Dams, Bridges and Power Plants of India: Static GK

The correct answer is A, hilly terrains. Hydel or hydroelectric power depends on head, the vertical distance through which water falls on to the turbine, and on a narrow valley in hard rock where a tall dam can hold a deep reservoir. Hills supply both, which is why the great hydro stations of the country stand in the Himalaya and the Western Ghats, at Tehri, Nathpa Jhakri, Koyna and Idukki. Option B, desert areas, is wrong because a desert has neither perennial flow nor the gradient needed, and high evaporation would empty a reservoir. Option C, plains, is wrong because the gradient there is too gentle to give useful head; plains carry barrages for irrigation and navigation, such as Farakka, rather than high dams. Option D, oceans, is wrong because a dam needs a river channel to close; the sea is used for tidal and wave power, which is a different technology altogether.

The correct answer is B, Bhagirathi. The Tehri Dam stands on the Bhagirathi in the Tehri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand, close to the confluence of the Bhagirathi and the Bhilangana, and it is an earth and rock fill dam, the tallest in India at about two hundred and sixty metres. Option A, the Alaknanda, is the other headstream of the Ganga and meets the Bhagirathi at Devprayag to form the Ganga; it carries the Vishnuprayag and Srinagar projects but not Tehri, and it is the strongest distractor because the two streams are always learnt together. Option C, the Sutlej, carries the Bhakra Dam in Himachal Pradesh and the Nathpa Jhakri power project, and Bhakra is the dam most often confused with Tehri in height questions. Option D, the Yamuna, carries barrages at Tajewala and Hathnikund and the Lakhwar project, and is not the river of the Tehri Dam.

The correct answer is B, Mahanadi. The Hirakud Dam lies across the Mahanadi above Sambalpur in Odisha, and counting the main dam together with its earthen dykes it is among the longest dams in the world; it was built chiefly to control the floods that used to devastate coastal Odisha, and it also serves irrigation and power. Option A, the Godavari, is the second longest river of India and carries the Sriram Sagar project and the Polavaram project, not Hirakud. Option C, the Brahmani, also flows through Odisha and carries the Rengali dam, which makes it the sharpest distractor here because the state is the same. Option D, the Subarnarekha, flows through Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha and carries the Chandil and Icha projects. Remember the pair Hirakud with Mahanadi as one unit, and the fact that it is a flood control dam first.

The correct answer is B, the Bhakra Dam. Gobind Sagar is the reservoir formed by the Bhakra Dam on the Sutlej in the Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh, and it is named after Guru Gobind Singh; the dam is part of the Bhakra Nangal project that serves Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. Option A, the Rihand Dam in Uttar Pradesh, creates Govind Ballabh Pant Sagar, the largest artificial lake in India by volume, and the resemblance between the two names is exactly the trap in this question. Option C, the Pong Dam, stands on the Beas in Himachal Pradesh and creates the Maharana Pratap Sagar reservoir, which is also a Ramsar wetland. Option D, the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam on the Krishna, creates a reservoir of its own name between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Learn the reservoir along with each dam and this pair stops being confusing.

The correct answer is C, Tarapur. The Tarapur Atomic Power Station in the Palghar district of Maharashtra was commissioned in 1969 and was the first nuclear power station in India and in Asia to generate electricity commercially; its first two units were boiling water reactors built with American assistance. Option A, Kalpakkam, is the Madras Atomic Power Station in Tamil Nadu, the first station of wholly indigenous design, and it also holds the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research and the fast breeder reactor programme. Option B, Rawatbhata, is the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, where the first pressurised heavy water reactor was built in collaboration with Canada, and it is the commonest wrong choice because it too claims a first. Option D, Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, is the most recent of the four and uses Russian pressurised water reactors of the VVER type.

The correct answer is B, Jammu and Kashmir. The Chenab Rail Bridge was built on the Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla rail link in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir, and its steel arch carries the track about three hundred and fifty nine metres above the bed of the Chenab, which makes it the highest railway arch bridge in the world. Option A, Himachal Pradesh, has the Kalka Shimla and Kangra valley narrow gauge lines with many masonry viaducts, but none of that height. Option C, Uttarakhand, carries the rail head at Rishikesh and the Rishikesh Karnaprayag line under construction, and its bridges do not reach this height. Option D, Ladakh, has no railway line at all, which alone rules it out; it is placed among the options because candidates associate the Himalaya with Ladakh. The Chenab rises in Himachal Pradesh, so read whether the question asks where the river rises or where the bridge stands.

The correct answer is C, the Brahmaputra. The Bogibeel Bridge crosses the Brahmaputra in the Dibrugarh district of Assam, was opened in December 2018 and carries a double line of railway below a three lane road above, which makes it the longest rail cum road bridge in India at close to five kilometres. Option A, the Lohit, carries the Bhupen Hazarika Setu, also called the Dhola Sadiya bridge, which links Assam with Arunachal Pradesh and is the longest river bridge in the country, and it is the strongest distractor because the two bridges are in the same region and are learnt together. Option B, the Barak, flows through southern Assam past Silchar and carries no bridge of this description. Option D, the Teesta, flows through Sikkim and West Bengal. Keep the three superlatives apart: longest river bridge, longest rail cum road bridge and longest sea bridge.

The correct answer is B, the Hooghly. The Howrah Bridge, renamed Rabindra Setu in 1965, is a steel cantilever bridge over the Hooghly connecting Howrah with Kolkata; it was opened to traffic in 1943 and its deck was riveted rather than bolted, so it is often described as having been built without nuts and bolts. Option A, the Damodar, is a tributary of the Hooghly and the river of the Damodar Valley Corporation, but it carries no bridge of this name. Option C, the Ganga at Patna, carries the Mahatma Gandhi Setu, for many years the longest river bridge in the country, and it is placed here because it is the other famous long bridge of eastern India. Option D, the Mahananda, flows through north Bengal and Bihar. Note also that the Vidyasagar Setu, the second Hooghly bridge, is a cable stayed bridge across the same river.

The correct answer is B, the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Damodar Valley Corporation was set up in 1948, the first statutory corporation of its kind in India, and it was consciously modelled on the Tennessee Valley Authority of the United States, which had shown how one authority could take up flood control, irrigation, power and navigation across a whole basin. It built the Tilaiya, Konar, Maithon and Panchet dams on the Damodar and the Barakar. Option A, the Hoover Dam, is a single structure on the Colorado and not a basin wide authority. Option C, the Aswan High Dam on the Nile in Egypt, was completed long after 1948 and cannot have been the model. Option D, the Three Gorges project on the Yangtze in China, was built at the end of the twentieth century and is the largest hydro project in the world, which is why it is offered as a plausible looking but chronologically impossible answer.

The correct answer is B, the Narmada. The Sardar Sarovar is a concrete gravity dam on the Narmada in the Narmada district of Gujarat, and its water and power are shared by four states, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan; the Narmada Bachao Andolan, led by Medha Patkar, grew around the displacement it caused. Option A, the Tapi, carries the Ukai dam in Gujarat and flows parallel to the Narmada in its own rift valley, which makes it the closest distractor. Option C, the Mahi, also flows through Gujarat and carries the Kadana and Mahi Bajaj Sagar dams. Option D, the Sabarmati, flows past Ahmedabad and carries the Dharoi dam. Note for the same river that the Indira Sagar dam stands upstream in Madhya Pradesh, so a question naming the Narmada may be asking for either dam, and the state in the stem decides.