Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Correct answer: a large seasonal salt marsh

The Rann of Kutch in Gujarat is a vast seasonal salt marsh. It floods with seawater and monsoon runoff between June and October and dries into a hard white salt flat for the rest of the year - one of the largest such expanses in the world. It was a shallow arm of the Arabian Sea in historical times, silted up and cut off, which is why the salt is marine in origin. It is divided into the Great Rann to the north and the Little Rann to the southeast. The Little Rann holds the Wild Ass Sanctuary, the last refuge of the Indian wild ass, and the Great Rann is the only regular breeding ground in India of the greater flamingo. Its seasonal islands, called bets, rise above the flood and carry grass and scrub. The Rann forms part of the international boundary with Pakistan, and Guhar Moti within it is the westernmost point of India.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Shiwaliks, Lesser Himalaya, Greater Himalaya

The Himalaya run in three roughly parallel ranges, and from south to north they are the Shiwaliks, the Lesser Himalaya and the Greater Himalaya. The Shiwaliks, or Outer Himalaya, are the lowest at 900 to 1,100 metres, made of unconsolidated sediment eroded from the ranges behind and therefore prone to landslides. Between them and the range above lie the flat-floored valleys called duns, of which Dehradun is the best known. The Lesser or Middle Himalaya rise to 3,700 to 4,500 metres and contain the hill stations - Shimla, Mussoorie, Nainital, Darjeeling - along with the Pir Panjal, Dhauladhar and Mahabharat ranges and the Kashmir and Kangra valleys. The Greater Himalaya, or Himadri, is the highest and most continuous, averaging 6,000 metres and carrying Everest, Kangchenjunga and Nanda Devi, with perpetual snow and the sources of the great rivers. Beyond them lies the Trans-Himalaya, including the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges.

Answer: B

II and IV - afforestation and limiting shifting cultivation.

Tree roots bind the soil and the canopy breaks the force of rain, while shifting cultivation strips cover and leaves slopes bare. Crop rotation should be encouraged, not avoided, and chemical fertilisers do nothing for soil structure - overuse degrades it.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Karnataka

Karnataka produces about seventy per cent of India’s coffee, chiefly in the districts of Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru and Hassan on the Western Ghats. Kerala is second and Tamil Nadu third; the three together account for almost the entire crop. Coffee needs a warm, humid climate, well-distributed rainfall of 150 to 250 cm, shade, and well-drained slopes at moderate altitude - conditions the Western Ghats supply exactly. India grows both arabica, which is grown higher, is more delicate and fetches more, and robusta, which is hardier, higher in caffeine and now the larger part of the crop. Indian coffee is distinctive for being shade-grown under a canopy of native trees, which supports considerable biodiversity within the plantations. Monsooned Malabar, exposed to the monsoon winds after harvest, is a recognised speciality. Most of the crop is exported. Coffee was introduced to Chikkamagaluru in the seventeenth century, and Assam is a tea state rather than a coffee one.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh

The Green Revolution succeeded most strikingly in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, which became the country’s grain surplus region and turned India from an importer of food into a self-sufficient producer. It rested on a package rather than a single change: high-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat and rice, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, assured irrigation, mechanisation and price support through procurement. The dwarf wheat came from Norman Borlaug’s work in Mexico, and M. S. Swaminathan led its adaptation in India from the mid-1960s. The regional concentration was itself a consequence of the package. Assured canal and tubewell irrigation was essential, and only those states had it at the necessary scale, which is why the benefits were uneven and regional disparities widened. Its costs are now well documented: falling water tables, soil degradation, loss of crop diversity, and the wheat-rice cycle displacing pulses and millets. The White Revolution in milk and the Blue Revolution in fisheries followed the same model.

Answer: B

There are three distinct Himalayan drainage systems.

They are the Indus, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra. All three rise in or near Tibet, and together they drain the whole northern plain, carrying the silt that makes it the most fertile region in the country.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The Sutlej and Beas

The Indira Gandhi Canal takes water from the Sutlej and Beas at the Harike barrage in Punjab and carries it southwest into the Thar Desert of Rajasthan. It is among the longest canals in the world, at over 600 km including its feeder. Formerly the Rajasthan Canal, it was renamed in 1984. It has brought irrigation to Ganganagar, Bikaner and Jaisalmer, turning tracts of desert into cultivated land growing wheat, mustard and cotton, and supplies drinking water to a large area. Its consequences have not all been intended. Waterlogging and rising salinity have followed in parts of the command area, and the canal has altered the local ecology and encouraged settlement in a fragile environment - a standard case study in the costs of large irrigation projects. The waters it uses are India’s share of the eastern rivers under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.

Answer: D

Nearly 70 per cent of India's population depends on agriculture.

The proportion of workers directly employed in it has since fallen towards half, but agriculture still supports a far larger share of the population than its share of national income - which is the central problem of rural incomes.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan

The Bhakra Nangal project on the Sutlej serves Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, and it was the irrigation backbone of the Green Revolution in those states. The Bhakra Dam in Himachal Pradesh, at 226 metres, is among the highest gravity dams in the world and impounds the Gobind Sagar reservoir; the Nangal Dam a short distance downstream in Punjab regulates the release into the canal system. Nehru called such projects the temples of modern India, and Bhakra was the largest undertaken in the years after independence. The waters it uses are India’s share of the eastern rivers under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which allotted the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to India and the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab to Pakistan. The other major multipurpose projects are worth knowing alongside it: Damodar Valley in Jharkhand and West Bengal, Hirakud on the Mahanadi, Nagarjuna Sagar on the Krishna, and Sardar Sarovar on the Narmada.

Answer: A

Correct answer: The monsoon winds run parallel to the Aravalli range instead of being lifted over it

The Thar is arid chiefly because the Arabian Sea branch of the southwest monsoon runs parallel to the Aravalli range rather than across it. Nothing forces the moist air to rise, so it is not cooled to its dew point and little rain is released. Two further factors reinforce this. The Bay of Bengal branch has lost most of its moisture by the time it reaches the northwest. And the winter western disturbances that bring rain to Punjab arrive already dry by the time they cross Rajasthan. This makes the Thar unusual among deserts: it is not a rain-shadow desert like the Gobi, nor a subtropical-high desert like the Sahara in the ordinary way, but one produced by the geometry of a mountain range relative to a wind. It is also the most densely populated desert in the world, supporting pastoralism and, since the Indira Gandhi Canal, irrigated agriculture - along with India’s best conditions for solar and wind generation.