Why did India’s first big steel plant come up at Jamshedpur, cotton mills at Mumbai and Ahmedabad, jute mills along the Hugli, and software parks in Bengaluru? This chapter is about the logic of location — and UPSC names it directly in the GS I syllabus.

What UPSC asks

Prelims: location factors of specific industries, steel plants and their foreign collaborators, industrial regions, and theory terms (material index, footloose industry, agglomeration).
Mains (GS I): factors responsible for the location of primary, secondary and tertiary activities in India and the world; shifts in location (sugar moving south, textiles dispersing); new clusters such as electronics and semiconductors; industrial corridors.

Key sub-topics

Sub-topic	Core idea
Location theory	Weber’s least-cost theory; market and profit approaches
Factors	Raw material, power, labour, market, transport, capital, policy, agglomeration
Primary activities	Located at the resource — mines, farms, fisheries, forests
Agro-based industries	Cotton, jute, sugar
Mineral-based industries	Iron and steel, aluminium, cement
Tertiary and knowledge industries	IT, finance, logistics — footloose but cluster in cities
Industrial regions	NCERT’s eight major regions; industrial corridors

Start with Factors of Industrial Location, then use the quick revision sheet and the practice questions.