MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 28 of 100

Correct — option (2), '(a) - (ii), (b) - (iii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i)'. Shifting cultivation is one agricultural practice with dozens of local names, and the standard table pairs each name with the region where it is used: Masole in the Congo basin and Central Africa, Jhum in North-East India, Ray in Vietnam, and Roca in Brazil. That gives statement (a) item (ii), statement (b) item (iii), statement (c) item (iv) and statement (d) item (i), which is option (2). The whole question can be settled from a single pair. Jhum is the one name in the list that every candidate preparing Indian geography already knows, and it belongs to North-East India — statement (b). Test that against the four options: option (1) gives statement (b) the name Roca, option (3) gives it Ray, option (4) gives it Masole. All three are eliminated at once, and only option (2) survives without any need to know what Masole, Ray or Roca mean. That is the general method for a four-by-four match: find the pair you are certain of, strike out every option that contradicts it, and only then spend time on the pairs you are unsure about. Two further anchors are available if the first is not enough. Roca is a Portuguese word and Brazil is the Portuguese-speaking country in the list, which is a reliable linguistic hook; Ray is the Vietnamese term, and Vietnam is the only Southeast Asian entry. Note also a flaw in the printed question worth registering: List-I is headed '(Country)', but 'Congo and Central Africa' is a region spanning several countries and 'North-East India' is part of one. The heading is loose; the pairings themselves are the standard ones.

• (1)(a) - (ii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — The most dangerous of the three, because it gets two pairings right — Masole for Central Africa and Ray for Vietnam — and then swaps the remaining two, giving Roca to North-East India and Jhum to Brazil. A candidate who checks only the unfamiliar names and assumes the familiar one must be safe will accept it. Jhum is an Assamese and North-East Indian term with no connection to South America whatever, and testing the pair you are surest of is precisely what defeats this option.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — Every pairing is wrong. It moves Jhum to the Congo basin, Ray to North-East India, Roca to Vietnam and Masole to Brazil — a complete rotation of the correct assignment. Because nothing in it is right, it is also the easiest to reject: any one anchor kills it. It is included to catch a candidate who has memorised that four particular names go with four particular regions but has not fixed which goes with which, and who is therefore matching on nothing more than the printed order of List-II.
• (4)(a) - (iv), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (i) — Gets only Brazil-Roca right and misassigns the other three, putting Ray in Central Africa, Masole in North-East India and Jhum in Vietnam. A candidate who anchors on the Portuguese origin of 'Roca' and stops there will find this option satisfying, which is exactly the trap: one confirmed pair narrows the field but does not close it, and here two options — this one and the correct one — both assign Roca to Brazil. The second anchor, Jhum for North-East India, is what separates them.

Shifting cultivation, also called slash-and-burn or swidden agriculture, is the oldest surviving form of settled crop growing. A patch of forest is cleared in the dry season, the felled vegetation is left to dry and then burnt, and the ash supplies a flush of potash and phosphate to soils that are otherwise poor. Seeds are dibbled into the ash without ploughing, and the plot is cropped for two or three years until yields fall as nutrients are taken up and weeds invade. The plot is then abandoned and a new one cleared, while the old one lies fallow long enough for secondary forest and soil fertility to return. The system is self-sustaining only if the fallow is long — on the order of fifteen to twenty years — and if population density is low enough to allow it. Where population presses on land, the cycle shortens, the forest never recovers, the ash input shrinks and the practice turns into a driver of deforestation and soil erosion. That single variable, the length of the fallow, explains both the traditional defence of shifting cultivation as an adaptation to poor tropical soils and the modern criticism of it, and an exam answer that names the fallow cycle is answering the real question.

The practice is concentrated in the humid tropics, where heavy rainfall leaches nutrients out of the soil and the standing forest holds most of the ecosystem's nutrient stock — which is why burning the biomass, rather than ploughing the soil, is the way to release fertility. Each region has its own term, and examiners exploit this because the names are numerous, unfamiliar and easy to set against one another: Jhum in North-East India, Podu in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha, Bewar, Dahiya and Penda in Madhya Pradesh, Kumari in the Western Ghats, Dipa in Bastar, Masole in the Congo basin, Chitemene in Zambia, Tavy in Madagascar, Roca in Brazil, Conuco in Venezuela, Milpa in Mexico and Central America, Ray in Vietnam, Caingin in the Philippines, Chena in Sri Lanka, Ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia, and Taungya in Myanmar. In North-East India, jhum remains a live policy question — it interacts with community land tenure, with attempts to promote settled terrace and horticultural farming, and with forest conservation law — so the topic can be asked as geography, as environment or as tribal policy.

• Local names of shifting cultivation by region: Jhum in North-East India, Masole in the Congo basin and Central Africa, Ray in Vietnam, Roca in Brazil, Milpa in Mexico and Central America, Conuco in Venezuela, Ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia, Chena in Sri Lanka, Caingin in the Philippines, Taungya in Myanmar, Tavy in Madagascar and Chitemene in Zambia.
• Indian regional names other than jhum: Podu in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha; Bewar, Dahiya and Penda in Madhya Pradesh; Kumari in the Western Ghats belt; Dipa in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. The same practice therefore appears under half a dozen names within India alone.
• The method: vegetation is cut in the dry season and burnt, and the ash supplies nutrients directly to soils that are naturally poor because heavy tropical rainfall leaches them. Seeds are dibbled into the ash without ploughing, and the plot is cropped for two or three seasons before being abandoned.
• Sustainability turns entirely on the fallow period. A cycle long enough for secondary forest to regrow — traditionally of the order of fifteen to twenty years — restores fertility; a shortened cycle under population pressure prevents regrowth and converts the practice into a cause of deforestation, soil erosion and declining yields.
• Shifting cultivation is a subsistence system, not a commercial one: output feeds the cultivating household, tools are simple, no draught power or irrigation is used, and yields per hectare are low while yields per unit of labour on freshly burnt land can be relatively high.

• Attacking a four-by-four match pair by pair instead of anchoring on the one pair you are certain of. Here Jhum for North-East India eliminates three of the four options by itself, and no knowledge of Masole, Ray or Roca is needed at all.
• Assuming an option that contains two visibly correct pairings must be the answer. Option (1) has Masole and Ray right and still fails, because a matching option is wrong the moment any single pairing in it is wrong — partial correctness earns nothing.
• Reading a list heading too literally. List-I here is headed '(Country)' although it contains a multi-country region and a part of one country; the heading is loose, and a candidate should match on the content of the entries rather than on the label above them.

Shifting cultivation is asked in three shapes. The first is the name-to-region match used here, which is pure recall and is best held as a single memorised list rather than reasoned out. The second is the process question — why is the vegetation burnt rather than ploughed in, why is the plot abandoned after two or three years, why has the practice become environmentally damaging — where the expected answer turns on nutrient stocks in tropical biomass and on the shortening of the fallow cycle. The third is the policy question on jhum in North-East India, which reaches the paper through environment and tribal-affairs topics rather than through geography. Because the first shape is recall, build the table once — region, name, and for India the state — and revise it whole; because the second and third are reasoning, hold one sentence on the fallow cycle that can be deployed in either.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'Milpa' is the local name given to the practice of shifting cultivation in which part of the world ?

  • (a)Mexico and Central America
  • (b)Sri Lanka
  • (c)Indonesia and Malaysia
  • (d)Venezuela

  Answer(a) Mexico and Central America — Milpa is the Mesoamerican term for the practice, classically the maize, bean and squash plot cleared and burnt from forest. Sri Lanka's term is Chena, Indonesia and Malaysia use Ladang, and Venezuela's is Conuco, so all four options name real shifting-cultivation regions and only the pairing is at issue.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which of the following Indian states is shifting cultivation known locally as 'Podu' ?

  • (a)Nagaland and Mizoram
  • (b)Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha
  • (c)Kerala and Karnataka
  • (d)Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh

  Answer(b) Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha — Podu is the eastern-Deccan term for the practice. Jhum belongs to the North-Eastern states, Kumari to the Western Ghats belt, and Bewar, Dahiya, Penda and Dipa to Madhya Pradesh and the Bastar region, so the same practice carries at least half a dozen names within India.