IAS Prelims (GS) Preparation 2018
Day # 20 (April 12, 2017)
Topics of the day: Geography 8th NCERT chapter 5 and 6 key points
Chapter 5
- Industry refers to an economic activity that is concerned with production of goods, extraction of minerals or the provision of services.
- Major industrial regions of the world are eastern North America, western and central Europe, eastern Europe and eastern Asia.
- Industrial regions tend to be located in the temperate areas, near sea ports and especially near coal fields.
- India has several industrial regions like MumbaiPune cluster, Bangalore-Tamil Nadu region, Hugli region, Ahmedabad-Baroda region, Chottanagpur industrial belt, Vishakhapatnam-Guntur belt, Gurgaon-Delhi-Meerut region and the Kollam Thiruvanathapuram industrial cluster.
- One of the worst industrial disasters of all time occurred in Bhopal on 3 December 1984 around 00:30 a.m. It was a technological accident in which highly poisonous Methyl Isocynate (MIC) gas along with Hydrogen Cyanide and
other reaction products leaked out of the pesticide factory of Union Carbide.
- on 23 December 2005, due to gas well blowout in Gao Qiao, Chongging, China, 243 people died, 9,000 were injured and 64,000 were evacuated.
- The countries in which iron and steel industry is located are Germany, USA, China, Japan and Russia.
- Textile industry is concentrated in India, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The major hubs of Information technology industry are the Silicon valley of Central California and the Bangalore region of India.
- Steel is often called the backbone of modern industry.
- All the important steel producing centres such as Bhilai, Durgapur, Burnpur, Jamshedpur, Rourkela, Bokaro are situated in a region that spreads over four states — West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Bhadravati and Vijay
Nagar in Karnataka, Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Salem in Tamil Nadu are other important steel centres utilising local resources.
- TISCO was started in 1907 at Sakchi, near the confluence of the rivers Subarnarekha and Kharkai in Jharkhand. Later on Sakchi was renamed as Jamshedpur. Geographically, Jamshedpur is the most conveniently situated iron and steel centre in the country.
- Pittsburgh : It is an important steel city of the United States of America.
- The term ‘textile’ is derived from the Latin word texere which means to weave.
- The cotton textile industry is one of the oldest industries in the world. Till the industrial revolution in the 18th century, cotton cloth was made using hand spinning techniques (wheels) and looms. In 18th century power looms facilitated the development of cotton textile industry, first in Britain and later in other parts
of the world. Today India, China, Japan and the USA are important producers of cotton textiles.
- The Muslins of Dhaka, Chintzes of Masulipatnam, Calicos of Calicut and Goldwrought cotton of Burhanpur, Surat and Vadodara were known worldwide for their quality and design.
- The first textile mill in the country was established at Fort Gloster near Kolkata in 1818.
- The first successful mechanized textile mill was established in Mumbai in 1854.
- Ahmedabad was often referred to as the ‘Manchester of India.
- Osaka : It is an important textile centre of Japan, also known as the ‘Manchester of Japan’.
Chapter – 6
- The Ministry of Human Resources was created in 1985 with an aim to improve people’s skills.
- The way in which people are spread across the earth surface is known as the pattern of population distribution. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population lives in about 30 per cent of the land surface.
- Population density is the number of people living in a unit area of the earth’s surface. It is normally expressed as per square km. The average density of population in the whole world is 51 persons per square km.
- Births are usually measured using the birth rate i.e. the number of live births per 1,000 people. Deaths are usually measured using the death rate i.e. the number of deaths per 1,000 people. Migration is the movement of people in and
out of an area.
- Births and deaths are the natural causes of population change. The difference between the birth rate and the death rate of a country is called the natural growth rate.
- Emigrants are people who leave a country; Immigrants are those who arrive in a country.
- Population composition refers to the structure of the population.
- An interesting way of studying the population composition of a country is by looking at the population pyramid, also called an age-sex pyramid.