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Class 10 Geography: Water Resources, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on Chapter 3, Water Resources, of the NCERT Class 10 Geography textbook, Contemporary India II. Each has a worked answer and the textbook page it rests on. They cover the government's water schemes, India's ancient water works, how dams are classified, the Sardar Sarovar project in numbers, an inter-state water dispute, and what irrigation has done to cropping. A short section on the chapter's map work for 2026-27 comes at the end.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every number was re-computed by a script and every answer was checked against the chapter, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. None of them is a textbook exercise or a sample-paper question reworded. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (Contemporary India II, Reprint 2026-27, Chapter 3, printed pages 19 to 29):

Water schemes and the need to conserve

Question 1. (1 mark) Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal) works with water-stressed gram panchayats in seven states. Which of these states is not one of them? (A) Gujarat (B) Karnataka (C) Punjab (D) Uttar Pradesh

Answer: (C) Punjab. Atal Jal runs in 8,220 water-stressed gram panchayats of 229 blocks in 80 districts of seven states: Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana and Gujarat. A key aim is to change people's habits from consuming water to conserving it (page 21).

Question 2. Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, every rural household should get an assured supply of safe piped water at a fixed amount per person per day. A village has 400 households with 5 people each on average (a made-up figure). (a) What is the Mission's amount per person per day? (b) How much water a day must the village's taps supply to meet it? (c) How much is that in a 30-day month?

Answer: (a) 55 litres; (b) 1,10,000 litres a day; (c) 33,00,000 litres. (a) The Mission's goal is potable piped water at 55 litres per person per day, on a regular, long-term basis (page 21). (b) 400 × 5 = 2,000 people, and 2,000 × 55 = 1,10,000 litres a day. (c) 1,10,000 × 30 = 33,00,000 litres, that is 3.3 million litres a month.

Water works old and new

Question 3. (a) Match each ancient water work to its time: the tank at Hauz Khas, Delhi; the Bhopal Lake; the flood-water channels of Sringaverapura near Allahabad. Times: first century BC; eleventh century; thirteenth to fourteenth century. (b) Name the traditional system people used in each of these places: the hills of the Western Himalayas; the flood plains of Bengal.

Answer: (a) Sringaverapura, first century BC; Bhopal Lake, eleventh century; Hauz Khas tank, thirteenth to fourteenth century. (b) Guls or kuls in the Western Himalayas; inundation channels in Bengal. (a) Sringaverapura had an advanced system that channelled the Ganga's flood water in the first century BC; the eleventh-century Bhopal Lake was among the biggest man-made lakes of that age; and the Hauz Khas tank was built by Allauddin Khilji in the thirteenth to fourteenth century to supply water to the Siri Fort area (pages 21-22). (b) In the hills, people dug diversion channels called guls or kuls for farming; in Bengal's flood plains they made inundation channels to water their fields (page 25).

Question 4. A textbook box explains how dams are described. (a) Give two ways of classifying dams and one example of each. (b) What is a spillway, or weir? (c) In the box's definition, does the word "dam" mean the wall across the river or the water held behind it?

Answer: (a) By structure and material: timber, embankment or masonry dams; by height: large and major dams, or low, medium and high dams; dams can also be classed by their intended purpose (page 22). (b) The part of a dam over or through which water is meant to flow, either now and then or all the time (page 22). (c) The water: in the box's definition, the word means the reservoir, not the wall (page 22).

Question 5. (a) Why did Jawaharlal Nehru call dams the "temples of modern India"? (b) The chapter quotes a Bhadu song from the Damodar valley. What does the song ask the river for, and what was the Damodar known as?

Answer: (a) Because dams were expected to tie the growth of farming and the village economy to fast industrial and urban growth, carrying the country forward after colonial rule (page 22). (b) The singers beg the Damodar to reduce its floods a little so their boats can sail again; the Damodar was called the "river of sorrow" because of its floods (page 22).

Big projects and their effects

Question 6. The Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada is planned to irrigate 18.45 lakh hectares in Gujarat, 2,46,000 hectares in Rajasthan's desert districts of Jalore and Barmer, and 37,500 hectares in the hilly tribal tract of Maharashtra. (a) What is the total area to be irrigated? (b) What percentage of it is in Gujarat, to one decimal place? (c) Why does the chapter call this water so important for these areas?

Answer: (a) 21,28,500 hectares; (b) 86.7%; (c) most of the command area is drought-prone. (a) 18,45,000 + 2,46,000 + 37,500 = 21,28,500 hectares (page 23). (b) 18,45,000 ÷ 21,28,500 × 100 ≈ 86.7%. (c) Roughly three-quarters of the Gujarat part of the area it will water, and the whole Rajasthan part, is drought-prone, and an assured water supply is expected to make it drought-proof (page 23).

Question 7. In the Krishna-Godavari dispute, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh objected to a plan by Maharashtra. (a) What was the plan? (b) Why did the two states object? (c) What does this show about rivers that flow through several states?

Answer: (a) Maharashtra wanted to divert more water at Koyna for a multi-purpose project (page 23). (b) Taking more water upstream would cut the flow downstream in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, which would hurt their farming and industry (page 23). (c) Water taken in one state is water lost to the states downstream, so a river shared by several states needs agreement on how its water is divided. (Part (c) asks you to reason from the case.)

Question 8. (a) What do the slogans "har khet ko pani" and "per drop more crop" of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana mean? (b) The chapter says irrigation has also changed cropping patterns. What change, and what harm can it do to the soil?

Answer: (a) "Har khet ko pani", water for every field, is about giving every farm some assured irrigation and bringing more land under it; "per drop more crop" is about using irrigation and water-saving technology so that each drop of water grows more (page 23). (b) Many farmers have shifted to water-hungry commercial crops, and that can make the soil saline (page 23).

Map work for this chapter

For this chapter, the 2026-27 curriculum's map list asks you to locate and label eight dams: Salal, Bhakra Nangal, Tehri, Rana Pratap Sagar, Sardar Sarovar, Hirakud, Nagarjuna Sagar and Tungabhadra (CBSE Social Science curriculum 2026-27, PDF page 7). The textbook's map India: Major Rivers and Dams (page 24) shows each one on its river: Salal on the Chenab, Bhakra Nangal on the Satluj, Tehri in the upper Ganga basin, Rana Pratap Sagar on the Chambal, Sardar Sarovar on the Narmada, Hirakud on the Mahanadi, Nagarjuna Sagar on the Krishna and Tungabhadra on the Tungabhadra. Learning the river first makes each dam easy to place.

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Sources

All opened and read on 3 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook; printed page = PDF page + 18.

The facts and figures are from the textbook pages above. The questions, the made-up village figures and the worked answers are our own, and every number was re-computed by script. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the textbook.

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