RAS question
The Damodar River is a tributary of which river?
Correct answer: (A) Hooghly (Bhagirathi).
The Damodar River is a tributary of the Hooghly, also called the Hugli or Bhagirathi, River.
Explanation
The Damodar is correctly linked to the Hooghly because its course ends by joining the Hugli (Hooghly) River southwest of Kolkata. It also has its source in the Chota Nagpur Plateau and an old reputation as the 'River of Sorrow' because of frequent floods. Those details matter for RAS because they fix the Damodar within the eastern Indian drainage system: it rises on the plateau, moves generally eastward, and does not directly enter the main Ganga channel in the way a simple 'Ganga tributary' answer would imply. Encyclopaedia Britannica confirms the decisive drainage fact: the Damodar joins the Hugli/Hooghly, making option A the precise answer.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Brahmaputra is wrong because the Damodar's described course is towards the Hugli/Hooghly system, with no connection to the Brahmaputra.
- (C) Ganga is wrong because the question asks the direct tributary relation, and the Damodar is identified as joining the Hooghly rather than the main Ganga channel.
- (D) Mahanadi is wrong because the Damodar is placed in the Chota Nagpur-to-Hooghly drainage setting, not in the Mahanadi river system.
Concept
This tests Indian drainage-system mapping, especially the ability to identify tributaries by their actual river confluence rather than by a broad regional association. Such questions recur in RAS because river systems, plateaus and flood-prone basins are core physical-geography facts.