NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 141 of 149

Correct — A, the Tharu placed in Madhya Pradesh. The Tharu are a Terai people of the Himalayan foothills: in the Indian Terai they live foremost in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with large numbers across the border in Nepal. The 2011 census counted about 159,900 Tharu in Bihar, 105,300 in Uttar Pradesh and 91,300 in Uttarakhand. Madhya Pradesh is nowhere in that picture, so this is the pair that is NOT correctly matched.

• (b)Adi : Arunachal Pradesh — Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. The Adi are one of the largest communities of Arunachal Pradesh, living mainly in the Siang belt of the State.
• (c)Irula : Kerala — Also correct. The Irula live in Tamil Nadu and in parts of Kerala and Karnataka; the 2011 census counted about 213,600 in all, most of them in Tamil Nadu, with the Kerala population in Palakkad district. A tribe spread across a border can be correctly paired with either State it inhabits.
• (d)Shaharia : Rajasthan — Correct as well. The Sahariya are a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group concentrated in the Baran and Kota belt of south-eastern Rajasthan, spilling over into neighbouring Madhya Pradesh.

Scheduled Tribes are notified State by State, and many communities live across State borders, so a tribe can be validly paired with more than one State. What a mismatch item tests is whether a name has been moved to a region it has no connection with at all — as the Tharu are here, taken from the Himalayan Terai and placed in central India.

Use physical geography as the check. The Tharu belong to the Terai, the damp forested strip at the foot of the Himalaya, so their States must be the Himalayan-foothill ones — Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar. The Irula belong to the Nilgiri and Palakkad hills of the far south, the Adi to the eastern Himalaya, the Sahariya to the Vindhyan fringe of south-eastern Rajasthan. Once each name is anchored to a landscape rather than to a State list, the odd pairing is obvious. Note that the paper spells the Sahariya as 'Shaharia'; the spelling of tribe names varies between sources and does not change the answer.

• In the Indian Terai the Tharu live foremost in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and they are a Scheduled Tribe.
• Census 2011 counted about 159,900 Tharu in Bihar, 105,300 in Uttar Pradesh and 91,300 in Uttarakhand.
• The Irula live in Tamil Nadu and parts of Kerala and Karnataka, about 213,600 in all, with roughly 189,600 in Tamil Nadu.
• The Sahariya of the Baran-Kota belt of Rajasthan are a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.
• The Adi are among the largest communities of Arunachal Pradesh.

• Assuming a tribe belongs to only one State when many live across borders.
• Being thrown by variant spellings such as Sahariya, Saharia or Shaharia.
• Confusing the Tharu of the Terai with central Indian communities of similar-sounding name.

Tribe-to-State pairing is a standing favourite in both NDA and UPSC, almost always as a NOT-correctly-matched item with one name moved far from its home region.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tharu community is associated with which physical region of India?

  • (a)The Terai of the Himalayan foothills
  • (b)The Nilgiri hills
  • (c)The Rann of Kachchh
  • (d)The Chhota Nagpur plateau

  Answer(a) The Terai of the Himalayan foothills — in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Sahariya, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, live mainly in

  • (a)Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh
  • (b)Kerala and Tamil Nadu
  • (c)Odisha and West Bengal
  • (d)Assam and Meghalaya

  Answer(a) Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh — chiefly the Baran and Kota belt of south-eastern Rajasthan.