Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The best explanation is the absence of mountains north of Rajasthan to cause the monsoon to shed its moisture there.

The Aravallis run parallel to the path of the Arabian Sea branch of the monsoon rather than across it, so they do not force the air to rise. With no barrier lying athwart the wind, the moisture is carried past Rajasthan without being precipitated.

Answer: D

The Apatanis are a tribe of Arunachal Pradesh.

They live in the Ziro valley of Lower Subansiri district and are known for a wet-rice cultivation that rears fish in the same fields and uses no draught animals - a system so efficient that UNESCO has considered the valley for World Heritage listing.

Answer: A

Arthur Holmes propounded the convection current hypothesis.

He proposed in 1928-29 that heat from radioactive decay drives slow convection in the mantle, and that the moving currents could carry continents apart. This supplied the mechanism Wegener's continental drift had lacked, and prepared the way for plate tectonics.

Answer: C

Exfoliation is a form of physical weathering.

Repeated heating and cooling makes the outer layer of a rock expand and contract more than the interior, and successive shells peel away like the coats of an onion. It is common in deserts, where the daily temperature range is extreme, and no chemical change is involved.

Answer: C

It is a joint venture of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

The Beas-Sutlej link diverts Beas water into the Sutlej above Bhakra, and the Pong dam at Talwara stores it. The three states share the cost and the water, as they do the Bhakra-Nangal project.

Answer: C

The difference is 5 hours 30 minutes.

Indian Standard Time is fixed by the 82°30′E meridian, and the earth turns 15° an hour, so \[\frac{82.5}{15} = 5.5\ \text{hours}\] The odd half hour follows from the choice of that meridian, roughly through the middle of a country spanning nearly 30 degrees of longitude.

Answer: D

Baghdad lies in the Euphrates-Tigris basin.

The city stands on the Tigris, in the Mesopotamian plain between the two rivers - Mesopotamia means 'between the rivers'. The two actually join at Al-Qurnah in southern Iraq to form the Shatt al-Arab.

Answer: C

The southern zone produces gold and is also rich in iron.

Karnataka's Kolar and Hutti fields were long India's only source of gold, and the Bababudan and Bellary-Hospet ranges in the same state hold large iron ore deposits.

Answer: D

Venus is the morning star.

Being closer to the sun than the earth, it never appears far from it, and is visible only for a few hours before sunrise or after sunset. It is then the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon, which is why it is called both the morning and the evening star.

Answer: A

They were set up by the Indian Oil Corporation.

IOC is the country's largest refiner. Digboi, taken over from Assam Oil, is the oldest refinery in India, dating from 1901; Mathura and Panipat serve the northern market.