Regional geography of India and West Bengal
Regional geography of India and West Bengal
This section combines physical and human geography of India with the regional detail of West Bengal: physiographic divisions, drainage, soils, agriculture, industry and the delta.
Core rules
- India: Himalaya, Northern Plains, Peninsular Plateau, Indian Desert, Coastal Plains, Islands.
- Himalayan rivers are perennial, antecedent and gorge-cutting; peninsular rivers are seasonal, broad-valleyed and largely consequent.
- Soils: alluvial (plains, most fertile), black/regur (Deccan basalt, moisture-retentive, cotton), red (crystalline rocks), laterite (heavy rainfall, leached, poor), arid, forest and mountain.
- West Bengal regions: Darjeeling Himalaya (Teesta, landslides, tea), Terai–Dooars (tea, forests), Barind and Rarh lateritic uplands, the moribund and active Gangetic delta, and the coastal Sundarbans.
- Industry: jute mills along the Hooghly, tea in Darjeeling–Dooars, iron and steel at Durgapur and Burnpur, petrochemicals at Haldia, coal from Raniganj–Asansol.
Worked example
Why did jute mills concentrate along the Hooghly rather than beside the jute fields of north Bengal? Reasoning: the raw material is bulky but loses weight in processing, so proximity helps - yet the decisive set was the combination of cheap navigable water transport on the Hooghly, the port of Kolkata for export to world markets, abundant labour from Bihar and eastern Bengal, coal from Raniganj for power, and soft water for retting and processing. Raw material alone would predict north Bengal; the full factor set predicts the Hooghly belt.
Traps that cost marks
Treating the Damodar as a Himalayan river; calling laterite soil fertile; placing tea only in the plains; naming Rarh as a deltaic region; ignoring the role of the port when explaining industrial location.