Which of the following pairs is not correctly matched ?
Capital – Country

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Khartoum – Ethiopia. Khartoum is the capital of Sudan, not of Ethiopia. It stands at al-Mogran, the point where the Blue Nile coming down from the Ethiopian highlands meets the White Nile flowing up from the Great Lakes region, and the united Nile turns north from there towards Egypt. Ethiopia's capital is Addis Ababa, founded in 1886 by Emperor Menelik II and today the headquarters of the African Union and of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. The pairing is tempting precisely because Ethiopia and Khartoum are genuinely linked by water rather than by government: the Blue Nile rises in Ethiopia's Lake Tana and carries most of the Nile's flow to Khartoum, and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam sits on that same river upstream of Sudan. One honest present-day note for a student reading this after the exam: Khartoum is still Sudan's constitutional capital, but since the civil war that broke out in April 2023 the government has largely operated from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Correctly matched, so it is not the answer — though it is the pair most likely to be mistrusted. Myanmar moved its seat of government from Yangon (Rangoon) to the purpose-built city of Naypyidaw in November 2005, and Naypyidaw was formally proclaimed the capital in 2006. Yangon remains the largest city and the commercial centre, which is why many candidates still name it.  (c) Correctly matched. Dublin, on the River Liffey, is the capital of the Republic of Ireland. The city sometimes confused with it is Belfast, which is the capital of Northern Ireland — a part of the United Kingdom, not of the Republic.  (d) Correctly matched. Ottawa, in the province of Ontario on the Ottawa River, was selected as the capital by Queen Victoria in 1857 and remains so. Toronto is Canada's largest city and Montreal its historic commercial capital, but neither is the national capital — the classic 'largest city is not always the capital' trap.

Concept: A national capital is the seat of government, and it need not be the largest, oldest or most famous city of a country. Several states have deliberately built or shifted capitals away from their biggest cities — Brazil to Brasilia, Australia to Canberra, Nigeria to Abuja, Kazakhstan to Astana, Myanmar to Naypyidaw — usually for reasons of central location, security, or relieving pressure on a congested port city. A few countries split the function among more than one city, as South Africa does between Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial), and Bolivia between Sucre and La Paz.

State PCS 2024 Q40 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q40 — Geography PYQ with Answer