The Inland Waterways Authority of India was set up in which year?

The correct answer is B, the Ganga, Bhagirathi and Hooghly. National Waterway 1 runs 1,620 km from Haldia in West Bengal to Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, through West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and was the first waterway to be declared national, in 1986. Option A is wrong because the Brahmaputra from Dhubri to Sadiya is National Waterway 2, declared in 1988. Option C is wrong because stretches of the Godavari and the Krishna, together with the Kakinada and Puducherry canals, make up National Waterway 4. Option D is wrong because the Narmada is a separate and much later declared waterway, numbered 73, and the Tapi is not among the older waterways at all. NW-1 is also the waterway on which the Jal Marg Vikas Project is being carried out.

The correct answer is C, 1,620 km, which makes National Waterway 1 the longest of India's national waterways and the one with the largest cargo movement. Option A, 891 km, is the length of National Waterway 2 on the Brahmaputra between Dhubri and Sadiya, and it is the figure most often swapped with this one. Option B, 1,095 km, is the length of National Waterway 4, which uses the Kakinada and Puducherry canals with stretches of the Godavari and the Krishna. Option D is simply larger than any single national waterway and does not match any of them. A useful way to remember the set is 1,620 for NW-1, 891 for NW-2, 205 for NW-3, 1,095 for NW-4 and 623 for NW-5. Note also that the Prayagraj end was earlier written as Allahabad in older papers, so both names appear in question stems for the same waterway.

The correct answer is A, Dhubri and Sadiya. National Waterway 2 follows the Brahmaputra for 891 km inside Assam, from Dhubri on the Bangladesh border to Sadiya in the upper valley, and its principal terminal is Pandu near Guwahati. Option B names the two ends of National Waterway 1 on the Ganga system. Option C names the ends of National Waterway 3, the West Coast Canal in Kerala. Option D names the ends of National Waterway 16 on the Barak river, which serves the Barak valley of southern Assam and is often confused with NW-2 because both lie in the same state. Through the inland water transit protocol with Bangladesh, cargo on NW-2 can reach Kolkata and Haldia and ports in Bangladesh. Dhubri also serves as a port of call under the protocol with Bangladesh, which is how Assam is linked by water to Kolkata.

The correct answer is C, one hundred and eleven. The National Waterways Act, 2016 brought together in one statute the five waterways already declared between 1986 and 2008 and added many more, making 111 in all, spread over rivers, canals, creeks, estuaries and backwaters in most states of the country. Option A is wrong because five was the number before the Act, declared one at a time by separate laws. Option B is a made-up figure and does not correspond to any stage of the declaration. Option D is wrong and is the kind of near miss that catches candidates who remember only that the number is above a hundred. Remember that declaration by Parliament is only the first step; a waterway carries cargo only after dredging, terminals and navigation aids are in place.

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.