UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 89 of 150

Correct — A, 1 and 4. Pair 1 holds: 'Keria' is the paper's spelling of the KHARIA, an Austroasiatic people of the Munda branch, and at the 2011 Census the largest Kharia population in any State was in Odisha — roughly 2.2 lakh, ahead of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh. Note the correct form of the claim: the Kharia are a multi-State community, also found in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tripura among other places, so the pairing means 'largest population in Odisha', not 'found only in Odisha'. Pair 4 also holds: the PALIYAN, also written Palliyar, are a forest-dwelling community of Tamil Nadu who speak a Dravidian language closely related to Tamil. The two failures are equally clear. Pair 2 sends the KUKI to Uttar Pradesh; the Kuki are a north-eastern people, centred on Manipur and present in every north-eastern State except Arunachal Pradesh, with no presence in the Gangetic plain. Pair 3 sends the YANADI to Rajasthan; the Yanadi live in Andhra Pradesh, in the Nellore, Chittoor and Prakasam districts. With 2 and 3 both wrong, every code containing them falls and only (a) survives.

• (b)1 and 2 — Pair 1 is right but pair 2 is not. The Kuki belong to the north-east — Manipur above all, and the neighbouring States — and are not a community of Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh's own recognised tribal communities are a different set altogether, including the Tharu of the Terai and the Buksa, Gond and Kol.
• (c)3 and 4 — Pair 4 is right but pair 3 is not. The Yanadi are an Andhra Pradesh community, concentrated in the Nellore, Chittoor and Prakasam districts. Rajasthan's principal tribal communities are the Bhil, Mina and Garasia, and the Yanadi are not among them.
• (d)2 and 3 — The weakest code available: it selects the only two pairs that are both wrong. The Kuki are not of Uttar Pradesh and the Yanadi are not of Rajasthan, so this option contains nothing correct.

Tribe-to-State matching questions rest on a simple regional logic once you know which language family and which physiographic region a community belongs to. The Kharia are Munda speakers of the Chhotanagpur-Odisha plateau belt, which is the great Austroasiatic zone of eastern India along with the Munda, Ho and Santhal. The Kuki are Tibeto-Burman speakers of the north-eastern hills, part of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo cluster. The Yanadi and the Paliyan are Dravidian-speaking communities of the peninsular south, the first in coastal and interior Andhra Pradesh and the second in the forested hills of Tamil Nadu. Attach a community to its language family and its terrain and the State follows almost automatically; that is far more durable than memorising isolated pairs.

This is a 'which two are correctly matched' item, so the efficient route is to hunt for the pairs that are obviously wrong rather than to certify the ones that look right. Pairs 2 and 3 are both gross regional misplacements — a north-eastern people put in the Gangetic plain, a coastal Andhra people put in the Thar — and knocking those two out leaves only code (a). That matters because pair 1 uses an unfamiliar spelling, 'Keria' for Kharia, and pair 4 names a community most candidates will never have met. You do not have to recognise either of them to answer correctly. One caution the card will not paper over: the Yanadi and the Paliyan are small communities with thin encyclopaedic coverage, so learn them at the level of the State and no further — the district-level detail circulating in coaching material is not well sourced.

• 'Keria' is the paper's spelling of the Kharia, an Austroasiatic people of the Munda branch; at the 2011 Census Odisha had the largest Kharia population of any State, ahead of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.
• The Kharia are a multi-State community — also present in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tripura — so the pairing means 'largest population in Odisha', not 'found only in Odisha'.
• The Kuki are a north-eastern people centred on Manipur and present in every north-eastern State except Arunachal Pradesh; they are not a community of Uttar Pradesh.
• The Yanadi live in Andhra Pradesh, in the Nellore, Chittoor and Prakasam districts.
• The Paliyan (Palliyar) are a forest-dwelling community of Tamil Nadu who speak a Dravidian language closely related to Tamil.

• Being thrown by non-standard spellings such as 'Keria' for Kharia; the pairs that are plainly wrong will still identify the answer
• Reading a tribe-to-State pairing as exclusive — most communities span several States, and the pairing points to the principal or largest concentration
• Placing a north-eastern community such as the Kuki in a plains State because the name is unfamiliar

Both examinations favour the 'which pair is NOT correctly matched' or 'which two are correctly matched' format for tribes, mixing well-known names with obscure ones. UPPSC alternates between Indian tribes and world tribes such as the Bushman, Pygmy and Lapp, so prepare both lists, and always by region rather than by rote pairing.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Kuki community is principally associated with which one of the following States?

  • (a)Manipur
  • (b)Odisha
  • (c)Rajasthan
  • (d)Uttar Pradesh

  Answer(a) Manipur — the Kuki are a north-eastern people, present across the region except in Arunachal Pradesh, and centred on Manipur.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of tribe and State is NOT correctly matched?

  • (a)Tharu – Uttar Pradesh
  • (b)Toda – Tamil Nadu
  • (c)Yanadi – Rajasthan
  • (d)Bhil – Rajasthan

  Answer(c) Yanadi – Rajasthan — the Yanadi are a community of Andhra Pradesh; Rajasthan's principal tribal communities include the Bhil and the Mina.