Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, locally the Sahyadri, form a near-continuous escarpment stretching roughly 1,600 km from the Tapi river valley near the Maharashtra–Gujarat border south to Kanyakumari, traversing Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. They are older than the Himalaya, geologically being a fault scarp of the Deccan Plateau formed when the Indian plate sheared away from Gondwana during the break-up of the supercontinent. The chain is interrupted only by the 30-km Palghat (Palakkad) Gap, which separates the Nilgiri Hills to the north from the Anaimalai and Cardamom Hills to the south and channels both road, rail and the southwest monsoon. Anamudi (2,695 m) in the Anaimalai Hills of Kerala is the highest peak in peninsular India; Doddabetta (2,637 m) crowns the Nilgiris. UNESCO inscribed 39 serial sites of the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site in 2012 under natural criteria (ix) and (x).

The Ghats function as the climatic and hydrological spine of the peninsula. By intercepting the southwest (Arabian Sea) monsoon, their windward western flank receives over 2,500 mm of orographic rainfall while casting a rain shadow over the Deccan interior. They are the source region of the major east-flowing peninsular rivers — the Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri (Cauvery) and Tungabhadra — whose catchments sustain agriculture and hydropower across south India. Ecologically the range harbours tropical wet evergreen "sholas," montane grasslands and species found nowhere else, including the lion-tailed macaque, Nilgiri tahr, Malabar civet and Nilgiri langur, alongside endemic frogs and the periodic mass flowering of Strobilanthes kunthiana (Neelakurinji).

Conservation governance has been politically contentious. The Ministry of Environment commissioned the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) under Madhav Gadgil (2011), which recommended designating the entire range as an Ecologically Sensitive Area in three graded zones. State governments and industry resisted, prompting the K. Kasturirangan High-Level Working Group (2013), which scaled the Ecologically Sensitive Area down to about 37% of the range (roughly 60,000 km²). As of 2026 the MoEFCC continues to issue and revise draft notifications delineating the ESA, with the final notification repeatedly delayed amid objections from the six states. The catastrophic 2018 Kerala floods and the 2024 Wayanad landslides intensified demands to implement the panels' recommendations.

For the UPSC examination the Western Ghats are tested across the Geography and Environment papers of GS Paper I and GS Paper III. Prelims questions probe location specifics — the Palghat Gap, the relative order of hills (Nilgiri, Anaimalai, Cardamom), peaks like Anamudi, and which rivers originate here — and frequently distinguish the Western from the Eastern Ghats by continuity, height and rainfall. Mains and Environment questions demand a comparison of the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports, the rationale for Ecologically Sensitive Area zonation, biodiversity-hotspot criteria, and the development-versus-conservation tension illustrated by mining, plantations and the 2012 UNESCO inscription. A precise grasp of named authorities and dates separates strong answers from generic ones.