Where was the Mitti Bachao (Save the Soil) Movement started in India ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Marked answer per the official UPPSC 2020 key — (c) Darbhanga, Bihar. Read this one with an important caveat: the key's answer is NOT supported by any documented source, and every mainstream account places the movement's birthplace elsewhere. The Mitti Bachao (Save the Soil) Movement, or Mitti Bachao Abhiyan, is recorded as having begun in 1977 in the Hoshangabad district (now Narmadapuram) of Madhya Pradesh, in the Tawa command area. Farmers there mobilised against severe waterlogging and soil salinity/alkalinity that had made once-fertile land unproductive after the Tawa Dam and its irrigation canals raised the water table. On the documented history, the correct place is therefore option (d) Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh. We retain (c) here only because it is the mark on the official key; students should note this as a recognised key error and remember the movement as a Hoshangabad/Madhya Pradesh, Tawa-Dam episode.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Not associated with the Mitti Bachao Movement; there is no documented soil-salinity movement of this name originating at Thane.  (b) Not linked to the Mitti Bachao Movement; Karnataka's better-known grassroots ecology movement is the Appiko (tree-hugging) movement, a different cause.  (d) This is, in fact, the documented birthplace of the movement (Tawa command area, 1977) and is the historically correct answer — but the official UPPSC key does NOT mark it; it marks (c). Flagged here only because the key disagrees with the sources.

Concept: The Mitti Bachao (Save the Soil) Movement is a farmers' environmental movement against soil degradation — specifically waterlogging and salinisation of agricultural land in a large-dam command area. Its widely documented origin is the Tawa project region of Hoshangabad (Narmadapuram) district, Madhya Pradesh, in the late 1970s. It belongs with India's post-1970s grassroots ecology movements (Chipko, Appiko, Narmada Bachao Andolan) that linked livelihoods to protection of a natural resource — here, fertile soil.

State PCS 2020 Q81 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2020 Q81 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer