Economic Activities and Regional Development Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The plan was the Fifth Five Year Plan.

The Fifth Plan (1974-79) took as its twin objectives removal of poverty (garibi hatao) and attainment of self-reliance, with programmes such as the Minimum Needs Programme. It was cut short in 1978 by the Janata government's rolling plan.

The Second Plan (1956-61) emphasised rapid industrialisation (the Mahalanobis model), the Third (1961-66) aimed at a self-reliant, self-generating economy and food self-sufficiency, and the Fourth (1969-74) set growth with stability and progressive self-reliance. Only the Fifth paired poverty removal with self-reliance as its central aims.

Answer: A

The principle is vertical unity.

The principle of vertical unity holds that all the phenomena operating in a region, physical (relief, climate, soils) and human (population, economy, culture), are integrated with one another into a single whole. A change in one, such as irrigation, works through to the others, so planning must treat them together.

Horizontal spatial unity is the link between regions side by side (the previous question). The space-time continuum concerns change over time, and ecological equilibrium is a balance between people and environment rather than the integration of all phenomena.

Answer: C

The cost of the movement itself, made up mainly of fuel and wages, is the line-haul cost.

Transport costs have two parts. Terminal costs (loading, unloading, documentation, terminal facilities) are fixed and paid whatever the distance. Line-haul costs are incurred in actually moving the goods, chiefly fuel and the crew's wages, so they rise with distance travelled.

Overhead costs are the fixed costs of running the business. Transfer cost is the total cost of moving goods, terminal and line-haul together. Comparative cost belongs to trade theory, not to transport costing.

Answer: B

Weber's third factor is agglomeration.

In his theory of industrial location (1909), Alfred Weber held that an industry seeks the least-cost location, determined by three factors: transport costs, the main one, then labour costs, which may pull an industry away from the least-transport-cost point, and agglomeration economies, the savings firms gain by locating together and sharing services, labour and infrastructure.

'Least cost' is the goal of the whole theory, not one of the three factors. The location of competitors is central to Hotelling's theory of locational interdependence, and maximum revenue location to the market-area approach of August Losch, not to Weber's least-cost theory.

Answer: A

The incorrect statement is that nomadic herding is a form of intensive subsistence agriculture.

Nomadic herding is the classic extensive form of land use: herders move their animals over very large areas of natural pasture, with low inputs and a low yield per unit of land. Calling it intensive is the error.

The other statements are correct. It is practised across the great belt of arid and semi-arid lands from North Africa through Arabia to Central Asia; it is an ancient, aboriginal form of livestock raising; and herders choose the kind and number of animals (camels, goats, sheep, yaks, reindeer) to suit local, cultural and physical conditions.

Answer: A

The Union and Pacific Railway connects New York to San Francisco.

The Union Pacific line, joined with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, completed the first transcontinental railway of the United States. Geography textbooks describe this route as linking New York on the Atlantic coast with San Francisco on the Pacific.

Halifax to Vancouver is the Canadian Pacific route across Canada, Paris to Istanbul is the route of the Orient Express, and Perth to Darwin is not a transcontinental railway route; Australia's east-west crossing runs from Perth to Sydney.

Answer: C

The answer is (A) is true but (R) is false.

Assertion (A) is the textbook definition: the balance of trade records the volume of goods and services a country imports and exports with other countries over a period.

Reason (R) has the sign reversed. If the value of exports is more than the value of imports, the country has a positive (favourable) balance of trade, a surplus. A negative balance, a deficit, is when imports exceed exports. So (R) is false, and the options calling it true are wrong.

Answer: C

The incorrect statement is that ring III has livestock farming.

In Von Thunen's model of agricultural land use around an isolated market town, the rings in his full six-ring scheme are: (I) market gardening and milk, which are perishable; (II) forestry, for firewood and lumber, which are bulky; (III) intensive crop rotation; (IV) crop and pasture rotation with fallow; (V) the three-field system; and (VI) livestock ranching, the outermost ring.

Livestock farming therefore belongs to the outermost ring, not ring III. The statements about rings I, II and IV match the model, so they are not the answer.

Answer: A

Of the four, Sri Lanka ranked highest on the Human Development Index in 2016.

In UNDP's Human Development Report 2016, Sri Lanka ranked 73rd, in the high human development group, thanks to long life expectancy and high literacy. India was 131st, Bhutan 132nd and Bangladesh 139th, all in the medium group.

India is the trap, as the largest economy of the four, but HDI combines life expectancy, education and per capita income, and on the first two Sri Lanka is well ahead of its South Asian neighbours.

Answer: B

Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

Copper ores contain only a small percentage of metal, so smelting loses most of the weight of the raw material. Under Weber's theory such weight-losing industries are pulled towards the raw material to save transport costs, which is why copper smelters stand near the mines, as at Khetri and Ghatsila.

The reason is a broad generalisation that is partly true, since many industries do locate near raw materials, but many others are market-oriented or footloose. The specific explanation for copper smelting is the large weight loss in processing, not a general rule, so R does not explain A.