Geographical Diversity of India

About this chapter

Geographical Diversity of India is the first chapter of Class 7 Exploring Society: India and Beyond Part 1, opening the Theme A — Geography — strand. The chapter takes a bird's-eye 'flight' over India, the seventh-largest country in the world and part of the Indian Subcontinent, and groups its landforms into five regions: the great mountain zone of the Himalayas, the plains of the Ganga and the Indus, the desert region (Thar and the cold desert of Ladakh), the southern peninsula with its Aravallis, Peninsular Plateau, Western and Eastern Ghats and Coasts, and the islands (Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar). It explains how India broke away from Gondwana about 50 million years ago, collided with Eurasia, and folded up the Himalayas (Himadri, Himachal, Shivalik), still rising about 5 mm a year. CTET Paper 2 SST tests this chapter through fact items on dates, places, ranges, rivers, festivals and UNESCO sites, and through cause-effect questions on how geography shapes climate, livelihood and culture. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all six regions at CTET depth.