Madhya Pradesh Mixed Quiz: Set 4

The reason is that the state's rain comes mostly from the Bay of Bengal branch of the monsoon, which enters from the east and weakens as it travels inland, so the farthest north-western corner is driest.

The Tropic of Cancer crosses Madhya Pradesh almost through the middle, running past Ratlam, Ujjain, Bhopal, Vidisha, Sagar, Jabalpur and Shahdol, so the state is divided nearly in half by it and more districts of Madhya Pradesh are touched by the line than in any other state.

Panna National Park, spread over Panna and Chhatarpur districts along the Ken river, lies beside the diamond bearing tract of Panna, the only diamond mining area worked in India, and it lost its tigers completely before animals brought from other reserves re-established a breeding population, a recovery cited as a…

Kanha, spread over Mandla and Balaghat districts in the Maikal range, was declared a national park in 1955, which makes it the oldest in the state, and it became one of the nine reserves with which Project Tiger began in 1973.

Pachmarhi sits on a plateau in the Satpura range south of the Narmada, and Dhupgarh beside it, at about 1,350 metres, is the highest point of Madhya Pradesh; the height gives the place its cool climate, its heavy rain and the biosphere reserve around it.

The Narmada does not flow in a valley cut by its own water but along a long structural trough, a rift, with the Vindhya forming its northern wall and the Satpura its southern wall.

The Bhimbetka rock shelters, with their prehistoric paintings, lie in the Raisen district within the limits of the Ratapani sanctuary, a teak forest of the Vindhyan range south of Bhopal that was later notified as a tiger reserve.

Beyond the Son valley the Vindhyan rocks continue east as the Kaimur range, which passes through the Rewa and Satna country of Madhya Pradesh into Uttar Pradesh and then into the Kaimur and Rohtas districts of Bihar, where it forms the southern plateau fringe of that state.

This is the only real alluvial tract of the state, it is the most fertile soil there and it grows wheat, mustard and gram.

The tribunal was constituted in 1969 under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act to settle the sharing of the Narmada, and it delivered its award in 1979, dividing the river's water among Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan and fixing the height and the rehabilitation terms of the Sardar Sarovar.

The Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve covers the Satpura National Park with the Bori and Pachmarhi wildlife sanctuaries in the Satpura range, and it is part of the UNESCO world network of biosphere reserves; Pachmarhi, the only hill station of the state, and Dhoopgarh, its highest point, lie inside this landscape.

The Deccan trap basalt underlies a very large part of the state, from the Malwa plateau through the Narmada valley to Nimar and the Satpura, and its weathering has given black soil, also called regur or cotton soil, the largest share of the state's area.

The deep black soil of Malwa holds moisture through the gaps in the monsoon, which is exactly what soybean needs, and the crop spread so widely across Indore, Ujjain, Dewas and Dhar that Madhya Pradesh came to be called the soya state; the same soil also carries cotton, wheat and…

The hard ground barasingha or swamp deer had fallen to a few dozen animals in the Kanha meadows, and a long programme of grassland management and protection brought the population back, which is why the barasingha is the state animal of Madhya Pradesh and the emblem of Kanha.

The Bhoj wetland is the pair of lakes at Bhopal, the Upper Lake built in the eleventh century in the time of Raja Bhoj and the Lower Lake beside it, and it was added to the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance in 2002, the first Ramsar site of…

The Chambal rises at Janapav hill near Mhow in Indore district, on the southern edge of the Malwa plateau, and flows north and then north-east into the Yamuna, cutting the deep ravines that form the boundary between Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The Chambal flows north through soft alluvium towards the Yamuna, and the monsoon run-off cuts channels into it that deepen and widen every year into the badlands called bihad, which swallow farmland and once gave the region its reputation as a refuge for outlaws.

Pench lies in Seoni and Chhindwara districts and continues across the state line into the Nagpur district of Maharashtra, so that each state manages its own Pench reserve on either side of the Pench river that gives the park its name; the forest is teak country and is often linked…

Laterite forms where heavy rain and warm temperatures wash the silica and bases out of the soil and leave iron and aluminium oxides behind, so it appears on the high rainfall plateau of eastern Madhya Pradesh, where rainfall crosses 1,400 millimetres.

Tendu leaf, the wrapper in which the beedi is rolled, is collected from the dry deciduous forests of Madhya Pradesh in the hot months, and the state leads the country in its production, the collection being organised through forest produce cooperatives that pay a collection rate to tribal gatherers; sal…