20 November 2025 · Shift 1

Founder of Mandore Pratiharas The ruler was Gurjara-Pratihara Harichandra. The Jodhpur inscription of Bauka and the Ghatiyala inscription describe Harichandra as a Brahmin learned in the Vedas who gave up priestly duties and took to arms. He founded the Pratihara line of Mandore (Mandavyapura, near Jodhpur in Rajasthan) around the 6th century CE; the sons of his Kshatriya wife Bhadra captured Mandore and raised its rampart. This branch later grew into the Gurjara-Pratihara power that ruled from Kannauj. The other names belong elsewhere: Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta dynasty of the Deccan, Dharmapala was a Pala king of Bengal, and Nagabhata I was a later Pratihara ruler famed for stopping the Arab advance from Sindh. Hence option (c) is correct.

Akbar and the Gakkhar chief Akbar made Kamal Khan Gakkhar, chief of the Gakkhar tribe of the Potohar region of Punjab, a mansabdar. The Gakkhars had already earned Mughal goodwill by seizing Kamran Mirza, Humayun's rebellious brother, and handing him over. Under Akbar's mansabdari system every officer held a zat rank, which fixed his personal status and pay, and a sawar rank, which fixed the cavalry he had to maintain. Drawing local chiefs into this ranked service turned them into imperial officers and secured the routes between Kabul, Lahore and Delhi. Hence option (b) is correct.

THE Asia Rankings 2025 The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, was India's highest ranked institution in the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2025, placed 38th in Asia. The list was released in April 2025 and judged more than 850 universities on 18 performance indicators grouped under teaching, research environment, research quality, industry income and international outlook. Anna University and IIT Indore were the next Indian names on the list, while Tsinghua University of China again held the first place in Asia. IISc is a deemed university founded in 1909 with the support of Jamsetji Tata and the Maharaja of Mysore, and it regularly leads Indian institutions on research-based measures. Hence option (c) is correct.

Sports terminology 'Raider' is the term used in Kabaddi for the player who enters the opponents' half to touch defenders and return. The raider must keep repeating the cant 'kabaddi' in one breath, and he scores a point for every defender he touches before crossing back over the mid-line. The role became widely known through the Pro Kabaddi League, where raiders such as Pardeep Narwal are famous for moves like the dubki and the toe touch. Tennis, boxing and cricket use quite different terms — serve and volley, jab and hook, over and no-ball — so none of them fits. Hence option (a) is correct.

Tata Mumbai Marathon 2025 The Tata Mumbai Marathon 2025, the 20th edition of the race, was held in January — on 19 January 2025. The race is traditionally run on the third Sunday of January, when Mumbai's weather is coolest and best suited to a full marathon. It is a World Athletics Gold Label road race and starts and finishes near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, drawing tens of thousands of runners along with elite international athletes. Hence option (d) is correct.

Authors and their books The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) was written by Salman Rushdie, so it is the book not written by Amitav Ghosh. Sea of Poppies (2008) and Flood of Fire (2015) are the first and the last volumes of Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, built around the colonial opium trade; River of Smoke is the middle volume. Gun Island (2019) is Ghosh's novel that ties the Bengali legend of the Gun Merchant to present-day climate change and migration. Rushdie's novel, by contrast, retells the Greek Orpheus–Eurydice myth in the world of rock music. Hence the correct option is (c).

Authors and their books Guerrillas (1975) was written by V. S. Naipaul, the Trinidad-born writer of Indian descent who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. The novel is set on an unnamed Caribbean island and follows a revolutionary commune that collapses into violence; Naipaul drew on the Michael X episode in Trinidad. The other three writers are known for entirely different works, and none of them wrote a novel called Guerrillas. Hence the correct option is (d).

Authors and their books Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975) is the novel written by Anita Desai. It follows Sita, who leaves her Bombay household for the island of Manori — the study of alienation and inner conflict typical of Desai's psychological fiction. Anita Desai was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, for Clear Light of Day, In Custody and Fasting, Feasting. Hence the correct option is (c).

Festivals of India Shad Suk Mynsiem is celebrated by the Khasi people of Meghalaya. The name means the 'dance of the joyful heart'; it is a spring thanksgiving festival held every April at the Weiking ground in Shillong. Unmarried women dance in the centre in gold and silver ornaments while the men move in an outer circle carrying a whisk and a sword, thanking God for the harvest. Hence the correct option is (d).

Qutb Minar dimensions The Qutb Minar tapers sharply upwards: its diameter is about 14.32 m at the base and only about 2.75 m at the top. The minaret is 72.5 m high and has 379 spiral steps; the lower storeys are of red sandstone and the upper ones use marble as well. It was begun by Qutb-ud-din Aibak in 1199 and completed by Iltutmish, and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Delhi. Hence the correct option is (b).

Folk dances of Tamil Nadu Karakattam is the folk dance performed before the idol of Goddess Mariamman, the rain goddess of Tamil Nadu. The dancer balances a decorated pot, the karakam, on the head while dancing to the Naiyandi Melam ensemble of drums and pipes. Its ritual form, danced only inside the temple, is Sakthi Karakam, while Aatta Karakam is danced outside for entertainment. Hence the correct option is (d).

Mars Orbiter Mission India's Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, was launched on 5 November 2013 by the PSLV-C25 rocket from Sriharikota. After raising its orbit around the Earth, the spacecraft was sent towards Mars on 1 December 2013 and was inserted into Martian orbit on 24 September 2014. India thus became the first country to reach the orbit of Mars at its very first attempt, at a cost of only about ₹450 crore. Hence the correct option is (c).

Domestic fuel gas The gas supplied in cylinders for cooking at home is liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). LPG is chiefly a mixture of propane and butane; these liquefy under moderate pressure, so a large amount of fuel is stored in a small cylinder. LPG is itself colourless and odourless, so ethyl mercaptan is added to give the sharp smell that warns of a leak. Hydrogen is far too explosive to be piped into kitchens, while nitrogen and carbon dioxide do not burn at all — carbon dioxide is in fact used to put fires out. Hence the correct option is (d).

States of matter Inter-particle attractive forces are strongest in solids and weakest in gases. In a solid the particles occupy fixed positions in a closely packed lattice, so the attraction between them is maximum — a solid keeps its shape and is almost incompressible. In a gas the particles are very far apart and move rapidly, so the attraction is almost negligible — a gas fills its container completely and is easily compressed. Liquids lie in between, which is why the required pair is solids, gases. Hence the correct option is (c).

Indigenous surgical robot SSI Mantra, built by SS Innovations, is India's first indigenous surgical robotic system. In January 2025 it carried out two cardiac telesurgeries with the surgeon seated at Gurugram and the patients at a hospital in Jaipur, 286 km away. The link worked at a latency of only about 35–40 milliseconds, and the procedures included a beating-heart robotic bypass — the first such cardiac telesurgeries in the world. Da Vinci is the American system of Intuitive Surgical, Robonaut is NASA's humanoid robot and Mitra is a social humanoid robot, so none of them fits. Hence the correct option is (d).

Finance Bill and receipts Tax proposals are placed before Parliament through the Finance Bill, which is introduced along with the Union Budget every year. Revenue receipts are the tax and non-tax revenue the government expects to collect, so they are estimated only after allowing for the new rates, levies and exemptions proposed in the Finance Bill. The Appropriation Bill merely authorises withdrawal from the Consolidated Fund for expenditure, so it has no bearing on receipts. Hence the correct option is (d).

Battle of Buxar The Battle of Buxar was fought on 22 October 1764 on the bank of the Ganga in present-day Bihar. The East India Company's force under Major Hector Munro defeated the combined armies of Mir Qasim of Bengal, Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. By the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 the Company obtained the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, so Buxar — not Plassey — is what turned military success into political power. Hence the correct option is (b).

Indigo Revolt aftermath The Indigo Revolt of 1859–60 made indigo cultivation impossible in Bengal, so the European planters shifted their operations to Bihar. In north Bihar, above all in Champaran, they enforced the Tinkathia system, under which a tenant had to grow indigo on 3 out of every 20 kathas of his holding. The resentment this created is what brought Mahatma Gandhi to Champaran in 1917 for his first satyagraha in India. Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were never indigo-plantation belts of this kind. Hence the correct option is (d).

MEIS export scheme The Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) was launched on 1 April 2015, as part of the Foreign Trade Policy 2015–20. It merged five earlier export incentive schemes into one and rewarded exporters of notified goods with transferable Duty Credit Scrips. Because such export subsidies were held to violate WTO rules, MEIS was withdrawn and replaced from 1 January 2021 by the RoDTEP scheme. Hence the correct option is (c).

Goals of Five-Year Plans The declared goals of India's Five-Year Plans were four: growth, modernisation, self-reliance and equity. Self-reliance meant cutting down dependence on imports and on foreign aid, particularly in food and technology, so 'reliance on foreign aid' is the exact opposite of a planning goal. Growth meant a rising GDP, modernisation meant new technology and a changing social outlook, and equity meant that the gains must reach the poor. Hence the option that was never a goal is (b).

Third Five-Year Plan The Third Five-Year Plan (1961–66) fell far short of its targets: against a growth target of about 5.6% it achieved only about 2.8%. The Chinese aggression of 1962 forced a sudden diversion of resources to defence; the 1965 war with Pakistan and the severe drought of 1965–66 completed the damage. The failure was so complete that planning itself was suspended and three annual plans were run instead — the 'Plan Holiday' of 1966–69. Hence the correct option is (b).

FRBM Act targets Under the FRBM Act, 2003 and the FRBM Rules, 2004, the Centre had to cut the revenue deficit by at least 0.5% of GDP in every financial year until it was wiped out. The companion target was a reduction of the fiscal deficit by at least 0.3% of GDP a year, until it came down to 3% of GDP. So the annual revenue-deficit reduction required is 0.5% of GDP. Hence the correct option is (d).

Pyruvate in glycolysis Pyruvate is a three-carbon compound, the alpha-keto acid $C{H}_3-CO-CO{O}^{-}$. In glycolysis one six-carbon glucose molecule is split into two molecules of pyruvate, and $6=2\times 3$ accounts for every carbon atom. When oxygen is available the pyruvate enters the mitochondria and is converted to acetyl-CoA for the Krebs cycle; without oxygen it becomes lactate or ethanol. Hence the correct option is (a).

Harappan site Daimabad Daimabad lies on the left bank of the Pravara, a tributary of the Godavari, in the Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra. It is the southernmost known site of the Harappan civilisation and shows the spread of that culture into the Deccan. The site is famous for the Daimabad bronzes — a chariot with a driver, a buffalo, an elephant and a rhinoceros. Hence the correct option is (d).

Prayag Prashasti The Prayag Prashasti, engraved on an Ashokan pillar now standing at Allahabad (Prayagraj), was composed by Harisena. Harisena was Samudragupta's court poet and his sandhivigrahika, the minister for peace and war. The eulogy is written in classical Sanskrit in champu style, mixing prose and verse, and lists Samudragupta's campaigns in the north and the south. Hence the correct option is (a).