12 November 2025 · Shift 2

Indians at the Olympics C. A. Bhavani Devi of Tamil Nadu became the first Indian fencer ever to qualify for the Olympic Games and competed in the women's sabre event at Tokyo 2020, held in 2021. She won her opening bout against Nadia Ben Azizi of Tunisia before going out to France's Manon Brunet, and she is also an Asian Fencing Championship medallist. Fencing is fought with three weapons - foil, epee and sabre - and rewards speed, reflexes and tactics. P. V. Sindhu plays badminton, Manu Bhaker is a shooter and Dipa Karmakar is a gymnast, so option (a) is the answer.

Bar Council of India Senior advocate Manan Kumar Mishra was the Chairman of the Bar Council of India in May 2025, having been re-elected to the post in February 2025 for a seventh consecutive term. The Bar Council of India is a statutory body set up under the Advocates Act, 1961; it is headquartered in New Delhi, regulates the professional conduct of advocates and lays down the standards of legal education for law colleges. Kapil Sibal is a senior advocate and politician who headed the Supreme Court Bar Association, Dushyant Dave is a former SCBA president and Harish Salve a former Solicitor General, but none of them chaired the BCI. So option (b) is the answer.

Women Entrepreneurship Platform "EmpowHER Biz - Sapno Ki Udaan" was launched in January 2025 by the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) of NITI Aayog in partnership with New Shop, a convenience retail chain. The programme trains and funds women who wish to run retail stores, offering mentorship, market linkage and franchise support so that they can own an outlet of their own. WEP itself was set up by NITI Aayog in 2018 and works on the three pillars of Iccha Shakti, Gyan Shakti and Karma Shakti. SEWA Bharat is a federation of women's cooperatives, the Tata Group is a conglomerate and Amazon India an e-commerce firm, so option (a) is the answer.

Union Budget 2025-26 The National Geospatial Mission, announced in the Union Budget 2025-26, is meant to build a single, unified geospatial infrastructure - foundational maps, land records and spatial data shared across ministries. Such a common framework helps in urban and infrastructure planning, land administration, disaster management and evidence-based policy making, and it feeds directly into Digital India and PM Gati Shakti. It is a data and mapping mission, not a satellite-launch scheme (option b), not a free navigation service (option c) and not limited to climate monitoring (option d). So option (a) is the answer.

Financial inclusion report The Global Findex 2025 reported that account ownership in India has risen to about 89% of adults, a sharp jump from the level of 2011. Global Findex is the World Bank's database on financial inclusion; it tracks account ownership, digital payments, savings and borrowing across more than 140 economies. India's jump is credited largely to the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar-based e-KYC and UPI - together called the JAM trinity. The Fiscal Health Index is a NITI Aayog ranking of state finances and the National Strategy for Financial Education is an RBI-led plan, not a report of this kind, so option (c) is the answer.

Wildlife conservation projects Project Cheetah began on 17 September 2022, when eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia were released at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Twelve more cheetahs were brought from South Africa in February 2023. Because the animals were carried from Africa to Asia, the programme is recognised as the world's first inter-continental translocation of a large wild carnivore. The cheetah had been declared extinct in India in 1952, so this was the reintroduction of a lost species and not a shift within the country. Project Tiger (1973) and Project Crocodile (1975) operate only inside India, and there is no national programme called Project Panther. Hence option (b) is correct.

Indian authors and books 'The Illicit Happiness of Other People' (2012) is a semi-comic psychological mystery set in Madras, written by the journalist-novelist Manu Joseph. Manu Joseph's debut novel 'Serious Men' (2010) won the PEN/Open Book Award and was later filmed, so the two titles are usually asked together. The remaining three novels belong to entirely different writers, as the table shows. Hence option (c) is correct.

Bhakti folk traditions Abhanga is a form of devotional verse sung in praise of Lord Vitthal (Vithoba) of Pandharpur. The Abhanga Vanis belong to the Varkari tradition of Maharashtra and were composed by Bhakti saints such as Sant Dnyaneshwar, Sant Namdev and Sant Tukaram. The word 'abhanga' means 'unbroken', suggesting devotion and metre that never break; pilgrims sing these songs on the wari march to Pandharpur. Karnataka's parallel forms are the Vachanas and Haridasa kirtanas, Gujarat has bhajans and garba songs, and Odisha has the Jagannath devotional tradition. Hence option (c) is correct.

Folk dances of Uttarakhand Jhoda is a folk dance of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand in which men and women link hands and move in a large circle to the beat of the dhol and damau. It is performed at fairs, weddings and community gatherings, and traditionally on the full moon night of Holi. The dancers sing jhoda couplets in a call-and-response pattern, which is why the dance is named after the song form itself. Dandiya belongs to Gujarat, while Yakshagana and Dollu Kunitha are art forms of Karnataka. Hence option (c) is correct.

Satellite orbits A satellite that stays in the equatorial plane has an orbital inclination of $0^{\circ }$. At an altitude of about 35,786 km — nearly 36,000 km — its orbital period becomes equal to the Earth's rotation period, T = 24 hours. Moving eastward with the same angular speed as the ground below, such a satellite appears fixed over one spot, so dish antennas pointed at INSAT and GSAT satellites need no tracking. LEO lies roughly between 160 km and 2,000 km and MEO between 2,000 km and 35,786 km, while a highly elliptical orbit has a large eccentricity instead of a circular equatorial path. Hence option (c) is correct.

Rate of evaporation Evaporation is a surface phenomenon: the faster-moving molecules at the free surface of a liquid escape into the air. It therefore speeds up with a larger exposed surface area, a higher temperature, faster air flow over the surface, and lower humidity of the surrounding air. Buoyant force is the upward thrust a fluid exerts on a body immersed in it; it decides whether an object floats or sinks and has nothing to do with molecules leaving a surface. Options (a), (b) and (d) are exactly the temperature, air-movement and moisture factors named in the question, so only buoyant force is the odd one out. Hence option (c) is correct.

Potential energy The energy a body stores merely because it stands at a height above the ground is called gravitational potential energy. It equals the work done against gravity while raising the body, E = mgh, where m is the mass, g the acceleration due to gravity and h the height. So a 2 kg brick lifted 5 m stores $E=2\times 9.8\times 5=98$ J, which is released the moment it falls. Kinetic energy needs motion, $\frac{1}{2}m{v}^2$; chemical energy is locked in bonds and thermal energy lies in the random motion of particles — none of these depends on position alone. Hence option (b) is correct.

Current affairs: science facility 'Pavana Chitra' is India's first airport-based, self-powered indoor air quality monitoring facility. It was dedicated to the nation in October 2024 by Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Dr Jitendra Singh at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport, Kerala. The unit works off-grid on indigenous indoor solar cells developed by CSIR-NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram, and displays terminal air quality in real time. The name itself is a memory hook: 'Pavana' means air and 'Chitra' means picture, so it gives a live picture of the air inside the terminal. Hence option (b) is correct.

Current affairs: Indian Railways In August 2025 the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) became the first Indian railway zone to replace single-use plastics on its trains with compostable bioplastics. NFR tied up with IIT Guwahati, whose ISO 17088-compliant compostable bags took the place of the plastic covers used for bed-roll and linen distribution. Such bioplastic breaks down into compost instead of lying along the tracks for decades, which supports the Railways' single-use-plastic-free target. NFR, with its headquarters at Maligaon, Guwahati, serves the whole North-East and is often the testing ground for such green initiatives. Hence option (b) is correct.

Rulers killed by nobles Farrukh Siyar was raised to the Mughal throne in 1713 by the Sayyid brothers, Abdullah Khan and Hussain Ali Khan, the 'kingmakers' of the period. When he tried to shake off their control they blinded, deposed and killed him in 1719, so statement I is correct. Alamgir II was placed on the throne in 1754 by his wazir Imad-ul-Mulk and was murdered by that same noble's conspiracy at Kotla Fateh Shah in 1759, so statement II is also correct. Pushyamitra Shunga is the opposite case: he was the commander who killed the Mauryan king Brihadratha and founded the Shunga dynasty; he himself died a natural death after a long reign. Both I and II are therefore true, and hence option (c) is correct.

Demand curve The demand curve is the graphical picture of the relation between the price of a good and the quantity demanded of it, other things remaining equal. Price is taken on the vertical axis and quantity demanded on the horizontal axis. It slopes downward from left to right, which is the law of demand: a rise in price lowers the quantity demanded and a fall in price raises it. A supply schedule is only a table of prices and quantities supplied, while 'Price-Quantity Line' and 'Seller Graph' are not terms used in economics at all. Hence option (b) is correct.

National Infrastructure Pipeline The National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) was launched on 31 December 2019 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. A task force under Atanu Chakraborty had been set up in September 2019 to draw up the project list, and its final report came in April 2020. The pipeline began with projects worth about ₹102 lakh crore for FY 2019-20 to FY 2024-25, later enlarged to about ₹111 lakh crore. Energy, roads, railways, urban and digital infrastructure account for the bulk of the outlay, shared between the Centre, the States and the private sector. Hence option (b) is correct.

WPI revision committee The Working Group set up to revise the Wholesale Price Index was chaired by Prof. Abhijit Sen, then a member of the Planning Commission. It submitted its recommendations in 2008. Its central proposal was to shift the WPI base year from 1993-94 to 2004-05 and to widen the commodity basket so that the index would mirror the changed structure of the economy. Acting on the report, the new WPI series with base 2004-05 was released in September 2010, raising the number of items to 676. Hence option (b) is correct.

Concurrent List subjects The Concurrent List is List III of the Seventh Schedule and carries the subjects on which both Parliament and the State Legislatures may make laws. Criminal law is Entry 1 and criminal procedure is Entry 2 of this list, so criminal matters are a concurrent subject. Defence (Entry 1) and foreign affairs (Entry 10) touch national sovereignty, and broadcasting comes under Entry 31 of the Union List, so all three belong to Parliament alone. If a Union law and a State law on a concurrent subject clash, Article 254 makes the Union law prevail. Hence option (b) is correct.

Cropping seasons of India Indian agriculture is organised around three main cropping seasons — Kharif, Rabi and Zaid. Kharif crops are sown with the arrival of the south-west monsoon and harvested in September-October, while Rabi crops are sown in the winter months and harvested in spring. Zaid is the short season between Rabi and Kharif, that is, the summer months, so the summer crop already has a recognised name. 'Summer-sown' is therefore not a separate cropping season in Indian agricultural classification. Hence option (a) is correct.

Planning Commission and Plans K.C. Pant was Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission from 1999 to 2004, under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Tenth Five-Year Plan (2002-2007) was drafted, approved and launched during that tenure, so his name is attached to it. The Ninth Plan (1997-2002) had already begun before he took charge, and the Eleventh Plan (2007-2012) was prepared under his successor Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The Tenth Plan is remembered for its target of $8\%$ annual growth and for the monitorable social targets it set, such as halving the poverty ratio by 2012. Hence option (c) is correct.

Non-tariff measures Non-tariff measures are the trade-control tools other than customs duty that act on goods entering a country. Anti-dumping measures are duties imposed when imports are sold below their normal value; they curb imports without being an ordinary tariff, so statement I qualifies. Technical barriers to trade — standards, testing, labelling and certification requirements — also restrict imports without any duty, so statement II qualifies. An export subsidy is a payment to one's own exporters; it pushes goods out of the country rather than regulating goods coming in, so statement III does not belong to this group. Hence option (c) is correct.

Population growth phases Indian demographers call 1921 the 'great divide' or the 'demographic divide': after that year deaths fell steadily while births stayed high, so the population began to grow fast. Between 1921 and 1951 the mortality rate fell mainly because of better healthcare and sanitation — control of epidemics such as plague, cholera and influenza, wider vaccination, safer drinking water and improved medical facilities. The Second World War and the Bengal famine of 1943 raised deaths rather than lowering them, a rise in fertility would affect births and not deaths, and AI did not exist in that period. Hence option (d) is correct.

Amoeba: pseudopodia Amoeba pushes out temporary, finger-like extensions of its cytoplasm called pseudopodia, a word that literally means 'false feet'. They are formed and withdrawn as needed: the cytoplasm streams into a pseudopodium to drag the cell forward, which is amoeboid movement. The same pseudopodia surround a food particle and fuse around it, so that food is taken in by phagocytosis into a food vacuole. Microvilli are permanent absorptive folds of intestinal cells, while filopodia are thin spike-like and lamellipodia sheet-like projections of specialised animal cells, not the broad lobes of Amoeba. Hence option (c) is correct.

Purusharthas of life The Purusharthas are the four aims of human life: Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Moksha stands for spiritual freedom — liberation from the cycle of birth and death (samsara) through knowledge of the true self. It is placed last because the first three are pursued within worldly life, while Moksha is the final release from that life itself. The other three options describe Kama, worldly recognition and Artha, none of which is the meaning of Moksha. Hence option (c) is correct.