Amid the distributaries of which river is situated Divi Island ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Krishna. Divi Island, known locally as Diviseema, is a deltaic island in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, and the geography that produces it is exactly what the stem describes. At Puligadda, near Avanigadda, the Krishna splits into two arms before reaching the sea. One arm meets the Bay of Bengal at Hamsaladeevi in Koduru mandal, the other near Gullalamoda in Nagayalanka mandal, and the fertile low-lying tract enclosed between them, with the sea on the third side, is Divi. The name is Telugu and says what it is: deevi means island, seema means region or country, so Diviseema is 'the region of the island'. It was administered as Divi taluk under that name and today comprises seven mandals — Avanigadda, Challapalli, Mopidevi, Nagayalanka, Koduru, Ghantasala and Movva — with Avanigadda and Challapalli as the main towns. The island is watered by canals drawn from the Prakasam Barrage at Vijayawada, upstream on the same river, and its seaward fringe carries dense mangroves that are notified as the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary. Two other things are worth attaching to the name. Historically, Divi was the stronghold of the Ayya chiefs and was taken by the Kakatiya ruler Ganapati in his coastal Andhra campaign, which is how the island enters medieval Deccan history. Recently, it is remembered for the cyclone of 19 November 1977, when a storm surge swept the Diviseema tract and killed an estimated ten thousand people — one of the worst cyclone disasters in Indian records and the event that gave the place its grim national recognition. The Krishna itself is India's third longest river at about 1,400 kilometres, rising in the Western Ghats near Mahabaleshwar in Satara district of Maharashtra at roughly 1,300 metres, and running east through Karnataka and Telangana into Andhra Pradesh; the Krishna–Godavari delta together is called the rice granary of India.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The most reasonable wrong answer, because the Godavari's delta lies immediately to the north and does exactly the same thing — it splits into the Gautami and Vasishta branches and encloses the tract known as Konaseema. That is the Godavari's famous deltaic island region; Divi is not in it. A candidate who knows that the Andhra coast has a deltaic island and reaches for the bigger river lands here.  (c) Printed as 'Vimasadhara' in the booklet and meaning the Vamsadhara, a modest east-flowing river that rises near Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district of Odisha at about 400 metres, runs roughly 278 kilometres and reaches the Bay of Bengal at Kalingapatnam in Srikakulam district. It is not a Godavari tributary and it builds no delta of consequence — far too small a river to enclose an island of seven mandals.  (d) A river of the wrong half of the country. The Mahananda flows through Bihar and West Bengal before crossing into Bangladesh and is a tributary of the Ganga, so it has no delta of its own at all — its water reaches the sea through the Ganga–Brahmaputra system. For a Bihar candidate it is the familiar name on the list, which is exactly why it is offered.

Concept: A delta forms where a river's sediment load exceeds what waves and tides can carry away, so the channel builds land seaward, splits into distributaries and drops its silt between them. India's east coast is a coast of deltas because its peninsular rivers flow east into the shallow Bay of Bengal — the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery all build one, while the west-flowing Narmada and Tapi, running through rift valleys into a deeper sea, build estuaries instead. Whenever two distributaries diverge and rejoin, or diverge and reach the sea separately, the land they enclose becomes an island in everything but geology: Divi between the Krishna's two arms, Konaseema between the Godavari's Gautami and Vasishta branches, Srirangam and Shivanasamudra where the Cauvery forks and reunites. These tracts share a profile — very flat, very fertile, densely settled, canal-irrigated from a barrage upstream, fringed by mangrove on the sea side, and dangerously exposed to storm surge, which is why cyclone history and delta geography are usually the same syllabus topic.

State PCS 2025 Q138 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q138 — Geography PYQ with Answer