The Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats

The Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats are the two mountain ranges that frame the peninsular plateau. The Western Ghats run almost continuously along India's west coast, from the Tapti valley in the south of Gujarat to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, for about 1,600 kilometres. They are steep on the western side facing the Arabian Sea and gentler on the eastern side facing the plateau. The Eastern Ghats run along the east coast, from Odisha through Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu, but they are lower, more broken and discontinuous, cut through by several large rivers that flow eastwards to the Bay of Bengal.

The Western Ghats are the higher and wetter of the two. Their highest peak is Anamudi in Kerala, at 2,695 metres, and the range includes the Nilgiri Hills, the Anaimalai Hills and the Cardamom Hills. Because the south-west monsoon winds strike their steep western face, the western slopes receive very heavy rainfall and support evergreen and semi-evergreen forests, while the eastern rain-shadow side is much drier. In 2012, UNESCO inscribed parts of the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site, recognising their exceptional biodiversity and the large number of species found nowhere else.

The Eastern Ghats are older and more eroded. Their highest peak is Arma Konda, at about 1,680 metres in Andhra Pradesh. Because rivers such as the Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri have cut through them, the range appears as a series of separate hills rather than a single wall, including the Javadi, Shevaroy and Nallamala hills. The Eastern Ghats are less wet and less continuously forested than the Western Ghats, but they still shelter important forests, wildlife and tribal communities, and their hill soils support shifting cultivation and forest produce in places.

The comparison is useful for civil studies because it explains rainfall, rivers and conservation in one contrast. The Western Ghats create the wet west coast and the dry Deccan rain shadow; the Eastern Ghats, being broken, let peninsular rivers reach the sea and create broad deltas. Protecting the Western Ghats involves balancing biodiversity, hydropower, plantations and settlements, while the Eastern Ghats raise questions about mining, forest rights and fragmented habitats. Both ranges show that a mountain is not only a landform but a water and livelihood system.