MPSC 2024 Prelims Q19: In which district is the Hetwane major irrigation scheme

Q: What is the answer to MPSC 2024 Prelims Q19?

(4). Correct — option (4), Raigad. The Hetwane (Hetawane) scheme is a Konkan project: the dam stands near Pen, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, and it was completed around the turn of the 2000s. It is an earthfill dam of moderate height across a short west-flowing stream, and it does two jobs at once, which is why it is worth remembering. It irrigates farmland in the Pen and Alibag tract, where the command is small by the standards of the Deccan schemes because the Konkan strip itself is narrow and broken; and it supplies drinking and industrial water to the fast-growing urban and industrial belt of Navi Mumbai and the neighbouring parts of Raigad, a demand that has grown steadily as the district has industrialised. That dual purpose is characteristic of Konkan reservoirs generally: the rivers here are short and steep, rising in the Sahyadri and reaching the Arabian Sea within a hundred kilometres or less, so their reservoirs are small relative to the Godavari or Krishna schemes but sit close to a heavily populated, water-hungry coast. Raigad itself is the district immediately south of Mumbai and Thane, with its headquarters at Alibag and Pen among its northern talukas; it is also the district of the Raigad fort, Shivaji's capital, from which the district took its present name, and of the port at Nhava Sheva in Uran. Locating Hetwane therefore involves nothing more than recognising it as a Konkan name and then choosing the Konkan district in the option list — which is precisely what the other three options are designed to prevent.

MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 19 of 100

Maharashtra Gazetted Civil Services Combined Preliminary Examination 2024, held 1 December 2024. Transcribed from the commission's own booklet (संच A); answer as per the official MPSC final answer key.

In which district is the Hetwane major irrigation scheme located ?

(1)Sindhudurg
(2)Satara
(3)Beed
(4)Raigad

Answer

(4)

Why

Correct — option (4), Raigad. The Hetwane (Hetawane) scheme is a Konkan project: the dam stands near Pen, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, and it was completed around the turn of the 2000s. It is an earthfill dam of moderate height across a short west-flowing stream, and it does two jobs at once, which is why it is worth remembering. It irrigates farmland in the Pen and Alibag tract, where the command is small by the standards of the Deccan schemes because the Konkan strip itself is narrow and broken; and it supplies drinking and industrial water to the fast-growing urban and industrial belt of Navi Mumbai and the neighbouring parts of Raigad, a demand that has grown steadily as the district has industrialised. That dual purpose is characteristic of Konkan reservoirs generally: the rivers here are short and steep, rising in the Sahyadri and reaching the Arabian Sea within a hundred kilometres or less, so their reservoirs are small relative to the Godavari or Krishna schemes but sit close to a heavily populated, water-hungry coast. Raigad itself is the district immediately south of Mumbai and Thane, with its headquarters at Alibag and Pen among its northern talukas; it is also the district of the Raigad fort, Shivaji's capital, from which the district took its present name, and of the port at Nhava Sheva in Uran. Locating Hetwane therefore involves nothing more than recognising it as a Konkan name and then choosing the Konkan district in the option list — which is precisely what the other three options are designed to prevent.

Why the others are wrong

(1)Sindhudurg — Sindhudurg is the correct region but the wrong district. It is the southernmost district of the Konkan, formed in 1981 out of the old Ratnagiri district and bordering Goa, and it shares Raigad's physical character of short, swift, west-flowing rivers and narrow valleys — which is what makes it a well-chosen distractor for a Konkan project. But it lies some three hundred kilometres down the coast from Pen, and its irrigation works serve the Malvan, Kudal and Sawantwadi tract in the far south, not the Pen and Alibag hinterland of Mumbai.
(2)Satara — Satara lies on the other side of the Sahyadri, in the upper Krishna basin of western Maharashtra, and its water story is a completely different one. The district's famous work is the Koyna dam in Patan taluka, built primarily for hydroelectric power with its reservoir Shivsagar, and its other schemes serve the Krishna and its tributaries flowing east across the Deccan. A candidate placing Hetwane here has not registered that a project of this kind belongs to a coastal district feeding a coastal command, not to a plateau district in an east-flowing basin.
(3)Beed — Beed is in Marathwada, well inland on the Deccan plateau within the Godavari basin, and is one of the most drought-prone districts of the state. Its irrigation depends on the Godavari valley schemes and on scarce, erratic rainfall, and it has no physical connection with the short Sahyadri-to-Arabian-Sea streams on which the Hetwane dam is built. It is included in the option list to test whether the candidate can place a project by region rather than merely recognise a district name, and it is the easiest of the three to eliminate once the scheme is identified as a Konkan one.

Concept

Maharashtra's irrigation geography divides along the Sahyadri. West of the crest lies the Konkan, where the rivers — the Ulhas, Amba, Kundalika, Savitri, Vashishthi and their neighbours — are short, steep and heavily fed by monsoon rain, so reservoirs fill quickly but command small, fragmented areas of level land, and their water is increasingly diverted to urban and industrial supply for the Mumbai-Navi Mumbai-Raigad belt. East of the crest lie the Godavari, Bhima and Krishna basins, where long east-flowing rivers cross a rain-shadow plateau; here the schemes are larger, the commands broader and the purpose overwhelmingly agricultural, and the political questions are about equity between upstream and downstream users and about inter-state allocation. The Hetwane project belongs squarely to the first group, and recognising which side of the Ghats a scheme sits on settles most questions about its size, purpose and command.

MPSC's Maharashtra geography section asks project-and-district questions in almost every paper, covering dams, irrigation schemes, ports, thermal and nuclear stations, and industrial estates. The commission usually builds the option list from districts in different physiographic regions — one Konkan, one western Maharashtra, one Marathwada, sometimes one Vidarbha — so that a candidate who knows only the region can still eliminate two or three options. That makes region-level knowledge unusually valuable here: it is worth learning the district list of each of the state's regions and the two or three water projects associated with each, rather than attempting to memorise every scheme in the state. For Raigad in particular, the district's industrial belt and its proximity to Navi Mumbai explain why so many of its water projects carry a drinking-water component alongside irrigation. It is also worth knowing why Konkan water projects recur in current-affairs questions about the district: the same reservoirs that irrigate a small agricultural command supply water to industry and to the metropolitan region, and the allocation between the two is a live local dispute rather than a settled arrangement.

Key facts

The Hetwane (Hetawane) dam is located near Pen in Raigad district in the Konkan region of Maharashtra and was completed around the turn of the 2000s.
The project serves irrigation in the Pen and Alibag tract and also supplies water to the Navi Mumbai and Raigad urban and industrial belt.
Konkan rivers are short, steep and west-flowing from the Sahyadri to the Arabian Sea, so their reservoirs have small commands compared with the Godavari and Krishna schemes east of the Ghats.
Raigad district lies immediately south of Mumbai and Thane, with headquarters at Alibag; Pen, Panvel, Uran, Mahad and Murud are among its talukas.
Satara's principal water project is the Koyna dam, built chiefly for hydroelectric power in the upper Krishna basin, while Beed lies inland in the drought-prone Godavari basin of Marathwada.

Place each district before you place the dam

Sindhudurg→Southern Konkan, at the Goa end of the coast — the wrong end of the strip entirely

Satara→Western Maharashtra above the ghats, Krishna-Koyna country

Beed→Marathwada, on the Godavari side of the plateau — the far side of the Sahyadri

Raigad→HETWANE — an earthfill dam near Pen; irrigates the Pen-Alibag tract and supplies Navi Mumbai and industrial Raigad

Konkan rivers are short and steep, so their reservoirs are small by Godavari or Krishna standards — but they sit beside a crowded, water-hungry coast, which is why Hetwane serves farms and cities at once.

Study next

Major, medium and minor irrigation projects of Maharashtra and the districts they serveRivers of Maharashtra: the west-flowing Konkan streams and the east-flowing Godavari, Bhima, Krishna and Tapi systemsThe Koyna project and hydroelectric generation in MaharashtraWater supply to the Mumbai metropolitan region and the reservoirs that serve itRegional divisions of Maharashtra — Konkan, western Maharashtra, Khandesh, Marathwada and Vidarbha — and their district lists

Common traps

Picking any Konkan district for a Konkan-sounding project; Sindhudurg is in the same region but three hundred kilometres away
Assuming an irrigation project must be inland and agricultural, when Konkan reservoirs commonly combine irrigation with urban and industrial water supply
Confusing the physiographic regions of the state, which is what places Satara in the Krishna basin and Beed in the Godavari basin of Marathwada

Project-and-district questions are among the most predictable items in MPSC's Maharashtra geography, and they appear both as single-line questions like this one and as match-the-columns sets pairing projects with districts or rivers. The option lists are drawn from different regions of the state, so a candidate who has the region right can usually eliminate two options immediately. Expect related items asking which river a project is built on, which districts a canal system serves, and which projects are primarily hydroelectric rather than irrigational — and note that MPSC also asks the reverse form, naming a district and asking which project lies in it.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Koyna dam, whose reservoir is known as Shivsagar and which was built primarily for hydroelectric generation, is located in which district of Maharashtra ?
- (a)Raigad
- (b)Satara
- (c)Ratnagiri
- (d)Kolhapur
Answer(b) Satara — the Koyna dam is in Patan taluka of Satara district in the upper Krishna basin, and its generating stations make it the state's most important hydroelectric project. Its water is carried west through the Ghats to power houses on the Konkan side, which is why the project is sometimes wrongly placed in a coastal district.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following best describes the rivers of the Konkan region of Maharashtra ?
- (a)Long, east-flowing rivers crossing a rain-shadow plateau
- (b)Short, steep, west-flowing rivers reaching the Arabian Sea within a short distance
- (c)Inland drainage streams that end in salt flats
- (d)Snow-fed perennial rivers with large alluvial floodplains
Answer(b) Short, steep, west-flowing rivers reaching the Arabian Sea within a short distance — the Sahyadri crest runs close to the coast, so the Konkan streams are brief and swift, with narrow valleys and small commands, unlike the long east-flowing Godavari, Bhima and Krishna systems of the plateau.