What is the usual term used to describe the climate of India?

The correct answer is B, West Bengal. India's first jute mill was set up at Rishra, on the bank of the Hooghly near Serampore in Bengal, in 1855 by George Auckland. The industry stayed along that river because the Hooghly belt had everything it needed together: jute grown in the deltaic plains of Bengal, cheap water transport, coal from the Raniganj field, labour from Bihar and Odisha, and the port of Kolkata to ship sacking and hessian out. Partition in 1947 left most of the jute fields in East Pakistan while the mills stayed in India, which hurt the industry badly. West Bengal still has the largest number of jute mills and the highest output. A is wrong because Odisha has only a few mills. C is wrong because Assam grows jute but its mills came later. D is wrong because Bihar's mills, at Katihar and elsewhere, also came after Bengal's. Exam tip: first jute mill at Rishra on the Hooghly in 1855; West Bengal leads in jute.

The correct answer is A, Odisha. Odisha is the largest producer of bauxite in India and accounts for more than half of the country's output. Its ore lies in the plateau belt of Koraput and Kalahandi, where the Panchpatmali deposit worked by NALCO is the biggest in the country, and it is also mined in Sundargarh and Bolangir. Bauxite is the ore from which alumina and then aluminium is obtained, so the state carries large refineries and smelters as well. Gujarat, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh follow at a distance. B is wrong because Bihar has almost no bauxite; its old reserves went to Jharkhand when the state was divided in 2000. C is wrong because Madhya Pradesh mines bauxite in Katni and Balaghat but on a far smaller scale. D is wrong because Jharkhand's mines in Lohardaga and Gumla also yield much less than Odisha's. Exam tip: Odisha leads in bauxite, chromite and iron ore; Panchpatmali in Koraput is the largest bauxite deposit.

The correct answer is D, Tamil Nadu. Hogenakkal Falls lies on the river Kaveri in the Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, close to the border with Karnataka. The river breaks into many channels over carbonatite rock here and drops in sheets, throwing up so much spray that the Kannada name hogenakkal, meaning smoking rocks, describes it exactly. Visitors are carried across the pools in round coracle boats, and the place is often called the Niagara of India; a drinking water project for Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri draws from the river here. A is wrong because Andhra Pradesh has falls such as Talakona and Ettipothala. B is wrong because Kerala's best known falls are Athirappilly and Palaruvi. C is wrong because Maharashtra has falls such as Thoseghar and Randha, not Hogenakkal. Exam tip: Hogenakkal is on the Kaveri in Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu — smoking rocks and coracle rides.

The correct answer is A, Nagpur. The National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, an institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, works from Nagpur and prepares the soil maps and land capability surveys on which district planning rests. Option B is wrong because Dehradun is the home of the Forest Research Institute and of the Survey of India, both important but concerned with forests and with topographical mapping rather than with soil. Option C is wrong because Hyderabad houses the National Institute of Rural Development and the Indian Institute of Millets Research, and is not the soil survey bureau. Option D is wrong because Karnal is known for the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute and the National Dairy Research Institute; salinity research there is a narrower field than the national soil survey.

The correct answer is C, badland topography. Running water cuts gullies in the soft alluvium of the Chambal basin, and where those gullies deepen and spread over a wide tract the land becomes a maze of steep channels and ridges unfit for cultivation, which geographers call badland and local people call the ravines or beehad. Option A is wrong because wind erosion, which works by lifting and rolling loose sand, dominates in the dry west of Rajasthan rather than in this river valley. Option B is wrong because sheet erosion removes a thin even film of soil and leaves no visible channels, the opposite of what the Chambal shows. Option D is wrong because waterlogging is the rise of the water table in canal-irrigated flat land, which brings salts to the surface and is a problem of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.