MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 29 of 100

Correct — option (3), which reads (a) - (iii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii). Three of the four waterfalls in the second column are in Karnataka and one is in Madhya Pradesh, so the first move is to separate them. Kapildhara at (iv) is the odd one out: it is the fall by which the Narmada makes its first descent from its source at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh, and it belongs to no southern river, so the Narmada at (b) takes it. That single pairing removes two rows at once. Of the three Karnataka falls, the Sharavati at (a) — printed here as 'Sharawati' — forms Jog Falls at (iii) in Shivamogga district, a drop of about 253 metres that splits into four cascades named Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket. The Kaveri at (c) forms Shivanasamudra Falls at (i), printed here as 'Shibsamudram', in Mandya district: a vertical drop of about 91 metres in two branches, Gagana Chukki and Bhara Chukki, and the site of the hydroelectric power station established in 1902 to supply the Kolar Gold Fields, designed by K. Seshadri Iyer and M. Visvesvaraya. The Ghataprabha at (d), a tributary of the Krishna, forms Gokak Falls at (ii) in Belagavi district. That completes (a) - (iii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii), the row printed at option (3). The stem itself is printed with broken grammar — 'Match the pairs of Indian rivers and waterfalls on it :' — and two of the names are misspelt, which changes nothing about the pairing.

• (1)(a) - (ii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — This row gives the Narmada the Shivanasamudra falls and the Kaveri the Kapildhara falls, exchanging a Madhya Pradesh fall with a Karnataka one. Kapildhara is on the Narmada, close to its source at Amarkantak, and is the river's first drop; Shivanasamudra is on the Kaveri in Mandya district of Karnataka, a two-branched fall of about 91 metres whose 1902 power station was the one built to light the Kolar Gold Fields. Neither river runs anywhere near the other's fall — the Narmada flows west across central India to the Arabian Sea and the Kaveri east across the Deccan to the Bay of Bengal. This row also puts Jog on the Ghataprabha and Gokak on the Sharavati, so no pair in it survives.
• (2)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — This row pairs the four items straight down the printed order — Sharavati with Shivanasamudra, Narmada with Gokak, Kaveri with Jog and Ghataprabha with Kapildhara — which is what a candidate produces when they read the two side-by-side lists as though the printing had already matched them. Every pair is wrong. The two that are most obviously so are the Narmada with Gokak, a fall on the Ghataprabha in Belagavi district of Karnataka, and the Ghataprabha with Kapildhara, which is on the Narmada near Amarkantak. In a matching question the columns sit side by side because the reader has to match them; the adjacency is typesetting and asserts nothing at all.
• (4)(a) - (iv), (b) - (i), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iii) — This row gives the Sharavati the Kapildhara falls and the Narmada the Shivanasamudra falls, then puts Gokak on the Kaveri and Jog on the Ghataprabha. It is the row that survives longest for a candidate who knows only that three of the four falls are in Karnataka, because it keeps all three Karnataka names on southern rivers — but it distributes them wrongly, and it puts the one Madhya Pradesh fall on a Karnataka river. Jog is the fall that settles this: it is the great fall of the Sharavati in Shivamogga district, splitting into the four cascades called Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket, and any row that puts it on another river can be struck out at once.

A waterfall forms where a river crosses a sharp break in the gradient of its bed — the edge of a plateau, a fault scarp, a band of hard rock over soft, or a hanging valley. Peninsular India supplies all of these, which is why its waterfalls cluster where the rivers leave the Deccan plateau at the Western Ghats and where they cross the plateau's own scarps. The Sharavati falls 253 metres at Jog in Shivamogga district, splitting into the Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket cascades. The Kaveri falls about 91 metres at Shivanasamudra in Mandya district, in two branches called Gagana Chukki and Bhara Chukki, and the site carries a hydroelectric station established in 1902 and designed by K. Seshadri Iyer and M. Visvesvaraya to supply the Kolar Gold Fields — the first of its kind in Asia, and the origin of the power supply to Bengaluru and Mysuru. The Ghataprabha, a Krishna tributary, falls at Gokak in Belagavi district. In central India the Narmada, rising at Amarkantak, makes its first descent at Kapildhara and later cuts the Dhuandhar fall through the marble rocks near Jabalpur.

MPSC uses waterfalls as a compact way of testing river geography, because a fall belongs to exactly one river and one place, and a candidate either holds the association or does not. This particular question also tests something more general: what to do when most of the items in a list come from the same region. Three of these four falls are in Karnataka, so the Karnataka names cannot be separated by region and have to be held individually, while the one central Indian fall is the anchor that decides two rows immediately. That is the standard structure of a hard matching item — one easy cell and three that must be known — and the corresponding method is to spend the easy cell first and then work through what remains. It is also worth noticing what the paper's misspellings do and do not affect. 'Sharawati' and 'Shibsamudram' are not the standard forms, but each is recognisable, and a candidate who hesitates over a spelling is spending time on the one thing in the question that carries no marks.

• Jog Falls is formed by the Sharavati river in Shivamogga district of Karnataka, drops about 253 metres and splits into four cascades named Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket.
• Waterfall height rankings for India move with the measurement convention and the source — Kunchikal in Karnataka, Nohkalikai in Meghalaya and Dudhsagar in Goa are all placed above Jog by one list or another — so quote the drop, which is measured, rather than a rank, which is argued.
• Shivanasamudra Falls is formed by the Kaveri in Mandya district of Karnataka, with a vertical drop of about 91 metres in two branches, Gagana Chukki and Bhara Chukki, the latter falling about 69 metres.
• The hydroelectric power station at Shivanasamudra was established in 1902, designed by K. Seshadri Iyer and M. Visvesvaraya to supply the Kolar Gold Fields, and its power later served Bengaluru and Mysuru.
• Gokak Falls is on the Ghataprabha, a tributary of the Krishna, in Belagavi district of Karnataka; Kapildhara is the Narmada's first descent below its source at the Narmada Kund at Amarkantak in Anuppur district of Madhya Pradesh, at about 1,048 metres.

• Reading pairs off the printed layout because the two columns sit side by side; one of the wrong rows in this question is exactly the straight-down reading of the printed order
• Quoting a rank for an Indian waterfall. Jog's 253-metre drop is measured and safe; its position in any national ordering is not, because different lists count a single leap, a cascade and a seasonal fall differently
• Attaching Kapildhara to a southern river because three of the four falls in the list are in Karnataka; it is on the Narmada near Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh
• Being delayed by a misspelt name — the English column prints 'Sharawati' and 'Shibsamudram' — when the spelling carries no marks and the pairing is unaffected

Waterfalls reach MPSC papers as river-to-fall matches like this one, as single-line items asking which river a named fall is on or which state it is in, and occasionally through the hydroelectric connection, since several of the older power stations sit at falls. The Commission's preferred set is small and stable — a dozen falls that appear again and again — so the whole topic can be carried on one page listing the fall, the river, the state and district, the approximate height and any distinguishing fact such as the number of cascades or the year of a power station. Learn it alongside the peninsular river systems, because the same page then answers the far commoner question of which tributary belongs to which river.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Shivanasamudra Falls, the site of a hydroelectric power station established in 1902 to supply the Kolar Gold Fields, lies on which river?

  • (a)the Sharavati
  • (b)the Ghataprabha
  • (c)the Kaveri
  • (d)the Tungabhadra

  Answer(c) the Kaveri — Shivanasamudra Falls is in Mandya district of Karnataka, a vertical drop of about 91 metres in two branches, Gagana Chukki and Bhara Chukki, and the power station there was designed by K. Seshadri Iyer and M. Visvesvaraya. The Sharavati forms Jog Falls in Shivamogga district and the Ghataprabha forms Gokak Falls in Belagavi district, both also in Karnataka.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kapildhara Falls, the first descent of a major river from near its source at Amarkantak, lies on which river?

  • (a)the Tapi
  • (b)the Narmada
  • (c)the Son
  • (d)the Mahanadi

  Answer(b) the Narmada — the river rises at the Narmada Kund at Amarkantak on the Amarkantak plateau in Anuppur district of Madhya Pradesh, at about 1,048 metres, and falls over a cliff at Kapildhara soon after. Further downstream, near Jabalpur, the same river cuts the Dhuandhar fall as it enters the narrow channel through the Marble Rocks. The Son also rises at Amarkantak but flows east to join the Ganga.