Practice: Rivers, Lakes, Water Harvesting and Irrigation

(c) Jaisalmer. Gadsisar appears twice in the chapter — in the district table of lakes and again in the talab list — and both entries put it in Jaisalmer.

Why not the others: (a) Bikaner is the classic misplacement, and it is the most repeated water-body trap in the papers. Bikaner's own water bodies are Lunkaransar, Anoop Sagar and Gajna. (b) Jodhpur has Balsamand and Kaylana; (d) Balotra has Pachpadra.

(d) Jaisamand – Alwar is the incorrect pair. Jaisamand is in Salumber on the current map, and was Udaipur's before the 2023 reorganisation — either way it is not Alwar. Udaipur keeps Fateh Sagar, Pichola, Udaisagar and Swaroop Sagar.

Why not the others: Alwar's own lakes are Jai Sagar, Mansarovar and Vijay Sagar — and Jai Sagar is a different water body with a similar name, which is exactly what the pair is built on. The other three are sound: Kaylana in Jodhpur, Rana Pratap Sagar in Chittorgarh, Tal Chhapar in Churu.

(b) Ummed Sagar and Pratap Sagar. Both names are listed under Jodhpur and under Jaisalmer, so a bare name without a district is not a safe answer in either direction.

Why not the others: (a) Balsamand and Kaylana are Jodhpur's alone; (c) Gadsisar is Jaisalmer's and Lalsagar Jodhpur's; (d) Anoop Sagar and Gajna are Bikaner's. The lesson is that duplicated names exist, which is why an option naming only a water body is worth reading twice.

(a) Sirohi.

Why not the others: (b) Pali has Sardar Samand; (c) Rajsamand has the lake of its own name; (d) Udaipur has five entries in the chapter's table and none of them is Nakki. The Aravalli setting is what pulls candidates towards Udaipur — the answer is a district, not a range.

(d) Ajmer. The three sit together in the chapter's district table and are the cleanest three-in-one entry on it.

Why not the others: (b) Bhilwara has Mandal Tal, Khari Bandh and Jaitpura Bandh; (a) Alwar has Jai Sagar, Mansarovar and Vijay Sagar. Ajmer is worth fixing as a set of three, because the question is usually set as a group rather than singly.

(c) Tonk.

Why not the others: (d) Sawai Madhopur has Panchna Bandh and Morel Bandh; (a) Bhilwara has Mandal Tal and the Khari and Jaitpura bunds. Bisalpur is pulled towards Ajmer and Jaipur because it supplies them — a supply command is not a location, and the reservoir sits in Tonk.

(a) Banswara.

Why not the others: (b) Dungarpur has Gaib Sagar and Somkamla, and Edward Sagar among its talabs; (c) Pratapgarh's own list runs to ten talabs, none of them Bajaj Sagar. The southern cluster is set as one confusion, so learn Banswara by the Mahi and Dungarpur by Gaib Sagar.

(b) Dungarpur. It is one of the four pairs the chapter confirms independently rather than on the textbook's word alone — with Gadsisar in Jaisalmer, Kaylana in Jodhpur and Chand Baori at Abhaneri in Dausa.

Why not the others: (a) Banswara has the Mahi and Bajaj Sagar; (d) Sirohi has Nakki. The spelling varies between Gaib and Gap in different books, and that alone is enough to make a candidate distrust a correct option.

(c) 1872. The Jodhpur cluster runs Lalsagar 1800 · Kaylana 1872 · Ummed Sagar 1931 · Takhat Sagar 1932, and the four together hold up to 70 crore cubic feet.

Why not the others: every wrong option is a real date from the same chapter. (a) 1800 is Lalsagar, (d) 1931 is Ummed Sagar, and (b) 1660 is the Mahamandir Jhalara at Jodhpur — the same city, a different kind of structure, two centuries earlier.

(b) Chittorgarh, with Wanakiya, Muraliya and Senapani.

Why not the others: (a) Bundi's talabs are Kirti Mori, Barda and Hindoli; (d) Bharatpur's are Parvati and Baretha; (c) Udaipur's is Bagoliya. The Padmini association pulls the answer towards Udaipur, and the talab is at Chittorgarh.

(a) Pachpadra, in Balotra district.

Why not the others: (b) Pichola is a freshwater lake at Udaipur; (c) Balsamand is at Jodhpur; (d) Talwara is in Hanumangarh. Learn the four saline lakes as one block with their districts attached, because two of those districts changed in 2023.

(d) Balotra, created in the 2023 reorganisation and retained through the December 2024 cull. The state now has 41 districts and 425 tehsils.

Why not the others: (a) Barmer is the pre-2023 answer and is what almost every book still prints — not wrong about the past, only about the present. Read the framework the paper is using: a question set on the 41-district map wants Balotra, and the Pachpadra refinery is placed in Balotra for the same reason.

(b) Didwana-Kuchaman, from 2023, and it too survived December 2024.

Why not the others: (a) Nagaur held Didwana until 2023, and Nagaur is still a district in its own right with Bhankri Molas in the chapter's table — which is what makes it such a durable distractor. (d) Jaipur belongs to Sambhar, the next lake in the same cluster.

(c) Rajasthan's second Ramsar site.

Why not the others: (b) is broken by the other three lakes in the same cluster — Didwana, Lunkaransar and Pachpadra are saline too. (d) is self-contradictory: a salt lake is not a freshwater lake at all. (a) is the option to be careful with — Sambhar is the second, and which site is the first belongs to the biodiversity chapter, not this one.

(a) Inland drainage. The Nagaur uplands have no outlet to the sea, so water that collects evaporates in place and the salt stays.

Why not the others: This is a mechanism rather than a fact to memorise, and it explains why the four lakes cluster where they do instead of scattering. Note the direction of the argument: the drainage explains the salt, so any option that imports salt from an outside source has the causation backwards.

(b) The Paliwal Brahmins of Jaisalmer, in the 15th century.

Why not the others: (a) Rao Jodhaji built the first nadi, in 1520, and (c) the Shakas brought the stepwell into western Rajasthan around the first century CE — both are real attributions in the same chapter, attached to different structures. Three founders, three structures, and the commonest error is to swap them.

(a) 1,300 hectares.

Why not the others: (c) 2.46 lakh ha is the Narmada Canal command and (d) 16.17 lakh ha the culturable command area of the Indira Gandhi Nahar, both from the Economic Review 2025-26. The scale is the point of the question: the whole khadin system of Jaisalmer is smaller than a rounding error on a canal command, and it still feeds the villages that built it.

(c) 2 to 4 metres high, with a catchment of 5 to 7 kilometres. Earthen embankments on two sides and a stone spillway on the third, so that surplus spills over rather than bursting the bund; deeper khadins have a gate, and the overflow passes into the next khadin.

Why not the others: each wrong option is a genuine dimension belonging to a different structure — (a) is the tanka, (b) the kui or beri, (d) the nadi in sandy tracts. A khadin is measured by the height of its bund; the others are measured by depth, which is the quickest way to keep them apart.

(d) Iraq.

Why not the others: all three wrong options are arid-country near-misses, and Israel in particular travels widely because of its association with drip irrigation. The chapter names Iraq and nobody else, and this is a one-word fact with no reasoning behind it — learn it as a word, not as an argument.

(a) The groundwater is saline. The tanka is saucer-shaped, 30 to 40 feet deep, and its stored rainwater is drinking water.

Why not the others: every wrong option is the identifying detail of a different structure — (b) the jhalara, (c) the toba, (d) the well below a khadin. Drinking is the tanka's distinguishing purpose, and it is the exact point on which it is set against the jhalara, whose water was never for drinking.

(b) Rao Jodhaji, in 1520. A nadi is 3 to 12 m deep in sandy tracts and holds water for about ten months; in alluvial soil it is larger and holds water the year round.

Why not the others: (a) is the khadin and (c) the arrival of the stepwell; (d) 1932 is the year of Takhat Sagar in the Jodhpur lake cluster, a date from this chapter attached to the wrong kind of thing.

(c) Deeper, on dense ground that does not let water seep away, serving up to about twenty families. Grass grows around it, so the village animals graze there.

Why not the others: (a) is the tanka, (b) the jhalara, (d) the baori. The toba is the structure most often left out of a list of eight, precisely because it looks like a bigger nadi — the ground it is dug in, and the number of families, are what separate them.

(d) The beris, that is the kui — a narrow well beside a talab, 10 to 12 m deep, its mouth covered with wooden planks, filled by seepage.

Why not the others: (b) is the tempting wrong answer, because a jhalara is also fed by seepage — but it is fed from the tanks and lakes above it, so when those dry, it dries. The beri draws from the ground beside the talab and outlasted it. The 1987 drought is the evidence the chapter gives, and it is the detail that makes the kui examinable.

(c) The Harshat Mata temple. Abhaneri is in Dausa district, and the pair is one of the four the chapter verifies independently.

Why not the others: (b) Jodhpur's Mahamandir belongs to a jhalara of 1660, not to a baori — a real structure from the same chapter attached to the wrong monument. The temple beside the stepwell is not decoration: a baori was built for religious merit and was public by design, which is why one so often stands with a temple.

(d) The catchment.

Why not the others: (a) is palar pani, (b) nehta or neshta, and (c) is madar, the boundary of the catchment — which is the one to watch, because agor and madar are the catchment and the edge of the catchment. Two words for two different things, one letter apart in most candidates' memory.

(a) The limit of the land from which water flows in, with fouling forbidden inside it.

Why not the others: (b) is indu, (c) dhekli, (d) vapika and its variants. Madar is the best single example of traditional resource governance in this chapter: a community that cannot police a watershed by law polices it by taboo, and the catchment stays clean either way.

(b) The mouth of a tanka, mesh-covered.

Why not the others: (a) is agor, (c) palar pani, (d) beri, also called kuiya. Indu and dhekli are the tanka's two fittings — the mouth and the lifting lever — and they are usually set together.

(c) A baori, the stepwell.

Why not the others: The other names in the chapter's glossary are functional — agor, nehta, indu, dhekli all describe a part or a purpose. Only the baori carries a set of archaic synonyms, which fits its history: the chapter records the tradition as brought into western Rajasthan by the Shakas around the first century CE, with baoris of 700–800 CE still standing at Jodhpur and Bhinmal.

(b) 40.19 lakh hectares, the created-area figure in the Economic Review 2025-26.

Why not the others: all three are real figures from the same chapter, and two are from the same document. (a) 16.17 lakh ha is the IGNP culturable command area; (c) 14.82 lakh ha is the land allotted under IGNP since inception; (d) 23,320 ha is the additional potential created up to December — a nine-month position, not a year's result.

(c) 6 major, 5 medium and 34 minor, per the Economic Review 2025-26.

Why not the others: (a) and (b) swap the counts between categories and (d) reverses the digits of 34. The safe way to hold it is by naming the projects rather than counting them — six major and five medium are both short enough lists to learn outright.

(d) Gagrin. The five medium projects are Garadada, Takli, Gagrin, Hatiyadeh and Andheri (Economic Review 2025-26).

Why not the others: all three are major projects from the same list — the six are Narmada Canal, Parwan, Dholpur Lift, Upper High Level Canal (Mahi), Pipalkhunt High Level Canal and Kaliteer Lift. The question is not whether the name is real but which of the two lists it sits on, and that is how RPSC sets it.

(a) Sprinkler irrigation mandatory across the whole command area, and the claim is India-wide, not state-wide.

Why not the others: (d) is the Indira Gandhi Nahar's description — Himalayan water carried into the desert, and the state calls it the lifeline of western Rajasthan. Do not let the sprinkler fact drift to the IGNP either: the IGNP uses sprinklers in its Stage-II lift areas by allotment, area by area, while on the Narmada command it is compulsory throughout.

(b) Jalore and Barmer, as the Economic Review 2025-26 names them. The project also supplies drinking water to 37.48 lakh people in 1,541 villages — 874 in Jalore and 667 in Barmer — and to the towns of Jalore, Bhinmal and Sanchor.

Why not the others: (d) is the trap that district reorganisation creates, and it is worth being precise about: Balotra was carved out of Barmer in 2023, but the Review still describes this command as Jalore and Barmer, and that is what the answer must follow. Where the state's own current document names a district, use its name rather than updating it yourself.

(c) 16.17 lakh hectares (Economic Review 2025-26).

Why not the others: (a) 14.82 lakh ha is the land allotted since inception — the two sit in the same table, one line apart, and are the likeliest pair to be swapped. (b) is the statewide created area and (d) the Narmada command. The IGNP budget for 2025-26 is ₹1,106.36 crore, of which ₹78.04 crore is the Stage I Kanwarsain lift and ₹1,028.32 crore Stage II.

(d) 1,917 cusecs, 577 MCM a year, at Tajewala Head (Hathnikund Barrage), monsoon only. The agreement was made through the Upper Yamuna River Board.

Why not the others: (b) swaps the units, which is the cheap error. (a) and (c) get the season wrong, and the season is the examinable part — a share available for four months has to be stored or carried, not simply used, which is exactly why the 17 February 2024 MoU with Haryana is for a joint DPR for an underground carrier.

(a) Sikar, Churu and Jhunjhunu, under the MoU of 17 February 2024 for a joint DPR.

Why not the others: (c) is the Indira Gandhi Nahar's country in the north-west, and (b) and (d) are eastern Rajasthan, which is the PKC-ERCP's business, not the Yamuna's. Three water stories, three parts of the state — keeping their maps apart is most of the work in this section.

(d) Navnera Barrage and Isarda Dam. Everything else on the project is under construction, allocated or under survey.

Why not the others: (a) and (b) are under way, inside the ₹9,416.70 crore of three packages; (c) is allocated, within ₹13,895 crore of Letters of Allocation. Three different verbs — completed, under construction, allocated — and the whole question turns on which one applies. Rajasthan's own DPR, worth ₹89,644 crore, went to the Central Water Commission on 29 July 2025, so the link is being built and is not yet delivering water.

(a) R is the evidence for A. MJSA 2.0 is explicitly about rainwater harvesting, afforestation and the restoration of traditional water bodies, and its first phase covers over 5,000 villages. A state building 1.10 lakh harvesting structures is doing at scale what the khadin and the nadi did locally. Note the verb: ₹2,500 crore is a budget provision, not completed work.

(d) R is true and A is false. Seventeen districts are the project's intended service area, not its present one. Two completed works do not make a link that functions: the DPR went to the Central Water Commission on 29 July 2025 and the rest is under construction. A sanctioned project is not a working one, and this is the commonest way a current-affairs fact is over-claimed.

(b) Both halves are true and both are unusual, but they are two separate facts about the same structure, not a cause and its effect. The jhalara's water went to religious rites and communal bathing by use, not by any disability of its source; the missing catchment describes where its water comes from, not what it was for. Either half can carry a question on its own.

(c) A is true; R is false twice over. The four lakes are saline because the Nagaur uplands drain inland, so water evaporates where it stands and leaves its salt — a fact of drainage, not of canals. A true assertion with an authoritative-sounding false reason is the hardest form of this question, and the defence is to know the mechanism rather than the list.

(a) R explains A. Merit is earned by the giving, so the gift has to be public — the ownership of a baori follows from the reason it was built. This is the cleanest distinction in the whole chapter and it is a social fact rather than an engineering one, which is what makes it worth a line in a Mains answer on traditional water management.

(b) A-3, B-1, C-2, D-4. The jhalara and the toba are the pair that gets swapped — both are fed from somewhere other than their own rainfall in a candidate's memory, and only the jhalara actually is.

(d) A-2, B-4, C-1, D-3. The rest of the set is Rajasthan — khadin, kund, nadi; Maharashtra — bandhara and taal; the Jammu region — pokhar. Kerala's surangam and Karnataka's katta are the two that trade places most often, and this set appears in general studies papers well beyond Rajasthan.

(c) A-4, B-2, C-1, D-3. Option (b) is the swap to watch — it reads palar pani as the catchment and agor as the water, which is the two halves of the same system exchanged. Nehta is also written neshta, and a full nadi drains through it into the next one or into a field.