NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 143 of 146

Correct — C, Gujarat. NITI Aayog released the first Composite Water Management Index in June 2018, ranking states on how well they manage water. Because hill states face quite different hydrology from the plains, the report split the states into two groups and ranked each separately — North Eastern and Himalayan States on one side, Other States on the other. Gujarat came first among the Other States, which is the group the stem's parenthesis is pointing at, and Jharkhand came last in it. Tripura topped the North Eastern and Himalayan group.

• (a)Madhya Pradesh — Madhya Pradesh ranked second among the Other States, immediately behind Gujarat. It is the closest of the three wrong options and the one a candidate with a hazy memory of the report is most likely to mark.
• (b)Karnataka — Karnataka ranked fourth in the same group, behind Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. A good performer, but not the leader.
• (d)Maharashtra — Maharashtra ranked fifth. Its extensive watershed programmes make it a plausible guess, but the index placed four states above it in the Other States group.

The Composite Water Management Index scores each state across nine broad themes covering some twenty-eight indicators — groundwater, the restoration of water bodies, irrigation, on-farm water use, rural and urban drinking water, and policy and governance. The purpose is not to rank rainfall or endowment but management: a state with plenty of water can score badly if it uses it wastefully, and a dry state can score well if it recharges, meters and regulates. That is why NITI Aayog described it as an instrument to induce competitive and cooperative federalism between states rather than as a report card on nature.

Three of the four options are the states that finished immediately behind the answer, which is the sort of option set that punishes half-recall. The stem itself carries the key structural fact — the phrase other than Himalayan or NE States exists because the index was published in two separate league tables, and a candidate who noticed that would at least know not to look for a north-eastern state among the options. Note the date frame: this was the first edition, released in June 2018, three months before the exam, and a second edition of the index followed in August 2019.

• NITI Aayog released the first Composite Water Management Index in June 2018.
• States were ranked in two separate groups — North Eastern and Himalayan States, and Other States — to allow for different hydrological conditions.
• Gujarat ranked first among the Other States; Jharkhand ranked last in that group.
• Tripura ranked first among the North Eastern and Himalayan States.
• The index scores nine broad themes and about twenty-eight indicators covering groundwater, water bodies, irrigation, drinking water and governance.

• Ignoring the bracketed exclusion in the stem and looking for a north-eastern state in the option list.
• Assuming a wetter state must score higher; the index measures management, not rainfall.
• Mixing up the 2018 edition with the second edition published the following year.

Asked as a report-and-ranking recall item where the three wrong options are the states placed just below the correct one.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Composite Water Management Index is published by

  • (a)the Central Water Commission
  • (b)NITI Aayog
  • (c)the Central Ground Water Board
  • (d)the National Water Development Agency

  Answer(b) NITI Aayog — first released in June 2018, ranking states on water management across nine themes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Composite Water Management Index, states are ranked in two separate groups because

  • (a)some states did not submit data
  • (b)hydrological conditions differ sharply between hill states and the rest
  • (c)the index covers only states with river disputes
  • (d)union territories are counted separately

  Answer(b) hydrological conditions differ sharply between hill states and the rest — hence a North Eastern and Himalayan group and an Other States group.