Given below are two statements, one is labeled as Assertion (A) and other as Reason (R): Assertion (A.) : Ahmedabad is the largest centre of cotton textile Industry in India. Reason (R) : Ahmedabad is located in Major cotton growing region of India, so it has no problem of raw materials. Select the correct answer from the codes given below.

Ahmedabad is called the Manchester of India and is the answer the paper expects here. Both statements are true, and the reason explains the assertion. Gujarat and the adjoining Malwa-Deccan belt grow a large share of India's cotton, so mills in Ahmedabad get raw material at short distance, lower freight and steady supply. Sabarmati water, a skilled labour pool and merchant capital from the Patidar and Jain trading communities reinforced that advantage.

• Option A: Correct. Assertion and reason are both true, and the reason gives the locational logic behind the assertion.
• Option B: Wrong, because the reason is the explanation the question is testing for, not an unrelated fact.
• Option C: Wrong, since the reason is a valid locational argument.
• Option D: Wrong, since the assertion is accepted as true in the standard geography texts.

Note that Mumbai was the older and historically larger cotton textile centre, and the dominance of any single city has shifted over time. Keep that in mind in case a fact-based question is framed differently. The core concept here is industrial location theory: raw material orientation combined with agglomeration. It links directly to Mains questions on industrial location and the cotton textile policy of Gujarat.

Trap: Candidates reject the reason because Ahmedabad is an urban centre, not a cotton-growing area. The correct reading is that it lies in the cotton-growing region of Gujarat, which is the source of its raw material advantage.