‘Loktak’ is a ________.

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Lake. 'Loktak' is Loktak Lake in Manipur, the largest freshwater lake in North-East India, lying at an elevation of about 768.5 m with Imphal and Moirang on or near its shores. It is described as a 'pulsating' lake because its surface swings between roughly 250 sq km and 500 sq km with the seasons around a typical 287 sq km; it runs about 35 km long by 13 km wide, is only 2.7 m deep on average and 4.6 m at its deepest, and collects a catchment of 980 sq km fed by the Manipur river and a mass of smaller rivulets. The name settles the category by itself: in Meitei, 'lok' means stream and 'tak' means the end — the place where the streams end. India designated it a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on 23 March 1990 as site number 463, and it was placed on the Montreux Record on 16 June 1993, the Ramsar register of listed sites whose ecological character has changed or is likely to change. Its signature feature is the phumdi — a floating, heterogeneous mat of vegetation, soil and organic matter solid enough to walk on and to build fishing huts upon. Keibul Lamjao National Park rests on a phumdi of about 40 sq km and is the only floating national park on earth; it is the last natural refuge of the sangai or brow-antlered deer, Rucervus eldii eldii, Manipur's state animal, which survives in the wild nowhere else. The lake is not a curiosity but the working heart of the State's economy: it supplies water for hydropower generation, irrigation and drinking supply, and it is the livelihood of the rural fishing communities who live on and around the phumdis.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The sharpest trap, because Manipur's central lowland genuinely is called the Imphal Valley and Loktak is its remnant. That valley is a lacustrine plain of about 1,864 sq km at an average 790 m, formed by the silting-up of an ancient lake — Loktak is what survives of the lake. 'Valley' names the basin, not the water standing in it.  (c) Manipur's rivers are the Manipur (Imphal), the Iril, the Thoubal and the Barak, and Loktak's own inflow is the Manipur river system — so the word sits in genuinely riverine company. But Loktak is the standing water that system feeds, not a channel; its outflow today passes through a barrage built for hydropower, irrigation and water supply.  (d) Manipur has real and examinable hill ranges — the Barail, the Naga Hills to the north, the Manipur hills flanking the valley — and 'Loktak' carries the sound of a Tibeto-Burman toponym, which is why the option is offered. No range bears the name. UPSC ran the reverse trick in 2013 by pairing 'Loktak Lake : Barail Range' and marking it wrong.

Concept: The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed at Ramsar in Iran in 1971, commits its parties to the wise use of wetlands; a site enters the List of Wetlands of International Importance on the country's own nomination against ecological, botanical, zoological, limnological or hydrological criteria. As of the 13 September 2025 exam India had 91 Ramsar sites, three of them in Bihar — Kabartal Wetland in Begusarai (21 July 2020) and Nagi and Nakti Bird Sanctuaries in Jamui (both 11 October 2023). Three more Bihar wetlands were listed later the same month, Udaypur Lake and Gokul Reservoir on 25 September and Gogabeel on 27 September, so present-day totals do not answer a question dated to the exam. The Montreux Record is a separate and unwelcome register kept inside the same framework: it flags already-listed sites where ecological character has changed, is changing, or is likely to change through human interference. Loktak's 1993 entry on it is the whole story of the lake. The Ithai barrage of the Loktak hydroelectric project holds the water at an artificially steady level, and phumdis need to ground on the lake bed in the dry season to draw nutrients from it; kept permanently afloat they thin, and as they thin the sangai loses the only ground it can stand on.

State PCS 2025 Q113 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q113 — Geography PYQ with Answer