14 November 2025 · Shift 1

National Science Day National Science Day is observed every year on 28 February to mark the discovery of the Raman Effect by Sir C. V. Raman on 28 February 1928. The Raman Effect is the inelastic scattering of light: when light passes through a transparent medium a small part of it is scattered with a changed wavelength, the shift depending on the molecular structure of the medium. It gave direct experimental support to the quantum nature of light and earned Raman the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 — the first science Nobel won by an Asian. The other options belong to other scientists: the photoelectric effect was explained by Albert Einstein, X-ray diffraction was discovered by Max von Laue and developed by the Braggs, and the theory of relativity is Einstein's. Hence option (b) is correct.

First woman ADC to President Lt. Commander Yashasvi Solanki of the Indian Navy became the first woman officer to be appointed Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to the President of India, taking up the post in May 2025. She is a Technical Officer of the Electrical Branch of the Navy, and her appointment was widely reported as a landmark for women in the armed forces. An Aide-de-Camp is a military officer attached to a high constitutional authority — the President, a Governor or a senior commander — and serves as the link between that dignitary and the armed forces. Lt. Commander Anjali Singh, offered in another option, is remembered for a different first: in 2021 she became India's first woman military diplomat, posted as Deputy Naval Attaché in Moscow. Hence option (b) is correct.

PM-YUVA 3.0 scheme PM-YUVA 3.0 — the third edition of the Prime Minister's Scheme for Mentoring Young Authors (Young, Upcoming and Versatile Authors) — was launched on 11 March 2025 by the Ministry of Education. Its focus is on mentoring and empowering young authors below the age of 30 so that a new generation can write about India's heritage, culture and modern achievements. It is implemented by the National Book Trust (NBT), India, which trains the selected writers, publishes their books and has them translated into other Indian languages. So the scheme is about writing and book culture, not about skilling entrepreneurs, rural start-up incubation or digital training. Hence option (b) is correct.

One Nation One Subscription The One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme became operational on 1 January 2025 and gives free access to scholarly journals, research articles and other academic resources. Under it the Government of India negotiates a single national licence with international publishers, so students, teachers and researchers of government-run higher education institutions and central R&D laboratories no longer need separate institutional subscriptions. It is coordinated through the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre, an autonomous inter-university centre of the UGC, and is delivered on a single digital platform. The aim is to democratise access to knowledge and strengthen research, so the correct area is academic journals and educational resources. Hence option (b) is correct.

Women in district judiciary The State of the Judiciary Report 2023, released by the Supreme Court of India, records that women make up 36.3% of the working strength of the district judiciary. The report reviews infrastructure, budgeting, human resources and ICT in the subordinate courts, and is the first consolidated document of its kind on the district judiciary. Representation falls sharply higher up: at the time of the report women were only about 13.4% of the judges of the High Courts. Hence option (c) is correct.

Big cats and roaring Among the four animals listed, only the cheetah cannot roar — the leopard, the jaguar and the tiger all can. The difference lies in the hyoid bone of the voice box. In the roaring cats a part of the hyoid is replaced by an elastic ligament, which lets the larynx vibrate deeply and produce a roar. In the cheetah the hyoid is completely bony (fully ossified) and the vocal folds are divided, so the larynx cannot vibrate in that way. That rigid structure instead lets the cheetah purr continuously while breathing in and out, and chirp, growl and hiss — but never roar. Hence the correct option is (b).

Books and authors 'The Gopi Diaries: Finding Love' was written by Sudha Murty. It is the second book of her children's trilogy narrated by Gopi, the family dog; the first is 'Coming Home' and the third is 'Growing Up'. Sudha Murty is an engineer, author and philanthropist, was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2023 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2024. Hence the correct option is (b).

Folk songs of India 'Adhratiya' and 'Jhumair' are traditional folk songs of Jharkhand. 'Adhratiya' takes its name from 'aadhi raat' (midnight) — these songs are sung at midnight during weddings, festivals and other special occasions. 'Jhumair' (Jhumar) is the harvest-season song and dance of the Sadan and tribal communities of the Chota Nagpur plateau, performed at festivals such as Karma. Hence the correct option is (c).

Baul tradition Baul is the mystic minstrel tradition of West Bengal (and of neighbouring Bangladesh). Bauls wander from place to place singing of the 'Moner Manush', the man of the heart, blending Vaishnava bhakti with Sufi thought and rejecting formal ritual and caste. They sing and dance to the ektara (a one-stringed drone), the duggi and the khamak. UNESCO recognised Baul songs as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005. Hence the correct option is (c).

ISRO — first Chairman Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai was the first Chairman of ISRO and is called the father of the Indian space programme. He set up INCOSPAR in 1962; it was reorganised as the Indian Space Research Organisation on 15 August 1969, and he headed it until his death in December 1971. Satish Dhawan succeeded him and led ISRO from 1972 to 1984, while K. Kasturirangan was Chairman from 1994 to 2003. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam worked at ISRO as project director of the SLV-3 and later led missile development at DRDO, but he was never Chairman of ISRO. Hence the correct option is (b).

Pressure, force and area Pressure is the force acting normally on unit area: $P=\frac{F}{A}$. If the force F is kept constant, pressure varies inversely with the area: $P\propto \frac{1}{A}$. So making the area smaller concentrates the same force on less surface, and the pressure must rise. For example, with F=100 N: an area of 10 sq m gives P=10 Pa, while an area of 2 sq m gives P=50 Pa. This is why a sharp knife or a pointed nail works so well — a very small area of contact produces a very large pressure. Hence the correct option is (c).

Weight as a vector Weight is the gravitational force with which the Earth pulls a body: W=mg. Since weight is a force, it is a vector quantity — it has both magnitude and direction. Statement I, which says it has only magnitude, is therefore wrong. Its direction is always vertically downwards, towards the centre of the Earth, so Statement II is correct. Mass is the scalar of the pair: it is measured in kilograms and is the same everywhere, whereas weight is measured in newtons and changes with g. Hence the correct option is (b).

Current affairs — research centre Celonis set up its Object-Centric Process Mining centre with the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIITA). Announced in 2025, the Celonis-IIITA centre is the company's first academic research centre in India and the country's first research centre devoted to process intelligence. It works on object-centric process mining and AI-driven optimisation of business processes, and trains students on real enterprise problems. Celonis is a German software company and the market leader in process mining — software that reconstructs how a business process actually runs from the event logs left behind in a firm's IT systems. Hence the correct option is (c).

Current affairs — AI models The Gemini family of models was developed by Google DeepMind. Google DeepMind was formed in 2023 by merging the DeepMind and Google Brain research teams, and Gemini was announced in December 2023. Gemini is natively multimodal: the same model takes in text, images, audio, video and code instead of joining separate single-purpose systems together. The GPT models come from OpenAI, Llama from Meta AI, and Watson and Granite from IBM Research. Hence the correct option is (c).

National Pension System The National Pension System was launched on 1 January 2004. It applied first to all new Central Government recruits (except the armed forces) joining on or after that date, replacing the old defined-benefit pension. It was opened to every citizen of India on a voluntary basis in May 2009, and to corporate employees as well. NPS is a defined-contribution scheme regulated by the PFRDA: the pension depends on the contributions made and the returns earned, not on the last salary drawn. Hence the correct option is (b).

Guru Gobind Singh Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, died on 7 October 1708 at Nanded in present-day Maharashtra. He had been stabbed by an assassin; the wound reopened and proved fatal. Before his death he ended the line of human Gurus and installed the Guru Granth Sahib as the eternal Guru of the Sikhs. The distractor 1699 is the year in which he founded the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib on Baisakhi, not the year of his death. Hence the correct option is (c).

Special Economic Zones The SEZ Rules officially came into effect on 10 February 2006. The Special Economic Zones Act was passed by Parliament in 2005, but an Act cannot be worked until its rules are notified; the SEZ Rules, 2006 supplied that machinery, and the Act and the Rules were brought into force together on that date. The Rules provide a single-window clearance for setting up a unit, prescribe the minimum area for each type of zone, and lay down the duties of the Board of Approval and the Development Commissioner. Note the trap: 2005 is the year of the Act, 2006 the year the Rules took effect. Hence the correct option is (c).

Voting age in India The minimum age for voting in State Legislative Assembly elections, as in Lok Sabha elections, is 18 years. Article 326 of the Constitution provides that these elections shall be held on the basis of adult suffrage. The age was lowered from 21 years to 18 years by the 61st Constitutional Amendment Act, 1988, which came into force on 28 March 1989. Do not confuse this with the age to contest: a candidate for a Legislative Assembly or the Lok Sabha must be at least 25 years old. Hence the correct option is (b).

Amul and the White Revolution Amul was founded on 14 December 1946 at Anand in Gujarat. It was registered as the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Ltd, set up on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's advice and led by Tribhuvandas Patel, so that farmers could sell their milk without middlemen. Dr. Verghese Kurien joined in 1949 and built the co-operative into the model for Operation Flood, the White Revolution that made India the largest milk producer in the world. The name Amul comes from the Sanskrit 'amulya', meaning priceless, and also reads as Anand Milk Union Limited. Hence the correct option is (b).

Second Five Year Plan The Second Five Year Plan (1956-61) was based on the Mahalanobis model and aimed at rapid industrialisation with priority to heavy and basic industries. The logic of the model is that the capital-goods sector must be built first, because machines that make machines raise the economy's capacity to produce everything else later. Under this plan the steel plants of Bhilai (with Soviet help), Rourkela (West Germany) and Durgapur (Britain) were set up, and the public sector was given the commanding heights. The Green Revolution belongs to the late 1960s and rural employment schemes to much later plans, so the other options do not fit. Hence the correct option is (b).

Industrial Policy Resolution The first Industrial Policy Resolution of independent India was announced on 6 April 1948. It was presented by the Industry Minister, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, and accepted a mixed economy in which the public and the private sector would work side by side. It divided industry into four groups: a state monopoly over arms and ammunition, atomic energy and railways; six industries reserved for new state undertakings; eighteen industries under state regulation; and the rest left to private enterprise. It was superseded by the better-known Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, which gave the public sector the commanding heights of the economy. Hence the correct option is (b).

Components of population change The size of a population in any region changes through three processes only: births, deaths and migration. Births add people and deaths remove them; the difference between the two is the natural increase of the population. Migration is the third component — in-migration (immigration) adds people to a region and out-migration (emigration) takes them away. Literacy, urbanisation, transport or health facilities may influence these three processes, but by themselves they do not change the number of people living in a region. Hence the correct option is (b).

GDP and Gross Value Added The relation is $\mathrm{GDP}=\mathrm{Total}\mathrm{GVA}+\mathrm{Product}\mathrm{taxes}-\mathrm{Product}\mathrm{subsidies}$. GVA is measured at basic prices — what the producer actually receives. GDP is measured at market prices — what the buyer actually pays. A buyer pays more than the producer receives because of taxes on products such as GST, so product taxes are added. A buyer pays less than the producer receives when the government pays a subsidy on the product, so product subsidies are subtracted. Options (c) and (d) can be rejected at once: multiplying or dividing by a tax figure has no economic meaning, and option (a) reverses the two signs. Hence the correct option is (b).

Hormones and puberty Testosterone, the principal male sex hormone (an androgen), initiates and drives puberty in boys. At puberty the hypothalamus releases GnRH, the pituitary then secretes LH and FSH, and LH makes the Leydig cells of the testes produce testosterone. Testosterone brings about the male secondary sexual characters: deepening of the voice, growth of facial and body hair, greater muscle and bone mass, and maturing of the reproductive organs. Oestrogen and progesterone are the female sex hormones, while oxytocin is concerned with uterine contraction during childbirth and with milk ejection. Hence the correct option is (c).

Ashokan edicts Most of Ashoka's edicts are written in Prakrit, the language of the common people, and are engraved in the Brahmi script. Ashoka deliberately avoided Sanskrit, the language of the learned, so that his message of Dhamma could be understood by everyone; Magadhi was the usual dialect used. In the north-west the same Prakrit was written in the Kharosthi script (Shahbazgarhi, Mansehra), and at Kandahar in Afghanistan a few edicts are in Greek and Aramaic. The edicts became readable again only after James Prinsep deciphered the Brahmi script in 1837. Hence the correct option is (b).