Which one of the following pairs is not correctly matched regarding peculiarities of Ramganga project ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Dam's length – 825·8 metres. This is the one figure in the set that the dam's own specification does not support. The Ramganga Dam, better known as the Kalagarh Dam, is an earth-and-rockfill embankment built across the Ramganga river about three kilometres upstream of Kalagarh in Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand. Its standard specification is 128 metres high and about 630 metres long — a tall dam on a comparatively narrow Himalayan foothill gorge, which is exactly why it does not need an 800-metre-plus crest. The 825·8-metre figure is the examiner's falsifier: it is neither the crest length nor the height nor any other published dimension of this structure. Construction ran from 1961 to 1974 and the three generating units came on line between December 1975 and March 1977. Everything else in the question checks out, so (a) is the pair that is not correctly matched. One warning about how to attack an item like this: do not go hunting for a wrong figure among the numbers you find hardest to recall. Here the two 'difficult' numbers — 198 MW and 6 lakh hectares — are both defensible, and the one that breaks is the physically simplest.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. The Ramganga power station is rated at 198 MW, made up of three Francis turbines of 66 MW each. It is a modest installation by national standards — a fraction of the 1,000 MW at Tehri — because the project's first purpose was irrigation and flood moderation for the western Uttar Pradesh plain, with power as a by-product of releases already being made for the canals.  (c) Correctly matched. The dam stands at Kalagarh in Pauri Garhwal district, which since 9 November 2000 has been part of Uttarakhand; before that the whole project lay inside undivided Uttar Pradesh, which is why older textbooks still file the Ramganga project under UP. The reservoir spreads north-east of the dam into the Kalagarh side of the Corbett Tiger Reserve. Both the 'Garhwal' and the 'Uttarakhand' halves of this pair are therefore accurate — a candidate who marks this option is usually being misled by the older UP attribution.  (d) Correctly matched as the question intends it, and this is the option most candidates wrongly attack. Two different numbers circulate for this project and both are real. The dam's own irrigation entitlement — the area served directly from the reservoir — is about 57,500 hectares. The Ramganga PROJECT, however, is a canal system of more than 6,300 kilometres with three barrages downstream, and Indian irrigation-department and geography sources put its command area at roughly six lakh hectares across western Uttar Pradesh. The question says 'Ramganga project', not 'Ramganga dam', so the six-lakh-hectare figure is the project command and is not the falsifier.

Concept: The Ramganga project is a multipurpose river-valley scheme of the 1960s and 1970s built on the Ramganga (West), a Himalayan tributary that rises in the Kumaon hills, cuts through the Shivaliks past Kalagarh and then joins the Ganga in the plains near Kannauj. A multipurpose project by definition serves several ends at once — here irrigation for western Uttar Pradesh, flood moderation for the Ramganga's notoriously flashy foothill flow, hydro-power, and a large reservoir that later became an ecological asset inside the Corbett landscape. The dam is an embankment structure, meaning it is built up from compacted earth and rock rather than cast in concrete, which is the usual choice on wide, alluvium-floored Himalayan foothill sites.

State PCS 2024 Q72 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q72 — Geography PYQ with Answer