BharatNotes Corridor
nounUsage in a UPSC answer
The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor seeks to weave a contiguous web of rail, port and digital connectivity across the Gulf, recasting trade geography even as it tests the diplomatic finesse needed to align disparate sovereign interests.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Word Family
corridor (n), corridors (n pl), course (n, cognate), current (n, cognate), cursory (adj, cognate)
Root
Latin currere = to run → Italian correre = to run → corridore = runner, long passage; ecological sense 20th c.
Etymology
From Italian corridore ("a runner, a long passage"), from correre ("to run"), ultimately from Latin currere ("to run") — originally denoting a covered passageway in a building, extended to ecology in the 20th century.
Memory Hook
Hear "CORRIDOR" as a place to "RUN" — share its Latin root currere ("to run") with current and courier; a corridor is literally a "running-way" you hurry down.
How This Word Works in UPSC Writing
A strip of habitat linking larger habitat patches. Ecologically it prevents populations from becoming isolated islands, sustaining gene flow and averting the inbreeding depression that follows isolation, and it accommodates the dispersal of wide-ranging species such as tigers and elephants whose ranges no single protected area can hold. The policy difficulty is legal rather than ecological. Corridors mostly lie outside protected areas, on revenue land, working forest divisions and private holdings, so they do not enjoy the statutory protection that parks and sanctuaries have, which leaves them exposed to fragmentation by highways, railways, canals and transmission lines. Mitigation therefore relies on underpasses and overpasses, eco-sensitive zone regulation and voluntary relocation rather than on prohibition.
Don’t Confuse It With
A corridor is the habitat link that permits movement, while fragmentation is the breaking up of continuous habitat that corridors are meant to counteract. A buffer zone is the regulated ring surrounding a core protected area, part of the core and buffer structure of tiger reserves. An eco-sensitive zone is the notified belt around a park or sanctuary within which land use is regulated. The economic corridor of infrastructure planning, as in the sentence above, is an unrelated sense of the same word.
Hindi Meaning
गलियारा (galiyārā); वन्यजीव गलियारा for a wildlife corridor.
Common Questions
- What is a wildlife corridor?
- A strip of habitat connecting larger habitat patches, allowing animals to move between them for dispersal, foraging and genetic exchange.
- Why are wildlife corridors difficult to protect?
- Because most lie outside protected areas on revenue, forest-division and private land, so they lack the statutory protection that national parks and sanctuaries enjoy.
Seen in UPSC Question Papers
- Prelims 2025 — International Organisations
- Prelims 2020 — Infrastructure
- Prelims 2017 — Internal Security
- Mains 2021 · GS4 · 20 marks — Ethics in Public Administration
- Mains 2018 · GS3 · 10 marks — Security
- Mains 2014 · GS3 · 12.5 marks — Security
- Mains 2013 · GS3 · 10 marks — Environment / Science & Technology
Real UPSC previous-year questions whose text uses “Corridor” — proof this word earns its place on your list.
Tip: press Alt+S to hear pronunciation
