce capital goods and consumer durables which are quite bulky, and are known as heavy industries for that reason. They require huge capital, a large quantity of raw material, scientific knowledge and sophisticated machinery. Light industries, by contrast, produce goods which are light in weight, such as cycles, sewing machines and electronic goods, and they require less capital and a smaller number of workers than the heavy industries. What the two share is that both are manufacturing — both take a raw material in and send a finished product out — but a heavy industry is far harder to start, and far harder to move once started.
17.3.3 On The Basis Of Investment And Turnover
Industries can also be sorted by how much money is locked up in them and how much passes through them in a year. Turnover here means the total value of what an enterprise sells in a year, which is not the same as its profit. (a) Large-scale industries are enterprises with substantial capital investment, large infrastructure and a significant workforce, producing goods or services on a mass scale. They are characterised by high output, advanced technology and complex management structures, and they play a crucial role in economic growth by generating employment and contributing to national income. Automobile manufacturing, steel production, and the oil and gas industry are examples. (b) Small-scale industries are further classified, with effect from April 2025, by fixed limits on investment and turnover, one crore being ten million rupees: (i) A micro enterprise is one where the investment in plant and machinery or equipment does not exceed 2.5 crore rupees and annual turnover does not exceed ten crore rupees. (ii) A small enterprise is one where the investment in plant and machinery or equipment does not exceed 25 crore rupees and annual turnover does not exceed 100 crore rupees. (iii) A medium enterprise is one where the investment in plant and machinery does not exceed 125 crore rupees and annual turnover does not exceed 500 crore rupees.
Notice that both tests must be met. An enterprise with small machinery but very large sales is not a micro enterprise, because the definition is fixed on two numbers and not on the feel of the place.
17.3.4 On The Basis Of Ownership
Who owns an industry decides who takes its risks and who takes its earnings. Four kinds of ownership are recognised. (a) Public sector industries are owned and managed either by the Central Government or the State Government. They include public utility industries like railways, post and telegraph, oil refineries, heavy engineering industries and defence establishments. The most significant of these are Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). (b) Private sector industries are owned and managed by an individual or a group of individuals, and include industries like Reliance India Limited (RIL), Infosys and Wipro. (c) Joint sector industries are owned, managed and controlled jointly by the private entrepreneur and the government. An enterprise is called a joint sector enterprise if the Government holds 26 per cent equity or more and the private promoter 25 per cent, with the balance held by the general public — equity being a share in the ownership of the company. Automobile Corporation of Goa Ltd. and IPITATA Sponge Iron Ltd. have been established with TELCO and TISCO of the Tata House as private promoters respectively. (d) Co-operative sector industries are the means by which people with limited resources can pool their physical and material resources, so that together they can run what none of them could afford alone. The Anand Cooperative Society in Gujarat is an example.
The chapter also prints a list of the leading industrial centres of the country, state by state. Read down it and the unevenness of India’s industry becomes visible before any map is opened.
17.3.5 On The Basis Of Location And Market
Where an industry sits, and how far its goods travel, gives a further pair of groups. Village industries fulfil the basic needs of the local markets, and all their requirements — raw materials, skills, labour and the rest — are met from within the village itself. They include handloom, pottery making, food processing, pickles and khadi.
Cottage industries are also known as household industries and are organised by individuals with private resources and with the help of members of the household. They use locally available resources and skills, as in carpet weaving, handloom and the handicrafts industry. Both kinds work on a small scale with local material, but the village industry is defined by the settlement it serves, while the cottage industry is defined by the home it is run from.
17.3.6 On The Basis Of Finished Product Or Function
A last grouping asks what the finished product is for, and it arranges industries in a chain rather than in separate boxes. (a) Basic industries form the core industries on which other industries depend for their manufacturing, such as the iron and steel industry and the petroleum industry. (b) Secondary or consumer industries process the basic raw materials into primary goods for direct use by the consumers, and include textiles, sugar and paper making. (c) Tertiary industries provide public utility based services like railways, transport, banking, post and telegraph, without which the other industries could neither move their goods nor pay for them. (d) Ancillary industries manufacture the components, tools, sub-assemblies, intermediates and machines required by big industries such as the heavy electrical industry, the aircraft industry, locomotives and buses. Automobile ancillary industries, for example, provide supporting equipment like tyres, batteries, brakes, headlights and mirrors.
The chain is worth reading in both directions. A basic industry that fails does not fail alone, because every secondary and ancillary unit standing downstream of it is waiting for its material.
17.4 Major Industrial Regions
In India, the distribution of industries is highly uneven. Part of the reason lies in the land — the necessary raw materials and energy resources are themselves unevenly distributed, and an industry cannot be sited where its material is not. The other part lies in the towns, where enterprises, financial resources and the other necessary conditions have concentrated, so that money and skill collect in the same few places generation after generation.
The unevenness is not random. It can be identified from five clear patterns, each of which is really a location factor from the previous section, seen at the scale of the whole country. (a) Agro-based industries like cotton, jute and sugar are concentrated in the raw material producing areas — cotton textile in Maharashtra and Gujarat, sugar in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, and jute textile in West Bengal. (b) The forest-based industries like paper, plywood, resins and lac are concentrated in the forest areas of various states. (c) The coastal belt of Kerala, in the far south-west of the peninsula, has a heavy concentration of coir, copra and fish canning, all three of them made from what that coast itself produces. (d) Since India imports about two-thirds of its requirements of petroleum, most of the oil refineries are located near the major ports, at the point where the imported crude arrives. (e) Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, parts of Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka account for most of the reserves of metallic minerals, which is why these areas have a high concentration of heavy metallurgical industries.
On the basis of the concentration of major industries, India can be grouped into the following areas, and the map shows how small a share of the country’s area they occupy.
Map
Map 17.1 Caption: The major industrial regions of India, drawn at a scale of 1:24 000 000. Brief: Political outline of India showing the full extent of India as officially defined, with state boundaries in a light line; the six industrial regions shaded in a single strong colour and labelled — Mathura-Delhi-Saharanpur-Ambala, Ahmedabad-Vadodara Belt, Mumbai Pune Belt, Chennai-Coimbatore-Bengaluru Belt, Chota Nagpur Belt and Hooghly Belt; Tropic of Cancer marked as a broken line; Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea, Lakshadweep Sea and Indian Ocean labelled; key showing only ‘Industrial Regions’; linear scale bar in kilometres; no individual factory sites to be shown.
The Hooghly Belt
The Hooghly belt, strung along the Hooghly river in West Bengal, constitutes one of the most important industrial regions of India. Jute textiles, engineering, cotton textiles, chemicals, leather footwear, paper and match works are the important industries in the area.
Several advantages pulled these industries close to the river. The port facilities of Kolkata gave them a doorway to the sea, proximity to coal, jute and leather producing areas gave them raw material and fuel, cheap transport carried both, and the availability of a large quantity of fresh water served the processes that need it.
The Mumbai-Pune Belt
This belt has a heavy concentration of cotton textile, engineering, oil refineries, fertilizer and chemical industries. The cotton textile industry was the nucleus of industrial growth in the area, and began here during the 1950s.
The development of hydro-electric power in the Sahyadris, the range of the Western Ghats running down the edge of the Maharashtra plateau, supplied the energy. Raw cotton was available from Maharashtra and Gujarat, and cheap labour came from the Konkan, the narrow coastal strip between the Ghats and the sea. Besides these, the most important factor responsible for the industrial development of this region is the availability of the port facilities of Mumbai.
The Ahmedabad-Vadodara Region
Ahmedabad, situated in a cotton-growing tract of Gujarat, has emerged as the second largest centre of cotton textiles after Mumbai. Surat, Navsari, Bharuch and Vadodara also attracted the cotton textile industry, along with many other industries. Today this region produces cotton textiles, plastics, fertilizers, chemicals and engineering goods on a large scale.
The chief advantages of this region are worth separating, because between them they cover almost every location factor at once. (a) The completion of a number of power projects, including the Dhuvaran Thermal Power Station, the Uttaran Gas Power Station, the Ukai Hydro-Electric Project and the Tarapur Atomic Power Station, removed the constraint of energy. (b) Cheap salt is available along the coast, which feeds the chemical industry. (c) Raw cotton comes from south Gujarat and from Kathiawar, the peninsula that forms the western part of the state. (d) Skilled labour is drawn from the Gujarat Plains.
The Chennai-Coimbatore-Bengaluru Region
Cheap cotton, a large market, and cheap and skilled labour were the chief factors which attracted a number of industries to this region, particularly cotton textile. The Mettur, Sivasamudram, Papanasam, Pykara and Sharavati projects supply cheap hydroelectric power to the area.
Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai are the leading centres of cotton and silk textiles. A number of engineering and chemical industries have also come up at these and several other places, particularly Salem and Tiruchirapalli.
The Chota Nagpur Plateau Region
This area, covering parts of Jharkhand and West Bengal, produces over 80 per cent of India’s coal, along with substantial quantities of iron ore, manganese, bauxite, mica and limestone. It has therefore become a hub of heavy industries rather than of consumer goods.
Jamshedpur, Bokaro, Kulti, Burnpur and Durgapur are centres of steel production, and metallurgical and heavy industries have come up at Asansol, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Ranchi and Jamshedpur. Due to the availability of coal, iron ore and other materials in close proximity, and the large-scale development of metallurgical industries that followed, this area is often compared to the ‘Ruhr region’ of West Germany, the coal and steel district that was Europe’s industrial heart.
The Mathura-Delhi-Saharanpur-Ambala Region
This region has two separate belts running in a north-south direction, between Faridabad and Ambala in Haryana and between Mathura and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. The belts merge into a large agglomeration around Delhi, which is one of the largest industrial cities in India.
The region has cotton textile, glass, chemicals and engineering industries, along with sugar industries. Besides the availability of cheap raw materials like sugarcane and raw cotton, a large market is the main stimulus for the industrial development in the area. This is the one region on the list where demand, rather than a mineral or a port, is doing most of the work.
17.5 Agro-Based Industries
Industries that have agricultural produce as raw materials are known as agro-based industries. These are consumer based industries, which means that most of what they make goes directly to a household rather than to another factory. In this chapter we shall study about such industries.
An agro-based industry is tied to the land twice over. Its raw material must be grown, so it depends on soil, rainfall and temperature; and its raw material is usually bulky, often perishable, and always harvested in a season rather than steadily through the year. Every peculiarity of the sugar and textile industries in the pages that follow comes back to those two facts.
17.5.1 Sugar Industry
The sugar industry is India’s second largest organised industry, next to cotton textiles. In 2021-22 India surpassed Brazil to become the largest producer of sugarcane in the world.
Being the largest grower of cane is not the same as being the most efficient maker of sugar, and much of this section is about the distance between the two.
17.5.2 Products And By-Products
For farmers sugarcane is one of the most profitable cash crops, that is, a crop grown mainly to be sold rather than eaten by the household that grows it. The cane is crushed in the factories to produce sugar. A fairly large amount is also used to make jaggery, known as gur, and unrefined sugar, known as khandsari.
Sugar is only part of what leaves the mill. Besides sugar, gur and khandsari, the cane also supplies molasses, bagasse and press mud, and each of these has its own industry standing behind it. (a) Molasses is obtained in the process of sugar manufacture, which involves repeated crystallisation and centrifugation — spinning the thick syrup at speed so that the sugar crystals separate from the liquid left behind. It is used in the alcohol industry for the distillation of liquor such as rum and for power alcohol, and also in the production of certain chemicals and synthetic rubber. (b) Bagasse is the leftover cane after crushing. It is used for producing steam, which is used as a source of power for the sugar industry itself, and also for making cardboard, paper and insulation board. (c) Press mud is utilised for making wax, carbon paper and shoe polish.
Ethanol, manufactured from molasses and bagasse, is gaining importance as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. At present molasses is used for its production, while various bio-conversion technologies are being used to obtain ethanol from bagasse as well. Ethanol is used to power fuel cells and to produce bio-diesel, and it is blended with gasoline because it reduces carbon and vehicular emissions, improving air quality.
Flowchart
Fig. 17.A3 Caption: Nothing much leaves a sugar mill as waste — each stream that comes off the crushed cane feeds an industry of its own. Nodes: sugarcane → crushing in the factory → sugar; crushing in the factory → gur and khandsari; crushing in the factory → molasses → liquor and power alcohol / chemicals and synthetic rubber / ethanol; crushing in the factory → bagasse → steam for the mill’s own power / cardboard, paper and insulation board / ethanol by bio-conversion; crushing in the factory → press mud → wax, carbon paper and shoe polish; ethanol → blended with gasoline → lower vehicular emissions
The chapter also lists the centres of the sugar industry state by state. Read it alongside a map of India and the two great clusters — the northern plains and the peninsula — stand out at once.
17.5.3 Distribution Of Sugar Industry
17.5.3.1 Maharashtra
Maharashtra is the leading producer of sugar in India, accounting for more than one-third of the total production of sugar in the country. Due to the marine impact — the moderating effect of the nearby sea, which keeps the temperature from swinging to extremes — the climate is ideal for the cultivation of sugarcane. As a result the recovery rate of sucrose is higher, meaning that more sugar is actually recovered from a given weight of cane, and the crushing season is longer.
The main sugar producing area in Maharashtra is located in a narrow belt extending from Manmad in the north to Kolhapur in the south. Most of the mills are large in size, and in these the crushing period lasts for more than 100 days.
17.5.3.2 Northern India
Uttar Pradesh is the second largest producer of sugar in India. Here the sugar factories are located in two belts — the Ganga-Yamuna doab and the Terai belt. A doab is the tongue of land lying between two rivers, and the Terai is the wet, low-lying strip running along the foot of the Himalayas.
In the Ganga-Yamuna doab area, the main sugar producing centres are Saharanpur, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Bulandshahar and Ghaziabad. In the Terai belt, the main sugar producing centres are located in Basti, Bahraich, Gonda, Gorakhpur and Lakhimpur Kheri.
Uttar Pradesh was formerly the largest producer and has been relegated to second place, for three reasons the chapter names: old mills, management and labour problems, and a shorter crushing period. The other states which produce sugar are Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
17.5.3.3 Peninsular India
Peninsular India has emerged as the leading producer of sugar in the country. Tamil Nadu has a higher per hectare yield of sugarcane, a higher sucrose content and a longer crushing season — a hectare being an area of ten thousand square metres, a little larger than two football fields. These characteristics, along with new machinery, have led to a higher output of sugar in Tamil Nadu.
In recent decades there has been a tendency of the sugar industry’s growth towards the South. This is one of the few instances in Indian geography where a major industry can be watched shifting from one part of the country to another within living memory.
17.5.4 Tendency Of The Industry To Migrate To The South
Eight reasons together explain the shift, and they fall into three families — climate and soil, the organisation of the farms, and the distance from field to mill. (a) In South India the favourable maritime climate, free from the effects of the summer loo — the hot dry wind that blows across the northern plains in May and June — and from winter frost, is best suited for growing superior varieties of cane. There is therefore a longer production period. (b) The black soil here is more fertile than the alluvial soil of northern India, and besides this the black soil is well drained, so the roots do not stand in water. (c) The cane is of superior quality with a higher yield. (d) The excellent transport facilities, especially in the states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, in relation to export markets, have placed these states in a very advantageous position for the further expansion of the sugarcane industry. (e) The sugarcane farms in South India have a bigger area and are managed by the co-operative societies. These co-operative societies have access to better facilities like better seeds, fertilisers and irrigation. (f) Sugar is a weight losing crop, that is, its sucrose content goes on decreasing with time. It is therefore necessary to crush sugarcane within 24 hours of harvesting, and since the factories in southern India are located near the fields, the loss of sugar content due to transportation is minimum. (g) New machinery and crushing devices ensure more yield. (h) The crushing season is longer.
17.5.5 Problems Of The Sugar Industry
The industry’s difficulties begin in the field and only later reach the factory gate, which is why so few of them can be solved by the mill alone. (a) The sugarcane cultivated in India is of poor quality, giving a low yield per hectare and a low sucrose content. (b) The cost of production is quite high because of the inefficient and uneconomic nature of production, the low yield, the short crushing season, and the location of sugarcane producing areas far away from the factories. (c) About the entire crop of sugarcane is harvested at the same time. As a result there is excess pressure on factories during harvest time and some amount of cane goes waste, which adds to the cost of production. (d) The supply of raw materials to sugar factories is irregular, as no plantation industry exists around the factory. Sugarcane is instead grown by small farmers who sell their produce to the sugar factories. (e) The output of cane also depends on the price offered for the sugarcane. Farmers sell the cane to the factories at prices fixed by the government, and if the prices offered are not attractive, farmers switch over to other crops. (f) The by-products of sugar like molasses and bagasse are not utilised completely. These can be converted into other useful products to reduce the cost of production. (g) Old and obsolete machinery is used in the sugar industry, and this should be replaced by new technology and new machinery. (h) In rural areas, the demand for gur and khandsari is more than that for sugar, so part of the cane never reaches a mill at all.
Read (c), (d) and (e) together and a single difficulty appears in three forms. The mill does not own its raw material, cannot spread its arrival through the year, and cannot set its price. An industry in that position is at the mercy of decisions taken in thousands of small fields.
The chapter sets the northern and peninsular sugar industries side by side, and the contrast summarises much of this section.
17.6 Cotton Textile
India is one of the largest cotton textile manufacturing countries in the world, and also one of the largest exporters of cotton textiles. Cotton textile is a major industry in India as it directly or indirectly supports more than nearly 40 per cent of the country’s labour force. No other manufacturing industry in the country touches so many working lives.
The industry is divided into the powerloom and handloom sectors, and the difference between them is a difference of power rather than of purpose. A powerloom weaves cloth by machine, driven by electricity and worked in a mill; a handloom is worked by the weaver’s own hands and feet, usually at home or in a small workshop. Both turn yarn into cloth, but one measures its output in mill-loads and the other in pieces.
The most important cotton mills, which are the powerlooms, are located in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. These three states account for three-fourths of the total output of yarn and cotton cloth, and the remaining one-fourth is produced by West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
The handloom industry, by contrast, is located in every Indian state, however small it may be. Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Kanpur, Delhi and Howrah are important centres, and Rajasthan, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Bihar and Assam are other important states.
17.6.1 The Main Cotton Manufacturing Centres
The cotton textile industry is one of the most widely distributed industries in India. However, it is more concentrated in the cotton growing tracts of the drier western parts of the Peninsula and the Great Plains, which is where the raw cotton itself comes from.
Maharashtra and Gujarat are the foremost cotton textile manufacturing states. In these states, Mumbai and Ahmedabad together contribute about 50 per cent of the total installed looms and nearly half of India’s cotton mill cloth. Two cities, in other words, hold about half an industry that is spread across the whole country.
Map
Map 17.2 Caption: The cotton textile centres of India, drawn at a scale of 1:24 000 000. Brief: Political outline of India showing the full extent of India as officially defined, with state boundaries in a light line; a single point symbol at each cotton textile centre, labelled — Dhariwal, Saharanpur, Panipat, Modinagar, Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Bhilwara, Gwalior, Kota, Varanasi, Gaya, Jamnagar, Bhopal, Indore, Bhavnagar, Surat, Kolkata, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Pune, Solapur, Kohlapur, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Harihar, Anantapur, Mysore, Chennai, Salem, Coimbatore, Thrissur, Kollam, Madurai, Tuticorin, Thiruvananthapuram and Tirunelveli; Tropic of Cancer as a broken line; Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea, Lakshadweep Sea and Indian Ocean labelled; key showing only ‘Cotton Textile Centres’; linear scale bar in kilometres.
The chapter also lists these centres state by state, which is the same information arranged for a different question.
In fact, Mumbai has become the most important centre of cotton textile in the country and is rightly called the ‘cottonpolis’ of India. It is also known as the ‘Lancashire’ of India, after the English county whose mills once clothed much of the world. Ahmedabad, being the second largest cotton manufacturing city in India, is referred to as the ‘Manchester of India’.
Why These Two Cities
Mumbai and Ahmedabad have emerged as the most important cotton manufacturing centres because of eight reasons, and it is worth noticing how many of them have nothing to do with cotton. (a) Proximity to raw material: the supply of raw cotton for the mills comes from the cotton producing areas of the Deccan Plateau that lie close to these mills. (b) Climatic conditions: the humid coastal climate favours textile making, because damp air keeps the yarn supple and it can be worked without the thread breaking. (c) Transport facilities: Mumbai and Ahmedabad are well connected through rail and road links with the cotton growing areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat respectively, and also through sea routes with the foreign markets. (d) Port facilities: Mumbai is a leading port with export and import facilities, whereas Ahmedabad utilises the port facilities from Kandla. The location of ports facilitates the import of capital goods and chemicals and the export of finished goods. (e) Labour: Mumbai and Ahmedabad have enough labour force from within or from nearby states. (f) Capital: both cities, being the financial and commercial centres of the country, have easy access to capital and financial resources. A large number of banks and other financial institutions exist in these cities, which provide loans and other credit facilities to the manufacturers. (g) Power: power is important for the development of any industry. The cotton mills in Mumbai are supplied electricity by the Tata Hydroelectric system located in the Western Ghats, whereas electricity is supplied in Gujarat by the Ukai and Kakrapara hydroelectric projects. (h) Market: there is a huge market for the cotton cloth in these states as well as in the southern and coastal areas of the country, because of the hot climate which prevails in these areas. Besides the internal demand, a huge market for Indian cotton cloth exists outside the country, especially in the Middle East countries, which are located comparatively near to Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Handloom And Khadi
A large part of the textile industry is still managed by small marginal weavers using the handloom, and this is not a survival from the past so much as a living sector of the present. The government has introduced many schemes to promote the rich heritage of the handloom sector. Through numerous khadi outlets and other marketing assistance, weavers and artisans are able to revive their skill of spinning and weaving and to make products for customers all over the world.
The handloom industry is the largest cottage industry in the country. It provides direct employment to about 13 million weavers and is the largest economic activity after agriculture. It employs a large number of women and thus helps in women empowerment.
Khadi, or khaddar, is handspun and woven by hand. The weavers use a spinning wheel to spin the yarn from cotton, and the finished product is a versatile fabric widely used in fashion circles.
17.6.2 Problems Of Textile Industry
The cotton textile industry suffers from the following problems, and they connect to one another rather than standing separately. (a) Shortage of raw material: there is a shortage of raw material, particularly of long staple cotton — cotton whose fibres are longer, and which is needed for finer yarn. It is imported from Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Egypt, USA and Peru. (b) Sick industrial units: the cotton industry faces the constant threat of sickness and consequent closure, a sick unit being one that runs at continued loss and cannot recover without help. The causes are uncertainty of raw material, low productivity of machines and labour, increasing competition from the powerloom sector, lack of modernisation, and management problems. These sick units require heavy financial investments for replacement and modernisation, and many of them have been taken over by the government. (c) Loss of foreign markets: the Indian cotton textile industry has lost some of the foreign markets because of the continued increase in the cost of production, and because the cotton textile industry has developed in a number of Asian countries like China and Japan and in African countries. Indian cotton textile goods face stiff competition in foreign markets from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, whose goods are cheaper and better in quality. (d) Inadequate production: the industry faces inadequate production because of the lack of an adequate and unfailing power supply, and also because of competition with the decentralised sector. It therefore has to face stiff competition from other Asian countries. (e) Shortage of power: the cotton textile mills are facing an acute shortage of power. Supplies of coal are difficult to obtain, and frequent cuts in electricity and load shedding affect the industry badly. This leads to loss of man hours, low production and loss in the mills. (f) Obsolete machinery: in India most of the cotton textile mills are working with old and obsolete machinery. According to an estimate, over 60 per cent of the spindles — the rods on which the fibre is twisted into yarn — are more than 30 years old.
The chapter gives one figure that makes the machinery problem measurable rather than merely worrying.
The arithmetic says something the words alone do not. For every hundred looms in the country, eighty-two still need a worker’s constant attention, while in the United States none do. Obsolete machinery results in low output and poor quality of goods, as a result of which Indian textile goods are not able to face competition in the international market. Note also what the figure does not say: it counts looms, not the cloth they produce, so it cannot tell us what share of India’s cloth comes off the automatic ones.
17.7 Silk Textile Industry
India is one of the largest producers of silk in the world, and it holds a distinction no other country can claim: it manufactures all four varieties of silk — mulberry, eri, tasar and muga. It has the world monopoly of the golden-yellow muga silk produced in Assam, which means that this one silk is made nowhere else on earth. India also has a long tradition of manufacturing and producing silk textiles.
Silk begins not in a field but in an insect. Sericulture is the rearing of silkworms for silk production, and it is farming and manufacturing at the same time — the worm must be fed on the right leaves, in the right climate, before there is any thread at all.
Flowchart
Fig. 17.A4 Caption: India makes all four kinds of silk, and the split between mulberry and the rest decides where each is reared. Nodes: silk in India → mulberry silk → reared on mulberry leaves → about 90 per cent of India’s natural silk; silk in India → non-mulberry silk → tasar / eri / muga → muga produced only in Assam
In India, silk fabrics were made in the cottage industrial sector, in homes rather than in mills. The first modern silk textile factory in India was started by the East India Company at Howrah, on the western bank of the Hooghly opposite Kolkata, in 1832. After independence there has been a significant increase in the production of silk textiles in the country.
The chapter maps and lists the weaving centres, and the two together show how far silk has spread from its old strongholds.
Map
Map 17.3 Caption: The silk textile centres of India, drawn at a scale of 1:24 000 000. Brief: Political outline of India showing the full extent of India as officially defined, with state boundaries in a light line; a star symbol at each silk textile centre, labelled — Srinagar, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Bharatpur, Shahjahanpur, Gwalior, Kota, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhagalpur, Ranchi, Kamrup, Nagaon, Murshidabad, Bankura, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Surat, Cuttack, Nashik, Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Solapur, Mahabubnagar, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Belagavi, Kurnool, Ongole, Anantapur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kanchipuram, Mysore, Salem, Coimbatore, Thanjavur, Madurai and Tirunelveli; Tropic of Cancer as a broken line; Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea, Lakshadweep Sea and Indian Ocean labelled; key showing only ‘Silk Textile Industry’; linear scale bar in kilometres.
17.7.1 Mulberry Silk
Mulberry silk accounts for about 90 per cent of the total natural silk produced in India. It is produced from the silkworms which are reared on the mulberry tree, and sericulture is the name given to the rearing of silkworms on mulberry leaves. Where the mulberry will grow, the silk can follow; where it will not, it cannot.
The significant producers of this variety of silk are Bengaluru, Mysore, Belagavi, Srinagar and Himachal Pradesh. The major mulberry silk producing states are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir, which together account for 92% of the country’s total mulberry silk production.
17.7.2 Distribution
The states dealing with sericulture are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya. Their shares are very unequal, and one state carries most of the industry.
Karnataka
Karnataka contributes 70 per cent of the country’s mulberry silk output, because it has a favourable climate for rearing silkworms. Supporting this are nurseries, silk farms and licensed seed distributors, so a rearer can obtain healthy stock rather than depending on chance.
The districts of Bengaluru, Mysore, Kolar, Mandya, Tumkur, Belagavi, Chikkaballapura, Ramanagaram, Chamarajanagar and Coorg are famous for the silk industry. The state-owned Channapatna mill has a capacity of numerous spindles, and the decentralised sector has many powerlooms and handlooms working alongside it.
The Other Sericulture States
The remaining states each hold a particular part of the industry, and the parts do not overlap much. (a) In Andhra Pradesh, the Chittoor, Visakhapatnam and Anantapur districts are actively involved in sericulture. (b) Telangana has a flourishing handloom silk industry in the Mahabubnagar, Karimnagar, Warangal and Adilabad districts. (c) West Bengal produces silk of the mulberry variety. Sericulture is chiefly carried out in the Malda, Murshidabad, Birbhum and Bankura districts, while the important weaving centres are located at Bishnupur, Baswa, Raghunathpur, Rishra and Chak Islampur. (d) Tamil Nadu is the fourth largest producer of raw silk in India — raw silk being the thread reeled off the cocoons, before it is woven into cloth. Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Salem and Tirunelveli districts are the main centres for the production of raw silk, and the state has many handlooms which produce the silk-yarn. (e) Bihar and Jharkhand produce silk of the tasar variety and are the largest tasar producing states in the country, with Palamau, Hazaribagh, Bhagalpur and Ranchi as the leading silk producing districts. (f) In Assam, sericulture is an important cottage industry providing sustenance to thousands of people. Assam is one of the largest producers of non-mulberry silk, that is tasar, eri and muga, and it is also the only muga-producing region of the country, with Goalpara in Kamrup and Nagaon as important silk producing districts.
Notice how the map of silk separates into two different geographies. Mulberry silk gathers where the climate suits the mulberry and the worm, chiefly in the peninsula, while the non-mulberry silks belong to the east and north-east, where those worms feed on other trees.
17.7.3 Problems Of Silk Industry
The main problems being faced by the silk industry are the following, and the first two both come from outside the country. (a) Competition from artificial silk is the main problem faced by the Indian silk industry, since artificial silk is cheaper and better in quality. (b) The import of better quality and cheaper raw silk from China is also detrimental for the Indian silk industry. (c) The changes in prices of raw silk badly affect both the weavers and the silk industry. (d) There is no systematic testing and grading of silk, as there is in advanced countries like Japan. (e) The industry needs modern power looms for increasing production.
Point (d) deserves a second look, because grading sounds like paperwork and is not. Without a recognised system of testing, a buyer abroad cannot know in advance what quality is being bought, and an unknown quality always fetches a lower price than a certified one.
17.8 Summary
- India has made significant progress in industrial development and is one of the top ten industrialised countries in the world, with vast and diversified natural resources, a large population that supplies both labour and market, and self-reliance in basic and capital goods.
- Rapid industrialisation is still needed for seven reasons.
- Agriculture, on which more than 50 per cent of the population depends, cannot absorb the growing population, so only industry can meet rising unemployment.
- Industry strengthens the agricultural base rather than competing with it.
- Industry supplies the goods and equipment required for the defence of the country.
- Industry keeps the country abreast of advanced technology and know-how.
- Industry makes India self-reliant and independent for all its needs.
- Industry in the less developed regions is needed to counter the regional imbalance.
- Industry helps maintain a favourable balance of trade, with exports exceeding imports.
- The location of an industry is decided by geographical factors — raw materials, power supply, water, transport, labour, market and climate — and by commercial factors, which are capital, bank and credit facilities, Government policies and organisational efficiency.
- Among the geographical factors, the nature of the raw material matters as much as its quantity.
- Perishable raw material pulls the factory to the field, which is why sugar mills stand in the cane areas.
- Bulky material that can wait, such as ore and coal, pulls heavy industry to the mining region.
- Fresh water, uninterrupted energy, rail and road links to the hinterland, skilled and mobile labour, a market with purchasing power, and a suitable climate all act together on the final choice of site.
- Industries are classified in six ways, and the same industry falls into a different group under each.
- By raw material: agro-based, mineral-based, forest-based and animal-based.
- By nature of products: heavy and light.
- By investment and turnover: large-scale, and the micro, small and medium enterprises defined by fixed limits with effect from April 2025.
- By ownership: public sector, private sector, joint sector and co-operative sector.
- By location and market: village and cottage industries.
- By finished product or function: basic, secondary or consumer, tertiary and ancillary.
- The distribution of industry in India is highly uneven, because raw materials and energy resources are unevenly spread and because enterprise, finance and other conditions collect in large towns.
- Six major industrial regions carry most of the country’s manufacturing.
- The Hooghly belt, built on the port of Kolkata, nearby coal, jute and leather, and abundant fresh water.
- The Mumbai-Pune belt, built on hydro-electric power from the Sahyadris, raw cotton, cheap labour from the Konkan and above all the port of Mumbai.
- The Ahmedabad-Vadodara region, built on power projects, coastal salt, raw cotton and skilled labour.
- The Chennai-Coimbatore-Bengaluru region, built on cheap cotton, a large market, skilled labour and cheap hydroelectric power.
- The Chota Nagpur plateau region, built on coal, iron ore and other minerals lying close together, and compared to the Ruhr region.
- The Mathura-Delhi-Saharanpur-Ambala region, built mainly on a very large market together with cheap sugarcane and raw cotton.
- Agro-based industries use agricultural produce as their raw material and are consumer based industries; the chapter studies sugar, cotton textile and silk.
- The sugar industry is India’s second largest organised industry, and in 2021-22 India surpassed Brazil to become the largest producer of sugarcane in the world.
- Sugarcane yields far more than sugar, and almost nothing is wasted.
- Gur and khandsari are made directly from a large share of the cane.
- Molasses goes to liquor, power alcohol, chemicals and synthetic rubber.
- Bagasse raises steam for the mill and makes cardboard, paper and insulation board.
- Press mud makes wax, carbon paper and shoe polish.
- Ethanol from molasses and bagasse is blended into fuel, and the Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme of 2003 sets targets for that blending.
- Maharashtra leads in sugar production with more than one-third of the country’s output, Uttar Pradesh is second with belts in the Ganga-Yamuna doab and the Terai, and peninsular India has emerged as the leading producer overall.
- The industry is migrating southwards because the maritime climate is free of loo and frost, the black soil is fertile and well drained, the cane is superior, transport is excellent, farms are larger and co-operatively run, the crushing season is longer, and the mills stand close enough to the fields to crush the cane within 24 hours.
- Its problems are poor cane quality and low yield, high cost of production, the whole crop arriving at once, irregular supply from small farmers, government-fixed cane prices, incomplete use of by-products, obsolete machinery, and rural demand for gur and khandsari rather than sugar.
- Cotton textile is a major industry supporting nearly 40 per cent of the country’s labour force, divided into powerloom and handloom sectors, with Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu producing three-fourths of the yarn and cloth.
- Mumbai, the ‘cottonpolis’ of India, and Ahmedabad, the ‘Manchester of India’, hold about half the installed looms because of raw cotton from the Deccan Plateau, humid coastal climate, transport, ports, labour, capital, power and a large market at home and abroad.
- The handloom industry is the largest cottage industry in the country, employing about 13 million weavers directly and standing as the largest economic activity after agriculture.
- The cotton textile industry suffers from shortage of long staple cotton, sick industrial units, loss of foreign markets, inadequate production, shortage of power, and obsolete machinery, with automatic looms at only 18 per cent against a world average of 62 per cent.
- India produces all four varieties of silk — mulberry, eri, tasar and muga — and holds the world monopoly of muga silk from Assam; sericulture is the rearing of silkworms for silk.
- Mulberry silk is about 90 per cent of India’s natural silk, and Karnataka alone contributes 70 per cent of the mulberry silk output because its climate suits the rearing of silkworms.
- The silk industry’s problems are competition from artificial silk, cheaper imported raw silk from China, unstable raw silk prices, the absence of systematic testing and grading, and the need for modern power looms.
Flowchart
Fig. 17.A5 Caption: In every agro-based industry in this chapter, the raw material’s own nature decides where the factory can stand. Nodes: climate and soil of a region → the crop that can be grown there → raw material for an agro-based industry → does it lose value quickly? yes → mill must sit beside the field, as with sugarcane crushed within 24 hours; no → mill can sit where the other factors are strongest, as with cotton at the ports → remaining location factors weigh in → water / power / transport / labour / market / capital / government → an industrial region forms → the region draws in more industry → back to the raw material, now bought from further away
What This Chapter Cannot Tell You
The chapter names centres and states, but it almost never gives their output, so a list cannot tell you whether a named town holds one mill or a hundred. The maps carry the same limit at 1:24 000 000, where a single dot stands equally for the largest cotton city in the country and for a small district centre.
The figures also belong to different moments — the cane record of 2021-22, the enterprise limits of April 2025, an estimate of spindle age with no year attached — and they cannot be read as a single snapshot. Above all, a state total hides the district, and a district total hides the small farmer whose decision to plant cane or something else is where the sugar industry actually begins. ## 17.9 Check Your Concepts
- Look again at Table 17.3, which compares the sugar industry of North India with that of Peninsular India.
- Which of the differences listed there are caused by climate, and which are caused by the way the industry is organised?
- State one thing about the two sugar industries that this table does not tell you.
- A stalk of sugarcane enters a mill and is crushed. Trace, in order, what leaves the mill and what each of those streams is used for. End your answer by naming the two streams from which ethanol is obtained.
- Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu account for three-fourths of the total output of yarn and cotton cloth, and the remaining one-fourth is produced by six other states named in this chapter.
- If that remaining one-fourth were shared equally among those six states, what fraction of India’s total output would each of them produce? Show your working.
- Give one reason why the actual shares are unlikely to be equal.
- Heavy metallurgical industry has concentrated on the Chota Nagpur plateau rather than in any of the other five industrial regions named in this chapter.
- Which factors named in the chapter explain this concentration?
- Which single factor is doing most of the work, and what would have to change for these industries to be located elsewhere?
- Give the difference between the following:
- Public sector and private sector industries.
- Heavy and light industries.
- Give a geographical reason for each of the following:
- Sugar mills are located close to sugarcane growing areas.
- Mumbai is known as the ‘cottonopolis’ of India.
- The silk industry has a small market.
- Give three important reasons which have made Maharashtra the leading producer of sugar in India.
17.10 Case-Based Questions
- Mysore is known for its soft, lustrous and durable silk. Murali is a silk weaver in Mysore. He does not want his children to follow his footsteps. What could be the reason for it?
- According to a newspaper report published in September 2023, India, the world’s biggest sugar producer after Brazil, banned mills from exporting sugar during the season beginning October 1, 2023. This was the first sugar export curb in seven years. New Delhi allowed mills to export only 6.1 million metric tonnes of sugar during the last season, nearly half of the country’s total shipment in 2021-22. Sugar output during the next 2024-25 season was likely to fall to 32 million metric tonnes from that year’s 34 million tonnes, due to the adverse impact of the previous year’s patchy rains in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
- Is the government going to continue the ban on exports? Give reasons to support your answer.
- How would ‘patchy rains’ impact the crop?
- What purpose does the ban on sugar export serve?
- In the subsequent year (2024) there was heavy rainfall and flooding. What would be the impact of this on sugar production in 2025-26? Do you think the ban would be lifted? Why?
- What would be the impact of this ban on the global market? Give reasons.
- The cotton textile industry is the highest employment generator amongst the agro-based industries in India, and the growth of this industry is mainly in the Gujarat-Maharashtra belt. Mr. Rahat, a rich industrialist, wants to invest his money in this industry.
- Which are the most important factors which have led Mr. Rahat to invest in the industry?
- Where would you advise him to set up his unit?
- List any three problems of this industry. How would you advise Mr. Rahat to tackle them?
- Is there an alternate industry that can be set up in this belt? What is it? Compare the profitability of both.