21 November 2025 · Shift 2

Mughal revenue administration Raja Todar Mal was the revenue minister of Akbar and one of the navaratnas of his court. He framed the Zabti system, also called the Todar Mal Bandobast, in which land was surveyed and measured and the revenue was fixed in cash. Its refined form, the Dahsala system of 1580, fixed the demand on the ten-year average of yields and prices of each locality. Babur and Humayun ruled long before this settlement was drawn up, and by Jahangir's reign the arrangement was already in force. Hence option (c) is correct.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation The SCO Charter names Russian and Chinese as the official working languages of the organisation. All its documents and meetings, and its permanent bodies — the Secretariat at Beijing and the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) at Tashkent — function in these two languages. The SCO was founded in 2001 at Shanghai; India and Pakistan became full members in 2017. India has pressed for English to be added, but no third working language has been adopted so far, so the options containing English or Hindi are wrong. Hence option (b) is correct.

East Asia Summit The first East Asia Summit was held on 14 December 2005 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, alongside the ASEAN summit. Sixteen countries took part — the ten ASEAN members together with India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The United States and Russia joined the forum later, at the sixth summit in 2011. The EAS is a leaders-led forum on political, security and economic questions of the Indo-Pacific, and it is always chaired by the ASEAN chair of that year. Hence option (c) is correct.

English literature The Jungle Book (1894) was written by Rudyard Kipling, the British author who was born in Bombay in 1865. Its stories are set in the Indian jungle and centre on Mowgli, the boy brought up by wolves, with Baloo, Bagheera and Shere Khan. Kipling also wrote Kim, the story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the poem If—, and in 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, H. G. Wells The Time Machine and Charles Dickens Oliver Twist. Hence option (b) is correct.

Appointments in news Shailendra Nath Gupta took charge as the Director General Defence Estates (DGDE) on 31 May 2025. He belongs to the 1990 batch of the Indian Defence Estates Service and had earlier served as Principal Director, Eastern Command, and as Director, Defence Estates, Central Command. The DGDE, working under the Ministry of Defence with its headquarters at New Delhi, manages about 17.99 lakh acres of defence land and supervises the cantonment boards. Hence option (c) is correct.

PM-YUVA mentorship scheme PM-YUVA 3.0 is the third edition of the Prime Minister's Scheme for Mentoring Young Authors, launched by the Ministry of Education in March 2025 and implemented by the National Book Trust, India. The scheme proposes to select 50 young authors below the age of 30 through an All India Contest run on the MyGov platform. Each selected author receives a consolidated scholarship of ₹50,000 per month for a six-month mentorship, and a royalty of 10% on the sale of the published book. The themes announced for this edition were the contribution of the Indian diaspora in nation building, Indian Knowledge Systems, and Makers of Modern India (1950-2025). Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860 as India's substantive criminal law and came into force on 1 July 2024. It contains 358 sections arranged in 20 chapters, against the 511 sections and 23 chapters of the IPC, so the law has been shortened and reorganised rather than merely renamed. It also introduces new offences such as organised crime, terrorism and mob lynching, and makes community service a form of punishment for the first time. The BNS is one of three new criminal laws, the other two being the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (replacing the CrPC) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (replacing the Indian Evidence Act). Hence, option (a) is the most appropriate answer.

Atal Pension Yojana The Atal Pension Yojana was launched on 9 May 2015 and is regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA); it therefore completed ten years in May 2025. Any Indian citizen aged 18 to 40 years with a savings bank account may enrol, so the prescribed age limit is 18-40 years. The age band is fixed at 40 at the upper end because the pension starts at 60, and the scheme requires a minimum contribution period of 20 years. The subscriber receives a guaranteed monthly pension of ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 from the age of 60, the amount depending on the age of joining and the contribution chosen. Since 1 October 2022 income-tax payers have been barred from joining, as the scheme targets workers of the unorganised sector. Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

Global employability ranking The Global University Employability Ranking is compiled from a worldwide survey of recruiters, so it measures how highly employers rate a university's graduates rather than its research output. In the 2025 edition Harvard University was placed 4th. The three institutions above it were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 1st, the California Institute of Technology at 2nd and Stanford University at 3rd. IIT Delhi, at 28th, was the highest ranked Indian institution in this edition. Hence, option (d) is the most appropriate answer.

Neeraj Chopra Olympic gold Neeraj Chopra won the men's javelin throw gold at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, which were actually held in 2021 after being postponed by the pandemic but kept the name 2020. His winning throw measured 87.58 m, achieved in his second attempt of the final. This was India's first ever Olympic gold in athletics, and only the second individual Olympic gold for the country after Abhinav Bindra's shooting gold at Beijing 2008. At Paris 2024 he threw 89.45 m and finished with the silver medal, so 2024 is the tempting but wrong option here. Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

Swimming technical components A swimming race is made up of exactly three technical phases, and each of them is coached separately and judged by the officials: the start off the block, the strokes down the length, and the turn at each wall. The stroke (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke or butterfly) supplies propulsion, the start decides the reaction time and the entry, and the turn decides how much speed is carried out of the wall. The remaining options each borrow their second and third words from a different sport, which is the quickest way to eliminate them. Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

Operation Falcon Operation Falcon is the anti-poaching drive announced by Assam in August 2025 to protect the greater one-horned rhinoceros. The state can be identified from the animal itself: the greater one-horned rhino survives mainly in Kaziranga, Orang, Pobitora and Manas, all of which lie in Assam. The drive is run jointly by the Assam Police and the state Forest Department, and it works by tracking the trade chain rather than only the shooters, so several international poaching gangs were identified and dozens of arrests were made. The immediate result claimed for the operation was zero rhino poaching in the state during 2025. Hence, option (a) is the most appropriate answer.

Wildlife sanctuary location The Umred-Pauni-Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary lies in the Nagpur and Bhandara districts of Maharashtra and was notified in 2012. Its importance is that it is a corridor rather than a core area: it links the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve and the Brahmapuri forests with the Nagzira-Navegaon landscape, letting tigers move between them. Such corridors matter because they allow genetic exchange between otherwise isolated tiger populations, which is what keeps small populations healthy. The sanctuary became widely known through the tiger Jai, who was collared and tracked here. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

National Marathon 2025 The National Marathon of February 2025 was organised in New Delhi. It was held with the support of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and drew thousands of participants, including elite runners, students and ordinary fitness enthusiasts. The stated purpose was to encourage regular physical activity and to spread public health awareness, in line with the Fit India Movement. New Delhi is the usual venue for such national level runs because the central ministries and national sports federations are based there. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

Folk song of Chhattisgarh Dewar Geet belongs to Chhattisgarh and takes its name from the Dewar community, a wandering group of singers who traditionally moved from village to village. The songs are sung as rhythmic narratives and are accompanied by local instruments such as the dholak and the mandar; their themes are nature, everyday village life, festivals and folk deities. Since the community is the singer group of Chhattisgarh, the song form is placed there and not in the neighbouring states offered as options. Hence, option (d) is the most appropriate answer.

Bamboo flute dimensions The traditional Indian bamboo flute, the bansuri, is a single hollow tube of bamboo with a blowing hole and six or seven finger holes and no mechanical keys. Its average outer diameter is taken as about 1.9 cm, while the length varies roughly from 30 cm to 75 cm depending on the pitch of the instrument. The bore that this diameter gives is wide enough for a stable, resonant air column and full volume, yet narrow enough for the finger holes to stay within a comfortable reach of the fingers. A much thinner tube of about 1.2 cm would sound thin and shrill, and a much wider one would put the holes beyond an easy stretch. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

Indus Valley town planning The defining building material of the Harappan cities was the standardised burnt or baked brick, laid in the English bond pattern, and the same brick was used for their defences. Most major sites, such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan and Lothal, had a raised citadel enclosed by a thick fortified brick wall, with the lower town lying below it. These walls also served as protection against the recurring floods of the Indus and its tributaries, and they marked off the planned sectors of the city. Wooden palisades and moats with movable bridges belong to other, later cultures, and no Harappan city relied on natural rock barriers. Hence, option (d) is the most appropriate answer.

Folk dance of Tripura Hai-Hak is a folk dance of Tripura, performed by the Halam tribe at the close of the jhum (shifting cultivation) harvest, when the community thanks the goddess Mailuma for the crop. The dancers move in a line or a circle to the beat of drums and bamboo instruments, and the dance is a thanksgiving, not a ritual of worship, which is why it is tied to the agricultural calendar. Tripura's better known dances are Hojagiri, Garia, Lebang Boomani and Mamita, all of them likewise linked to harvest and to community festivals. Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

ISS orbital period The ISS moves in a low Earth orbit at a height of about 400 km and completes one revolution in nearly 90 minutes. Number of orbits in a day $=\frac{\mathrm{minutes}\mathrm{in}a\mathrm{day}}{\mathrm{orbital}\mathrm{period}}$ $=\frac{24\times 60}{90}=\frac{1440}{90}=16$ This is why an astronaut aboard the station sees about 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in every 24 hours. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

Friction and ignition Rubbing the stick against the rough striking strip converts mechanical work into heat by friction, and it is this local rise in temperature that starts the reaction. The heat first changes the red phosphorus of the striking surface into white phosphorus, which catches fire at a very low temperature. The small flame so produced decomposes the potassium chlorate in the match head, releasing oxygen, which then burns the antimony trisulphide and the wood. $2{KClO}_3\to 2KCl+3O_2$ No liquid fuel is stored in the stick, air is already present around it, and moisture would only make the match harder to light, so the other options fail. Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

Current affairs - investment in India The company that announced the $200 million investment is Amgen, a US-based biotechnology major headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. The money is being put into expanding its technology and innovation centre in Hyderabad, which Amgen opened as a Global Capability Centre to support data science, artificial intelligence and digital drug-development work. The expansion is expected to take the Hyderabad site to several thousand employees, and it underlines how India has become a base for research and technology capability rather than only for back-office services. Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly and AbbVie are all US pharmaceutical or biotechnology firms, but none of them made this particular Hyderabad announcement in February 2025. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

Colonial plantation crop The plantation crop forced on the peasants of Assam was tea. Robert Bruce reported wild tea plants growing in Assam in 1823; the first English tea garden was set up at Chabua in 1837 and the Assam Company began commercial production in 1839-40. The colonial state then handed over vast tracts of land under the Wasteland Rules on very easy terms, and peasants and indentured labourers were tied to the gardens under harsh contracts they could not leave. Coffee and rubber plantations belonged to the south and the west coast, and tobacco was never a plantation crop of Assam, so only tea fits. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

Indira Gandhi Canal The Indira Gandhi Canal takes off from the Harike Barrage, which stands just below the meeting point of the Beas and the Sutlej in the Ferozepur district of Punjab. The barrage was completed in 1953 to hold and divert this combined flow for irrigation. The canal was originally named the Rajasthan Canal and was renamed after Indira Gandhi in 1984; it carries water across Punjab and Haryana into the Thar desert of western Rajasthan. Its purpose is to green the arid districts of Sriganganagar, Hanumangarh, Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Barmer, which is why it is one of the longest irrigation canal systems in India. Hence, option (b) is the most appropriate answer.

Census 2011 religion data The Census of India 2011 recorded Hindus as $79.8\%$ of the population and Muslims as $14.2\%$, so Muslims formed the second-largest religious group. The order after them was Christians $2.3\%$, Sikhs $1.7\%$, Buddhists $0.7\%$ and Jains $0.4\%$, which fixes every option in the question. In absolute numbers the Muslim population was about 17.22 crore out of a total of 121.09 crore. Their largest concentrations were in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Assam and Kerala, and Lakshadweep, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam had the highest shares. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.

Upanishadic concept of Brahman In the Upanishads, Brahman is the ultimate, eternal and formless reality from which the whole universe arises, in which it rests and into which it returns. It is described as nirguna, that is without attributes, and as beyond time, space and causation, so it can only be indicated and not defined. Atman is the individual self, and the central Upanishadic teaching Tat Tvam Asi (That thou art) asserts that Atman is identical with Brahman; Atman is therefore the self, not the cosmic source. Purusha and Prakriti are the two principles of Samkhya philosophy, consciousness and primordial matter, and belong to a different system altogether. Hence, option (c) is the most appropriate answer.