Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The Deccan plateau is the ideal cotton region.

Cotton needs deep black regur soil that holds moisture, 50 to 100 cm of rain, a long frost-free season and bright sunshine at picking time. The lava-derived black soils of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh supply exactly that.

Answer: D

Correct answer: 1986

The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve was established in 1986, the first in India, and covers parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. It includes Bandipur, Nagarhole, Mudumalai and Wayanad, along with Silent Valley and Mukurthi National Parks. A biosphere reserve under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme is zoned rather than uniformly protected: a strictly guarded core, a buffer permitting research and limited use, and a transition area where communities live and work. The design is intended to reconcile conservation with human use rather than exclude one for the other. The reserve holds the largest population of Asian elephants in India, along with tigers, gaur and the endemic Nilgiri tahr and lion-tailed macaque. India now has a substantial number of biosphere reserves, of which several are also recognised internationally by UNESCO. The distinction from a national park or wildlife sanctuary is that those are legal categories under Indian wildlife law, whereas a biosphere reserve is a management designation that may contain them.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Rajasthan

The Aravalli range runs about 670 km northeast across Rajasthan, from Gujarat towards the Delhi ridge, and is among the oldest fold mountain systems on Earth - Proterozoic, well over a billion years old. Aeons of erosion have worn it down to low, rounded hills. Its highest point, Guru Shikhar on Mount Abu, reaches only 1,722 metres, a fraction of its original height. It plays an important climatic role, forming a barrier that has checked the eastward advance of the Thar Desert towards the fertile Gangetic plain - which is why its degradation through quarrying and deforestation is a live policy concern. It is rich in minerals: the marble of Makrana used for the Taj Mahal, and the zinc and lead of Zawar, among the oldest worked mines in the world. The Banas, Luni and Sabarmati all rise in it, and it divides Rajasthan into the arid west and the more fertile southeast.

Answer: C

Correct answer: The Western and Eastern Ghats

The Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu are the junction of the Western and Eastern Ghats, standing where the two ranges converge at the southern end of the Deccan plateau. Their highest peak, Doddabetta, reaches 2,637 metres. The name means blue mountains, from the kurinji flower that blooms across the slopes once in twelve years. They matter geographically because south of them lies the Palghat Gap, a break of about 30 km in the otherwise continuous Western Ghats. It is the principal route between Kerala and Tamil Nadu for road and rail, and it lets monsoon air through, giving the country beyond it more rain than the rain shadow would otherwise allow. The Nilgiris are a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the first declared in India, and support tea and coffee plantations along with the shola forest and grassland mosaic found nowhere else.

Answer: C

The Himalayas cover about 5 lakh sq km.

The system stretches some 2,400 km from the Indus gorge in the west to the Brahmaputra gorge in the east, with a width ranging from 400 km in Kashmir to 150 km in Arunachal, and spans five countries.

Answer: C

The subcontinent belongs to the monsoon natural region.

Its defining feature is the seasonal reversal of wind: moist south-westerlies from June to September bringing almost all the rain, and dry north-easterlies for the rest of the year. The pattern arises from the differential heating of the Asian landmass and the Indian Ocean.

Answer: C

They are in the Greater Himalayas, the Himadri.

This is the northernmost and highest of the three parallel ranges, averaging about 6,000 m, and holds almost all the peaks above 8,000 m. Its core is granite and it is permanently snow-covered, which is why the great glaciers - Gangotri, Siachen - rise there.

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: A

Correct answer: The first week of June

The southwest monsoon normally arrives over Kerala around 1 June, with a margin of a few days either way, and the India Meteorological Department’s declaration of its onset is a closely watched annual announcement. From Kerala it advances in two branches. The Arabian Sea branch moves up the west coast, striking the Western Ghats and delivering very heavy rain on their windward slopes. The Bay of Bengal branch moves up the eastern side, is deflected westward by the Himalaya, and travels up the Ganga plain. The two meet over the northwest, and the whole country is covered by about mid-July. Withdrawal begins from Rajasthan in early September and is complete by October. The monsoon supplies roughly three quarters of India’s annual rainfall, which is why its timing and strength bear directly on agriculture, reservoirs and the wider economy. The northeast monsoon follows in October to December and is what waters Tamil Nadu.

Answer: C

Oceanic crust averages about 5 km thick.

It is basaltic and dense, formed at mid-ocean ridges and consumed at trenches, so none of it survives longer than about 200 million years. Continental crust averages some 30 km and is much older.