MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 7 of 100

Correct — option (3). Both printed statements hold, and each has to be tested on its own before the option row is chosen. Statement (a) makes two claims about the Jhelum and both are sound. The Jhelum rises at the Verinag spring at the foot of the Pir Panjal in the south-east of the Kashmir valley, flows north-westward past Srinagar, and passes through Wular Lake in the north of the valley, which is fed and drained by it and is a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention; it then cuts through the Pir Panjal in a gorge, enters the plains and joins the Chenab, whose combined waters reach the Indus. The Jhelum is therefore a tributary of the Indus in the ordinary sense in which every river of the Punjab is, and it does flow through Wular. Statement (b) makes the parallel claim for the Sutlej. The Sutlej rises in Tibet near Rakas Lake, close to the source region of the Indus itself, crosses into Himachal Pradesh at the Shipki La in an antecedent gorge, runs through the Punjab plain and, after receiving the Beas, joins the Chenab; the united stream, the Panjnad, meets the Indus far downstream. On the map of the whole system, the Sutlej and the other Punjab rivers approach the trunk from its southern and eastern, that is its left-bank, side, while the Shyok, Gilgit, Kabul, Kurram and Gomal come in from the north and west, so describing the Sutlej as a southern tributary of the Indus places it correctly within the system. Since neither statement contains an error, the row that accepts both is right and option (3) is the answer.

• (1)Only statement (a) is correct — This option accepts the Jhelum statement and rejects the Sutlej statement, and the difficulty is that the two stand or fall together. Both rivers reach the Indus in exactly the same way — not directly, but through the Chenab and the united Panjnad — so a reading strict enough to deny the Sutlej the name of tributary would deny it to the Jhelum as well, and the candidate who chooses this row is applying two different standards to two identical cases. In the accepted usage of Indian geography all five rivers of the Punjab, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, are counted among the tributaries of the Indus, which is why the system carries the name it does and why the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 divides them as the eastern and western rivers of a single basin. Consistency between the two statements is the test to apply here.
• (2)Only statement (b) is correct — This option rejects the Jhelum statement, and the doubt that leads to it usually settles on the lake. Candidates remember Dal Lake as the famous water body of Srinagar and are unsure whether the Jhelum merely passes near Wular or actually flows through it. It flows through it: the Jhelum enters Wular in the north of the Kashmir valley and leaves it again, so the lake acts as a natural reservoir on the river's course and absorbs a part of its flood water, which is one reason the shrinking of the lake is treated as a flood-management problem for Srinagar. The other half of the statement, that the Jhelum is a tributary of the Indus, is not in doubt at all. With both halves sound, statement (a) cannot be the one to reject, and this row fails.
• (4)Statements (a) and (b) are incorrect — This is the row that rejects both statements, and it is chosen by a candidate who has decided that a river joining the Chenab cannot be called a tributary of the Indus and has applied that decision to the Jhelum and the Sutlej alike. The reasoning is at least consistent, but it is not the usage the subject follows. A tributary need not meet the main stream directly; the Punjab rivers are tributaries of the Indus through the Panjnad in the same way that the Beas is a tributary of the Sutlej and the Chambal of the Yamuna, and standard treatments list the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej among the Indus tributaries without qualification. There is also nothing else in either statement to reject, so a row that discards both must be wrong.

The Indus system is best held as a trunk with two sets of tributaries. The Indus itself rises in Tibet near Lake Mansarovar, flows north-westwards through Ladakh between the Ladakh and Zaskar ranges, turns south-west after the Nanga Parbat massif and runs the length of Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. From the north and west it receives the Shyok, Nubra, Shigar, Gilgit and Hunza in the mountains and the Kabul, Kurram, Tochi and Gomal below them. From the east and south it receives the five rivers that give the Punjab its name. The Jhelum rises at Verinag, drains the Kashmir valley through Srinagar and Wular Lake and joins the Chenab; the Chenab, formed by the Chandra and Bhaga at Tandi in Himachal Pradesh, receives it and later the Ravi; the Beas, rising at the Rohtang Pass, joins the Sutlej at Harike; and the Sutlej, rising near Rakas Lake in Tibet and entering India at the Shipki La, joins the Chenab to form the Panjnad, which meets the Indus at Mithankot. Three of these rivers, the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi, are antecedent, having cut their gorges through the Himalaya as the mountains rose. The division of the basin under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 follows this geography: the eastern rivers, the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, were allotted to India and the western rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, to Pakistan, with limited non-consumptive uses reserved to India on the latter.

Two-statement river questions are a fixture of MPSC papers because they let the Commission test a source, a course and a confluence in a few lines, and because the errors it plants are of a standard kind: a river given the wrong source, a tributary given the wrong bank, a lake put on the wrong river. This item plants no error at all, which is itself a lesson. Candidates are trained to hunt for the mistake and, when they cannot find one, to invent a doubt — usually about the least familiar phrase in the question, here the description of the Sutlej as a southern tributary. The correct response to a phrase that is loose rather than wrong is to ask whether it places the river correctly within the system, not whether it is the wording a textbook would have chosen. The second habit to build is consistency: when two statements make the same kind of claim about two comparable rivers, a candidate who accepts one and rejects the other is almost always applying an inconsistent standard, and that pattern of options is worth a second look before any row is marked.

• The Jhelum rises at the Verinag spring at the foot of the Pir Panjal, flows north-westwards through Srinagar and through Wular Lake, and joins the Chenab in the plains, so reaching the Indus through it.
• Wular Lake, in the Kashmir valley, is fed and drained by the Jhelum and is a Ramsar site; it acts as a natural flood reservoir on the river's course.
• The Sutlej rises in Tibet near Rakas Lake, enters India at the Shipki La in Himachal Pradesh in an antecedent gorge, receives the Beas at Harike, and joins the Chenab to form the Panjnad, which meets the Indus at Mithankot.
• The Punjab rivers — Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — join the Indus from its eastern and southern, that is left-bank, side, while the Shyok, Gilgit, Kabul, Kurram and Gomal join it from the north and west.
• The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 allots the eastern rivers, the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, to India and the western rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, to Pakistan.

• Denying a river the name of tributary because it reaches the main stream through another river, when the Punjab rivers are counted as Indus tributaries through the Panjnad
• Applying one standard to the first statement and a different one to the second, when both make the same kind of claim about comparable rivers
• Hunting for an error that is not there and manufacturing a doubt about the least familiar phrase in the question
• Confusing Wular with Dal Lake, and so doubting whether the Jhelum actually flows through the lake named in the statement

River questions in MPSC papers take three regular forms: the source question, which asks where a named river rises; the confluence question, which asks where two rivers meet or which river a named tributary joins; and the two-statement verification item used here. The Himalayan rivers are tested through the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra systems, with the antecedent gorges and the treaty allocations as the recurring points of detail, while the peninsular rivers are tested through their sources in the Western Ghats and their east-flowing courses. The Commission also mixes a lake into a river statement, as it does here with Wular, because that pairing is a compact way to test two facts at once. A river-by-river note holding source, direction, main tributaries, the states crossed and the confluence answers all three forms.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Sutlej enters India from Tibet through which pass ?

  • (a)Rohtang Pass
  • (b)Shipki La
  • (c)Zoji La
  • (d)Nathu La

  Answer(b) Shipki La — the Sutlej rises near Rakas Lake in Tibet and crosses into Himachal Pradesh at the Shipki La, cutting an antecedent gorge through the ranges. The Rohtang Pass is associated with the source of the Beas, the Zoji La carries the road from the Kashmir valley to Ladakh, and the Nathu La is a pass on the Sikkim border with Tibet, far to the east of the Indus system.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which group of rivers was allotted to India ?

  • (a)Indus, Jhelum and Chenab
  • (b)Ravi, Beas and Sutlej
  • (c)Jhelum, Chenab and Ravi
  • (d)Indus, Sutlej and Beas

  Answer(b) Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — these are the eastern rivers of the basin, allotted to India for unrestricted use, while the western rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, were allotted to Pakistan with certain non-consumptive uses reserved to India. Holding the division as eastern rivers to India and western rivers to Pakistan is the quickest way to keep the six rivers in their right groups.