In the physical map of India, Maharashtra plateau is shown by which of the following colours ?

Question

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Correct — option (3), 'Yellow'. A physical map is a layer-tinted map, and the one thing its colours record is altitude. The technique, called layer tinting or hypsometric tinting, divides the whole range of elevation into bands and gives each band a colour, and the colours are chosen so that the sequence itself carries the meaning: greens for the lowest ground, yellows for the intermediate ground, browns for the high ground, deepening as height increases, with the highest peaks sometimes carried into purple or white. The exact shades and the exact figures attached to each band vary from one atlas to another, which is why every physical map prints a legend, but the order of the sequence does not vary. That is what makes a question of this kind answerable by ranking rather than by memory of a particular publisher's palette. Set India out in that order. The Indo-Gangetic plain, the Brahmaputra valley and the coastal plains, including the Konkan strip of Maharashtra, are the country's lowest ground and take the greens. The Himalaya, and on a detailed map the crests of the highest ranges, are the country's highest ground and take the browns. Between them lies the great peninsular plateau, standing a few hundred metres above sea level — well above the coastal lowlands beside it, and far below the mountain systems to the north — and it takes the intermediate tint, which is yellow. The Maharashtra plateau is simply the portion of that peninsular plateau lying east of the Sahyadri, sloping generally eastward from the Ghat crest towards the interior. It is neither lowland nor mountain, so it belongs in the middle band, and the answer is yellow, option (3). The map of Maharashtra makes the point visible: the narrow Konkan lowland along the coast is shown in a green, the plateau behind it in yellow, and the change of colour falls along the line of the Sahyadri scarp that separates them.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The greens on a layer-tinted map belong to the lowest altitude band, and the darkest green to the lowest ground of all. Choosing it for the Maharashtra plateau places the plateau in the same class as the Ganga plain and the Konkan coastal strip, which is precisely the distinction the map exists to draw. The deeper error behind this option is reading the colour as vegetation rather than as height: dark green suggests forest to most readers, and a candidate who thinks of the wooded Ghat country reaches for it naturally. On a physical map that inference is not available. Colour there means elevation and nothing else, so the green of the Ganga plain records low land, not a forest, and the yellow of the Deccan records a moderate elevation, not a dry landscape. Vegetation is shown on a separate thematic map with a legend of its own.  (b) This is the same altitude band as option (1) in a lighter shade, and offering the two greens together is a deliberate piece of construction: a candidate who has put the plateau in the lowland band will find a green to suit whichever shade he half-remembers, and loses the mark either way. Green in a hypsometric sequence is reserved for the plains, and in Maharashtra the ground that carries it is the Konkan — the narrow coastal lowland between the Arabian Sea and the foot of the Sahyadri. Since the Konkan and the plateau are the two divisions of the state that a physical map most obviously separates, giving them the same colour would defeat the purpose of the map. If two options fall in the same band and differ only in shade, it is usually a sign that the band itself is the wrong one.  (d) Brown is the colour of the high ground — the Himalaya above all, and on a large-scale map the crest lines of the major ranges. This option is chosen by the candidate who reasons that a plateau is elevated land and therefore takes an elevated colour, which mistakes the middle term for the top one. A plateau is by definition raised above the surrounding plains and by definition lower than the mountains, and a layer-tinted map is built to show exactly that intermediate position. Within Maharashtra the ranges that rise above the plateau surface, such as the Satmala, Ajanta, Harishchandra-Balaghat and Mahadeo hills, and the crest of the Sahyadri itself, may indeed pick up a browner tint on a sufficiently detailed map, but the plateau surface on which they stand does not.

Concept: Maps encode information in conventions, and reading a map means reading its conventions before its content. A political map uses colour to distinguish administrative units, so the colours carry no meaning beyond identity. A thematic map uses colour to show the distribution of one chosen variable — rainfall, population density, natural vegetation, soil type — and its legend defines what each shade stands for. A physical or relief map uses colour to show altitude, and the method is layer tinting: elevation is divided into bands and each band is filled with a colour from an ordered sequence, so that reading the map for height becomes a matter of reading the colour. The sequence conventionally runs from greens through yellows to browns as the ground rises. Relief maps combine this with two other devices, contour lines joining points of equal height and spot heights marking individual summits and passes, and often with hill shading to suggest the form of slopes. Applied to India the layer tint tells the country's structural story at a glance: a green band around the coasts and across the northern plains, a broad yellow expanse over the peninsular plateau, and a brown arc along the Himalaya. The three colours correspond to the three great structural divisions — the plains built of recent alluvium, the ancient plateau of the peninsular shield, and the young fold mountains of the north.

State PCS 2023 Q26 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q26 — Geography PYQ with Answer