Q.In north eastern states, the jhum culture is a major threat to biodiversity - substantiate.

Step 1. The chapter defines Jhum (shifting, slash-and-burn) cultivation as a practice specific to north-eastern India: plots of natural tree vegetation are burnt away, the cleared patches farmed for only 2-3 seasons until fertility drops below profitable levels, and the farmer then abandons that patch and clears a fresh patch of forest elsewhere.

Step 2. Because this cycle repeats indefinitely rather than reusing the same land sustainably, the chapter notes that 'when vast areas are cleared and burnt, it results in loss of forest cover, pollution and discharge of CO2' — meaning the damage compounds over successive cycles rather than staying limited to one patch.

Step 3. This directly attributes to loss of habitat and climate change, which in turn 'has an impact on the faunal diversity of that region' — connecting Jhum cultivation to the same habitat-loss and climate-change threat mechanisms the chapter describes elsewhere in the chapter as major, general causes of biodiversity decline. …

Explain Jhum cultivation's burn-farm-abandon cycle and trace the chapter's own causal chain from repeated clearing to forest-cover lo …

• Describing Jhum cultivation without explaining why its cumulative, repeated nature (not just one clearing event) is what makes it a major threat. …