15 November 2025 · Shift 3

Early medieval land grants From about the 7th century CE, kings rewarded Brahmanas with grants of revenue-free land recorded on copper plates. Such a grant was called brahmadeya (land given to a Brahmana) or agrahara (a whole Brahmana settlement), and the plate listed the village, its boundaries and the taxes surrendered. Context that makes it memorable: the grant paid the king back twice over — the Brahmana performed the rituals that legitimised his rule, and settling him in forest or frontier tracts pushed agriculture and the state into new land. Ornaments and trade privileges went to merchants and courtiers, and military titles to warrior chiefs — none of these was the standard reward for a Brahmana. Hence the correct option is (b).

Babur and field artillery Babur is the ruler remembered for the first effective use of gunpowder artillery on an Indian battlefield. At the First Battle of Panipat (1526) he defeated Ibrahim Lodi by combining cannon and matchlock fire with the Ottoman tactics of tulughma (flanking) and araba (carts chained together to shield the guns). His two Ottoman gunners, Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa Rumi, made the artillery work again at Khanwa (1527) against Rana Sanga. Rana Sanga and Sikandar Lodi fought in the older cavalry-and-elephant style, and Humayun came later and is remembered for losing his throne to Sher Shah, not for artillery. Hence the correct option is (b).

India-Bangladesh rail link Petrapole lies in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and Benapole lies just across the border in Jessore district of Bangladesh, so the link joins India and Bangladesh. Context: Petrapole-Benapole is the busiest land port on the India-Bangladesh border and handles the largest share of trade between the two countries. India has no rail link with Sri Lanka (it is separated by sea) and none with Nepal on this alignment; the India-Pakistan links are at Attari-Wagah and Munabao-Khokhrapar. Hence the correct option is (c).

Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train The Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail corridor uses Japan's Shinkansen technology, and the soft loan for it comes from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Context: the corridor is about 508 km long with a design speed of 320 km/h, and the executing agency is the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), set up in 2016. The JICA loan carries a very low rate of interest with a long repayment period, which is why Japan and not Germany, South Korea or Spain is the partner. Hence the correct option is (c).

Asima Chatterjee — first woman DSc Asima Chatterjee received the DSc of the University of Calcutta in 1944, the first Indian woman to be awarded a Doctor of Science by an Indian university. She was an organic chemist whose work on the vinca alkaloids and on Indian medicinal plants led to the anti-epileptic drug Ayush-56 and to anti-malarial compounds. Context worth remembering: in 1975 she became the first woman General President of the Indian Science Congress Association and received the Padma Bhushan; she was later nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1982. Anna Mani was a physicist and meteorologist, and E. K. Janaki Ammal (options c and d name the same botanist) took her DSc from the University of Michigan, not an Indian university. Hence the correct option is (a).

Prime Ministers of India P. V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister from 21 June 1991 to 16 May 1996. His government, with Dr. Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister, launched the New Economic Policy of 1991 — liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation — which dismantled the 'Licence Raj' and opened the economy to world trade and investment. The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments of 1992, which gave constitutional status to Panchayati Raj institutions and to urban local bodies, also belong to this tenure. Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi held office well before 1991 and Atal Bihari Vajpayee's long term began in 1998, so option (d) is the answer.

Governors appointed in 2025 Pusapati Ashok Gajapathi Raju took oath on 26 July 2025 as the Governor of Goa, succeeding P. S. Sreedharan Pillai. He is a senior Telugu Desam Party leader from Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh and was earlier the Union Minister of Civil Aviation. In the same round of appointments Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar went to Kerala and Ashim Kumar Ghosh to Haryana, which rules out options (a) and (d). Hence option (b) is the answer.

New criminal laws The Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and contains 531 sections, against the 484 sections of the old CrPC. All three new criminal laws came into force on 1 July 2024. The BNSS permits trials, inquiries and proceedings in electronic mode and the service of summons by SMS or e-mail, and it codifies the Zero FIR, which may be lodged at any police station irrespective of jurisdiction. So option (c) is the answer.

Government scheme ULLAS ULLAS stands for Understanding of Lifelong Learning for All in Society, the New India Literacy Programme of the Ministry of Education. It is therefore an education initiative: it targets non-literates aged 15 years and above who missed formal schooling, and works towards full literacy through foundational literacy, numeracy and critical life skills. It follows the National Education Policy 2020, in which the term 'Adult Education' was replaced by 'Education for All'. Since the scheme has nothing to do with rural infrastructure, renewable energy or animal healthcare, option (c) is the answer.

History of Indian hockey The first hockey club in India was set up at Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1885-86, the game having been brought to the country by British regiments and officials. Calcutta is therefore called the cradle of Indian hockey, and the first hockey association in the country, the Bengal Hockey Association, was formed there in 1908. The Indian Hockey Federation followed in 1925, and the team picked after the 1928 inter-provincial championship won gold on India's Olympic debut at Amsterdam. Hence option (c) is the answer.

T20 World Cup 2024 India won the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024, beating South Africa by 7 runs in the final at the Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados on 29 June 2024. It was India's second T20 World Cup title after 2007 and ended a 13-year wait for an ICC trophy, the last having come at the 2011 ODI World Cup. India went through the tournament unbeaten and Jasprit Bumrah was named Player of the Tournament. So option (c) is the answer.

Ranji Trophy 2024-25 Vidarbha won the Ranji Trophy 2024-25, beating Kerala in the final played at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur. The final ended in a draw, so the title went to Vidarbha on the strength of their first-innings lead. It was Vidarbha's third Ranji title, after the back-to-back wins of 2017-18 and 2018-19. The tournament is conducted by the BCCI, founded in December 1928 and headquartered in Mumbai. Hence option (a) is the answer.

Wildlife sanctuaries Parvati Arga Bird Sanctuary lies in the Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh. It is a pair of oxbow lakes that shelter large numbers of resident and migratory water birds, and it was designated a Ramsar Site — a wetland of international importance — in 2019. The national World Wetlands Day function of 2 February 2025 was held here by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which is why the site was in the news. So option (a) is the answer.

Commonwealth Games hosts The XXIII Commonwealth Games of 2026 will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, from 23 July to 2 August 2026. Glasgow stepped in after the original host, Victoria in Australia, withdrew on grounds of cost, so the 2026 edition has a trimmed programme of 10 sports and six para sports. Glasgow had also hosted the 2014 Games, Birmingham hosted 2022 and Cardiff 1958, while Vancouver has never hosted the Games. Hence option (c) is the answer.

Durand Cup 2025 The 134th Durand Cup began on 23 July 2025, so the tournament started in the month of July. It ran till 23 August 2025, when NorthEast United FC retained the title by beating Diamond Harbour FC 6-1 in the final at the Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata. Alaaeddine Ajaraie of NorthEast United won both the Golden Ball as best player and the Golden Boot with 8 goals. The Durand Cup, first held in 1888 and named after Sir Mortimer Durand, is Asia's oldest football tournament. So option (a) is the answer.

Agra Fort Statement I is wrong: Agra Fort was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1983. Statement II is correct: the fort was the main residence of the Mughal emperors until 1638, when Shah Jahan shifted the capital from Agra to Shahjahanabad (Delhi). Statement III is wrong: Akbar rebuilt the fort largely in red sandstone, and only some later additions such as the Khas Mahal and the Moti Masjid are of white marble. Only statement II holds, so option (b) is the answer.

Folk dances and states Chad Laho, or the Laho dance, is a thanksgiving dance festival of the Pnar or Jaintia tribe of Meghalaya, held after the harvest. Two men and a woman link arms and dance in step while a cheerleader recites couplets, the whole offering being made to the Almighty for a good harvest. Meghalaya's other well-known festivals are Wangala of the Garos, Shad Suk Mynsiem of the Khasis and the Nongkrem dance. Hence option (c) is the answer.

Dances of Odisha Gotipua is a traditional dance of Odisha in which young boys dress as girls and dance in praise of Lord Jagannath and Lord Krishna. It is performed in the temple towns of Puri and Raghurajpur and is regarded as the forerunner of the classical Odissi dance. Bhangra belongs to Punjab, the Naga folk dances such as Chang Lo to Nagaland, and Hojagiri to the Reang (Bru) community of Tripura. So option (d) is the answer.

Light travel time The mean distance of the Earth from the Sun is about $1.496\times {10}^8$ km and light travels at about $3\times {10}^5$ km/s. Time taken = distance ÷ speed $=\frac{1.496\times {10}^8}{3\times {10}^5}\approx 499$ seconds. In minutes this is $\frac{499}{60}\approx 8.3$ minutes, that is, about 8 minutes 20 seconds. Because the orbit is elliptical the value ranges from roughly 8 min 17 s at perihelion to 8 min 27 s at aphelion. Only 8.311 minutes matches this, so option (b) is the answer.

Lagrange points Lagrange points are the positions in a two-body system where the gravitational pulls of the two large bodies and the centripetal force needed by a small third body balance one another. A spacecraft parked there keeps a fixed position relative to the two bodies and needs very little fuel, and because it only oscillates slightly about the point, such points are called libration points. Every pair of large bodies has five of them, L1 to L5, of which L4 and L5 are the stable ones. Hence option (c) is the answer.

Newton's laws of motion The statement is Newton's First Law of Motion, also called the Law of Inertia because it describes a body's tendency to resist any change in its state of rest or of uniform motion. The law also defines force qualitatively: force is the external agent that can change that state. The Second Law measures the force, F=ma, and the Third Law says every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The Law of Gravitation deals with attraction between masses and Bernoulli's principle with pressure in a flowing fluid, so option (b) is the answer.

Quantum computing in India IBM has announced a quantum computing centre at Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh, targeted for completion by March 2026. It is the anchor of the state's 'Amaravati Quantum Valley' project and is expected to house an IBM Quantum System Two built around the 156-qubit Heron processor. The centre is a joint effort of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, IBM and Tata Consultancy Services. IBM itself began in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and took its present name in 1924, so option (b) is the answer.

Land revenue systems The Permanent Settlement was introduced by the East India Company in 1793 under Governor-General Lord Cornwallis. It fixed the land revenue permanently and recognised the zamindars as proprietors of the land, and it covered Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. The other arrangements came later — the Ryotwari system of Thomas Munro in Madras in 1820 and the Mahalwari system of Holt Mackenzie in 1822. So option (c) is the answer.

Human digestive system The small intestine is the longest part of the alimentary canal, about 6 to 7 metres long in an adult; it is called 'small' only because its diameter is narrow. It has three parts — the duodenum, where bile and pancreatic juice act on the chyme, the jejunum in the middle, and the ileum, which opens into the large intestine. Digestion is completed here, and the villi and microvilli of its lining give the enormous surface area needed to absorb nutrients into the blood. The large intestine is only about 1.5 m long and the stomach and the rectum are far shorter, so option (b) is the answer.

Harappan agriculture The Harappans were the first people in Eurasia to grow cotton, from about 3000-2500 BCE. The evidence is archaeological: fragments of woven cotton cloth stuck to a silver jar at Mohenjo-daro, and cotton threads from Mehrgarh. The Greeks later called this fibre 'sindon', a name taken from Sindh, showing where they first met it. Barley and wheat were already being grown in West Asia long before the Harappans, and maize is a New World crop that reached India only after the sixteenth century. Hence option (d) is the answer.