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Review key Peninsular Plateau of India: Deccan Trap, Malwa, Chhotanagpur & Western Ghats exam facts and rate your mastery to track revision.
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#1
The Peninsular Plateau is a remnant of Gondwanaland comprising Archaean crystalline gneisses and granites, tilted east-southeast except for west-flowing Narmada and Tapi rift rivers.
#2
The Deccan Trap formed through late Cretaceous fissure volcanic eruptions (~66 Ma), creating step-like basaltic topography that weathered into fertile black regur soil.
#3
The Malwa Plateau forms a triangular block bounded by the Aravalli and Vindhyan ranges, feeding dendritic drainage networks into the Yamuna river system.
#4
The Chhotanagpur Plateau acts as India's mineral heartland, containing primary Gondwana coal reserves within the faulted Damodar River rift valley.
#5
The Shillong Plateau and Karbi Anglong represent eastward extensions of the Peninsular shield, separated from the Rajmahal Hills by the down-faulted Malda Gap.
#6
The Bundelkhand Gneiss represents some of the oldest exposed continental crust in India, dating back approximately 3.5 billion years to the Archaean era.
#7
The Dandakaranya region across Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh forms a rugged physiographic section drained by the Indravati and Sabari tributaries of the Godavari.
#8
The Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), modeled on the US Tennessee Valley Authority, was established in 1948 to harness the mineral-rich Chhotanagpur drainage basin.
#9
Parasnath Peak (1,365 m) in the Giridih district of Jharkhand is the highest summit of the Chhotanagpur Plateau and a primary Jain pilgrimage center.
#10
Dhupgarh (1,350 m) near Pachmarhi in the Mahadeo Hills serves as the highest peak of the Satpura Range and Madhya Pradesh.
#11
The Narmada flows through an asymmetrical tectonic rift valley formed by fault blocks between the Vindhyan Range to the north and the Satpura Range to the south.
#12
The Baghelkhand Plateau, situated east of the Maikal Hills, separates the Son River basin from the southern Mahanadi river headwaters.
#13
The Deccan Plateau is subdivided into three regional sub-provinces: the Maharashtra Plateau (basaltic traps), the Karnataka Plateau (Dharwar schists), and the Telangana Plateau.
#14
The Baba Budan Hills in Karnataka host the Mulayanagiri peak (1,930 m) and extensive banded iron formations that supply the Kudremukh mining region.
#15
The Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia hills of the Meghalaya Plateau contain the world's wettest stations, Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, situated on funneling southern escarpments.
Subject Specialist Commentary
Analytical perspective & practical exam advice from the Master10 academic board
The Peninsular Plateau is India's oldest and most stable landmass, originating as an ancient fragment of Gondwanaland. Composed of tough Archaean granites and gneisses, it slopes gently from west to east, directing most major rivers toward the Bay of Bengal, while the Narmada and Tapi flow westward through tectonic rift valleys. The region features diverse sub-plateaus, from volcanic Deccan basalt that weathered into rich cotton-growing black soil to the mineral-rich Chhotanagpur plateau.
For UPSC and State PSC geography papers, examiners regularly target structural boundaries and river directions. A very popular prelims trap concerns the Shillong and Karbi Anglong plateaus: candidates mistakenly assume they belong to the Himalayas, but they are actually peninsular extensions detached from the Rajmahal Hills by the down-faulted Malda Gap. For revision, remember that the Damodar valley in Chhotanagpur holds India's primary Gondwana coal seams, and Narmada-Tapi flow west without forming deltas.
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