MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 11 of 100

Correct — option (1). Three statements are printed, and the first of them carries a negation that nothing in the printing marks out: statement (a) says that soil erosion is not a serious problem of agriculture. In Maharashtra it plainly is. Most of the state is a basalt plateau carrying shallow soils, the monsoon delivers its rain in heavy bursts on slopes that fall steeply away from the Sahyadri crest, and the combination strips soil from the uplands as sheet and rill wash and cuts gullies in the valley sides; conserving soil is a standing objective of the state's watershed programmes, from contour and nala bunding to the village-level work at Ralegan Siddhi and Hiware Bazar. Statement (a) is therefore false, and every option row that contains it falls with it. Statement (b) is correct and states the ordinary causes: river flooding scours the banks and carries away the alluvium of the flood plain, the felling of forest removes the canopy that breaks the force of the rain and the root network that binds the soil, and uncontrolled grazing crops the grass cover to the ground and compacts the surface with hooves, so that the next storm runs off instead of soaking in. Statement (c) is also correct: where irrigation water is applied in excess and the land is not drained, the water table rises towards the surface, water is drawn up by capillary action, and evaporation leaves behind the salts it carried, so that the surface turns saline and eventually goes out of cultivation. That is a familiar condition in the canal commands of the state, and Maharashtra has in addition its own naturally saline tract in the Purna valley of Vidarbha. With statements (b) and (c) sound and statement (a) false, option (1) is the answer.

• (2)Statements (a) and (b) are correct — This row accepts statement (a), and statement (a) is the false one. It is accepted because of how it is written: the negative word sits in the middle of an otherwise ordinary sentence, it is printed in the same roman type as everything around it, and a candidate scanning quickly registers the words soil erosion and problem of agriculture and marks the statement as familiar. That is the single commonest way marks are lost on statement questions, and the defence is mechanical rather than intellectual — underline every not, never, no and except as you read, and re-read any statement containing one before judging it. The other half of this row, statement (b), is perfectly sound, which is what makes the row plausible; a row that pairs one true statement with one false one is harder to reject than a row that is wholly wrong.
• (3)Statements (a), (b) and (c) are correct — This row accepts all three statements, and it therefore accepts both statement (a), which says that soil erosion is not a serious problem, and statement (b), which explains how soil erosion happens in the state. The two cannot both be held: if erosion is caused by river flooding, deforestation and uncontrolled grazing on the scale statement (b) describes, it is not a trivial problem. Noticing that two statements in a set contradict each other is one of the most useful moves available in this format, because it tells you at once that the all-of-them row is unavailable and that the answer lies in choosing between the pair. Here the contradiction is resolved by the evidence: erosion is a serious problem in Maharashtra, so statement (a) is the one to discard.
• (4)Statements (a), (b) and (c) are not correct — This row rejects all three statements, which requires statements (b) and (c) to be false as well, and neither is. The causes named in statement (b) — flooding, forest cutting and uncontrolled grazing — are the standard causes of soil erosion in any hill and plateau country and are the ones the state's soil conservation measures are addressed to. The salinity described in statement (c) is a real and well-documented consequence of irrigating without adequate drainage, and it is the reason canal projects are expected to provide for drainage as well as for supply. A row that discards everything is worth suspecting on its own account: it is offered in almost every statement question because the format requires an all-negative row, and its presence carries no information about whether it is the answer.

The soils of Maharashtra are dominated by the black soil, the regur, weathered from the Deccan trap basalt that underlies most of the state. It is clayey and rich in iron, lime, magnesium and calcium, holds moisture well and cracks deeply when dry — the cracks that give it the name of self-ploughing soil — but it is poor in nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter, and it is the classic cotton soil of the country. Where the basalt is exposed on slopes the soil cover is thin and coarse, and it is these shallow upland soils that erosion removes first. Two forms of degradation matter most in the state. The first is erosion, driven by the intensity of monsoon rainfall on steep and often bare slopes and accelerated by the removal of forest and by grazing pressure; its treatment is the whole apparatus of soil and water conservation, contour bunding, contour trenching, terracing, nala bunding, check dams and afforestation, organised at the scale of the watershed. The second is salinity and waterlogging, which is the characteristic disease of irrigated land: excess water without drainage raises the water table, capillary rise brings dissolved salts to the surface, and evaporation concentrates them there. Its treatment is drainage, controlled water application, the use of gypsum on alkali soils and the choice of salt-tolerant crops. The two problems are opposite in origin — one from too little water retention, the other from too much water applied — but both end in land going out of production.

Agriculture and soils are examined heavily in MPSC papers because the syllabus is state-focused and because the subject connects to irrigation, drought, watershed development and rural livelihoods, all of which are separately examinable. What makes this particular item a test of technique rather than of knowledge is the negation buried in statement (a). This paper prints five stems whose negation is set in bold in both language columns, but a negation inside a statement, as here, gets no such help, and neither does option (4), which turns on the words are not correct. The reader has to supply the caution. The reliable procedure is to mark every negative word as you read, to judge each statement on its own before looking at any row, and to check whether two statements in the set contradict each other, since a contradiction removes at least one row immediately. It is also worth registering that only three statements are printed here; this paper does that fourteen times, and a candidate who half-remembers a fourth will waste time looking for a row to fit it.

• Soil erosion is a serious problem for agriculture in Maharashtra, where shallow soils on a basalt plateau and intense monsoon rainfall on steep slopes produce sheet, rill and gully erosion.
• Its main causes are the scouring of banks and flood plains by rivers in flood, the felling of forest which removes both canopy protection and root binding, and uncontrolled grazing which strips and compacts the surface.
• Over-irrigation without drainage raises the water table; capillary rise carries dissolved salts to the surface and evaporation concentrates them there, so that irrigated land turns saline and can go out of cultivation.
• The remedies for erosion are contour bunding, contour trenching, terracing, nala bunding, check dams and afforestation, organised at the scale of the watershed; those for salinity are drainage, controlled application of water, gypsum on alkali soils and salt-tolerant crops.
• Most of Maharashtra carries black regur soil weathered from Deccan trap basalt — clayey, moisture-retentive and rich in iron, lime and calcium, but poor in nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter.

• Missing a negation printed inside a statement rather than in the stem, which is how statement (a) here is accepted by candidates who know perfectly well that erosion is a serious problem
• Failing to notice that two statements in the same set contradict each other, which by itself removes the row that accepts them both
• Choosing the row that rejects everything merely because the question feels difficult, when such a row is printed in every statement question regardless of the facts
• Confusing the causes of salinity with the causes of erosion, when one follows from applying too much water and the other from failing to retain any

Soil and agriculture questions in MPSC papers take three forms: the property question, which asks what a named soil contains or lacks; the problem question, which asks about erosion, salinity or waterlogging and their causes and cures; and the statement item used here, which mixes a false sentence into a set of true ones. The Commission's favourite falsehood in this block is a denial — a statement that a well-known problem does not exist or does not matter — because it can be inserted without altering any fact and catches candidates who read for topic rather than for sense. Variants attach the same content to schemes, asking which programme addresses watershed development or what a named conservation measure does. A single page holding the state's soil types, the two forms of degradation with their causes, and the standard conservation measures answers all of them.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Salinity in irrigated land develops chiefly because

  • (a)the water table falls and the subsoil dries out
  • (b)excess irrigation without drainage raises the water table and capillary rise brings salts to the surface
  • (c)chemical fertilisers replace organic manure in the soil
  • (d)the land is left fallow for more than one season

  Answer(b) Excess irrigation without drainage raises the water table and capillary rise brings salts to the surface — evaporation then concentrates them there, and the surface eventually goes out of cultivation. The cure follows from the cause: provide drainage, control the quantity of water applied, use gypsum on alkali soils and grow salt-tolerant crops where the damage is already done.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is a soil conservation measure suited to sloping agricultural land ?

  • (a)Contour bunding
  • (b)Deep ploughing along the slope
  • (c)Flood irrigation of the whole field
  • (d)Removing the grass cover before the monsoon

  Answer(a) Contour bunding — bunds built along the contour break the length of the slope, slow the runoff and let water soak in instead of carrying soil away, and they are the basis of watershed treatment on plateau land. Ploughing along the slope, flooding the field and stripping the grass cover all increase runoff and erosion, which is why each of them appears among the causes of soil loss rather than among its remedies.