Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the code given below the lists.
List – I (Waterfalls of India)
A. Dudhsagar
B. Barkana
C. Khandadhar
D. Palani
List – II (Location)
1.

Question

Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the code given below the lists.
List – I (Waterfalls of India)
A. Dudhsagar
B. Barkana
C. Khandadhar
D. Palani
List – II (Location)
1. Karnataka
2. Odisha
3. Himachal Pradesh
4. Goa

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, A-4, B-1, C-2, D-3. DUDHSAGAR, the 'sea of milk', is the four-tiered cascade of about 310 metres on the Mandovi in South Goa, on the Western Ghats escarpment where Goa meets Karnataka, and is conventionally listed as a Goa waterfall (A-4). BARKANA is in Karnataka, in the Shivamogga (Shimoga) district on the river Sita near Agumbe, one of the falls of the Agumbe rainforest belt, about 260 metres high (B-1). KHANDADHAR is in Odisha, in Sundargarh district in the iron-ore country of the north-west of the State — note that a second waterfall of the same name exists in Keonjhar district, so the DISTRICT is sometimes given differently, but the State is not in doubt and the State is all the question asks (C-2). That leaves PALANI with Himachal Pradesh (D-3). Be honest about this last pair: the Himachal attribution rests on the standard compiled lists of Indian waterfalls and is thinly documented elsewhere, and the name will pull most candidates towards the Palani Hills of Tamil Nadu. But Tamil Nadu is not in List-II at all, and once Goa, Karnataka and Odisha are taken by the three well-attested falls, Himachal Pradesh is the only location left — so the code holds by elimination whatever one makes of the Palani entry.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The near-miss, and the one most candidates land on. It gets Dudhsagar–Goa and Khandadhar–Odisha right and then swaps the other two, sending Barkana to Himachal Pradesh and Palani to Karnataka. Barkana is a Western Ghats fall in the Agumbe belt of Karnataka's Shivamogga district — a monsoon-forest waterfall of the peninsular escarpment, not a Himalayan one.  (c) Nothing survives. It moves Dudhsagar to Himachal Pradesh, Barkana to Odisha, Khandadhar to Goa and Palani to Karnataka. Dudhsagar alone kills it: the cascade on the Mandovi, visible from the Braganza Ghat railway line, is among the best-known waterfalls in India and anchors the whole match-list to Goa.  (d) The unshuffled 1-2-3-4 code, and it misplaces all four — Dudhsagar to Karnataka, Barkana to Odisha, Khandadhar to Himachal Pradesh and Palani to Goa. Dudhsagar does straddle the Goa–Karnataka border, so this is the one option with a sliver of an excuse, but the falls themselves lie in Sanguem taluka of South Goa and are always listed under Goa; and the remaining three pairs have nothing to support them.

Concept: India's great waterfalls cluster where a river crosses a sharp break of slope, and in peninsular India that break is the Western Ghats escarpment and the edges of the old plateaus. West-flowing rivers dropping off the Ghats give the tallest and best-known falls — Dudhsagar on the Mandovi in Goa, Jog on the Sharavati and Barkana on the Sita in Karnataka, and the many falls of the Agumbe belt, which is one of the wettest places in India. On the eastern side, the Chota Nagpur and Odisha plateaus give a second family, where rivers step off the plateau edge onto the coastal plain: Khandadhar in Sundargarh, Hundru on the Subarnarekha and Dassam on the Kanchi in Jharkhand, Chitrakote on the Indravati in Bastar. The Himalayan falls are a different type again — steeper, snow- and glacier-fed, and generally smaller in volume outside the melt season.

State PCS 2022 Q47 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q47 — Geography PYQ with Answer