Which of the following is not true of the Western Ghats ?

Correct — D, (d) ONGC surveys have recently found huge oil reserves.

The question asks which statement is not true, and the word ‘not’ is printed in bold italic in the booklet — one of the few pieces of emphasis anywhere in this paper, and placed where it matters, because three of these four statements are true and the work is to find the one that is not.

Option (d) is the false one. No oil reserves have been found in the Western Ghats, and the geology makes it very unlikely that any will be. Petroleum accumulates in thick sedimentary basins; the Western Ghats are the faulted and eroded western edge of the Deccan Plateau, where the predominant rock is basalt, in places three kilometres thick, over charnockites, granite gneiss, khondalites, leptynites and other metamorphic and crystalline rocks, with residual laterite and bauxite in the southern hills. India’s producing oil and gas comes from quite different terrain — the offshore fields of the western continental shelf, the Cambay basin of Gujarat, the Assam-Arakan basin in the north-east and the Krishna-Godavari basin off the eastern coast.

The other three statements are all correct, and each is worth knowing on its own.

Option (a): the Western Ghats were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2012 as a serial property of thirty-nine component sites, grouped in seven clusters across Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Option (b): the range is described by UNESCO itself as one of the world’s eight ‘hottest hotspots’ of biological diversity, and at least 325 globally threatened species occur there.

Option (c): the standard descriptions of the range record two biosphere reserves and thirteen national parks among the protected areas the Government of India has established in it, alongside a number of wildlife sanctuaries and many reserve forests.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)UNESCO declared 39 places in the Western Ghats as 'World Heritage Sites' in 2012 — This statement is true, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking which is not true. The Western Ghats were added to the World Heritage List in 2012, and the property is a serial one: thirty-nine separate component sites, arranged in seven clusters, spread across the four States the range runs through. India had proposed the Ghats for listing some years earlier, and the inscription was made on natural criteria — the range’s exceptional biological diversity and endemism, and its role in the Indian monsoon system. The number thirty-nine is the kind of detail that looks invented when it appears in an option, and a candidate who distrusts precise figures on principle may reject it for that reason. Here the figure is exact and correct, which is a useful reminder that specificity is not by itself evidence that a statement has been made up.
• (b)It is one of the eight hottest hotspots of biological diversity in the world — This statement is true as well. The description of the Western Ghats as one of the world’s eight ‘hottest hotspots’ of biological diversity is UNESCO’s own, and it rests on the biodiversity-hotspot literature, in which a small number of the recognised hotspots are ranked highest on measures of endemism and of threat. The range holds an extraordinary concentration of species found nowhere else — in flowering plants, amphibians, reptiles and freshwater fish especially — and at least 325 globally threatened species occur in it. A candidate may hesitate over the exact number eight, since different counts of hotspots circulate, but the phrase in the option is the standard one used of this range and the statement is not the false one the question is looking for.
• (c)It has two reserves and thirteen national parks — This statement is true too. The protected areas established in the Western Ghats include two biosphere reserves and thirteen national parks, along with several wildlife sanctuaries and many reserve forests, all managed by the forest departments of the States the range passes through. The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, of some 5,500 square kilometres, is the largest contiguous protected area in the Ghats. The option is phrased loosely — ‘two reserves’ rather than ‘two biosphere reserves’ — which may make a careful reader pause, but the figures are the standard ones and nothing in the statement is contradicted. When three statements in a negative item are all true and one is plainly false, loose phrasing in a true statement is not a reason to prefer it over the false one.

The Western Ghats, also called the Sahyadri, run roughly parallel to India’s west coast for about 1,600 kilometres, from the Gujarat–Maharashtra border to the southern tip of the peninsula, broken only by the Palakkad gap. They are the faulted edge of the Deccan Plateau rather than a fold range, and they block the south-west monsoon, which is why the western slopes are among the wettest places in India and why the rivers that drain nearly two-fifths of the country rise there.

Their importance is biological. The range is one of the world’s recognised biodiversity hotspots and is placed among the small group of hottest ones; a very large share of its plants, amphibians and freshwater fish are found nowhere else. That combination of high endemism and heavy pressure from population, plantation agriculture, mining and hydropower is what puts it in that category, since a hotspot is defined by threat as well as by richness.

The conservation machinery over it comes in layers, and questions tend to test whether the layers are distinguished. National parks and wildlife sanctuaries are protected areas under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Biosphere reserves are designations for landscapes with a strictly protected core and inhabited buffer zones. A World Heritage Site is an international inscription under the 1972 UNESCO Convention that carries no new domestic legal powers, and the Western Ghats inscription of 2012 covers thirty-nine sites already protected under Indian law.

Key facts

• The Western Ghats were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2012 as a serial property of 39 component sites arranged in seven clusters across Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
• UNESCO describes the range as one of the world’s eight ‘hottest hotspots’ of biological diversity; at least 325 globally threatened species occur there.
• The protected areas in the range include two biosphere reserves and thirteen national parks, besides wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests; the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is the largest contiguous protected area in the Ghats.
• Geologically the Ghats are the faulted and eroded edge of the Deccan Plateau: basalt up to about three kilometres thick over charnockites, granite gneiss and other crystalline and metamorphic rocks, with residual laterite and bauxite in the south.
• India’s oil and gas production comes from sedimentary basins elsewhere — the western offshore fields, the Cambay basin, the Assam-Arakan basin and the Krishna-Godavari basin — and not from the Western Ghats.
• The range runs about 1,600 km along the west coast, blocks the south-west monsoon, and feeds the rivers that drain a large part of peninsular India.

Common traps

• Answering the question positively. The stem asks which statement is not true, and the negation is the whole of the task.
• Rejecting a statement because it carries an oddly precise number. Thirty-nine sites and thirteen national parks are both correct.
• Assuming that a loosely worded true statement must be the false one; ‘two reserves’ is shorthand for two biosphere reserves.
• Accepting a claim about a natural resource because it sounds like recent news. The geology of the range rules out oil, and India’s fields lie in sedimentary basins elsewhere.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Western Ghats were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012 as

  • (a)a single continuous property covering the whole range
  • (b)a serial property of 39 component sites in seven clusters
  • (c)a cultural landscape
  • (d)a transboundary property shared with Sri Lanka

  Answer(b) a serial property of 39 component sites in seven clusters — the inscription covers selected protected areas across four States rather than the entire range. Option (a) misstates the form of the listing, option (c) misstates its criteria, which were natural, and option (d) invents a transboundary element that the inscription does not have.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is a designation that carries no additional powers under Indian law, being an international listing rather than a domestic protected-area category ?

  • (a)National park
  • (b)Wildlife sanctuary
  • (c)World Heritage Site
  • (d)Tiger reserve

  Answer(c) World Heritage Site — it is an inscription under the 1972 UNESCO Convention, and the sites so listed remain protected in India by whatever domestic status they already hold. National parks and wildlife sanctuaries are categories under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and tiger reserves are notified under the same Act.