Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 54

The correct answer is A, Nashik and Pune. The Thal Ghat, also called the Kasara Ghat, is the climb by which the road and railway from Mumbai reach Nashik and continue towards central India, while the Bhor Ghat is the climb by which the Mumbai to Pune road and railway cross the Sahyadri, passing Khandala and Lonavala. Option B is wrong because it simply reverses the correct pairing, which is the commonest error in this question. Option C is wrong because Surat lies north of Mumbai on the coastal plain and needs no ghat crossing at all. Option D is wrong because Kolhapur lies far to the south in the Krishna basin and is not reached through either of these two ghats. Both ghats are in Maharashtra and are distinct from the Palakkad and Shencottah gaps of the far south.

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 B, Article 338A. It was inserted by the 89th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2003, which split the earlier joint National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; the separate tribal commission began functioning in 2004. A is wrong because Article 338 now deals only with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes after that amendment. C is wrong because Article 339 empowers the Union to appoint a commission to report on the administration of Scheduled Areas and the welfare of Scheduled Tribes, and gives the Union power to give directions to a state on tribal welfare schemes. D is wrong because Article 340 provides for a commission on the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes, under which the Kalelkar and Mandal Commissions were appointed.

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 B, four zones numbered II to V. The earlier Zone I was merged with Zone II, so the map now runs from Zone II, of low hazard, to Zone V, of the highest hazard, which covers Kutch, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, most of the North-East, parts of northern Bihar and parts of the western Himalaya. A is wrong because three zones never formed the Indian classification. C is a deliberate distractor built on the old numbering: five zones from I to V belong to the superseded map, and marking it is the commonest error in this question. D is wrong because no Indian zoning map has six classes. Remember that the number of zones is four while the highest number used is five, which is exactly the confusion examiners exploit.

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, dry point settlements. Where water is abundant and flooding is a danger, people avoid the low wet land and build on the levee, the terrace or any patch of higher dry ground, and such a site is called a dry point. A, wet point settlements, is the exact opposite and is wrong here: in a dry region people cluster around the single dependable source of water, a well, a tank or a spring, and that site is the wet point. C, linear settlements, is wrong because that term describes the shape of a settlement strung along a road, a canal or a river bank, not the reason for its site. D, planned settlements, is wrong because those are laid out by government for canal colonists, refugees or industrial workers, and their site is chosen administratively rather than by the water table.

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 C, 15 November. Birsa Munda, the Munda leader who led the Ulgulan or Great Tumult against colonial land policy in the Chota Nagpur region at the close of the nineteenth century, was born on 15 November 1875, and since 2021 that date has been observed as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas in honour of tribal freedom fighters. The date is also the day Jharkhand was created, in 2000. A is wrong because 15 August is Independence Day. B is wrong because 26 January is Republic Day. D is wrong because 2 October is the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, observed as Gandhi Jayanti and as the International Day of Non-Violence. Pair Birsa Munda with the Ulgulan, the Munda tribe and Jharkhand. The Ulgulan demanded the restoration of tribal land rights against the zamindari and contractor system imposed on the region, and Birsa Munda died in Ranchi jail in 1900.

The correct answer is A, Tube well. Tube wells irrigate the largest share of the net irrigated area of Rajasthan, and groundwater drawn through tube wells and wells together waters the greater part of the state's fields. The reason is the climate: rainfall is low and uncertain over most of the state and perennial rivers are few, so a farmer who wants a second crop has to pump water. This heavy drawing of groundwater has pushed many blocks of Rajasthan into the over-exploited category, which is why drip and sprinkler irrigation are pressed in the state. B is wrong because ponds and tanks serve only small pockets, mostly in the south and south-east. C is wrong because open wells, once the mainstay, now water a much smaller area than tube wells. D is wrong because canals, led by the Indira Gandhi Canal, come second and are limited to the north-west and the Chambal command. Exam tip: in Rajasthan groundwater leads, tube wells first and canals second.

The correct answer is B, 2005. The Disaster Management Act, 2005 set up the National Disaster Management Authority, the State Disaster Management Authorities and the District Disaster Management Authorities, and provided for the National Disaster Response Force and the National Institute of Disaster Management. A is wrong because 2001 is the year of the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat, which, with the super cyclone of 1999 and the tsunami of 2004, created the pressure for such a law, but no Act was passed that year. C is wrong because 2009 is the year of the National Policy on Disaster Management, a policy document issued under the Act and not the Act itself. D is wrong because 2015 is the year the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction was adopted internationally, which is a global agreement rather than Indian legislation.

The correct answer is C, the theory of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics says the Earth's rigid outer shell is broken into plates that keep moving slowly, carried by convection currents in the mantle below. The theory took shape in the 1960s, after Harry Hess explained sea-floor spreading, and the term was given by Tuzo Wilson and others. There are seven major plates and many minor ones, moving a few centimetres a year, and almost all earthquakes, volcanoes, fold mountains and deep trenches occur where they meet. A is wrong because Alfred Wegener's continental drift of 1912 moved only the continents and could not name a force strong enough to do it. B is wrong because Pangaea is the name of the single super-continent, not a theory of motion. D is wrong because plate boundaries are the edges where plates meet, a part of the theory and not the theory itself. Exam tip: Wegener gave continental drift in 1912, Hess gave sea-floor spreading in 1960, and plate tectonics followed.

The correct answer is B, only statement B is true. Statement B is sound: for the poor and for people of the lower castes, the new jobs in colonial cities were a way out of the control of upper-caste landowners in the village and of the daily humiliation they suffered there, and this pull is part of every account of colonial urbanisation. The first statement is false because of the word only: it was not only the rich who left the villages for work in the growing cities, and in fact the poor and the landless formed the bulk of the migration to mills, docks, railways and construction sites. So option A, which calls the first statement true, is wrong, and option C, which calls both false, is wrong because the second statement is true. Option D, which calls both true, is wrong for the same reason as A.

The correct answer is C, Kerala. National Waterway 3 runs 205 km from Kollam to Kottapuram along the West Coast Canal and includes the Champakara and Udyogmandal canals, which serve the industrial belt near Kochi. Declared in 1993, it was the first national waterway to be given navigation aids for use by day and by night, and it runs through the Kerala backwaters that also carry heavy tourist traffic. Option A is wrong, though Goa does have two waterways, NW-68 on the Mandovi and NW-111 on the Zuari, used for moving ore. Option B is wrong because Karnataka's waterways are smaller and were declared only under the 2016 Act. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra has NW-10 on the Amba and other short waterways, not the West Coast Canal.

The correct answer is C, the Prime Minister of India. Under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 the Prime Minister is the Chairperson of the NDMA, which may have other members not exceeding nine, one of them designated Vice-Chairperson; the parallel offices are held by the Chief Minister in a State Authority and the District Magistrate in a District Authority. A is wrong because the President holds no executive office of this kind. B is wrong although the Ministry of Home Affairs is the nodal ministry for disaster management and the Home Minister chairs the National Crisis Management Committee arrangements; the Authority itself is headed by the Prime Minister. D is wrong because the Cabinet Secretary heads the National Crisis Management Committee, a separate body of secretaries, and is not the Chairperson of the NDMA.

The correct answer is A, Fold Mountain. The Himalayas are young fold mountains, formed when the sediments of the Tethys Sea were squeezed and folded as the Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate.

Because that collision still continues, the range is rising even now and the whole belt stays earthquake prone. The Alps, the Rockies and the Andes belong to the same class, and like them the Himalayas run in parallel ranges — the Himadri, the Himachal and the Shiwaliks.

Option B, plateau mountain, is not a standard category; plateaus such as the Deccan are flat uplands, not folded ranges. Option C, fault-block mountain, forms when land between two faults is lifted or its sides sink, as in the Satpura and Vindhya blocks. Option D, dome mountain, forms when magma pushes the rock above it upward without erupting.

Exam tip: Himalayas, Alps, Andes and Rockies are young fold mountains; Satpura is a block mountain.

The correct answer is B, Patrick Geddes. The Scottish geographer and town planner Patrick Geddes coined the word conurbation in 1915 for a great urban mass formed when separate towns grow outward until their built-up areas merge, as in Greater London or the Ruhr. A, Jean Gottmann, is the main trap: he gave the term megalopolis in 1957 for an even larger super-metropolitan belt, such as the chain from Boston to Washington. C, Ebenezer Howard, is wrong because his contribution was the garden city idea, a planned town ringed by a green belt, which influenced the planning of New Delhi and of several Indian townships. D, Lewis Mumford, is wrong because he wrote on the history and culture of cities rather than giving this term; he did, however, popularise Geddes's ideas.

The correct answer is B, the Chief Minister of the State. The Disaster Management Act, 2005 makes the Chief Minister the ex officio Chairperson of the State Disaster Management Authority, just as the Prime Minister heads the national Authority; in a Union Territory the Lieutenant Governor or the Administrator takes that place. A is wrong because the Governor is the constitutional head of the State but holds no place in this executive structure. C is wrong because the Chief Secretary heads the State Executive Committee, which carries out the Authority's decisions, a distinction examiners test. D is wrong because although the Revenue or Relief department usually handles relief work in the States, the Act names the Chief Minister and not any departmental minister as Chairperson of the Authority.

The correct answer is C, the 74th Amendment Act. The Seventy-fourth Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992 inserted Part IXA into the Constitution with Articles 243P to 243ZG, gave municipalities a fixed term of five years with elections conducted by a State Election Commission, provided for reservation of seats, and added the Twelfth Schedule listing eighteen subjects for urban local bodies. B, the 73rd Amendment Act, is the standing trap: it is the twin Act of the same year, but it deals with panchayats, Part IX, Articles 243 to 243O and the Eleventh Schedule with twenty-nine subjects. A, the 72nd Amendment Act, is wrong because it concerned the representation of the Scheduled Tribes in the Tripura Legislative Assembly. D, the 76th Amendment Act, is wrong because it placed the Tamil Nadu reservation Act in the Ninth Schedule.

The correct answer is B, Hyderabad. After the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004 the country set up a tsunami early warning centre at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, which works at Hyderabad under the Ministry of Earth Sciences and uses a network of seismic stations, bottom pressure recorders and tide gauges to issue warnings for the Indian Ocean region. A is wrong because Chennai, though badly hit by the 2004 tsunami, hosts other ocean institutions and not the warning centre. C is wrong because New Delhi is the seat of the NDMA and of the National Institute of Disaster Management, which train and plan rather than issue tsunami bulletins. D is wrong because Port Blair, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has monitoring stations but is not the location of the warning centre.