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Here is a question worth asking before memorising anything: why does India's heaviest industry cluster on the Chota Nagpur plateau, when the country's biggest cities and richest markets are hundreds of kilometres away on the coasts?
Because steel is made from iron ore and coal, and both sit there together. Odisha and Jharkhand hold India's richest iron ore belt; the Damodar valley next door holds its best coking coal. Ore is heavy and coal is heavier, so it is cheaper to move the finished steel to the market than to move the raw material to a coastal factory. Jamshedpur, Bokaro, Rourkela and Durgapur are all within reach of both, and that is not a coincidence — it is the whole explanation.
Read the mineral map this way and it stops being a list. Every mine, refinery and power plant in this card set is placed by three forces: where the mineral is, how heavy it is to move, and whether the industry needs the sea. Learn the logic and the locations follow; learn only the locations and they blur together in the exam hall.
1. Which iron ore is regarded as the best quality, containing roughly 70 per cent iron?
2. The Bailadila iron ore mines are located in which state?
3. Which variety of coal has the highest carbon content and is therefore the best quality?
4. Which is the oldest oil field of India, worked since the late nineteenth century?
5. Panchpatmali in the Koraput district of Odisha is a famous deposit of which mineral?
6. Which is the oldest nuclear power station in India?
7. Khetri in Rajasthan is known for the mining of which metal?
8. Which is the only shore-based integrated steel plant in India?