Assertion (A) : The percentage of the earth’s surface covered by India is 2.4%. Reason (R) : On the Mercator ’s map of the world, India is shown much smaller than Canada.

Assertion (A) is true as India's land area of approximately 3.28 million sq. km accounts for 2.4% of the world's total land surface area [1]. Reason (R) is also true; on a Mercator projection map, India appears significantly smaller than Canada. This occurs because the Mercator projection distorts the size of landmasses as latitude increases, causing high-latitude countries like Canada to appear much larger than they are in reality, while countries near the equator, like India, appear relatively smaller [2]. However, Reason (R) is not the correct explanation for Assertion (A). The 2.4% figure is a measurement of actual physical land area on the Earth's surface, whereas the visual representation on a Mercator map is a result of cartographic projection distortion and does not determine or explain the actual physical percentage of the Earth's surface India covers.

Sources

1. [1] INDIA PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT, Geography Class XI (NCERT 2025 ed.) > Chapter 1: India — Location > INDIA – LOCATION > p. 5
2. [2] CONTEMPORARY INDIA-I ,Geography, Class IX . NCERT(Revised ed 2025) > Chapter 1: India Size and Location > SIZE > p. 2