Observe the statements regarding agriculture in Maharashtra :
(a) Soil erosion is not a serious problem of agriculture.
(b) Soil erosion takes place due to flooding in rivers, forest cutting and uncon

Question

Observe the statements regarding agriculture in Maharashtra :
(a) Soil erosion is not a serious problem of agriculture.
(b) Soil erosion takes place due to flooding in rivers, forest cutting and uncontrolled grazing.
(c) Soils are saline due to over-irrigation.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1). Three statements are printed, and the first of them carries a negation that nothing in the printing marks out: statement (a) says that soil erosion is not a serious problem of agriculture. In Maharashtra it plainly is. Most of the state is a basalt plateau carrying shallow soils, the monsoon delivers its rain in heavy bursts on slopes that fall steeply away from the Sahyadri crest, and the combination strips soil from the uplands as sheet and rill wash and cuts gullies in the valley sides; conserving soil is a standing objective of the state's watershed programmes, from contour and nala bunding to the village-level work at Ralegan Siddhi and Hiware Bazar. Statement (a) is therefore false, and every option row that contains it falls with it. Statement (b) is correct and states the ordinary causes: river flooding scours the banks and carries away the alluvium of the flood plain, the felling of forest removes the canopy that breaks the force of the rain and the root network that binds the soil, and uncontrolled grazing crops the grass cover to the ground and compacts the surface with hooves, so that the next storm runs off instead of soaking in. Statement (c) is also correct: where irrigation water is applied in excess and the land is not drained, the water table rises towards the surface, water is drawn up by capillary action, and evaporation leaves behind the salts it carried, so that the surface turns saline and eventually goes out of cultivation. That is a familiar condition in the canal commands of the state, and Maharashtra has in addition its own naturally saline tract in the Purna valley of Vidarbha. With statements (b) and (c) sound and statement (a) false, option (1) is the answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) This row accepts statement (a), and statement (a) is the false one. It is accepted because of how it is written: the negative word sits in the middle of an otherwise ordinary sentence, it is printed in the same roman type as everything around it, and a candidate scanning quickly registers the words soil erosion and problem of agriculture and marks the statement as familiar. That is the single commonest way marks are lost on statement questions, and the defence is mechanical rather than intellectual — underline every not, never, no and except as you read, and re-read any statement containing one before judging it. The other half of this row, statement (b), is perfectly sound, which is what makes the row plausible; a row that pairs one true statement with one false one is harder to reject than a row that is wholly wrong.  (c) This row accepts all three statements, and it therefore accepts both statement (a), which says that soil erosion is not a serious problem, and statement (b), which explains how soil erosion happens in the state. The two cannot both be held: if erosion is caused by river flooding, deforestation and uncontrolled grazing on the scale statement (b) describes, it is not a trivial problem. Noticing that two statements in a set contradict each other is one of the most useful moves available in this format, because it tells you at once that the all-of-them row is unavailable and that the answer lies in choosing between the pair. Here the contradiction is resolved by the evidence: erosion is a serious problem in Maharashtra, so statement (a) is the one to discard.  (d) This row rejects all three statements, which requires statements (b) and (c) to be false as well, and neither is. The causes named in statement (b) — flooding, forest cutting and uncontrolled grazing — are the standard causes of soil erosion in any hill and plateau country and are the ones the state's soil conservation measures are addressed to. The salinity described in statement (c) is a real and well-documented consequence of irrigating without adequate drainage, and it is the reason canal projects are expected to provide for drainage as well as for supply. A row that discards everything is worth suspecting on its own account: it is offered in almost every statement question because the format requires an all-negative row, and its presence carries no information about whether it is the answer.

Concept: The soils of Maharashtra are dominated by the black soil, the regur, weathered from the Deccan trap basalt that underlies most of the state. It is clayey and rich in iron, lime, magnesium and calcium, holds moisture well and cracks deeply when dry — the cracks that give it the name of self-ploughing soil — but it is poor in nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter, and it is the classic cotton soil of the country. Where the basalt is exposed on slopes the soil cover is thin and coarse, and it is these shallow upland soils that erosion removes first. Two forms of degradation matter most in the state. The first is erosion, driven by the intensity of monsoon rainfall on steep and often bare slopes and accelerated by the removal of forest and by grazing pressure; its treatment is the whole apparatus of soil and water conservation, contour bunding, contour trenching, terracing, nala bunding, check dams and afforestation, organised at the scale of the watershed. The second is salinity and waterlogging, which is the characteristic disease of irrigated land: excess water without drainage raises the water table, capillary rise brings dissolved salts to the surface, and evaporation concentrates them there. Its treatment is drainage, controlled water application, the use of gypsum on alkali soils and the choice of salt-tolerant crops. The two problems are opposite in origin — one from too little water retention, the other from too much water applied — but both end in land going out of production.

State PCS 2022 Q11 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q11 — Geography PYQ with Answer