15 November 2025 · Shift 2

Medieval Indian coinage The coins issued locally at Delhi under the Tomara and Chauhan rulers were known as Dehliwal. These were the well-known billon 'bull-and-horseman' coins that circulated widely in the Delhi region for everyday trade and revenue payments. The early Delhi Sultans, including Iltutmish, at first continued to issue Dehliwals before shifting to the standard silver tanka and copper jital. Ashrafi was a gold coin of the later Sultanate and Mughal period, Nishka was an ancient gold ornament-coin mentioned in Vedic literature, and Rajat simply means silver. So option (b) is correct.

Mughal Mansabdari system The Mansabdari system was organised by Akbar in 1571 and graded every imperial officer by two numbers, Zat and Sawar. Zat was the officer's personal numerical rank; it fixed his position in the imperial hierarchy and the salary he drew. Sawar was the second number and showed how many cavalrymen and horses he had to maintain, which is what option (a) describes. The revenue assignment given to an officer in place of a cash salary was called a jagir, not Zat, so option (c) is also wrong. Hence option (b) is correct.

Indian Ocean Rim Association The Indian Ocean Rim Association was established on 7 March 1997 at Port Louis, Mauritius, originally under the name IOR-ARC. It works for economic cooperation, trade facilitation, maritime safety and security, fisheries management, disaster risk management and sustainable development among the Indian Ocean littoral states. Its secretariat is at Ebene, Mauritius, and India is a founding member; the grouping now has 23 member states. So the year of establishment is 1997 and option (c) is correct.

Indian polity: personalities Sucheta Kripalani became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1963 and was thus the first woman Chief Minister of any Indian state. She was a freedom fighter who worked underground during the Quit India Movement of 1942 and founded the All India Mahila Congress in 1940. She was also a member of the Constituent Assembly and sang 'Vande Mataram' there on the eve of independence. Sarojini Naidu, by contrast, was the first woman Governor of an Indian state (Uttar Pradesh, 1947). So option (b) is correct.

Awards in science Asima Chatterjee won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1961 in chemical science and was the first woman to receive this award. She worked on the chemistry of Indian medicinal plants, especially vinca alkaloids and anti-epileptic and anti-malarial compounds. She was also the first woman to be awarded a Doctor of Science degree by an Indian university (Calcutta University, 1944). Janaki Ammal was a botanist and cytogeneticist, Kamala Sohonie a biochemist and the first Indian woman to earn a PhD in a scientific discipline, and Tessy Thomas a DRDO missile scientist. So option (a) is correct.

National Film Awards The 70th National Film Awards, announced in August 2024, gave the award for Best Music Direction (Songs) to Pritam for Brahmastra: Part One - Shiva. The music direction award has two separate heads — Songs and Background Score — and it is the Songs head that Kesariya and the rest of the Brahmastra album won. A.R. Rahman won the same year, but under Background Score for Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1, which is why option (b) tempts. So the correct option is (a).

Statehood of Sikkim Sikkim merged with the Indian Union on 16 May 1975 under the 36th Constitutional Amendment and became the 22nd State of India. Fifty years later, 16 May 2025 was therefore observed as its Golden Jubilee (50th) Statehood Day. Its Chief Minister is Prem Singh Tamang, popularly known as P. S. Golay, of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha; the first Chief Minister in 1975 was Kazi Lhendup Dorjee. So the correct option is (a).

Foreign honours to PM The Order of St. Andrew the Apostle is the highest civilian honour of Russia, instituted by Tsar Peter the Great in 1698 and revived in 1998. It was conferred on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2024 during his visit to Moscow for the 22nd India-Russia Annual Summit. The citation recognised his contribution to the India-Russia special and privileged strategic partnership in defence, energy and space cooperation. So the correct option is (c).

Female labour force participation The Periodic Labour Force Survey shows the female labour force participation rate (usual status, age 15 years and above) rising from about 23% in 2017-18 to 41.7%. Almost the whole of that rise comes from rural India, where women have re-entered work mainly as self-employed workers and as helpers in household agricultural enterprises — statements 1 and 2. Better schooling and skilling of girls widened the pool of employable women, and schemes such as MGNREGA, Stand Up India, Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-NRLM and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao pushed the same trend — statements 3 and 4. No statement contradicts the data, so all four are valid contributory factors. So the correct option is (d).

Union Budget 2025-26 UDAN The Union Budget 2025-26 announced a modified UDAN — Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik — regional connectivity scheme. The revamped scheme is to connect 120 new destinations and carry 4 crore additional passengers over the next 10 years. It also provides for greenfield airports in Bihar and for helipads and small airports in hilly, aspirational and North-Eastern districts. So the correct option is (c).

Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana PMMY, launched on 8 April 2015, provides collateral-free micro-credit to non-farm micro and small enterprises through banks, NBFCs and MFIs. Its loans are graded by the size of the borrower's business, and the three names used are Shishu, Kishor and Tarun. A fourth slab, Tarun Plus (above ₹10 lakh and up to ₹20 lakh), was added in 2024 for borrowers who have repaid a Tarun loan; there is no category called Yuva. So the correct option is (d).

Doping — narcotics In the WADA Prohibited List, narcotics are opioid analgesics that act on the central nervous system to kill pain and sedate; morphine and methadone are classic members of this class. An athlete using them can play through an injury without feeling it, which is unfair and medically dangerous, so they are banned in competition. Caffeine is not banned at all — it only sits on WADA's monitoring programme — and ephedrine is a stimulant, not a narcotic, prohibited only above its urinary threshold. Hence only 1 and 2 qualify, so the correct option is (a).

Badminton scoring Under the BWF rally-point system every rally earns a point to the side that wins it, and a match is the best of three games. Each game is played up to 21 points, and the side must be ahead by at least 2 points to close it. The figure 30 in option (d) is only the ceiling reached at 29-29; the game itself is still a 21-point game. So the correct option is (c).

State environment campaign Majhi Vasundhara means 'My Earth' in Marathi — the name itself points to Maharashtra, whose Environment and Climate Change Department runs the campaign. Launched on 2 October 2020, it scores and ranks urban and rural local bodies on their work relating to the five elements of nature (Panchamahabhuta) — earth, water, air, fire and sky. The 6.0 edition was rolled out in 2025 across about 28,000 local bodies of the state. So the correct option is (b).

FIFA World Cup 2022 The 22nd FIFA World Cup was held in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022 — the first World Cup hosted by an Arab and West Asian country, and the first played in November-December because of the summer heat. Thirty-two teams took part; Argentina beat France on penalties in the final at the Lusail Stadium and Lionel Messi won the Golden Ball. Morocco reached the semi-finals there, the first African team to do so, which is why option (d) is a common trap. So the correct option is (b).

FIFA U-17 World Cup 2025 FIFA has awarded Qatar the hosting rights of the men's U-17 World Cup for five successive editions, from 2025 to 2029. The 2025 edition was accordingly played in Qatar in November 2025, mostly at the Aspire Zone in Doha, and was the first U-17 World Cup with an expanded 48-team field. The stadiums, training bases and accommodation built for the 2022 senior World Cup made Qatar the natural choice for an annual tournament of this size. So the correct option is (a).

Festivals of Kerala The Guruvayur festival is held at the Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple in Thrissur district of Kerala, a shrine often called the Dwarka of the South. The ten-day Utsavam begins with the elephant race, Aanayottam, and ends with the Arattu procession; the temple also has its own elephant sanctuary at Punnathurkotta. Onam, Vishu, Thrissur Pooram and Attukal Pongala are the other major festivals of the same state. So the correct option is (a).

Gol Gumbaz Gol Gumbaz is the tomb of Mohammed Adil Shah of the Adil Shahi dynasty at Vijayapura (formerly Bijapur) in Karnataka, completed in 1656. Its hemispherical dome, about 44 m across, is one of the largest unsupported domes in the world, and the circular gallery inside it — the Whispering Gallery — carries even a whisper clearly to the opposite side. It is a landmark of Deccan Indo-Islamic architecture; the Adil Shahis ruled from Bijapur, which is in present-day Karnataka and not Maharashtra. So the correct option is (c).

Blue Origin New Glenn New Glenn, Blue Origin's heavy-lift partially reusable rocket, made its maiden orbital flight NG-1 on 16 January 2025 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, and its first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen. Blue Origin's earlier New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, is only a suborbital vehicle, so New Glenn marked the company's entry into orbital launches. So the correct option is (b).

Atmospheric pressure Atmospheric pressure at sea level is about $1.013\times {10}^5$ Pa, which is a force of roughly ${10}^5$ N on every square metre of the body surface. The body is not crushed because the blood and other fluids inside it press outward with very nearly the same pressure, so the inward and outward pushes balance and the net force on the body wall is about zero. Option (a) is false — pressure is greatest near the surface; (c) confuses gravity, which in fact creates the pressure; and (b) states no physical reason. So the correct option is (d).

Lohagarh Fort, Bharatpur Lohagarh, the 'Iron Fort', at Bharatpur in Rajasthan was raised by Maharaja Suraj Mal, the Jat ruler of Bharatpur, in the middle of the 18th century. Instead of stone it used thick ramparts of packed mud and rubble ringed by wide moats, and this soft mass absorbed cannon balls instead of shattering. The fort therefore held out against Mughal, Maratha and British attacks, including Lord Lake's siege of 1805, and earned its name. Chittorgarh and Ranthambore are the great Rajput forts of Mewar and of Sapadalaksha, while Gwalior Fort lies in Madhya Pradesh, not Rajasthan. So the correct option is (b).

Land revenue systems The word mahal is the giveaway: in the Mahalwari settlement the unit of assessment was the mahal — a village or a group of villages — and the village community, through its headmen or lambardars, was jointly responsible for paying the revenue. It was framed by Holt Mackenzie in 1822 for the North-Western Provinces and revised by R. M. Bird under Lord William Bentinck in 1833, when the demand was fixed at about two-thirds of the rental value. It was thus a middle path between the Permanent Settlement, where the zamindar paid, and the Ryotwari system, where each cultivator paid directly to the state. So the correct option is (c).

Rajya Sabha qualification Article 84(b) of the Constitution lays down that a person must be not less than 30 years of age to be chosen to fill a seat in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha), against 25 years for the House of the People. The higher bar reflects the Rajya Sabha's role as a permanent revising chamber that represents the States, with a maximum strength of 250 members. So the correct option is (a).

Human brain — forebrain The forebrain (prosencephalon) is the largest division of the brain and contains the cerebrum, whose cortex is divided into lobes carrying separate sensory centres. The forebrain also holds the thalamus, the relay station for sensory signals, and the hypothalamus, which controls hunger, thirst and body temperature. The cerebellum, medulla oblongata and the rest of the brain stem belong to the hindbrain and midbrain; they manage balance, posture and involuntary acts such as breathing, not sensory perception. So the correct option is (b).

Panini's Ashtadhyayi Panini's Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi or 'eight chapters', is dated to about the 4th century BCE and lays down over 4,000 sutras or rules. The sutras are written in an extremely compressed, almost algebraic style, using technical markers and an ordering of rules, which is why it is regarded as the earliest formal generative grammar of any language. It systematises phonetics, morphology and syntax, and Panini also left the Dhatupatha, a list of verbal roots, and the Ganapatha, a list of word groups. So the correct option is (c).