Physiography of India: Physical Divisions and PYQs

The correct answer is C, Arabian sea. Lakshadweep is a group of small coral islands, atolls and reefs lying off the Malabar coast of Kerala in the Arabian Sea, built on a submarine ridge. It is the smallest union territory of India by area, and Kavaratti is its administrative headquarters.

Option A, the Bay of Bengal, holds India's other island group, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are of volcanic and tectonic origin rather than coral, so the two are easy to swap in a hurry. Option B, the Pacific Ocean, lies far to the east of Asia and washes no part of India. Option D, the Atlantic Ocean, lies on the other side of Africa and has no Indian territory in it at all. Remember the simple pair: coral Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea in the west, volcanic Andaman and Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal in the east.

The correct answer is B, Bhabar. Where the rivers leave the hills they drop their coarsest load, and the resulting belt of gravel and pebbles is so porous that the smaller streams sink into it and vanish. This belt, about eight to sixteen kilometres wide, runs along the whole northern edge of the plains and is known as the bhabar.

Option A, the terai, is the belt immediately south of the bhabar, where the same streams come to the surface again, creating a marshy and once heavily forested tract. Option C, bhangar, refers not to a position at the foot of the hills but to the older alluvium of the plains, lying above the flood level and often containing lime nodules called kankar. Option D, khadar, is the newer alluvium of the active floodplains, renewed by fresh silt at every flood. Bhabar and terai are a pair and are the two most often interchanged in answer sheets.

The correct answer is B, Anaimudi. Anaimudi stands in the Anaimalai hills of Kerala, where the Anaimalai, Palani and Cardamom hills meet, and rises to about 2,695 metres. It is the highest point of the Western Ghats and of the whole peninsular block, and the highest point in India south of the Himalaya.

Option A, Doda Betta, at about 2,637 metres, is the highest peak of the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu, but it is lower than Anaimudi, and the two are the classic pair set against each other in this question. Option C, Mahendragiri, is a peak of the Eastern Ghats in Odisha and is far lower, since the Eastern Ghats are broken and much less elevated than the Western Ghats. Option D, Guru Shikhar near Mount Abu in Rajasthan, at about 1,722 metres, is the highest point of the Aravalli, an old and heavily eroded range.

The correct answer is B. Both rivers flow westward along faulted troughs, or rift valleys, that lie between the Vindhya and the Satpura ranges, and both empty into the Arabian Sea through estuaries instead of deltas. Most other large peninsular rivers, such as the Godavari, the Krishna and the Kaveri, flow eastward down the general slope of the Deccan.

Option A is wrong because both are peninsular rivers: the Narmada rises at Amarkantak and the Tapi in the Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, far from the Himalaya. Option C is wrong because a river flowing into the Arabian Sea through a rift cannot build an eastern delta; in fact the swift flow and the narrow trough prevent either river from building a delta at all. Option D is wrong because both are perennial rivers of considerable size, the Narmada being the largest west-flowing river of the peninsula.

The correct answer is A, the Nilgiri and Anaimalai hills. The Palghat Gap is a wide trough about thirty kilometres across, and it is the principal natural break in the otherwise continuous wall of the Western Ghats. The road and rail routes and the Bharathapuzha river between Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and Palakkad in Kerala all use it, and it strongly affects the monsoon winds reaching the interior.

Option B is wrong because the Cardamom and Palani hills lie south of the gap and are continuous with the Anaimalai group. Option C is wrong because the Satpura and Maikal ranges belong to central India, far north of the Western Ghats, near the source of the Narmada. Option D is wrong because the Javadi and Shevaroy hills are outliers of the Eastern Ghats in Tamil Nadu and have nothing to do with this gap. The other named breaks in the Ghats are the Thal Ghat and the Bhor Ghat in Maharashtra.

The correct answer is B, Aravalli. The Aravalli was folded in the Precambrian era, hundreds of millions of years before the Himalaya rose, and long erosion has reduced it to a chain of low residual ridges running north-east from Gujarat through Rajasthan towards Delhi. Its highest point, Guru Shikhar near Mount Abu, is only about 1,722 metres.

Option A, the Satpura, is a block range of the peninsula, younger than the Aravalli and raised between the Narmada and Tapi troughs. Option C, the Shiwalik, is the youngest range in India, made of loose gravel and sediment shed by the rising Himalaya in recent geological time, so it is the opposite of the right answer. Option D, the Vindhya, is a scarp of sedimentary rock north of the Narmada that acts as the traditional divide between north and south India, but it is not a folded range of the Aravalli's antiquity.

The correct answer is B, basalt of the Deccan Trap. The Deccan Trap was formed by vast fissure eruptions that spread sheet after sheet of lava over the north-western peninsula. Weathering of this basalt produces the clayey black soil known as regur or black cotton soil, which holds moisture well and is the basis of cotton cultivation in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Option A, granite, weathers into the red and lateritic soils of much of the southern plateau, not into black soil. Option C, limestone, gives thin calcareous soils and karst landforms and is not the parent material of the regur belt. Option D, the sandstone of the Vindhyan series, produces sandy and poor soils in central India. Only the basalt of the trap country accounts for the deep black soils shown on soil maps of the Deccan.

The correct answer is B, the Ten Degree Channel. It runs roughly along the ten degree north parallel, which is where it gets its name, and it divides Little Andaman in the north from Car Nicobar in the south, separating the two halves of the union territory.

Option A, the Duncan Passage, is a smaller strait within the Andaman group itself, between South Andaman and Little Andaman. Option C, the Nine Degree Channel, belongs to the other island group altogether: it separates Minicoy from the main Lakshadweep islands in the Arabian Sea, while the Eight Degree Channel separates Minicoy from the Maldives. Option D, the Palk Strait, lies between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka and has nothing to do with the islands. Keeping the degree channels tied to the right group is the point of the question.

The correct answer is B, Great Nicobar. Indira Point stands at the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island, the largest of the Nicobars, and it is the southernmost point of the territory of India. It was earlier called Pygmalion Point and was badly damaged by the tsunami of December 2004.

Option A, Kanyakumari, is the southernmost point of mainland India, which is a different thing and the commonest trap in this question; candidates who miss the word territory pick it. Option C, Minicoy, is the southernmost island of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea, but it lies well north of Great Nicobar. Option D, Rameswaram, is an island off the Tamil Nadu coast in the Gulf of Mannar, famous for the Ramanathaswamy temple and the Pamban bridge, and is not a southern extremity at all.

The correct answer is B, the Brahmaputra. Majuli lies in the braided channel of the Brahmaputra in Assam, where the river splits into many arms and deposits enormous quantities of silt. The island is a centre of Vaishnava culture, with satras founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva, and it loses land steadily to erosion each flood season.

Option A, the Ganga, carries islands and sandbanks but nothing on the scale of Majuli. Option C, the Godavari, is the largest peninsular river and builds a large delta on the eastern coast, but the question is about a river island, not a delta. Option D, the Mahanadi, drains Chhattisgarh and Odisha and also builds a delta, and its best known feature in exams is the Hirakud dam rather than any island. The braided Brahmaputra is the answer to look for whenever a question mentions river islands or shifting channels.

The correct answer is B, the Karakoram. The Trans-Himalayan ranges, the Karakoram, the Ladakh and the Zaskar, lie north of the Greater Himalaya and belong structurally to the Tibetan block rather than to the Himalayan fold belt. The Karakoram carries some of the world's largest glaciers outside the polar regions, among them the Siachen.

Option A, the Pir Panjal, is the longest range of the Lesser Himalaya and encloses the vale of Kashmir on the south. Option C, the Dhauladhar, is another Lesser Himalayan range, rising above Dharamshala and the Kangra valley in Himachal Pradesh. Option D, the Shiwalik, is the outermost and youngest range of all, made of loose sediment brought down by rivers and separated from the Lesser Himalaya by the flat duns. Only the Karakoram lies beyond the Himalaya proper.

The correct answer is B, Odisha. Chilika lies on the eastern coastal plain south of the Mahanadi delta, separated from the Bay of Bengal by a long sandbar, and it is the largest brackish water lagoon in the country and a Ramsar wetland famous for migratory birds and the Irrawaddy dolphin.

Option A, Andhra Pradesh, has the Kolleru freshwater lake and shares Pulicat lake with Tamil Nadu, but not Chilika. Option C, Tamil Nadu, holds the southern part of Pulicat, the second largest brackish lagoon, which is the usual distractor here. Option D, Kerala, has the backwater lagoons of the western coast, of which Vembanad is the longest lake in India, but these are on the other side of the peninsula and are formed by a submerged coast rather than by a sandbar on an emergent one.