12 November 2025 · Shift 3

Directive Principles, Article 39A Article 39A directs the State to secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity, and to provide free legal aid so that no citizen is denied justice because of economic or other disabilities. It was inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976 and is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy in Part IV. It is the constitutional base of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, under which NALSA and the Lok Adalats function. Article 46 promotes the educational and economic interests of SCs, STs and other weaker sections; Article 42 provides for just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief; Article 35 (a Fundamental Right provision) reserves to Parliament the power to make laws on certain matters in Part III. So option (c) is correct.

Bharat Ratna 2024 Karpoori Thakur, the former Chief Minister of Bihar popularly called 'Jannayak', was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 2024 for his lifelong work for social justice and the backward classes. The award was announced on 23 January 2024, on the eve of his birth centenary. A record five Bharat Ratnas were announced in 2024, and of the four names given only Karpoori Thakur belongs to that list. B. R. Ambedkar received the award posthumously in 1990, Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966 and Jayaprakash Narayan in 1999, so option (d) is correct.

Nuclear Energy Mission The Union Budget 2025-26 announced a Nuclear Energy Mission for Viksit Bharat with an outlay of ₹20,000 crore. The mission funds the research and development of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), and it targets at least five indigenously designed SMRs in operation by 2033. SMRs are compact factory-built reactors, so they can be set up near industry or on retired thermal-plant sites. The same budget set the wider goal of 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047 and proposed amendments to the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act to allow private participation. So the number asked for is 5, and option (c) is correct.

World Happiness Report 2025 The World Happiness Report 2025 was released on 20 March 2025, the International Day of Happiness. It is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre of the University of Oxford along with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network; the 2025 theme was 'Caring and Sharing'. India was placed 118th out of 147 countries, an improvement on its 126th place in the 2024 report. Finland topped the list for the eighth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, while Afghanistan was last. So option (c) is correct.

UNICEF report on children UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2024, titled 'The Future of Childhood in a Changing World', looks ahead to the 2050s. It projects that by the 2050s just four countries — India, China, Nigeria and Pakistan — will be home to more than one-third of the world's children. Sudan is not in that group, so option (a) is the country asked for. The report also names three megatrends that will shape childhood: demographic change, the climate and environmental crisis, and frontier technologies.

Current affairs — solar energy In May 2025 Diu was declared the first district in India to meet its entire power demand from solar energy. Diu belongs to the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu; about 11.88 MW of solar capacity — ground-mounted plants plus rooftop panels on homes and government buildings — now covers its demand. Earlier Diu bought almost all its electricity from Gujarat, so the switch also cut the administration's annual power bill sharply and made the district a model for renewable-energy adoption. Hence the correct option is (b).

Hindustani music gharanas Ashwini Bhide Deshpande is a leading vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana. She was trained first by her mother Manik Bhide and later by Pt. Ratnakar Pai, both singers of the same gharana. The Jaipur-Atrauli style, founded by Ustad Alladiya Khan, is known for rare compound ragas, long unbroken phrases and intricate laykari — precisely the features her singing is praised for. Hence the correct option is (b).

Books and authors In an Antique Land (1992) was written by Amitav Ghosh. The book blends travel writing, history and anthropology: while living in an Egyptian village Ghosh reconstructs, from Cairo Geniza documents, the life of a 12th-century Indian slave — showing how closely medieval India and the Middle East were linked. Hence the correct option is (c).

Books and authors Love Is Always Right and Other Musings was written by Vinita Dawra Nangia, an author and newspaper columnist. The book collects pieces from her long-running column 'O-zone', in which she reflects on love, relationships, society and everyday human values. Hence the correct option is (b).

Folk dances of India The Suwa dance of Chhattisgarh is popularly called the "Parrot Dance". 'Suwa' means parrot in Chhattisgarhi; women move in a circle around a pot carrying a wooden parrot, clapping and singing suwa geet in the weeks between Deepawali and the Gaura-Gauri puja. Hence the correct option is (a).

Indian space programme INCOSPAR stands for Indian National Committee for Space Research, so the letter "N" denotes National. It was set up in 1962 by the Department of Atomic Energy on Dr Vikram Sarabhai's initiative, and it chose Thumba near Thiruvananthapuram — close to the magnetic equator — for India's first sounding-rocket station. INCOSPAR was reorganised into ISRO in 1969, so option (a) is correct.

Mass and weight Weight is the gravitational force acting on a body: W=mg, where m is the mass and g the acceleration due to gravity. So the mass is $m=\frac{W}{g}$. On the Earth g=9.8 m/s${}^2$, and here W=441 N. $m=\frac{441}{9.8}=45$ kg. Mass stays 45 kg everywhere, while the weight would change on the Moon; hence the correct option is (d).

Solar system — Saturn's rings NASA's research shows that the rings of Saturn are slowly disappearing. Charged icy particles of the rings spiral down along Saturn's magnetic field lines and fall into its atmosphere — a process called "ring rain" — draining enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool in about half an hour. At this worst-case rate the rings could vanish in roughly 100 million years, a very short span on the astronomical clock. Mars, Venus and Mercury have no ring system at all, so option (b) is correct.

Mughal provincial governors Around 1713 Sawai Raja Jai Singh II of Amer was appointed the Mughal governor (subahdar) of Malwa by Farrukhsiyar. Malwa mattered because it was the land bridge between north India and the Deccan and was the province the Marathas were pressing hardest; Jai Singh was given its governorship on three occasions — 1713, 1729 and 1732. He is remembered even more as an astronomer: the founder of Jaipur city and the builder of the five Jantar Mantar observatories at Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Mathura and Varanasi. Hence the correct option is (d).

Capital and revenue receipts Selling government assets — for example disinvesting shares of a PSU — yields capital receipts. The test is simple: a receipt is a capital receipt if it either creates a liability or reduces the government's assets. Selling PSU shares reduces an asset and creates no liability, so it is a non-debt capital receipt. Such a sale is a one-time inflow: it can narrow the fiscal deficit for that year but neither raises the deficit permanently nor adds to liabilities, which rules out (a), (c) and (d). Hence the correct option is (b).

New Industrial Policy 1991 The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) was created as part of the New Industrial Policy of 1991. That policy abolished industrial licensing for most industries, cut the list of industries reserved for the public sector from 17 to 8 and opened the economy to foreign direct investment; FIPB was the single window that cleared the FDI proposals needing government approval. FIPB was finally abolished in 2017, its work passing to the administrative ministries under DPIIT. Hence the correct option is (d).

Revolt of 1857 Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi was defeated and killed in June 1858. After losing Jhansi to Hugh Rose she joined Tatya Tope and Rao Sahib, captured the fort of Gwalior, and fell fighting the British near Kotah-ki-Serai on 17-18 June 1858. Her death effectively ended the organised phase of the Revolt of 1857 in Bundelkhand, and the other dates lie outside that decisive Gwalior campaign. Hence the correct option is (a).

Excise duty and CENVAT The many excise slabs were merged in the Budget of 2000-01, and during 2001-02 excise duty ran on a single CENVAT rate of 16 per cent. CENVAT let a manufacturer set off the duty already paid on inputs against the duty payable on the finished product, so tax fell only on the value added and the cascading of tax upon tax stopped. This single-rate, input-credit structure was the direct ancestor of the input-tax-credit chain used in today's GST. Hence the correct option is (a).

Contingency Fund of a State The Contingency Fund of a State is held by the Governor. Article 267(2) allows a State legislature to create such a fund and place it at the disposal of the Governor, who may sanction advances from it to meet unforeseen expenditure. The advance must afterwards be recouped once the State Legislature votes the expenditure, so the fund is only a bridge and not a fresh source of money. Hence the correct option is (c).

Ports of India Kolkata Port (now Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port) is the port whose working is hit by heavy silting in the Hugli. It is a riverine port lying about 128 km upstream from the sea; the Hugli, a distributary of the Ganga, dumps large quantities of alluvium there, so the navigable depth of the channel keeps shrinking. Costly round-the-year dredging is therefore needed, and even so the largest ships cannot reach it — which is precisely why Haldia was developed downstream as its deep-water auxiliary port. Hence the correct option is (d).

Planning Commission of India The main role of the Planning Commission was to formulate the Five-Year Plans and to oversee their implementation. It was set up by a Cabinet resolution in March 1950 — an extra-constitutional, non-statutory body with the Prime Minister as its chairman — and it assessed the country's material, capital and human resources and allotted them plan period by plan period. It also reviewed the progress of each plan and suggested policy corrections; it was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015. Controlling expenditure and managing public debt are the Finance Ministry's work and supervising banks is the RBI's, so option (c) is correct.

National Youth Policy The National Youth Policy now in force was launched in 2014. NYP-2014, released on 21 February 2014 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, replaced the policy of 2003 and defines 'youth' as the 15-29 age group. It sets five priority areas: education; employment and skill development; entrepreneurship; health and healthy lifestyle; and social values and community engagement. Hence the correct option is (c).

Human digestive system The lipase that digests emulsified fat is secreted by the pancreas. Bile from the liver carries no enzyme at all; it only breaks large fat globules into tiny droplets (emulsification) so that the enzyme gets a far larger surface to work on. Pancreatic juice then pours lipase into the duodenum, where it splits these fat droplets into fatty acids and glycerol. Hence the correct option is (c).

Haemoglobin and blood Statement I is correct: haemoglobin is the red, iron-containing respiratory pigment of the red blood cells, which binds oxygen in the lungs as oxyhaemoglobin and releases it to the tissues. Statement II is wrong: clotting is done by the platelets and by plasma factors such as fibrinogen and prothrombin, not by haemoglobin. Only I is therefore true, so option (c) is correct.

Vedic literature In ancient India the compiled summaries of what the assemblies settled were called Samhitas. The word samhita literally means 'put together, a collection', and the Samhitas form the earliest layer of Vedic literature — the collected hymns of the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda. The Upanishads are later philosophical texts, the Agamas deal with temple ritual and worship, and 'Vedas' names the whole body of sacred literature rather than a summary — so option (d) is correct.