Which of the following soils is found in the Chambal basin?

Question

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Correct — C, alluvial soil. The Chambal rises in the Vindhyas near Mhow, flows north and north-east across the northern edge of Madhya Pradesh and joins the Yamuna, and its lower basin — Sheopur, Morena, Bhind and the Gwalior tract — is the southern fringe of the Ganga–Yamuna plain, floored by sediment the river itself has deposited. In the standard soil map of Madhya Pradesh, alluvial soil is precisely the soil of the north-western part of the state, in contrast to the black soil of Malwa, the Narmada valley and Nimar, and the red-and-yellow soils of Baghelkhand in the east. The region's signature landform confirms it: the Chambal ravines (behad) are badland gully erosion, and gullies on that scale can only be cut into deep, soft, unconsolidated alluvium.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This is the soil of eastern Madhya Pradesh — the Baghelkhand plateau and the Rewa–Panna–Shahdol belt — formed in place on old crystalline and metamorphic rock. It is on the opposite side of the state from the Chambal.  (b) Laterite needs heavy seasonal rainfall that leaches away silica and leaves iron and aluminium oxides behind, which is why it belongs to the Western Ghats, the north-east and the wetter plateau tops. The semi-arid Chambal tract has neither that rainfall nor that leaching, and laterite occurs in Madhya Pradesh only in small high-plateau patches.  (d) Another residual soil, weathered in situ from crystalline rock on the eastern and southern plateaus. The material in the Chambal basin was transported and laid down by the river, not weathered out of the rock beneath it — that is exactly what makes it alluvial.

Concept: Soils are classified first by how they were formed. Residual soils weather in place out of the rock below — black (regur) soil from Deccan Trap basalt, red and yellow soils from gneiss and granite, laterite from intense leaching under heavy rain. Transported soils are carried and deposited elsewhere, and river-deposited soil is alluvium. Madhya Pradesh contains five broad groups: black soil across Malwa, the Narmada valley and Nimar; red-and-yellow soil in Baghelkhand and the east; alluvial soil in the north-west, in the Chambal basin and the Gwalior region; small patches of laterite; and thin skeletal or mixed soils on the Satpura and Vindhyan slopes. Alluvium is deep and easy to till, but it is also loose, which makes it fertile for wheat, mustard and gram and simultaneously highly vulnerable to gully erosion.

State PCS 2026 Q78 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q78 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer