MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 26 of 100

Correct — option (3), 'Yellow'. A physical map is a layer-tinted map, and the one thing its colours record is altitude. The technique, called layer tinting or hypsometric tinting, divides the whole range of elevation into bands and gives each band a colour, and the colours are chosen so that the sequence itself carries the meaning: greens for the lowest ground, yellows for the intermediate ground, browns for the high ground, deepening as height increases, with the highest peaks sometimes carried into purple or white. The exact shades and the exact figures attached to each band vary from one atlas to another, which is why every physical map prints a legend, but the order of the sequence does not vary. That is what makes a question of this kind answerable by ranking rather than by memory of a particular publisher's palette. Set India out in that order. The Indo-Gangetic plain, the Brahmaputra valley and the coastal plains, including the Konkan strip of Maharashtra, are the country's lowest ground and take the greens. The Himalaya, and on a detailed map the crests of the highest ranges, are the country's highest ground and take the browns. Between them lies the great peninsular plateau, standing a few hundred metres above sea level — well above the coastal lowlands beside it, and far below the mountain systems to the north — and it takes the intermediate tint, which is yellow. The Maharashtra plateau is simply the portion of that peninsular plateau lying east of the Sahyadri, sloping generally eastward from the Ghat crest towards the interior. It is neither lowland nor mountain, so it belongs in the middle band, and the answer is yellow, option (3). The map of Maharashtra makes the point visible: the narrow Konkan lowland along the coast is shown in a green, the plateau behind it in yellow, and the change of colour falls along the line of the Sahyadri scarp that separates them.

• (1)Dark green — The greens on a layer-tinted map belong to the lowest altitude band, and the darkest green to the lowest ground of all. Choosing it for the Maharashtra plateau places the plateau in the same class as the Ganga plain and the Konkan coastal strip, which is precisely the distinction the map exists to draw. The deeper error behind this option is reading the colour as vegetation rather than as height: dark green suggests forest to most readers, and a candidate who thinks of the wooded Ghat country reaches for it naturally. On a physical map that inference is not available. Colour there means elevation and nothing else, so the green of the Ganga plain records low land, not a forest, and the yellow of the Deccan records a moderate elevation, not a dry landscape. Vegetation is shown on a separate thematic map with a legend of its own.
• (2)Green — This is the same altitude band as option (1) in a lighter shade, and offering the two greens together is a deliberate piece of construction: a candidate who has put the plateau in the lowland band will find a green to suit whichever shade he half-remembers, and loses the mark either way. Green in a hypsometric sequence is reserved for the plains, and in Maharashtra the ground that carries it is the Konkan — the narrow coastal lowland between the Arabian Sea and the foot of the Sahyadri. Since the Konkan and the plateau are the two divisions of the state that a physical map most obviously separates, giving them the same colour would defeat the purpose of the map. If two options fall in the same band and differ only in shade, it is usually a sign that the band itself is the wrong one.
• (4)Brown — Brown is the colour of the high ground — the Himalaya above all, and on a large-scale map the crest lines of the major ranges. This option is chosen by the candidate who reasons that a plateau is elevated land and therefore takes an elevated colour, which mistakes the middle term for the top one. A plateau is by definition raised above the surrounding plains and by definition lower than the mountains, and a layer-tinted map is built to show exactly that intermediate position. Within Maharashtra the ranges that rise above the plateau surface, such as the Satmala, Ajanta, Harishchandra-Balaghat and Mahadeo hills, and the crest of the Sahyadri itself, may indeed pick up a browner tint on a sufficiently detailed map, but the plateau surface on which they stand does not.

Maps encode information in conventions, and reading a map means reading its conventions before its content. A political map uses colour to distinguish administrative units, so the colours carry no meaning beyond identity. A thematic map uses colour to show the distribution of one chosen variable — rainfall, population density, natural vegetation, soil type — and its legend defines what each shade stands for. A physical or relief map uses colour to show altitude, and the method is layer tinting: elevation is divided into bands and each band is filled with a colour from an ordered sequence, so that reading the map for height becomes a matter of reading the colour. The sequence conventionally runs from greens through yellows to browns as the ground rises. Relief maps combine this with two other devices, contour lines joining points of equal height and spot heights marking individual summits and passes, and often with hill shading to suggest the form of slopes. Applied to India the layer tint tells the country's structural story at a glance: a green band around the coasts and across the northern plains, a broad yellow expanse over the peninsular plateau, and a brown arc along the Himalaya. The three colours correspond to the three great structural divisions — the plains built of recent alluvium, the ancient plateau of the peninsular shield, and the young fold mountains of the north.

Map-reading questions of this kind reward a candidate who has actually handled an atlas rather than one who has only read about India's relief, and MPSC includes them because the skill is basic to the geography syllabus and cannot be got from a summary. The question is not really about Maharashtra: it is about whether the candidate knows that the colours of a physical map are a scale of height. Anyone who knows that can reason the answer out from the plateau's position between the Konkan lowland and the Himalaya, without having memorised a single figure. The habit worth forming is to read the legend of every map you meet and to state to yourself what its colours are measuring, because the same green means low land on one map, heavy rainfall on the second and dense forest on the third. A second habit specific to this state is to keep Maharashtra's three physiographic divisions clearly in mind from west to east — the Konkan coastal lowland, the Sahyadri range that walls it, and the plateau that stretches inland behind the crest — since a large share of the state's geography questions, on rivers, rainfall, soils and crops alike, is organised around that same threefold division.

• A physical map uses layer tinting, also called hypsometric tinting, in which altitude is divided into bands and each band is given a colour; the sequence conventionally runs from greens for the lowest ground through yellows to browns for the highest.
• On such a map the colour records elevation and nothing else. Vegetation, rainfall and population are shown on separate thematic maps, so the green of the Ganga plain means low land rather than forest.
• On the physical map of India the northern plains and the coastal plains fall in the green band, the peninsular plateau in the yellow band, and the Himalaya and the highest ranges in the brown band.
• The Maharashtra plateau is the part of the peninsular plateau lying east of the Sahyadri; it stands a few hundred metres above sea level and slopes generally eastwards, placing it in the intermediate colour band.
• Maharashtra's three physiographic divisions from west to east are the Konkan coastal lowland, the Sahyadri range and the plateau of the interior, and the change of tint on a physical map falls along the Sahyadri scarp.

• Reading the colours of a physical map as vegetation or as rainfall, which is the single commonest misreading of a layer-tinted map and the reason the green options are offered here
• Treating a plateau as high ground and reaching for the mountain colour, when a plateau by definition occupies the band between plains and mountains
• Choosing between two shades of the same colour when the band itself is wrong; a pair of options in one colour family usually signals that the family is a distractor
• Assuming the exact shades are fixed across atlases; the figures attached to each band vary, and only the order of the sequence is reliable

Map-reading appears in MPSC geography in a handful of recurring forms: what a colour or a symbol on a given kind of map stands for, which physiographic division a named place belongs to, in which direction a named river flows, and which range separates two named basins. The commission keeps these questions short and factual, and it usually builds the option set so that two choices lie in the same family — here two greens — which quietly punishes a candidate who has the general idea but not the underlying principle. The reliable preparation is not memorisation of colours but familiarity with an atlas, together with a clear grasp of India's threefold relief structure and of Maharashtra's threefold physiographic division, from which most such questions can be reasoned out rather than recalled.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  On a layer-tinted physical map, the colour filling a given area indicates which of the following ?

  • (a)The altitude of the land
  • (b)The annual rainfall received
  • (c)The type of natural vegetation
  • (d)The density of population

  Answer(a) The altitude of the land — layer tinting divides elevation into bands and assigns an ordered sequence of colours to them, running from greens for the lowest ground through yellows to browns for the highest, with the legend defining the figures. Rainfall, vegetation and population density are each shown on separate thematic maps with legends of their own, which is why the same green can mean three different things on three different maps.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following gives the physiographic divisions of Maharashtra in the correct order from west to east ?

  • (a)Konkan lowland, Sahyadri range, plateau of the interior
  • (b)Sahyadri range, Konkan lowland, plateau of the interior
  • (c)Plateau of the interior, Sahyadri range, Konkan lowland
  • (d)Konkan lowland, plateau of the interior, Sahyadri range

  Answer(a) Konkan lowland, Sahyadri range, plateau of the interior — the narrow Konkan strip lies between the Arabian Sea and the foot of the Ghats, the Sahyadri rises as a steep scarp behind it, and the plateau stretches inland from the crest, sloping generally eastwards. Option (3) simply reverses the order, and the remaining two put the Sahyadri or the plateau on the wrong side of the coastal lowland.