14 November 2025 · Shift 2

Women achievers of India Shila Dawre is recognised as India's first woman auto-rickshaw driver, who began driving in Pune in the 1980s. She obtained a commercial driving licence at a time when the trade was entirely male, and drove her auto for well over a decade before starting a travel business. Her achievement is recorded in the Limca Book of Records and she is remembered as a pioneer for women in the transport sector. Hence option (c) is correct.

Lieutenant Governor of J&K Manoj Sinha took office as Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir on 7 August 2020 and continues to hold the post in August 2025. The office of Lieutenant Governor was created for J&K after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 split the state into the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. G. C. Murmu (option a) was the first LG of J&K and resigned in 2020 to become Comptroller and Auditor General; Satya Pal Malik (option b) was the last Governor of the erstwhile state; R. K. Mathur (option d) was LG of Ladakh. Hence option (c) is correct.

Youth Spiritual Summit 2025 The Youth Spiritual Summit was organised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports at the Rudraksh Convention Centre, Varanasi, from 18 to 20 July 2025. Its theme was 'Nasha Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat' and it was inaugurated by Union Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya. It brought together youth leaders with more than a hundred spiritual and socio-cultural organisations and adopted the 'Kashi Declaration' as the roadmap for a youth-led movement against drug abuse. Hence option (c) is correct.

PM Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyan The Pradhan Mantri Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyan (PM-JUGA), approved in 2024, is meant for tribal communities, chiefly in tribal-majority villages and aspirational districts. It follows a saturation approach: every eligible tribal household and village is to be covered by existing schemes for housing, roads, drinking water, electricity, health, education and livelihood. The mission covers roughly 63,000 villages and is expected to benefit more than 5 crore tribal people across 30 states and Union Territories. Since the target group is tribal, options (a), (b) and (d) are ruled out, so option (c) is correct.

RBI Financial Inclusion Index The RBI's Financial Inclusion Index, first published in 2021, is built on three sub-indices — Access, Usage and Quality. Their weights are Access 35%, Usage 45% and Quality 20%; the index runs from 0 (complete exclusion) to 100 (full financial inclusion) and needs no base year. Access measures branches, ATMs and banking correspondents; Usage measures deposits, credit, insurance and digital payments actually used; Quality measures financial literacy, consumer protection and grievance redressal. Hence option (b) is correct.

Current affairs — Green GDP In January 2025 Chhattisgarh became the first Indian state to link its forest ecosystem with Green GDP. Green GDP is ordinary GDP adjusted for environmental gain and loss, so the services a forest gives free of cost are given a money value and enter the state's economic planning. The services being valued are biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, soil conservation, water recharge and oxygen release — significant for a state with about 44% of its area under forest. Hence the correct option is (c).

Folk musical instruments The Dimasa (Dimasa-Kachari) tribe of Assam plays the Muri, a bamboo wind instrument of the fife or pipe type. It is sounded along with the Khram, their long drum, to carry the tune of Dimasa songs and dances, most of all at Busu Dima, the post-harvest festival. Pepa is the buffalo-horn pipe of the Bihu dance, Algoza is the paired flute of Punjab and Rajasthan, and Bansuri is the ordinary transverse flute of North India — none of them is the Dimasa instrument. Hence the correct option is (b).

Books and authors The Householder (2012) is a novel by Amitabha Bagchi. It follows a section officer in a Delhi government department and shows how the small corruptions of office life quietly reach into his home and family. Bagchi, a computer-science teacher at IIT Delhi, also wrote Above Average, This Place and Half the Night Is Gone, which won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Hence the correct option is (b).

Folk dances of India Parichakali, literally the 'shield dance', is a martial folk dance of Lakshadweep. The performers fight in pairs with a wooden sword in one hand and a small shield (parisha) in the other, moving to the beat of drums, so the dance preserves the old warrior training of the islands. Lakshadweep's other well-known folk forms are Kolkali, Lava (of Minicoy), Oppana and Bandiya, while Ladakh has Jabro and Shondol and Puducherry has Garadi. Hence the correct option is (b).

Stars — composition Statement I is correct: a star is an enormous ball of extremely hot gas, roughly 71% hydrogen and 27% helium by mass, held in the plasma state by the temperature of its interior. Statement II is wrong: a star does have its own heat and light. In its core, hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium and the small loss of mass appears as a huge amount of energy. Bodies that shine only by reflecting sunlight — the Moon and planets such as Venus — are the ones without light of their own; the Sun, our nearest star, is self-luminous. Hence the correct option is (a).

Contact and non-contact forces A contact force acts only when the two bodies actually touch each other; a non-contact force acts from a distance, through a field. Statement I is wrong: the electrostatic force acts between two charges even when they are far apart — a charged comb lifts bits of paper without touching them — so it is a non-contact force. Statement II is correct: friction appears only where two surfaces are in contact and it opposes their relative motion, so it is a contact force. Hence the correct option is (b).

Momentum formula Momentum measures the 'quantity of motion' of a body, and it depends on both how heavy the body is and how fast it moves. Formula: $p=m\times v$, where m is the mass and v the velocity of the body. With m in kilograms and v in metres per second, the SI unit of momentum works out to $\mathrm{kg}m/s$, which only the product form can give. A sum m+v, a quotient $\frac{m}{v}$ or a difference v-m would not even be dimensionally meaningful, so those three are rejected. Hence the correct option is (c).

Current affairs — Ayurveda device Nadi Tarangini is India's first Ayurvedic diagnostic device, built to modernise Nadi Pariksha, the traditional reading of the pulse. It was developed by the Pune-based start-up Atreya Innovations, which grew out of research at IIT Bombay, and in January 2025 it became the first Ayurvedic diagnostic instrument to receive CDSCO approval. Pressure sensors strapped at the wrist record the pulse wave and the software analyses its rhythm, strength and shape to indicate the balance of Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Its value is that it turns what was a physician's subjective feel into a reproducible digital record that can be stored and compared over time. Hence the correct option is (b).

Current affairs — AI in healthcare In August 2025 Kasturba Medical College (KMC), Manipal launched a full Department of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare — the first such department in any Indian medical institution. KMC is a constituent college of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and the new department works on AI for diagnosis, medical imaging, predictive analytics and hospital management. It also trains doctors and students to use and to judge AI tools clinically, so that the technology supports clinical judgement instead of replacing it. Hence the correct option is (c).

Article 112 — Union Budget Article 112 requires the President to cause to be laid before both Houses of Parliament, for every financial year, a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government of India. The Constitution names this document the Annual Financial Statement; it is popularly called the Union Budget and covers 1 April to 31 March. It must show separately the expenditure 'charged' on the Consolidated Fund of India, which is not put to vote, and the other expenditure proposed to be made from that Fund, which the Lok Sabha votes upon. The Economic Survey is only a convention, the Finance Commission report belongs to Article 281 and the Appropriation Bill to Article 114. Hence the correct option is (c).

PLI Scheme objectives Under the Production Linked Incentive Scheme the government pays a company an incentive on the incremental sales of goods made in its Indian units, so every objective of the scheme is growth-related. Its declared aims are to attract large investments, scale up domestic manufacturing, make Indian producers globally competitive and raise export potential, all under Atmanirbhar Bharat. Increasing government regulation of private-sector operations is the opposite of its method — the scheme works through ease of doing business and outcome-linked payouts — so this is NOT an objective. Hence the correct option is (c).

Maratha army — social base The Kunbis, the peasant-cultivator community of the Maratha country, supplied most of the manpower of the early Maratha army. Shivaji raised his infantry largely from such families — the Mavalas of the western hill tracts — who knew the terrain and were ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. These soldier-peasants went back to their fields in the monsoon, so the campaign season and the farming season did not clash and the state kept a large army at very little cost. Kolis were fishermen and hill dwellers, Bhandaris were toddy-tappers and Ramoshis served mostly as village watchmen, so none of them formed the backbone of the army. Hence the correct option is (b).

SEIS — foreign trade policy The name itself answers the question: the Service Exports from India Scheme was notified under the Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 to promote the export of services from India. It replaced the older 'Served From India Scheme' and rewarded eligible service providers with duty credit scrips calculated on their net foreign exchange earnings. Those scrips could be used to pay basic customs duty, which lowered costs for exporters of IT, healthcare, education, tourism, transport and professional services. The matching scheme for goods was MEIS (Merchandise Exports from India Scheme), later replaced by RoDTEP. Hence the correct option is (b).

Article 85 — sessions of Parliament Article 85 deals with the sessions of Parliament, and with prorogation and dissolution. The President summons each House at such time and place as he thinks fit, subject to one condition: not more than six months may pass between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next. That six-month rule is exactly why Parliament must meet at least twice a year; the same Article lets the President prorogue either House and dissolve the Lok Sabha. Impeachment of the President falls under Article 61, qualifications of members under Article 84, and the Speaker's office under Articles 93 to 96. Hence the correct option is (b).

Deendayal (Kandla) Port Statement 1 is wrong: Deendayal Port, formerly Kandla, stands on the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat — that is the western coast of India, not the eastern. Statement 2 is correct: it is one of India's Major Ports, administered by a Port Authority under the Central Government. Statement 3 is correct: it handles very large volumes of crude oil, petroleum products, chemicals, fertilisers, salt and edible oil, and is among the country's busiest ports by cargo tonnage. The port was developed after Partition to replace Karachi as the outlet for north-western India, and it serves a hinterland covering Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Delhi. Hence the correct option is (b).

Five Year Plans — public sector Indian planning rested on the public sector until the reforms of 1991; the Eighth Plan then introduced indicative planning, and it is after the Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) that the emphasis on the public sector fell steadily. The Ninth Plan itself described the private sector as the main engine of growth, pushed disinvestment of public sector undertakings and opened infrastructure such as power, telecom and roads to private investment. From that point the State's share in plan outlay kept shrinking, and the government's role shifted towards regulation and towards social sectors like health and education rather than towards producing goods itself. Hence the correct option is (c).

Planning Commission — chairman The Planning Commission was not a constitutional body; it was set up in 1950 by a Cabinet resolution, and the Prime Minister of India was its ex-officio Chairman. The Tenth Five Year Plan ran from 2002 to 2007 and was approved by the National Development Council in December 2002, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister — so he chaired the Commission that framed and launched it. The plan aimed at 8% annual GDP growth, at halving the poverty ratio and at gainful employment for the addition to the labour force. Hence the correct option is (c).

National Population Policy 2000 The National Population Policy 2000 fixed 2045 as the target year for achieving a stable population in India. That long-term objective was to be reached at a level consistent with the needs of sustainable economic growth, social development and environmental protection. Its medium-term goal was to bring the Total Fertility Rate down to the replacement level of 2.1 by 2010, and its immediate goal was to supply the contraceptives, health infrastructure and trained health personnel needed for reproductive and child health care. The policy also stressed raising the age of marriage of girls, universal immunisation and women's empowerment as the real means to slower growth. Hence the correct option is (d).

Structure of arteries Arteries carry blood away from the heart, and the ventricles push that blood out in strong spurts at high pressure. So an artery must have thick, muscular and elastic walls: the thickness lets it withstand the pressure without tearing, and the elasticity lets it stretch when the heart contracts and recoil afterwards. That recoil keeps the blood moving smoothly between two heartbeats, which is why arteries need no valves at all. Veins carry blood back at low pressure, so they have thin walls and instead need valves to stop the blood flowing backwards — that is option (b), a property of veins, not arteries. Hence the correct option is (c).

Fourth Buddhist Council The Fourth Buddhist Council met at Kundalavana in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka. It was presided over by Vasumitra with Ashvaghosha as his deputy, and its proceedings were carried on in Sanskrit rather than Pali. The council produced the Mahavibhasha, a great commentary on the Tripitaka of the Sarvastivada school, and after it Buddhism divided clearly into the Hinayana and Mahayana branches. The other three options are the seats of the earlier councils, as the table shows. Hence the correct option is (c).