MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 25 of 100

Correct — option (4), which reads (a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii). Every pair here can be settled on its own, so the question is a straight test of whether four protected areas are held with their states. Bandipur at (a) is in Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka, in the Nilgiri foothills where Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala meet; it was among the first reserves brought under Project Tiger and became a national park in 1974, so it takes Karnataka at (iii). Keoladeo at (b) is the former Bharatpur bird sanctuary in Rajasthan, a man-made and man-managed wetland that was one of India's first two Ramsar sites on 1 October 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site; it takes Rajasthan at (i). Indravati at (c) lies in the Bastar region of southern Chhattisgarh, was declared a national park in 1982, is named for the Indravati river and is a tiger reserve; it takes Chhattisgarh at (iv), which the English column prints as 'Chattisgarh' — the Marathi column prints छत्तीसगढ, the Hindi-style form rather than the Marathi छत्तीसगड, so each column is non-standard in its own way. Manas at (d) is in the Himalayan foothills of Assam, in the Chirang and Baksa districts of the Bodoland Territorial Region, on the Manas river that also carries the border with Bhutan; it was declared a World Heritage Site in 1985 and a biosphere reserve in 1989, and it takes Assam at (ii). The completed pairing is (a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii), the row printed at option (4). A useful check on any row here is the Bandipur cell, since Bandipur is the one name in the list that almost every candidate can place, and only one row gives it Karnataka.

• (1)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — This row gives Bandipur to Rajasthan and Manas to Karnataka, so it exchanges a southern park with a north-eastern one and vice versa. Bandipur is in Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka, adjoining Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu and Wayanad in Kerala, and forms part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve; Rajasthan's tiger parks are Ranthambore and Sariska, not Bandipur. Manas is in Assam, on the Manas river along the Bhutan border, and is the only known home of the pygmy hog and the stronghold of the golden langur and the Bengal florican. The row also sends Keoladeo to Assam and Indravati to Karnataka. Testing the single pair a candidate is surest of — Bandipur with Karnataka — removes this row without reading the rest of it.
• (2)(a) - (ii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (iii), (d) - (i) — This row gives Bandipur to Assam, Keoladeo to Chhattisgarh, Indravati to Karnataka and Manas to Rajasthan, so all four pairs fail and each one relocates a park to a different part of the country. Keoladeo is the clearest failure: it is the Bharatpur wetland of eastern Rajasthan, a shallow man-made marsh flooded from the Ajan Bund, famous for wintering waterfowl and once for the Siberian crane, and nothing about it belongs to the Bastar forests of Chhattisgarh. Indravati, conversely, is named for a river of Chhattisgarh and lies in Bastar; it has no Karnataka connection. A row in which no pair survives is usually placed to absorb a candidate who has run out of time and is choosing by the look of the grid.
• (3)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — This row keeps Manas with Assam, which is correct, and then misplaces the other three: Bandipur is sent to Chhattisgarh, Keoladeo to Karnataka and Indravati to Rajasthan. It is the more dangerous of the wrong rows because one true pair at the end can persuade a candidate who checks from the bottom upwards. Bandipur is a Karnataka park of the Nilgiri foothills; Keoladeo is the Bharatpur wetland in Rajasthan; and Indravati, in the Bastar region, is Chhattisgarh's own tiger reserve, declared a national park in 1982. The discipline that defeats a row of this kind is to verify every pair before accepting a row, and to be most careful about the ones printed first, since a setter who leaves the last pair intact has done so to buy the row credibility.

India's protected areas run through four legal categories under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 — national park, wildlife sanctuary, conservation reserve and community reserve — with national parks the most strictly protected, since no grazing or private tenurial rights are allowed inside them. Over this legal grid lie several programme labels that a question can use interchangeably with confusing effect. A tiger reserve is a designation under Project Tiger, launched in 1973 and now administered by the National Tiger Conservation Authority; it has a core, usually a national park, and a buffer. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere designation with core, buffer and transition zones. A Ramsar site is a wetland listed under the Convention on Wetlands of 1971, and a World Heritage Site is a UNESCO listing under the 1972 convention. The four parks in this question illustrate the overlap: Bandipur is a national park and a tiger reserve within the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve; Keoladeo is a national park, a Ramsar site of 1 October 1981 and a World Heritage Site; Indravati is a national park of 1982 and a tiger reserve; and Manas is a national park, a tiger reserve, a biosphere reserve of 1989 and a World Heritage Site of 1985 that was on the danger list from 1992 to 2011.

Protected areas are among the most reliably examined topics in the MPSC general studies paper, because they can be tested as pure location, as a legal category, or as a species association, and the Commission uses all three. This question takes the simplest of those forms — park to state — and its difficulty is entirely in the spread of the list: two of the four parks are famous enough to be placed by almost anyone, and two are not. That is the ordinary construction of a four-by-four match, and it prescribes the method. Lock the pairs you know, strike out every row that contradicts them, and then use elimination on what remains rather than trying to recall the pairs you do not know. Here the Bandipur cell alone leaves one row standing. It is also worth noticing that the columns are printed side by side purely as layout: the printed row that puts Bandipur next to Rajasthan asserts nothing whatever, and reading a pairing off the page is the commonest way to lose a mark in a question of this kind.

• Bandipur National Park is in Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka, was constituted a national park in 1974 and brought under Project Tiger, and forms part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve with Mudumalai, Wayanad and Nagarhole.
• Keoladeo National Park at Bharatpur in Rajasthan is a man-made wetland that was one of India's first two Ramsar sites on 1 October 1981, together with Chilika, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Indravati National Park lies in the Bastar region of southern Chhattisgarh, was declared a national park in 1982, is named for the Indravati river and is one of the state's tiger reserves.
• Manas National Park is in the Chirang and Baksa districts of Assam on the Manas river, which forms part of the India-Bhutan border; it was declared a World Heritage Site in 1985 and a biosphere reserve in 1989, and was on the danger list from 1992 to 2011.
• Manas holds the only known population of the pygmy hog in the world, along with the golden langur, the hispid hare, the Assam roofed turtle and the largest population of the endangered Bengal florican.

• Confusing Manas in Assam with the Manas river's other bank in Bhutan, or with Kaziranga, the other Assam World Heritage Site, which is the rhino park and not the pygmy hog one
• Treating national park, tiger reserve, biosphere reserve, Ramsar site and World Heritage Site as interchangeable labels; several parks carry more than one, and the question may turn on which label it names
• Reading a pairing off the printed layout because the two columns sit side by side, when a matching question asserts no pair until the reader makes it
• Accepting a row on the strength of one correct pair at its end without checking the pairs printed before it

Protected areas appear in MPSC papers as park-to-state matches like this one, as species-to-park items — which park is the last home of the pygmy hog, which is famous for the golden langur — and as legal or institutional questions about the categories of protected area and the authorities that run them. A recurring third form asks which park a named river flows through, so the river association is worth carrying. Prepare one table of the fifty or so parks that recur, carrying state, district or region, river, the special species and any additional designation, and a second table for Maharashtra's own protected areas in more detail, since the Commission tests the home state at a finer grain than the rest of the country.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which national park holds the only known surviving population of the pygmy hog and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the India-Bhutan border?

  • (a)Kaziranga National Park
  • (b)Manas National Park
  • (c)Namdapha National Park
  • (d)Dibru-Saikhowa National Park

  Answer(b) Manas National Park — it lies in the Chirang and Baksa districts of Assam on the Manas river, which also carries the international boundary with Bhutan, was declared a World Heritage Site in 1985 and a biosphere reserve in 1989, and holds the world's only known pygmy hog population along with the golden langur, the hispid hare and the largest population of the Bengal florican. Kaziranga, the other Assam World Heritage Site, is the great one-horned rhinoceros park.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Keoladeo National Park, one of India's first two Ramsar sites, lies in which state and is best known for what?

  • (a)Gujarat, for wild ass
  • (b)Rajasthan, for wintering waterfowl
  • (c)Madhya Pradesh, for hard-ground barasingha
  • (d)Odisha, for olive ridley turtles

  Answer(b) Rajasthan, for wintering waterfowl — Keoladeo is the former Bharatpur bird sanctuary in eastern Rajasthan, a shallow man-made marsh that was listed under the Ramsar Convention on 1 October 1981 along with Chilika and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The wild ass sanctuary is in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, the hard-ground barasingha is Kanha's speciality in Madhya Pradesh, and the olive ridley arribada belongs to Gahirmatha and Rushikulya in Odisha.