MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 3 of 100

Correct — option (2). The two lists are printed side by side, but that is only how the page is set; the left column carries countries labelled (a) to (d) and the right column carries local names for shifting cultivation labelled (i) to (iv), and nothing about the printing tells you which belongs to which. The pairing has to be built from what each name means. Jhum, item (iv), is the term used in the north-eastern hill states of India — in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam — for the practice of clearing and burning a forest patch, cropping it for a few years and then leaving it fallow, so (iv) belongs to India at (a). Milpa, item (iii), is the maize field of Mexico and Central America, the plot cut and burnt out of the forest in which maize, beans and squash are grown together, so (iii) belongs to Central America at (b). Roca, item (ii), is the Brazilian term for the same practice, the clearing made in the tropical forest by cutting and firing, so (ii) belongs to Brazil at (c). Ladang, item (i), is the Malay and Indonesian word for the dry upland field made by clearing forest, used across Indonesia and Malaysia, so (i) belongs to Indonesia at (d). That gives (a) with (iv), (b) with (iii), (c) with (ii) and (d) with (i), which is the row printed at option (2). Notice that the correct row happens to run the second list backwards; that is a coincidence of this question rather than a rule, and the pairing was settled name by name before the shape of the row was looked at.

• (1)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — This row takes the two printed lists straight down in order — India with (i), Central America with (ii), Brazil with (iii), Indonesia with (iv) — and every one of its four pairs is wrong. That is exactly what the setter intends. Because the columns stand next to each other on the page, the eye reads across the rows and the mind quietly accepts the adjacency as a pairing, so a row that preserves the printed order feels natural. It gives Ladang, an Indonesian and Malay word, to India; Roca, a Brazilian term, to Central America; Milpa, the maize field of Mexico and Central America, to Brazil; and Jhum, which is unmistakably north-east Indian, to Indonesia. The last of those is the one to catch first, because a candidate who has read anything about shifting cultivation in India knows where Jhum belongs, and one secure pair is enough to strike this row out.
• (3)(a) - (i), (b) - (iv), (c) - (iii), (d) - (ii) — This row also gives Ladang to India and Milpa to Brazil, and it adds two further errors of its own by giving Jhum to Central America and Roca to Indonesia. It is the least plausible of the four and survives only for a candidate who knows none of the four terms and is choosing on the appearance of the row. It is worth noticing how such a row can be eliminated without knowing all four names: Jhum is the single term in this list that an Indian candidate is certain to recognise, and any row that does not attach it to India is dead. Working from the one pair you are sure of, and using it to strike out rows before attempting the pairs you are unsure of, is the standard economy of a matching question and usually removes two or three options in a few seconds.
• (4)(a) - (iv), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (i) — This is the dangerous row, because it gets the two easy pairs right and swaps the two harder ones. It correctly gives Jhum to India and Ladang to Indonesia, so a candidate who checks only the pairs he is confident about will find nothing wrong with it and will stop checking. The failure is in the middle: it gives Roca to Central America and Milpa to Brazil, when Milpa is the Central American term — the maize, bean and squash plot of Mexico, Guatemala and their neighbours, a word from Nahuatl — and Roca is the Brazilian one. The lesson this option teaches is that a matching row must be verified in full, because a setter who wants to defeat partial knowledge will leave the well-known pairs undisturbed and reverse only the two that fewer candidates can separate.

Shifting cultivation is the oldest surviving form of farming in the humid tropics and it works on a single principle: the fertility of a tropical forest soil is held not in the soil but in the vegetation standing on it. A patch of forest is cut in the dry season and burnt, the ash supplying a flush of potash and phosphate; seed is dibbled in without ploughing; and the plot yields well for two or three years, after which weeds, pests and falling fertility make it not worth cropping and it is abandoned to regrow while the cultivator moves on. Where the fallow is long — fifteen or twenty years — the forest recovers and the system is stable. Where population pressure shortens the cycle to four or five years, the forest does not recover, the soil is exposed to erosion on hill slopes, and the system turns destructive, which is the form in which it appears in Indian policy debate. The same practice carries a different name in almost every region that follows it: Jhum in north-eastern India, with Podu in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, Bewar and Dahiya in Madhya Pradesh and Kumri in the Western Ghats as Indian regional variants; Ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia; Chena in Sri Lanka; Taungya in Myanmar; Ray in Vietnam; Caingin in the Philippines; Milpa in Mexico and Central America; Roca in Brazil; Conuco in Venezuela; and Masole in the Congo basin.

Local names for shifting cultivation are a favourite of every state commission because they compress a whole chapter into a one-to-one list that can be tested in a single matching item, and because a candidate either has the list or does not. MPSC prints them as a two-column match with the columns side by side, and the layout itself is part of the difficulty: adjacency on the page suggests a pairing that the question has not asserted, and the first option offered is usually the straight-through row that the layout invites. The way through is fixed. Cover the option rows, pair the lists yourself from what you know, then look for your own pairing among the four rows; if you cannot complete the pairing, use the one or two pairs you are certain of to eliminate rows rather than to confirm them. The second habit this question rewards is checking a row all the way to the end, because option (4) here is built to reward a candidate who verifies two pairs and stops. Agricultural geography of this kind also connects to the Maharashtra syllabus through the state's own dryland and hill farming, so the topic is rarely absent for long.

• Jhum is the north-eastern Indian name for shifting cultivation, practised in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, where a forest patch is cleared, burnt, cropped for a few years and then left fallow.
• Milpa is the Central American and Mexican term, a forest plot cut and burnt in which maize, beans and squash are grown together; the word comes from Nahuatl and the crop combination is the classic milpa polyculture.
• Roca is the Brazilian name for shifting cultivation in the tropical forest, and Ladang is the Malay and Indonesian term for the dry upland field cleared from forest in the same way.
• Other regional names worth holding together are Chena in Sri Lanka, Taungya in Myanmar, Ray in Vietnam, Caingin in the Philippines, Conuco in Venezuela and Masole in the Congo basin.
• Within India the practice carries further regional names — Podu in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, Bewar and Dahiya in Madhya Pradesh, and Kumri in the Western Ghats — all describing the same slash-and-burn cycle.

• Reading the two side-by-side columns as though the printing itself paired them, and choosing the row that keeps the lists in their printed order
• Verifying only the pairs you are confident about and accepting a row that reverses the two you are not, which is precisely how option (4) is built
• Confusing Milpa with Roca, the Central American term with the Brazilian one, since both name the same practice in Latin America
• Assuming that a correct matching row will look orderly; the row that answers this question runs the second list backwards, and that is a coincidence rather than a signal

Shifting cultivation appears in MPSC papers either as a straight one-line question asking what a named practice is called in a given country, or, more often, as a four-by-four matching item of exactly this shape. The Commission draws on the standard list found in Indian geography textbooks, so the countries that recur are India, Indonesia and Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mexico and Central America, Brazil, Venezuela and the Congo basin. Variants ask for the Indian regional names instead of the international ones, joining Jhum, Podu, Bewar, Dahiya and Kumri to their states, and a further variant tests the mechanics rather than the vocabulary, asking why yields fall after the second or third year or what a shortened fallow does to the soil. A single table of names against places, with three lines on the ash-and-fallow mechanism beneath it, covers all of them.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Shifting cultivation is known by which local name in Sri Lanka ?

  • (a)Chena
  • (b)Ladang
  • (c)Milpa
  • (d)Taungya

  Answer(a) Chena — this is the Sri Lankan term for the practice. Ladang belongs to Indonesia and Malaysia, Milpa to Mexico and Central America, and Taungya to Myanmar, where it also gave its name to the forestry system of raising a plantation while a cultivator crops the ground between the young trees.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In shifting cultivation, why is a plot usually abandoned after two or three cropping seasons ?

  • (a)Because the monsoon shifts away from the region
  • (b)Because the ash-derived fertility is exhausted and weeds and pests increase
  • (c)Because the government requires the land to be surrendered
  • (d)Because the soil becomes too hard to be ploughed

  Answer(b) Because the ash-derived fertility is exhausted and weeds and pests increase — in a tropical forest the nutrients are held in the standing vegetation rather than in the soil, so burning releases a single flush of fertility that the first two or three harvests use up. The plot is then left fallow to regrow, and the system remains stable only while that fallow is long enough for the forest to recover.