MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 17 of 100

Correct — option (2), Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Agra. The Golden Quadrilateral is the 5,846 kilometre highway ring that joins the four metropolitan corners of India, launched in January 1999 as the first phase of the National Highways Development Project and declared complete in January 2012. Its four legs are Delhi to Kolkata, Kolkata to Chennai, Chennai to Mumbai and Mumbai to Delhi, and the cities in this choice can each be placed on one of them. Kolkata and Chennai are two of the four corners, so they are on the ring by definition. Agra lies on the Delhi to Kolkata leg, the 1,453 kilometre stretch that also passes Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi and Asansol. Bengaluru lies on the Chennai to Mumbai leg, the 1,290 kilometre stretch that runs by Krishnagiri and Vellore, through Bengaluru and Chitradurga, then Belagavi, Kolhapur and Pune. So all four names in this choice sit on the quadrilateral, and no other choice can say the same. The point the question is really testing is the difference between the Golden Quadrilateral and the corridors that were built beside it. Phase II of the same programme built the North-South corridor from Srinagar to Kanyakumari and the East-West corridor from Silchar to Porbandar, and those two run through a different set of large cities. A candidate who has stored one mental image of a national highway network, without separating the ring from the two crossing corridors, will find that every choice here contains at least one name they associate with a major highway, and will have nothing left to decide with. The correct image is geometric: a closed loop touching Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, with a vertical corridor and a horizontal corridor crossing through the middle of the country and passing through cities such as Hyderabad, Nagpur, Ambala and Jalandhar that the loop itself never reaches.

• (1)Jalandhar, Ambala, Delhi, Jaipur — Two of these four are on the ring and two are not. Delhi is one of the four corners, and Jaipur lies on the Delhi to Mumbai leg along with Kishangarh, Chittaurgarh, Bhilwara, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Ankleshwar. But Jalandhar and Ambala lie north-west of Delhi on the road towards Amritsar, which belongs to the North-South corridor and not to the quadrilateral; the ring has no leg running north of Delhi at all, because Delhi is its northern corner. The choice is built to catch a candidate who thinks of the Golden Quadrilateral as a general label for the busiest national highways rather than as a specific closed loop with four named vertices.
• (3)Allahabad, Agra, Lucknow, Gorakhpur — Allahabad, now Prayagraj, and Agra are both on the Delhi to Kolkata leg, so this choice starts convincingly. Lucknow and Gorakhpur are not. Both lie north of the alignment that runs Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi and on into Bihar and Bengal, and they are served by other national highways rather than by the quadrilateral. A candidate scanning the option set quickly will see two Uttar Pradesh cities they know to be on major highways and accept the whole set. The defence is to test every single name against a mental map of the four legs, because the examiner has deliberately built each wrong choice out of a mixture of cities that are on the ring and cities that are not.
• (4)Vishakhapatanam, Vijaywada, Hydrabad, Belgaum — This is the sharpest distractor in the set, because three of its four cities really are on the Golden Quadrilateral and only one is not. Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada both lie on the Kolkata to Chennai leg, alongside Bhubaneswar, Baleshwar, Rajahmundry and Nellore, and Belagavi, printed here as Belgaum, lies on the Chennai to Mumbai leg between Chitradurga and Kolhapur. Hyderabad does not: it sits inland on the North-South corridor, well away from the coastal alignment that carries the quadrilateral between Kolkata and Chennai. One wrong name is enough to defeat the whole choice, which is exactly why an option of this construction has to be read to the end. The paper prints the first and third names as Vishakhapatanam and Hydrabad; the usual spellings are Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad.

The National Highways Development Project, launched in 1998 and 1999, was the largest road programme India had attempted. Phase I was the Golden Quadrilateral, a four-lane and in places six-lane ring of 5,846 kilometres joining Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, begun in January 1999 and completed in January 2012. Phase II built the two corridors that cross the country and cross each other: the North-South corridor from Srinagar to Kanyakumari with a spur to Kochi, and the East-West corridor from Silchar to Porbandar, together about 7,300 kilometres. Later phases added four-laning of other national highways, expressways, port connectivity and ring roads. The executing agency is the National Highways Authority of India, constituted under an Act of 1988 and made operational in 1995, and much of the construction was financed through a cess on petrol and diesel and delivered on build-operate-transfer contracts. The programme's economic logic was that national highways carry a very large share of India's road freight on a very small share of its road length, so upgrading the trunk network relieves the whole system.

Transport infrastructure is a standing part of the Indian geography and economy syllabus, and MPSC prefers to test it through named places rather than through policy, because a place either lies on a route or it does not. The commission's method here is to build every wrong choice from a mixture of cities that are on the route and cities that are not, so that recognition of a single name proves nothing. This is the same technique it uses for river-and-tributary questions, for questions about which states a river or a highway passes through, and for national park and sanctuary questions. The countermeasure is always the same: carry the route as a mental map with its intermediate points in order, and check every name in the choice against it. For the Golden Quadrilateral, four legs with half a dozen intermediate cities each is a small enough list to memorise outright, and it also secures the related questions about the North-South and East-West corridors, since knowing which cities are on the ring tells you which of the famous ones are not.

• The Golden Quadrilateral is 5,846 kilometres long, connects Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, was launched on 6 January 1999 as Phase I of the National Highways Development Project, and was completed in January 2012.
• The Delhi to Kolkata leg of 1,453 kilometres passes through Agra, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi and Asansol; the Kolkata to Chennai leg of 1,684 kilometres passes through Bhubaneswar, Baleshwar, Visakhapatnam, Rajahmundry, Vijayawada and Nellore.
• The Chennai to Mumbai leg of 1,290 kilometres passes through Krishnagiri, Vellore, Bengaluru, Chitradurga, Belagavi, Kolhapur and Pune; the Mumbai to Delhi leg of 1,419 kilometres passes through Ankleshwar, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Chittaurgarh, Bhilwara, Kishangarh and Jaipur.
• Hyderabad, Jalandhar, Ambala, Lucknow and Gorakhpur are not on the Golden Quadrilateral; Hyderabad lies on the North-South corridor built under Phase II, which runs from Srinagar to Kanyakumari.
• The programme is executed by the National Highways Authority of India, constituted under an Act of 1988 and operational from 1995; Phase II also built the East-West corridor from Silchar to Porbandar.

• Treating the Golden Quadrilateral as a general name for India's busiest highways rather than as a specific closed loop with four named corner cities
• Placing Hyderabad on the ring; it lies inland on the North-South corridor, while the Kolkata to Chennai leg keeps to the coastal alignment through Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada
• Accepting a choice after recognising two familiar names, when every wrong option here mixes cities that are on the route with cities that are not
• Confusing cities on the North-South corridor, such as Ambala and Jalandhar north of Delhi, with cities on the quadrilateral, which has no leg running north of Delhi

MPSC asks about the Golden Quadrilateral in three shapes: which cities it connects, what its total length is, and how it differs from the North-South and East-West corridors. The commission likes route questions generally, and the same technique of mixing on-route and off-route names appears in its questions on rivers and their tributaries, on the states a river passes through, and on the alignment of railway zones. The way to make all of them routine is to hold each route as an ordered list of places rather than as a pair of endpoints. For this question that means four short lists, one per leg, and it also equips a candidate for the reverse question that asks which listed city is not on the quadrilateral.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following cities does not lie on the Golden Quadrilateral highway network ?

  • (a)Vijayawada
  • (b)Belagavi
  • (c)Hyderabad
  • (d)Prayagraj

  Answer(c) Hyderabad — it lies inland on the North-South corridor built under the second phase of the National Highways Development Project, whereas the Kolkata to Chennai leg of the quadrilateral keeps to the coastal alignment through Visakhapatnam, Rajahmundry, Vijayawada and Nellore. Belagavi is on the Chennai to Mumbai leg and Prayagraj on the Delhi to Kolkata leg.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The North-South corridor built under the second phase of the National Highways Development Project runs between which two places ?

  • (a)Srinagar and Kanyakumari
  • (b)Silchar and Porbandar
  • (c)Delhi and Chennai
  • (d)Amritsar and Kolkata

  Answer(a) Srinagar and Kanyakumari — with a spur to Kochi, this is the vertical corridor of Phase II. Silchar to Porbandar is the East-West corridor of the same phase, and the two together run to roughly 7,300 kilometres, crossing near the middle of the country and passing through cities such as Nagpur and Hyderabad that the Golden Quadrilateral itself does not touch.