UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

It is the highest part of the Aravalli range and the only hill station of Rajasthan, so the monsoon winds are forced to rise over it and it receives well over a thousand millimetres a year, far more than anywhere else in the state.

These, with the Sambhar basin, are the inland basins of Rajasthan: the streams that reach them have no outlet to the sea, so the water evaporates and leaves its salts behind, and the same salt is worked commercially at Sambhar, Didwana and Pachpadra.

Where the Chambal runs through the soft alluvium of Dholpur, Karauli and Sawai Madhopur, the monsoon run-off cuts deep channels that widen year after year into the badlands called bihad, taking farmland out of use and giving the area its old reputation as a hiding place for outlaws.

The Central Arid Zone Research Institute was set up at Jodhpur in 1959 and works on sand dune stabilisation, shelter belts, dry farming, desert pasture and the spread of the desert, which is why it is the institute named in questions on the Thar.

The Thar desert and the arid plains west of the Aravalli take up the greater part of Rajasthan, and their soil is overwhelmingly sand, low in nitrogen and organic matter, porous so that water sinks away quickly, but often well supplied with lime and phosphate.

The soil there is formed from the weathering of the basalt of the Deccan trap, so it is clayey, holds moisture well and cracks in summer, and it carries the state's soybean, cotton and wheat.

The Tropic of Cancer crosses the southern part of Banswara, the southernmost district of Rajasthan, so the whole of the state except that small corner lies north of the tropic, in the subtropical belt.

These are the showers of December to February, brought by western disturbances that travel from the Mediterranean across Iran and Pakistan into north-western India, and they are valued because they water the standing rabi crops of wheat, gram, barley and mustard without any cost to the farmer.

It lies in the extreme west of the state, farthest from both branches of the south-west monsoon, and parts of the district record under 200 millimetres a year, which is why the sand dunes there are the largest and the most mobile in Rajasthan.

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.

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.

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…

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

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 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.

There the old crystalline rocks, gneiss and granite, lie at the surface, and the iron released by their weathering gives the soil its red colour, turning yellow where the iron is hydrated by heavier rain.

The lava flows that spread over central and western India at the end of the Cretaceous left thick sheets of basalt, and when basalt weathers in a monsoon climate it yields a fine clay rich in iron, lime and magnesium, which is exactly the black soil of Malwa, the Narmada…

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 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.

The Sixth Schedule, read with Article 244, lets the tribal areas of these four states run Autonomous District Councils with their own powers over land, forests, village administration, inheritance and customary law, such as the Bodoland Territorial Council in Assam and the Khasi Hills council in Meghalaya.