Match the following.
Biosphere Reserve
a. Nilgiri
b. Sundarban
c. Kutch
d. Panna
Establishment Year
I. 2011
II. 2008
III. 1989
IV. 1986

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2): a–IV, b–III, c–II, d–I, that is, Nilgiri (1986), Sundarban (1989), Kutch (2008), Panna (2011). Nilgiri was India's first biosphere reserve, notified in 1986, spanning parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka around the Nilgiri hills. Sundarban followed in 1989, protecting the mangrove delta of the Ganga–Brahmaputra system in West Bengal. Kachchh (Kutch) Biosphere Reserve, covering parts of Kachchh, Rajkot, Surendranagar and Patan districts of Gujarat, was notified in 2008 and is India's largest biosphere reserve by area. Panna, in Madhya Pradesh, was notified in 2011 and is the most recently established of the four listed here. Set in that order, the four names run in a clean chronological sequence from the earliest Indian biosphere reserve to a comparatively recent one, which is what the correct pairing is really testing — the sequence in which India's biosphere reserve network was actually built.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option runs the four years in reverse chronological order against the four reserves — pairing Nilgiri, the earliest reserve (1986), with 2011, the latest year, and Panna, the most recent reserve, with 1986. It inverts the correct sequence entirely rather than making a single-pair swap.  (c) This keeps Sundarban correctly at III (1989) but misdates the other three: it assigns Nilgiri to 2008 instead of 1986, and Kutch to 1986 instead of 2008 — swapping India's first biosphere reserve with one notified more than two decades later.  (d) This option swaps Nilgiri and Sundarban's years relative to each other (III and IV interchanged) and swaps Kutch and Panna's years relative to each other (I and II interchanged), so every single pairing is wrong even though the same four years and four reserves both appear.

Concept: India's biosphere reserve programme, run under the Man and Biosphere framework, has been built up in phases since the mid-1980s. Ordering four of these reserves by their notification year tests whether a candidate has actually memorised the sequence rather than just recognising the names.

State PCS 2025 Q17 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

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