At the time Egypt's pyramids were being constructed, one of the cradles of global civilization emerged, the Indus Valley around the borders of Pakistan and India. Its grid-planned cities produced sewerage networks, delicate artworks and an undeciphered writing system. Then, a 900-year drought emptied its urban areas and sent its population back to a simpler, poorer village life on the plains of the River Ganga. Something grimly similar is happening right now.Tech professionals are leaving India's IT hub of Bengaluru amid an intensifying drought that has gripped the city as it sweats through another torrid pre-monsoon season. With over half of its groundwater wells dried up, the city's reliance on water tankers underscores a stark reality: the very foundation of this urban oasis is crumbling under the weight of climate change and failed policies.The predicament in Bengaluru is not isolated. Across southern India, states like Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu-though they represent a mere 15% of India's populace-contribute significantly to the nation's GDP, thanks in large part to their booming tech and manufacturing sectors. Their success is vital for the global economy, especially as a counterbalance to China's anticipated economic slowdown. Yet, these regions are uniquely vulnerable to water scarcity, lacking the vast Himalayan snowpack reserves that benefit the north.Chennai's 2019 water crisis and the current drought affecting Hyderabad highlight a systemic issue: India's water management policies are in desperate need of overhaul. Agriculture, consuming approximately 85% of the country's water, remains largely unchecked. The cultivation of water-intensive crops like sugarcane is not only encouraged but subsidized, exacerbating the strain on India's water resources. Similarly, the power sector, heavily reliant on coal-fired plants, further depletes the country's water reserves, with significant portions of urban water consumption earmarked for cooling thermal generators.The pressing need for sustainable water management and policy reform has never been clearer. Cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad, once hailed as beacons of professional opportunity and urban living, face the risk of becoming symbols of institutional failure. India's challenge is monumental yet not insurmountable. To avert a crisis of historic proportions, the nation must prioritize its water resources, ensuring its cities remain hubs of growth and innovation. The lessons of the Indus Valley civilization loom large; India's response will determine its future in an era of escalating climate challenges.Q 91.   Which of the following aptly captures the author's main concern in the passage?a)  The historical parallels between ancient droughts and modern urban decline in India.b)  Overhauling India's water policies to prevent a crisis affecting urban sustainability and economic stability.c)  The migration of tech professionals due to Bengaluru's failing water infrastructure.d)  Addressing climate change through improved urban planning and policies.

BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages. Indo-Aryan tribes moved into the Punjab

Bengaluru is amongst the most successful cities in India and also the developing world. Its population growth has been very exponential and it has also generated a vast amount of wealth and prosperity. However, the development path adopted by Bengaluru is not sustainable. And it is leading to widespread degradation of the environment. In the above context, prepare a report on “Development of Infrastructure in Bengaluru and its implications on the Environment”. Your report should contain the following discussions; 1.1 Infrastructural developments in Bengaluru have affected the environment adversely in the past 3 decades. 1.2 Any kind of actions that can undo the damage done so far. 1.3 Suitable remedial measures to avoid environmental pollution.

local coordinator of the West Bengal State’s Nirmal Bangla programme, representative ofthe Gram Panchayat to the Block Disaster Management team) or in daily activities(women, elderly, farmers, etc.).In order to illustrate the dialectical co-production of river, sediment and society, andinstead of labelling each paragraph as in the previous section, the main features of thehydrosocial cycle in this story, here shifting assemblages of representations and meaningsof land and water, technology, materiality of river, uses, institutional arrangements andpower equations, are first summed up in Box 1 with 10 main points.Box 1. Hamidpur char case, Malda district, West Bengal.(1) The post-colonial ruling paradigm, inherited from British representations such as theland/water divide and the preeminence of Kolkata port economics, led Indiannational authorities to assert their capability and power through the constructionof the Farakka Barrage on the main channel of the river Ganges.(2) The barrage modified water flows, but affected deposition and erosion patternswithin the riverbed as well as lateral embankments’ strength.(3) In the context of embankment and irrigation regimes inherited from colonial times,these changes led to increased flood and lateral erosion, with submergence of somemature chars and creation of some new chars. This caused displacement andmigration of Choruas as well as deleterious impacts on people’s livelihoods (theSDDR syndrome or settlement>displacement>re-settlement>re-displacement, seeMukherjee, 2011a).(4) In response, authorities could not/did not want to deal with these uncategorized‘muddyscapes’, neither fixed land nor water, subject to seasonal changes.(5) People were refused welfare program support as their land, and their official identityattached to it were lost while the new chars retained the status of water-logged non-revenue land, thus ‘administratively orphans’.(6) In reaction, grassroots movements emerged in the Malda district to build a politicalforce to push for recognition of Choruas’ rights and fight administrative decisions.(7) The discourse of the Choruas got strengthened by scientific arguments developed byscholar-activists like Kalyan Rudra about the impact of Farakka Barrage on thesediment regime.(8) These movements finally became successful in Hamidpur char with the delivery ofidentity cards, voter cards and ration cards, later with the construction of schools,flood shelters and better roads.(9) Though the char land remains categorized as shikasti (i.e. non-revenue land, whoseliteral meaning is ‘defeated’), there is now an effective integration of HamidpurChoruas in local institutions like Gram Panchayat, flood commission or NirmalBangla (state) programmes.We now move to the detailed account of this narrative. Hamidpur char belongs toKaliachak II development block, Malda district (see Figure 6). This block, situated 15 kmupstream of Farakka Barrage, covers 15,700 ha and a population of about 210,000.The majority of the population are farmers. Among the 15 blocks of the Malda district,Kaliachak II is one of the most vulnerable to floods and river bank erosion. Over 20 years,about a fourth of the block territory has been eroded: 22 villages were completely destroyedand eight others partially swallowed by the River (Kaliachak II BDO, 2007). BesidesLafaye de Micheaux et al. 653erosion, floods regularly destroyed crops and housings: within Hamidpur Gram Panchayatboundary, eight villages remained waterlogged in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 (Kaliachak IIBDO, 2017).In Hamidpur, people who were affected by land erosion due to the progressive eastwardshifting of the Ganges (with massive erosion in 1971 according to local residents) had tomigrate to nearby available lands. Thus, they settled in newly emerged chars that hadappeared on the other bank of the River, in the neighbouring state of Jharkhand. There,they renamed the place Hamidpur to retain the connection with their initial land. However,they were denied any property rights as those areas are considered as shikasti orgovernmental non-revenue land according to the Revenue bill. 7 As in other chars of WestBengal, Bihar or Jharkhand, the lives of newly settled Choruas remained precarious asmigrations caused an oversupply of agricultural labour force, stressing wages to lowlevels. Moreover, migration, trade and land conflicts, lack of public utilities as roads,communications, hospitals and maternal health facilities were other significant constrainsin the chars (Dutta, 2011; Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta, 2013; Mukherjee, 2011b). There werealso instances of illegal trafficking and other criminal activities as these areas easily remainedout of authorities’ sight. In the official perspective, these places were emblems of uncertaintyand vulnerability and hence unsuitable for any governmental investment (Mukherjee, 2011b)and rehabilitation issues were not considered (Rudra, 2003). Government social andhealth schemes were not implemented, as people were not registered as proper citizens(Mukherjee, 2011a).In 1986, a severe flood in Jharkhand drove more than half of the population of that local‘Hamidpur char’ to move back to West Bengal. People from three to four mouzas (groups ofFigure 4. Pre-monsoon ‘muddyscape’, Nirmal char, Murshidabad district, West Bengal (courtesy: KoushikChowdhury).654 Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1(4)villages) however remained in Jharkhand. The newcomers settled on a large and new char(about 7 km long and 4 km wide) that re-emerged next to the left bank of the Ganges River,separated from the western mainland by a new small river channel. That area liedapproximately at the same spot of mainland Hamidpur’s previously submerged areas(interview of Hamidpur GP’ executive assistant, July 2017). However, the Choruasexperienced repeated erosion and floods, notably during 1995, 1998, and 2002. Moreover,being denied rights by West Bengal authorities, they had no identity cards, neither votercards nor ration cards that allow Below-Poverty-Line (BPL) populations to access rice andother basic commodities at low prices.In 1998 troubled by the loss of their houses and livelihoods, and against the negligible roleof the government, a small group of villagers from nearby Panchanandapur created theGanga Bhangan Pratirodh Action Nagorik Committee (GBPANC). This grassrootsmovement received the support of action groups and NGOs such as Child Rightsand You. These organizations initially aimed at better rehabilitation and relief forthe Choruas. They then surveyed and mapped the chars, in order to initiatethe institutionalization of these lands. They also promoted activism towards recognitionand assertion of citizenship rights of Choruas. Scholar-activists like geographer KalyanRudra from Kolkata supported their cause by disseminating studies on Farakka Barrage’sresponsibility in sediment regime disruptions and its impact on char erosion in Malda andMurshidabad districts (Rudra, 2003).Finally, in December 2010, GBPANC managed to organize a meeting at the Hamidpurchar itself, in the presence of the Additional District Magistrate of Malda district. InhabitantsFigure 5. Monsoon ‘muddyscape’, Hamidpur char, Malda district, West Bengal.Lafaye de Micheaux et al. 655were told to bring and show to the administrator their past property entitlements. As a directconsequence of this event, in 2011, Choruas got identity cards and voter cards. Two primaryschools and a junior school were constructed between 2012 and 2015, allowing children fromthe char to join schools. The char got access to electricity in 2015, a tangible sign ofmarginalization reduction. Since 2014, a woman from the char has been elected as Memberof the Hamidpur Gram Panchayat. Since char residents were recognized officially, this pavedthe way for political participation (for instance within the local flood commission, or withNirmal Bangla (Clean Bengal schemes, etc.), disaster planning, and delivery of governmentservices (construction of emergency shelters, health programs, etc.).Between 2005 and 2011, people thought that only classification of chars as payasti(i.e. revenue land) could lead to access to government schemes and provide officialidentities to Choruas. However, the char remains shikasti land or non-revenue land; notaxes are then collected on agriculture revenues. As a consequence, thanks to the highFigure 6. Location map of Hamidpur char, Malda district, West Bengal.656 Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1(4)fertility of the char soil and according to the head of the Kaliachak II block, ‘people are notpoor there’ (field interview, July 2017).This particular case of a successful grassroots movement shows the potentials andpossibilities of moving terrain where flood or erosion may come anytime. In this case,official recognition of the residents’ existence and needs has been crucial. However, as thehead of Kaliachak II Block explains, Hamidpur char is particular in the sense that some easyidentifiable land was available for the settlers thanks to re-emergence of land. In contrast, inareas of the Jharkhand-West Bengal border, many chars remain like ‘orphans’: as of now, nodecision has been taken to attribute these chars to one of the two states. Vulnerabilities ofChoruas there remain unabated. In 2018, GBPANC was still an active association thatdefined its mission as promoting a ‘complete awareness’ about river erosion and theassociated problems (GBPANC’s website, accessed September 2018). Its aim remained toput pressure on government for conducting technical assessments, understanding empiricalrealities and crafting policies for welfare of erosion-victims in general and Choruas inparticular.

What is one significant feature of the urban planning and architecture of Indus Valley cities?

Which was the largest Indian site of Indus Civilization ?MohenjodaroLothalChanhudaroDholavira