Transport, Ports & Urbanisation: previous-year questions

Answer: (A) Kandla — Maharashtra

Kandla, officially Deendayal Port since 2017, lies on the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat, not Maharashtra; it is a tidal port developed after Partition to make up for the loss of Karachi. The other pairs are correct: Paradip (Odisha, near the mouth of the Mahanadi), Tuticorin, now V.O. Chidambaranar Port (Tamil Nadu), and Cochin, a natural harbour on the Vembanad backwaters (Kerala). Maharashtra's major ports are Mumbai and Jawaharlal Nehru Port (Nhava Sheva), with Vadhavan approved as a new major port. West Bengal has the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port (Kolkata-Haldia), India's only riverine major port.

No option is correct as printed — this question is disputed. WBPSC awarded the mark to all candidates: none of the listed ports is the largest by total cargo — that is Deendayal (Kandla) or Paradip among major ports, and Mundra overall.

Answer as of 2023 — this may have changed since.

No correct option is listed: among major ports Deendayal (Kandla) and Paradip handle the most cargo, and Mundra, a private port, handles the most of all. Jawaharlal Nehru Port is the largest container port, which makes it tempting, and Chennai, Mumbai and Visakhapatnam all handle less cargo, so the PSC awarded the mark to all candidates.

Answer: (A) Udaipur

Udaipur in Rajasthan, with Lake Pichola, Fateh Sagar and other lakes, is known as the City of Lakes. Nainital is a lake town but not called by this name, Srinagar is known for Dal Lake, and Bengaluru is the Garden City.

Answer: (B) Kolkata

Eastern Railway has its headquarters at Fairlie Place, Kolkata. Hajipur near Patna is the headquarters of East Central Railway, Guwahati (Maligaon) of Northeast Frontier Railway, and Bhubaneswar of East Coast Railway.

Answer: (B) Darjeeling Himalayan Railway

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, opened in 1881, is the oldest of the Mountain Railways of India and was the first inscribed by UNESCO, in 1999. The Nilgiri (1908) and Kalka–Shimla (1903) lines were added later, and the Konkan Railway is not a heritage site.

Answer: (C) Lord Dalhousie

Lord Dalhousie is called the Father of Indian Railways: the first passenger train ran from Bombay to Thane in 1853 during his tenure, and his 1853 minute laid out the trunk-line network. Visvesvaraya was an engineer known for dams, and Syed Ahmed Khan an educationist.

Answer: (A) Mumbai

The Gateway of India stands on the Apollo Bunder waterfront in Mumbai and was built to mark the 1911 visit of King George V and Queen Mary. Delhi has India Gate, a war memorial often confused with it.

Answer: (D) East and West coast respectively.

Paradip is in Odisha on the east coast and Mormugao in Goa on the west coast, so the order is east and west respectively. Option (C) reverses this, and (A) and (B) put both ports on one coast.

Answer: (A) India's four main megacities by superfast railway services

The Diamond Quadrilateral is the proposed high-speed rail network, announced in 2014, to link the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata; the Mumbai–Ahmedabad bullet-train corridor is the first high-speed line being built. Do not confuse it with the Golden Quadrilateral, the 5,846 km national highway network joining the same four metros (launched in 2001), or with the North–South and East–West road corridors, which cross at Jhansi. Sagarmala is the port-led development programme, Bharatmala covers highways and UDAN covers regional air connectivity.

Answer: (D) Atal Mission for Rejuvenation Urban Transformation (AMRUT)

AMRUT is not a JNNURM component; it is a separate mission launched in 2015 that replaced JNNURM. JNNURM's four components were Urban Infrastructure and Governance (UIG) and Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) for the larger mission cities, and UIDSSMT and the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) for small and medium towns. So (A), (B) and (C) were all part of JNNURM. The Smart Cities Mission was launched in 2015 along with AMRUT.

Answer: (D) Delhi-Mumbai-Chennai-Kolkata

The Golden Quadrilateral, built under Phase I of the National Highways Development Project, is a highway network of about 5,846 km linking the four metros Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. The North–South Corridor links Srinagar with Kanyakumari. The East–West Corridor links Silchar with Porbandar. Bengaluru lies on the Golden Quadrilateral between Mumbai and Chennai, but it is not one of the four corner cities, which is why (A) and (C) are wrong.

Answer: (A) Bengaluru

Namma Metro ('Our Metro' in Kannada) is the metro rail of Bengaluru, run by the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation, whose first section opened in 2011. Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad, is served by the Hyderabad Metro. Visakhapatnam had no operating metro at the time of the exam. Kanpur is a north Indian city, so it is wrong on both counts.

Answer: (A) Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) was proposed by Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who saw it as a way to reduce migration to cities by creating rural growth clusters connected by roads, electronics and knowledge. Dr C. N. R. Rao is a solid-state chemist who received the Bharat Ratna in 2014. Dr M. S. Swaminathan is known as the father of the Green Revolution in India. Dr Verghese Kurien led the White Revolution through Operation Flood and Amul.

Answer: (B) NH 27

Under the national highway numbering of 2010, NH 27 runs from Porbandar in Gujarat to Silchar in Assam and forms most of the East–West Corridor. NH 44 is the longest national highway, running from Srinagar to Kanyakumari along the North–South Corridor. NH 27 passes through Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. The other numbers are not the Porbandar–Silchar route.

Answer: (B) Mumbai

Mumbai port, sheltered between Mumbai island and the mainland, is called the finest natural harbour in India and handles a large share of India's trade. Kochi is also a natural harbour on the Vembanad lagoon and is called the 'Queen of the Arabian Sea', which makes (D) the tempting option. Marmagao in Goa is known for iron-ore exports. Chennai has one of the oldest artificial harbours on India's east coast.

Answer: (D) Maharastra

Answer as of 2022 — this may have changed since.

Maharashtra has three big metropolitan centres, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, which were its three largest urban agglomerations in Census 2011. It also had the largest urban population of any state, about 5 crore. West Bengal is dominated by a single metropolis, Kolkata, and Gujarat by Ahmedabad and Surat. Uttar Pradesh has many million-plus cities, but none comparable in size to Mumbai or Pune.

Answer: (A) Bombay and Thane

India's first passenger train ran on 16 April 1853 from Bori Bunder in Bombay to Thane, about 34 km, during Lord Dalhousie's governor-generalship. In eastern India, the first train ran from Howrah to Hooghly on 15 August 1854, passing through Serampore, which makes (D) the tempting option. The line from Bombay to Pune came later, across the Bhor Ghat. Indian Railways is today among the largest railway networks in the world.

Answer: (C) Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu, with about 48.4% of its people living in urban areas in Census 2011, was the most urbanised of the major states. Kerala came close at about 47.7%, after the sharpest rise in urban share between 2001 and 2011. Maharashtra was about 45.2% urban, though it had the largest urban population in absolute numbers. Note: Goa, a small state, had the highest urban share of all states at about 62%, so (B) is factually correct.

Answer: (D) NH-34—Sevak-Gangtok

The question uses the old National Highway numbers. Old NH-34 ran from Dum Dum (Kolkata) to Dalkhola through Krishnanagar, Berhampore and Malda; the Sevoke-Gangtok road was NH-31A, so option D is the wrong match. The others are correct: NH-2 Delhi-Kolkata (part of the Grand Trunk Road), NH-35 Barasat-Bangaon-Petrapole and NH-41 Kolaghat-Haldia. New numbers after 2010: NH-2 is now largely NH-19, NH-34 is NH-12, NH-35 is NH-112, NH-41 is NH-116 and NH-31A is NH-10.

Answer: (B) Kolkata

The Central Inland Water Transport Corporation (CIWTC), which operates cargo and passenger services on India's river systems, is headquartered in Kolkata, reflecting the historic importance of the Hooghly and Ganga-Brahmaputra river network to the region.