Match the following.
List - I
(Country)
(a) Congo and Central Africa
(b) North-East India
(c) Vietnam
(d) Brazil
List - II
(Local Names of Shifting Cultivation)
(i) Roca
(ii) Masole
(iii) Jhum
(iv) Ra

Question

Match the following.
List - I
(Country)
(a) Congo and Central Africa
(b) North-East India
(c) Vietnam
(d) Brazil
List - II
(Local Names of Shifting Cultivation)
(i) Roca
(ii) Masole
(iii) Jhum
(iv) Ray

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2), '(a) - (ii), (b) - (iii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i)'. Shifting cultivation is one agricultural practice with dozens of local names, and the standard table pairs each name with the region where it is used: Masole in the Congo basin and Central Africa, Jhum in North-East India, Ray in Vietnam, and Roca in Brazil. That gives statement (a) item (ii), statement (b) item (iii), statement (c) item (iv) and statement (d) item (i), which is option (2). The whole question can be settled from a single pair. Jhum is the one name in the list that every candidate preparing Indian geography already knows, and it belongs to North-East India — statement (b). Test that against the four options: option (1) gives statement (b) the name Roca, option (3) gives it Ray, option (4) gives it Masole. All three are eliminated at once, and only option (2) survives without any need to know what Masole, Ray or Roca mean. That is the general method for a four-by-four match: find the pair you are certain of, strike out every option that contradicts it, and only then spend time on the pairs you are unsure about. Two further anchors are available if the first is not enough. Roca is a Portuguese word and Brazil is the Portuguese-speaking country in the list, which is a reliable linguistic hook; Ray is the Vietnamese term, and Vietnam is the only Southeast Asian entry. Note also a flaw in the printed question worth registering: List-I is headed '(Country)', but 'Congo and Central Africa' is a region spanning several countries and 'North-East India' is part of one. The heading is loose; the pairings themselves are the standard ones.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The most dangerous of the three, because it gets two pairings right — Masole for Central Africa and Ray for Vietnam — and then swaps the remaining two, giving Roca to North-East India and Jhum to Brazil. A candidate who checks only the unfamiliar names and assumes the familiar one must be safe will accept it. Jhum is an Assamese and North-East Indian term with no connection to South America whatever, and testing the pair you are surest of is precisely what defeats this option.  (c) Every pairing is wrong. It moves Jhum to the Congo basin, Ray to North-East India, Roca to Vietnam and Masole to Brazil — a complete rotation of the correct assignment. Because nothing in it is right, it is also the easiest to reject: any one anchor kills it. It is included to catch a candidate who has memorised that four particular names go with four particular regions but has not fixed which goes with which, and who is therefore matching on nothing more than the printed order of List-II.  (d) Gets only Brazil-Roca right and misassigns the other three, putting Ray in Central Africa, Masole in North-East India and Jhum in Vietnam. A candidate who anchors on the Portuguese origin of 'Roca' and stops there will find this option satisfying, which is exactly the trap: one confirmed pair narrows the field but does not close it, and here two options — this one and the correct one — both assign Roca to Brazil. The second anchor, Jhum for North-East India, is what separates them.

Concept: Shifting cultivation, also called slash-and-burn or swidden agriculture, is the oldest surviving form of settled crop growing. A patch of forest is cleared in the dry season, the felled vegetation is left to dry and then burnt, and the ash supplies a flush of potash and phosphate to soils that are otherwise poor. Seeds are dibbled into the ash without ploughing, and the plot is cropped for two or three years until yields fall as nutrients are taken up and weeds invade. The plot is then abandoned and a new one cleared, while the old one lies fallow long enough for secondary forest and soil fertility to return. The system is self-sustaining only if the fallow is long — on the order of fifteen to twenty years — and if population density is low enough to allow it. Where population presses on land, the cycle shortens, the forest never recovers, the ash input shrinks and the practice turns into a driver of deforestation and soil erosion. That single variable, the length of the fallow, explains both the traditional defence of shifting cultivation as an adaptation to poor tropical soils and the modern criticism of it, and an exam answer that names the fallow cycle is answering the real question.

State PCS 2026 Q28 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q28 — Geography PYQ with Answer