Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 53

The correct answer is B, Pithoragarh. The Lipulekh Pass lies in the Pithoragarh district of the Kumaon division and has long been the traditional Indian route for the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, as well as an old trade crossing into Tibet. Option A is wrong because the Chamoli district carries the Mana and Niti passes, the Mana Pass lying beyond Badrinath. Option C is wrong because Uttarkashi is the district of Gangotri and the upper Bhagirathi and does not contain Lipulekh. Option D is wrong because Tehri Garhwal is a district of the lower Garhwal Himalaya, known for the Tehri dam on the Bhagirathi, and has no international pass. Candidates should note that all the major passes of Uttarakhand, Mana, Niti and Lipulekh, open towards Tibet, since the state shares no other international boundary of this kind.

The correct answer is D, Polar type. Koeppen grouped climates by temperature and rainfall and gave each group a capital letter, and E stands for the polar group, where the mean temperature of the warmest month stays below 10 degrees Celsius. In India this type is met only in the high Himalaya, in Ladakh and the upper reaches of Jammu and Kashmir, where snow lies for much of the year and the vegetation is tundra-like. Option A is wrong because tropical savannah is Aw in the scheme and covers most of the peninsular interior. Option B is wrong because the hot desert of western Rajasthan is marked BWhw. Option C is wrong because monsoon with a dry summer is As, the climate of the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu, which gets most of its rain from the retreating monsoon. Exam tip: Koeppen's first letters are A tropical, B dry, C warm temperate, D cold snow forest and E polar.

The correct answer is A, Madhya Pradesh. Census 2011 recorded the largest tribal population of any state in Madhya Pradesh, where the Gond, Bhil, Baiga, Sahariya, Korku and Bharia together account for roughly a fifth of the state's people. B, Mizoram, is wrong as an answer to this question although it is the trap: Mizoram has one of the highest proportions of tribal people, about 94 per cent of its population, but its total population is small, so its absolute tribal numbers are low. C, Rajasthan, and D, Jharkhand, both have large tribal populations, the Bhil and Mina in Rajasthan and the Santhal, Munda, Oraon and Ho in Jharkhand, but neither exceeds Madhya Pradesh. Always read whether the question asks for the number or the share.

The correct answer is D, 2.4%. India covers about 32.87 lakh square kilometres, which is roughly 2.4 per cent of the world's total land area.

That small share supports about 17 to 18 per cent of the world's people, and this gap between land and population is what the question is really testing. By area India is the seventh largest country in the world, after Russia, Canada, the United States, China, Brazil and Australia. Its mainland runs from about 8 degrees 4 minutes North to 37 degrees 6 minutes North, and from 68 degrees 7 minutes East to 97 degrees 25 minutes East, giving a north to south length of about 3,214 km and an east to west width of about 2,933 km.

A is wrong: 2.8 per cent is higher than India's actual share. B is wrong: 3.9 per cent overstates that share by more than half. C is wrong: 4.2 per cent is nearly double the correct figure.

Exam tip: India has 2.4 per cent of the world's land area and about 17 per cent of its population, and is the seventh largest country.

The correct answer is B, epicentre. The energy of an earthquake is released at a point inside the earth, and the point on the surface directly above it is the epicentre, where the tremor is felt first and usually most strongly; it is the point reported in news bulletins. A is wrong because the focus, also called the hypocentre, is that place of origin inside the earth, not on the surface, and the depth of the focus decides whether an earthquake is shallow, intermediate or deep. C is wrong because a fault line is the fracture in the crust along which the rocks move, and it may run for hundreds of kilometres, while the epicentre is a single point. D is wrong because a seismic belt is a broad zone such as the Circum-Pacific belt where earthquakes are concentrated, which is a regional idea and not a point.

The correct answer is B, Black. On Survey of India topographical sheets, railway lines, telegraph and telephone lines, settlement names and boundaries are printed in black, so black is the colour of such man-made linear features.

These sheets follow a fixed colour code, which lets a reader tell features apart at a glance: metalled roads and grid lines appear in red, contours in brown, rivers, canals and tanks in blue, open scrub, grass and cultivated land in yellow, and woodland in green.

Option A, yellow, stands for cultivated land and open fields, not railways. Option C, blue, is kept for water features. Option D, red, is used for roads, grid lines and some settlement symbols.

Exam tip: black for railways and telephone lines, blue for water, green for forest, brown for contours, yellow for cultivated land.

The correct answer is D, the presence of a municipality or a notified town area committee. A place that has a municipal corporation, a municipality, a cantonment board or a notified town area committee is a statutory town, and it is urban whatever its population; it is therefore not a census town at all. A census town is a place with no such body that satisfies three tests together, which are exactly the other three options: A, a population of at least five thousand; B, at least seventy-five per cent of the male main working population in non-agricultural work; and C, a density of at least four hundred persons per square kilometre. All three must be met at once, so a large but farming village remains rural. The distinction between a statutory town and a census town is the single most tested point in this chapter.

The correct answer is D, flow channel. In a flow channel the water runs from the canal head down to the fields purely under gravity, because the bed of the canal is laid at a slope and the source lies higher than the land it serves. Canals are therefore taken off a river or a reservoir at a point high enough for the water to move on its own, and flow irrigation is cheaper to run than any system that needs machinery. Option A is wrong because a lift channel carries water that has to be raised by pumps, the source lying below the land to be watered. Option B is wrong because the command area is the stretch of land a canal is able to irrigate, not a channel at all. Option C is wrong because warabandi is the roster that fixes each farmer's turn and time for drawing water, a method of sharing rather than a type of channel. Exam tip: flow irrigation works by gravity, lift irrigation needs pumps.

The correct answer is B, the Karakoram Pass. The Karakoram Pass crosses the Karakoram range north of the Nubra valley and was the crucial crossing on the centuries-old caravan route that carried pashmina wool, silk and tea between Leh and Yarkand in Xinjiang. Option A is wrong because Chang La is the pass crossed on the road from Leh to the Pangong lake and is not a route out of India. Option C is wrong because Zoji La connects the Kashmir valley with Dras, Kargil and Leh and is an internal rather than a trans-frontier pass. Option D is wrong because Baralacha La lies in Himachal Pradesh on the Manali to Leh highway, connecting Lahaul with Ladakh. The Aghil Pass, lying beyond the Karakoram Pass, was the next crossing on the same old route and is occasionally asked as an alternative answer.

The correct answer is A, B, D and E, that is landslide, tsunami and floods. An earthquake is the shaking of the ground when energy stored along a fault is suddenly released, and that shaking sets off further hazards. On a steep slope the tremor loosens soil and rock and brings down a landslide. Under the sea, a sudden movement of the ocean floor lifts a huge column of water and sends out a tsunami, as in the Indian Ocean in December 2004. Floods follow when the shaking cracks a dam or an embankment, or when a landslide dams a river and the water later bursts through. Option B is wrong because lightning and thundering are weather events born in tall cumulonimbus clouds and have nothing to do with movement inside the earth. Option C is wrong because it keeps only the landslide and leaves out the tsunami. Option D is wrong because it adds floods but still misses the tsunami. Exam tip: earthquake – landslide, tsunami and dam-burst floods; lightning and thunder belong to a thunderstorm.

The correct answer is C, Arunachal Pradesh. The Apatani live in the Ziro valley of the Lower Subansiri district and are famous for an intensive paddy-cum-fish cultivation system worked entirely by hand, without the plough or draught animals, which is why the Ziro valley has been proposed for World Heritage status. Arunachal Pradesh also has the Nyishi, Adi, Galo, Monpa, Mishmi and Wancho. A is wrong because Nagaland's tribes are the Angami, Ao, Konyak, Sumi, Lotha and Chakhesang. B is wrong because Mizoram's communities are the Lushai or Mizo, Mara, Pawi and Chakma. D is wrong because Tripura has the Tripuri, Reang, Jamatia, Chakma and Halam. Arunachal Pradesh has the largest number of notified tribes in the North East. The Apatani also maintain permanent villages and an elaborate network of bamboo irrigation channels, unlike most neighbouring tribes, who practise shifting cultivation on the hill slopes.

The correct answer is C, because the Suez Canal has no locks at all. It is a sea level canal: the Mediterranean and the Red Sea stand at almost the same height, so ships sail straight through without being raised or lowered. The canal, about 193 km long, was built under Ferdinand de Lesseps and opened in November 1869 across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt, separating Africa from Asia. Egypt nationalised it in 1956. Options A, B and D all state facts, so none of them is the answer: the canal did open in 1869, it does join the Mediterranean to the Red Sea through the Gulf of Suez, and it did shorten the voyage from Europe to India by thousands of kilometres, ending the long route round the Cape of Good Hope. Exam tip: Suez is a lock free canal; the Panama Canal is the one with locks, because Gatun Lake lies well above sea level.

The correct answer is C, the Richter scale. It expresses magnitude, the energy released at the focus, on a logarithmic scale, so a rise of one whole number means about thirty-two times more energy, and a single earthquake has only one magnitude whatever the distance of the observer. A is wrong because the Modified Mercalli scale measures intensity, the shaking and the damage actually felt at a place, so the same earthquake has a high Mercalli value near the epicentre and a low one far away. B is wrong because the Beaufort scale describes wind speed by its visible effects on the sea and on land. D is wrong because the Saffir-Simpson scale classifies hurricanes by their wind speed into categories one to five. Magnitude with Richter and intensity with Mercalli is the pair examiners want.

The correct answer is C, Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the world's largest producer of uranium and alone accounts for roughly two-fifths of global output.

Its uranium comes mainly from the Chu-Sarysu and Syr Darya basins and is won by in-situ leaching, a method that dissolves the metal underground instead of digging it out. Kazakhstan has held first place since 2009, when it moved ahead of Canada and Australia. Uranium is the fuel of nuclear power plants, and Australia holds the largest known reserves even though it mines less.

Option A, the USA, has large reserves but very small production today, since imported uranium is cheaper. Option B, India, mines only a little uranium, from Jaduguda in Jharkhand and Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh. Option D, Uzbekistan, is among the top producers but far behind Kazakhstan.

Exam tip: largest uranium producer Kazakhstan, largest reserves Australia, India's oldest mine Jaduguda.

The correct answer is C, which names a compact pattern. The Ganga-Yamuna Doab is a level alluvial plain with deep fertile soil, assured water from wells, canals and a high water table, and a long history of dense farming settlement, so its villages are compact or nucleated: the houses stand packed together in one block with narrow lanes, and the fields lie all around. A, scattered, is wrong because a scattered or dispersed pattern belongs to hilly and forested country such as Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and the hills of Kerala, where terrain and small patches of cultivable land keep farmsteads apart. B, random, is wrong because it describes no recognised pattern of Indian rural settlement. D, semi sprinkled, is wrong because a semi-clustered or fragmented pattern is typical of the Gujarat plain and parts of Rajasthan, where one compact core is joined by a few clusters set some distance away.

The correct answer is C, Pisciculture. The Blue Revolution means the rapid rise in fish production, so it belongs to pisciculture, the rearing of fish. In India it began with the Fish Farmers Development Agency set up in the early 1970s, and Dr Hiralal Chaudhuri, who worked out induced breeding in carp, is called its father. The effort continued through the Neel Kranti Mission and then the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, and India today is among the largest fish producers in the world, with inland fisheries giving most of the catch. Option A is wrong because floriculture, the growing of flowers, comes under the Golden Revolution in horticulture. Option B is wrong because sericulture is the rearing of silkworms for silk. Option D is wrong because horticulture, the growing of fruit and vegetables, is linked to the Golden Revolution. Exam tip: Blue for fish, White for milk, Yellow for oilseeds, Green for food grains.

The correct answer is B, Matheran. Matheran, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, is an eco-sensitive hill station where motor vehicles are not allowed within the town; visitors walk, ride horses or use hand-pulled carts, and the Matheran Hill Railway, a narrow gauge line from Neral, is the classic way to reach it. Option A is wrong because Lonavala, on the Mumbai to Pune route near the Bhor Ghat, is fully open to road traffic. Option C is wrong because Panchgani, near Mahabaleshwar in the Satara district, is an ordinary road-served hill town. Option D is wrong because Mahabaleshwar, the best known Sahyadri hill station and the source region of the Krishna river, is reached by road. The vehicle ban at Matheran is the single fact that makes it an examination favourite.

The correct answer is B, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. The Sixth Schedule, read with Article 244(2), provides for Autonomous District Councils and Regional Councils in these four states, with power to make laws on land, forests, village administration, inheritance and social custom. A is wrong because Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have Scheduled Areas under the Fifth Schedule instead, where the Governor's powers and the Tribes Advisory Council apply. C is wrong because Nagaland, Manipur, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh are governed by other special provisions, such as Article 371A for Nagaland; Manipur has hill area committees. D is wrong because the western and southern states named have Fifth Schedule areas. Memorise the four Sixth Schedule states as a block. One further point is worth noting: Sixth Schedule areas are listed in the Schedule itself, while Fifth Schedule areas are declared by an order of the President, so the two differ even in the way the area is notified.

The correct answer is B, secondary waves. S waves are transverse: the particles move at right angles to the direction of travel, and that requires a medium with shear strength, which liquids do not have. The shadow zone created by the failure of S waves to cross the outer core is the evidence that the outer core is in a liquid state. A is wrong because P waves are longitudinal, travel as a push and pull along the direction of motion, move fastest and pass through solids, liquids and gases, which is why they are the first to be recorded on a seismograph. C is wrong because surface or L waves travel along the surface of the earth, are the slowest and cause the greatest destruction to buildings, but they do not travel through the body of the earth at all. D is therefore wrong as well.

The correct answer is A, Class I. The Census of India groups towns into six classes by population: Class I of one hundred thousand and above, Class II of fifty thousand to ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class III of twenty thousand to forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class IV of ten thousand to nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class V of five thousand to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, and Class VI of less than five thousand. So B, C and D are all wrong for a town of a lakh, and each belongs to a smaller band as listed. A further step beyond Class I is worth remembering: a city of a million or more is called a metropolitan city, and one of five million or more a megacity.