Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Correct answer: Agra

Agra stands on the Yamuna, and the Taj Mahal was built along its bank - the river forming part of the design, since the garden opposite was laid out to view the tomb across the water. The other cities are on other rivers, and the pairing of city to river is a standard examination point. Kanpur is on the Ganga, Nashik on the Godavari, and Cuttack on the Mahanadi. The Yamuna rises at the Yamunotri glacier in Uttarakhand and flows past Delhi, Mathura and Agra before joining the Ganga at Prayagraj - the confluence at the Triveni Sangam, where the mythical Saraswati is held to meet them. It is the longest tributary of the Ganga. Other pairings worth holding: Delhi on the Yamuna, Varanasi and Patna on the Ganga, Ahmedabad on the Sabarmati, Surat on the Tapi, Vijayawada on the Krishna, Lucknow on the Gomti and Srinagar on the Jhelum.

Answer: A

The Radcliffe Line is the boundary between India and Pakistan.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew it in five weeks in 1947, dividing Punjab and Bengal, and it was published on 17 August, two days after independence. He had never visited India before. The India-China boundary is the McMahon Line.

Answer: A

Correct answer: the Sundarbans and the coastal deltas

Mangroves grow in the intertidal zone where fresh and salt water mix, so they are confined to sheltered coasts, deltas and estuaries. In India the largest by far is the Sundarbans in the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta, with further stands in the Mahanadi, Godavari and Krishna deltas, the Gulf of Kutch, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and parts of Kerala. They are the only trees that tolerate regular immersion in salt water, managing it by excluding salt at the roots, excreting it through the leaves, or both. Their stilt roots anchor them in soft mud and their vertical pneumatophores take in the oxygen the waterlogged sediment cannot supply. Their practical value is out of proportion to their area: they are nurseries for fish and prawns, they absorb cyclone storm surge and check coastal erosion, and they store carbon exceptionally efficiently. Their protective role was widely noted after the 2004 tsunami, when settlements behind intact mangrove belts suffered far less.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh is the largest producer of sugarcane, with Maharashtra second and Karnataka third. India is the world’s largest producer of the crop, ahead of Brazil in tonnage though not in sugar recovered. The two leading states differ in ways worth knowing. Uttar Pradesh has the larger area and output, growing the crop in the fertile Gangetic plain under a subtropical climate. Maharashtra has a higher sugar recovery rate and a longer crushing season, since its tropical conditions suit the plant better; its industry is organised largely through cooperatives, which have become a significant political force in the state. Sugarcane needs a long growing season, high temperature, and 75 to 150 cm of rainfall or irrigation, and it exhausts the soil, so it demands heavy fertiliser. It is a water-intensive crop, which is why its expansion in drought-prone parts of Maharashtra is contested.

Answer: C

Madhya Pradesh has the largest forest area.

It has about 77,000 sq km under forest, the most of any state in absolute terms, though as a proportion of its own area several north-eastern states are far more heavily forested. Haryana has the least forest cover in the country.

Answer: B

Correct answer: A mineral-rich plateau covering much of Jharkhand and neighbouring states

The Chota Nagpur plateau covers most of Jharkhand and extends into Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. It is often called the ruhr of India, after the German industrial region, because of the exceptional concentration of minerals beneath it. It holds a large share of the country’s coal, in the Damodar valley fields of Jharia, Bokaro and Raniganj, along with iron ore, mica, bauxite, copper and limestone. That combination is why the steel plants at Jamshedpur, Bokaro and Rourkela were built there. It is made of ancient Gondwana rock, and its plateau surface is broken by the Damodar and Subarnarekha valleys and by scarps such as the Ranchi and Hazaribagh plateaus. It is also home to a large tribal population - Santhal, Munda, Oraon and Ho - and much of it falls under the Fifth Schedule, which gives the Governor special responsibility for the administration of scheduled areas.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Middle Andaman

Middle Andaman is the largest island of India by area, part of the Andaman group in the Bay of Bengal. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands form a chain of over five hundred islands, of which only a few dozen are inhabited. They are the exposed peaks of a submarine mountain range continuing the Arakan Yoma of Myanmar, and they lie closer to Indonesia and Thailand than to the Indian mainland. Great Nicobar is the southernmost and carries Indira Point, the southernmost point of India. Majuli in the Brahmaputra is the largest river island in India and among the largest in the world, though it has shrunk greatly through erosion; it became the first island to be constituted a district in 2016. India’s other island group is Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea, made of coral atolls and reefs rather than of rock, and the smallest union territory by area.

Answer: C

Correct answer: The Thar, in Rajasthan

The Thar, or Great Indian Desert, lies chiefly in western Rajasthan and extends into Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab and across the border into Pakistan. It covers about 200,000 square kilometres. The other three deserts named are on other continents entirely: the Gobi in Mongolia and China, the Kalahari in southern Africa, and the Atacama in Chile. The Thar is unusual for being the most densely populated desert in the world, supporting pastoralism and, since the Indira Gandhi Canal brought Sutlej water south, irrigated agriculture. India does have a cold desert as well, in Ladakh and the Spiti valley of Himachal Pradesh, arid because it lies in the rain shadow of the Himalaya. A desert is defined by low precipitation rather than by heat, which is what admits it. The Thar holds the Desert National Park, refuge of the great Indian bustard, and India’s best conditions for solar and wind generation.

Answer: C

Correct answer: The one-horned rhinoceros

Kaziranga, in Assam on the Brahmaputra floodplain, holds about two thirds of the world’s population of the one-horned rhinoceros. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and also a tiger reserve, with one of the highest tiger densities anywhere. Its tall elephant grass and seasonal flooding suit the rhinoceros exactly, and the annual Brahmaputra floods renew the grassland while forcing the animals to higher ground - a natural cycle that also exposes them to poaching and to road traffic. The other three species have their own strongholds, and the set is a standard examination pairing. The Asiatic lion survives only in the Gir Forest of Gujarat. The snow leopard lives in the high Himalaya of Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, with Hemis National Park its best-known refuge. The Nilgiri tahr, a mountain goat, is confined to the Western Ghats, chiefly in Eravikulam National Park in Kerala.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Chilika Lake

Chilika Lake in Odisha was among the first Ramsar sites designated in India, in 1981, along with Keoladeo in Rajasthan. The Ramsar Convention, signed at Ramsar in Iran in 1971, is an international treaty for the conservation and wise use of wetlands. India has designated a large and growing number of sites under it. Chilika is the largest brackish-water lagoon in India and the second largest coastal lagoon in the world. It supports over a million migratory birds in winter, arriving from as far as Siberia and the Caspian, and a resident population of Irrawaddy dolphins. It was placed on the Montreux Record of threatened sites in 1993 because of siltation and shrinkage, and removed in 2002 after restoration - the first Asian site to be taken off. The other three are protected areas under different designations: Kaziranga and Sundarbans are national parks and World Heritage sites, and Gir is a wildlife sanctuary.