The second largest river basin of India is -

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Godavari river basin. The Godavari drains 3,12,812 sq km and runs 1,465 km from Brahmagiri hill at Trimbakeshwar in Nashik district, Maharashtra, at about 920 m, right across the peninsula to the Bay of Bengal — India's second longest river after the Ganga. Its basin lies in Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Karnataka and Puducherry (Yanam), with Maharashtra taking by far the largest share at about half, fed from the left by the Purna, Pranahita, Indravati and Sabari and from the right by the Pravara, Manjira and Manair, and it fans out into a delta at the Dhavaleshwaram barrage near Rajamahendravaram, splitting into the Gautami and Vasishta Godavari. Against the other three options this is not a close contest: Mahanadi roughly 1.3–1.4 lakh sq km depending on the source, Narmada 98,796 sq km, Kaveri 81,155 sq km. The Commission's own published remark on this question reads that the Godavari basin 'is the largest river basin in peninsular India and second largest after Ganga Basin in India'. The first half of that is unambiguous and is the fact worth memorising — no peninsular basin comes near the Godavari, which is why it is called the Dakshina Ganga. Be precise about the second half, though. The Ganga basin covers about 8.61 lakh sq km inside India, and the Indian portion of the Indus basin is reckoned at roughly 3.21 lakh sq km — marginally more than the Godavari's 3,12,812 — so the Commission's own remark calls it 'the largest river basin in peninsular India and second largest after Ganga Basin in India', and that is the sense the paper intends; on drainage area within India the Indus basin's Indian portion is larger than the Godavari's, so a ranking that counts it would put the Godavari third. The key is unaffected because the Indus is not on the option list: among the four rivers actually printed, the Godavari's basin is more than twice the next largest.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The nearest rival on the list and the reason the question is not trivial: the Mahanadi is 900 km long, rises at Nagri-Sihawa in Dhamtari district, Chhattisgarh at about 890 m, drains mainly Chhattisgarh and Odisha, and carries the Hirakud dam. But its basin is roughly 1.3–1.4 lakh sq km — well under half the Godavari's 3,12,812.  (b) Tempting because the Narmada owns a different superlative — it is the largest WEST-flowing river of peninsular India, 1,312 km from Narmada Kund on the Amarkantak plateau in Anuppur district, Madhya Pradesh, to the Gulf of Khambhat. Its basin is only 98,796 sq km, because it runs in a narrow rift valley penned between the Vindhyas and the Satpuras and gathers almost no long tributaries.  (d) The smallest of the four. The Kaveri is about 800 km long from Talakaveri in the Brahmagiri hills of Kodagu district, Karnataka, at 1,341 m, and its basin is 81,155 sq km — roughly a quarter of the Godavari's. Its constant presence in inter-State water-dispute headlines gives it a prominence that has nothing to do with basin size.

Concept: A river basin, or catchment, is the entire area of land whose surface runoff drains into one river and its tributaries, bounded by a water divide along the ridge lines. So basin size is set by lateral reach — how far a river's tributaries stretch sideways — not by the length of the trunk stream. India's drainage divides into two very different families. The Himalayan rivers are snow-and-glacier fed, perennial, and carve huge alluvial basins across the northern plains; the peninsular rivers are rain-fed and seasonal, flow over old hard rock in mature, shallow valleys, and are largely fixed in their courses. The peninsula's water divide is the Western Ghats, which run close to and parallel with the west coast, so the great majority of peninsular drainage is forced eastward across the full width of the plateau into the Bay of Bengal. The Godavari, Krishna, Mahanadi and Kaveri are all products of that geometry; the Narmada and Tapi are the exceptions, running west down fault-bounded rift valleys.

State PCS 2025 Q107 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q107 — Geography PYQ with Answer