Ladang refers to -

Question

Ladang refers to -

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Shifting Agriculture. Ladang is the Malay and Indonesian name for shifting, slash-and-burn cultivation as practised in South-East Asia, and the Commission's own remark on the final key says so — it identifies Ladang as the South-East Asian name for shifting cultivation, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. The word itself gives the answer away: in Indonesian and Malay a *ladang* is an unirrigated, dry field used to grow crops, the direct opposite of a *sawah*, the bunded and irrigated wet-rice paddy. A dry upland plot cut out of forest, cropped for a season or two and then walked away from, is exactly the shifting-cultivation cycle: trees and bush are slashed, what remains is burnt so the ash adds potash to the soil, the plot is cropped while that nutrient flush lasts — typically one to three years — and then abandoned to a far longer fallow while the vegetation regenerates and the cultivator opens a new patch elsewhere. Now the option that has to be dealt with honestly, because it is not false. Option (c), 'Subsistence type of Agriculture', is a true statement about Ladang: shifting cultivation is a subsistence system, and every standard classification files it under primitive subsistence agriculture. But (c) names the genus while (a) names the species. 'Subsistence agriculture' also covers intensive wet-rice subsistence farming across monsoon Asia, primitive herding on dry margins, and settled subsistence tillage — none of which is Ladang. The question asks what the word Ladang *refers to*, and a local term refers to one named practice, not to the whole family that practice belongs to. Where one option is the specific term and another is the category containing it, prelims convention takes the specific one — and here the Commission's published remark confirms the specific reading, so the key at (a) is not merely defensible, it is explained.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Geographically right and conceptually opposite. Malaysia and Indonesia really are dominated by plantations — of the world's 77.3 million tonnes of palm oil in 2023–24, Indonesia produced 44 million tonnes and Malaysia 19.7 million, about 80 per cent between them, besides their rubber estates — so the country association pulls hard. But a plantation is permanent, commercial and capital-intensive, worked by hired labour on a single export crop with processing on site, whereas a ladang is temporary, subsistence, family-worked and mixed-cropped.  (c) Not false — which is exactly what makes it dangerous. Shifting cultivation genuinely is a subsistence system, so a candidate choosing this has made no factual error. The trouble is that 'subsistence type of agriculture' is a whole category that also covers intensive wet-rice subsistence farming and primitive herding; it places Ladang without identifying it. A named local term calls for the named practice, so the specific option beats the general one and the key takes (a).  (d) Printed exactly like that in the booklet — a typographical slip for 'dry farming', and it should be read as such rather than as some unfamiliar concept. Dry farming is cropping in low-rainfall regions by conserving soil moisture through fallowing, mulching and drought-hardy varieties. It looks close because a ladang really is a dry, unirrigated field; but dry farming is a permanent, settled system on semi-arid plains, with no forest clearing, no burning and no shifting of the plot.

Concept: Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots are cultivated only temporarily and then abandoned, while the fallow vegetation that follows is allowed to grow back freely. Its usual technique is slash-and-burn: trees, bushes and forest are cleared by slashing and the remaining vegetation is burnt, the ashes adding potash to the soil. The cropping phase is short — commonly one to three years, until the nutrient flush is exhausted and weeds take hold — and is far shorter than the fallow that follows, which historically ran to 20–40 years in the European versions of the system. It is a subsistence economy: no ploughing of a permanent field, little or no purchased input, mixed food crops grown for the household, and land held and rotated by the community rather than by title. The same system carries a different name almost everywhere it is practised, and those names are staple exam material: Ladang in Malaysia and Indonesia, Jhum in North-East India, Podu or Penda in the Andhra–Odisha belt, Bewar and Dahiya in Madhya Pradesh, Kumari in Kerala and the Western Ghats, Chena in Sri Lanka, Ray in Vietnam, Taungya in Myanmar, Milpa in Mexico and Central America, Roca in Brazil, Conuco in Venezuela and Masole in the Congo basin.

State PCS 2025 Q105 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q105 — Geography PYQ with Answer