Economic Activities and Regional Development Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Statements 2 and 3 are incorrect, so the answer is Only 2 and 3.

The olive is not a soil-sensitive tree. It is famously hardy and grows on thin, stony and calcareous soils that suit little else, as long as the ground is not waterlogged, which is why olive groves cover Mediterranean hillsides; statement 2 is incorrect. Statement 3 is incorrect because no country, France included, holds anything like 90 percent of the world trade in fresh grapes; the leading exporters are spread across several countries, such as Chile and Italy.

Statements 1 and 4 are correct: Mediterranean lands supply most of the world's citrus exports, and cork oak is a typical evergreen tree of Mediterranean forests.

Answer: C

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct, so the answer is Only 1, 2 and 3.

The Grand Banks off Newfoundland are shallow, gently sloping parts of the continental shelf where the cold Labrador Current meets the warm Gulf Stream, so sunlight reaches the bottom and plankton thrives (1). Both surface-dwelling (pelagic) fish such as herring and mackerel and bottom-dwelling (demersal) fish such as cod and haddock are caught there (2), and cod has historically been the chief catch (3).

Statement 4 is wrong. St. John's is in Newfoundland, but Halifax and Yarmouth are ports of Nova Scotia, so the option with all four fails.

Answer: D

All five practise it: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Mediterranean agriculture, with winter cereals and specialised tree crops such as grapes, olives and citrus fruits, is found wherever the Mediterranean climate of mild wet winters and hot dry summers occurs, roughly between 30° and 40° latitude on the western sides of continents.

That includes the lands around the Mediterranean Sea (Turkey among them), central California, central Chile, south-western and southern Australia, and the south-western Cape region of South Africa. Each of the five regions in the list has this climate, so no shorter list is complete.

Answer: B

The crop is paddy.

Rice was a minor crop in Punjab before the Green Revolution, under 5% of the cropped area in 1960-61. With high-yielding varieties, assured procurement at minimum support price and subsidised tubewell irrigation, its share climbed steadily to about two-fifths of the cropped area, making the rice-wheat cycle dominant.

Wheat already had a large share in 1960-61, far above 4.8%. Pulses and sugarcane have shrunk or stayed small in Punjab, the opposite of this rising trend.

Answer: C

The correct statements are 1 and 3.

1. In Punjab the services sector employs the largest share of workers, while across India agriculture and allied activities remain the largest employer.
3. In Punjab agriculture's share of gross state value added and its share of employment are of a similar order, roughly a quarter to a third each, whereas nationally agriculture employs over two-fifths of workers but produces less than a fifth of gross value added. Punjab's sector is therefore far more balanced.

Statement 2 overstates agriculture: it contributes roughly a quarter to a third of Punjab's GSVA, not around 60%.

Answer: B

It is called truck farming.

Truck farming is the intensive, commercial growing of vegetables (olericulture) and fruit and flowers (horticulture) for distant urban markets. It grew up along the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains of the south-eastern United States, where a long frost-free season lets growers ship early crops north to cities such as New York by rail and road; the name comes from the old word 'truck', meaning goods for barter, and the trucks that later carried the produce.

The other names belong to shifting cultivation, not specialised market gardening: Conuco is the term used in Venezuela and Tavy in Madagascar. Chiltenene is not the term for this type of farming. Only truck farming describes specialised horticulture in the south-eastern USA.

Answer: D

The pair not correctly matched is Berbecho - Thailand.

Shifting (slash-and-burn) cultivation has a local name in each region where it is practised. The usual name in Thailand is Tamrai, so pairing Thailand with Berbecho is wrong.

The other three pairs are standard. Milpa is the shifting cultivation of maize in Mexico and Central America. Caingin (kaingin) is the name used in the Philippines. Podu is practised by tribal communities in the hills of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha in India. Other names that appear in such lists are Ladang in Malaysia and Indonesia, Taungya in Myanmar, Chena in Sri Lanka and Jhum in north-east India.

Answer: B

This is called economies of the scale.

When a firm expands its scale and output rises proportionately more than the quantity of inputs, the cost elements of land, labour, capital and organisation, its average cost per unit falls. These savings, from specialisation, bulk buying, better machinery and spreading overheads, are economies of scale.

Constant returns to scale means output rises in exactly the same proportion as inputs, so unit cost does not change. Diseconomies of scale are the opposite case, where growth raises average cost through problems of management and coordination. The average cost curve is only the graph on which these effects are shown, not the name of the condition.

Answer: D

The dimension that is not part of the HDI is Equality.

The UNDP's Human Development Index combines three dimensions: a long and healthy life, measured by life expectancy at birth (longevity); knowledge, measured by mean and expected years of schooling; and a decent standard of living, measured by gross national income per head. The index is the geometric mean of the three normalised indices.

Longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living are therefore all dimensions of the HDI. Equality is not one of them: the UNDP accounts for inequality in separate measures, the inequality-adjusted HDI and the Gender Inequality Index, which is why the other options are wrong answers to a question asking what is not a dimension.

Answer: A

Imperative planning is economic growth directed by the public sector.

Imperative (directive) planning is the centralised planning of the former socialist economies such as the Soviet Union, where a state planning authority fixes targets for output, investment and prices and the state-owned enterprises are bound to carry them out. Since the economy is run through the public sector under government command, growth is achieved by the state rather than by market choice.

It is contrasted with indicative planning, as practised in France and in India's later plans, where the state sets broad goals and uses incentives to guide a largely private sector. Growth led by the private sector, by joint ventures or by external agencies is therefore not what imperative planning means.