28 November 2025 · Shift 3

Jnanpith Award Mahadevi Verma received the Jnanpith Award in 1982 for her poetry collection Yama. She was one of the four pillars of the Chhayavad movement in modern Hindi poetry; Nihar, Rashmi, Nirja and Deepshikha are her best known collections. She was also honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1956 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1988. Anuradha Roy and Nayantara Sahgal write in English and have won the Sahitya Akademi Award, not the Jnanpith. Hence the correct option is (b).

UPSC Chairperson Dr. Ajay Kumar took charge as the Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission in May 2025. He is a 1985-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre and had earlier served as the Defence Secretary of India. The UPSC is a constitutional body; its composition, appointment, removal, powers and functions are laid down in Part XIV of the Constitution (Articles 315-323). Its Chairman and members are appointed by the President and hold office for six years or till the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. K. Sanjay Murthy is the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, which is a different constitutional office. Hence the correct option is (a).

Governor appointment Arif Mohammad Khan was appointed Governor of Bihar in December 2024. He had been serving as the Governor of Kerala since 2019 before this transfer. A Governor is appointed by the President under Article 155 and holds office during the pleasure of the President under Article 156. At that time Uttar Pradesh had Anandiben Patel, Jharkhand had Santosh Kumar Gangwar and West Bengal had C. V. Ananda Bose as Governor. Hence the correct option is (b).

Lakhpati Didi initiative The 'Lakhpati Didi Sammelan' was held at Navsari in Gujarat on 8 March 2025, International Women's Day. The Lakhpati Didi initiative aims to make every self-help group household earn at least ₹1 lakh a year on a sustained basis, across farm seasons or business cycles. It is implemented under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM). DAY-NRLM is run by the Ministry of Rural Development and works through skill training, enterprise support and easy credit for rural women. Hence the correct option is (b).

Manual scavenging ruling In January 2025 the Supreme Court ordered a complete stop to manual scavenging and hazardous sewer cleaning in six metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Jaipur does not appear in that list, so it is the city asked for. Manual scavenging means manually handling, carrying or disposing of human excreta from dry latrines, drains and insanitary toilets. It was first outlawed by the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, and again by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act, 2013. The Court directed the chief executives of these cities to file affidavits on enforcement and on rehabilitation of the workers. Hence the correct option is (d).

Union Budget 2025 mission The Union Budget 2025-26 announced a six-year 'Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses', running from 2025-26 to 2030-31. It concentrates on the three pulses India imports most — tur (arhar), urad and masoor — and directs NAFED and NCCF to buy these pulses from registered farmers at assured prices. The purpose is to raise domestic production and cut the import bill, since a large share of India's tur and urad still comes from abroad. Hence option (d) is correct.

Financial Inclusion Index The Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) is released by the Reserve Bank of India, every year in July, for the financial year ending in March. It runs from 0 (complete exclusion) to 100 (full inclusion) and is built from three sub-indices — Access (weight 35%), Usage (45%) and Quality (20%) — covering banking, insurance, pension, investment and the postal sector. The value for March 2025 was 67.0 against 64.2 in March 2024. The index has no base year, so every reading measures cumulative progress rather than change over a fixed benchmark. Hence option (a) is correct.

Environment statistics report 'EnviStats India 2024: Environment Accounts' was published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). MoSPI is the government's statistical arm — the NSS surveys, the Index of Industrial Production, the National Accounts and EnviStats all come from it, which is the quickest way to set the other three ministries aside. This was the seventh consecutive edition of the series, compiled on the UN's SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounting) framework, which links environmental data to the economic accounts; it carried Energy Accounts, Ocean Accounts, the Soil Nutrient Index and biodiversity data. Hence option (a) is correct.

National parks of India Keibul Lamjao National Park, the only floating national park in the world, lies on Loktak Lake in Manipur. It floats on phumdis — thick, buoyant mats of decomposing vegetation, soil and organic matter that drift on the surface of the lake, thick enough to walk on. It is the last natural home of the Sangai or brow-antlered deer, the 'dancing deer of Manipur' and the State animal, whose delicate step on the springy phumdi gives it that name. Hence option (b) is correct.

Ragas and regions The raga Gurjari takes its name from the Gurjara country — the tract that is today Gujarat — and is traditionally linked with that State. Many Indian ragas are named after the land they grew in, and recognising that naming habit is the fastest way to answer such questions. Rajasthan's characteristic raga of this kind is Mand and Sindh's is Sindhu Bhairavi; neither Karnataka nor Punjab has any claim on the Gurjar name. Hence option (b) is correct.

Delhi Sultanate cities Tughlaqabad, the third city of Delhi, was built by Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, the founder of the Tughlaq dynasty. He was Ghazi Malik, a warden of the western marches under the Khaljis; he took the throne in 1320 and raised this massive stone fort-city as a capital strong enough to face Mongol raids. Iltutmish and Balban belong to the earlier Slave (Mamluk) dynasty and Sher Shah Suri came two centuries later, so none of them could have built a city named after the Tughlaqs. Hence option (b) is correct.

Folk dances of Gujarat Manjira Nritya, also called Dhamal Nritya, is performed by the Padhaar community of Gujarat. The Padhaars are a riverine community living around Nal Sarovar; the dance is named after the manjira, the pair of small metal cymbals the dancers strike as they move in a circle, their swaying imitating the rowing of a boat and the ripple of water. The Rabaris are a pastoral community of Kutch and Saurashtra and the Bhils and Garasias are tribal communities of eastern Gujarat, each with dances of their own, but none of them performs the Manjira dance. Hence option (b) is correct.

Agricultural technology 2025 The solar dehydration technology announced in February 2025 was developed at IIT Kanpur, through its Ranjit Singh Rozi Shiksha Kendra. The unit dries fruits and vegetables with solar heat alone, so produce that would spoil in a few days keeps for months without a cold chain or electricity. That allows a farmer to hold his crop back instead of making a distress sale at harvest-time prices; training was given to Farmer Producer Organisations, including those working under the Namami Gange project. Hence option (b) is correct.

Indian space start-ups RHUMI-1, India's first reusable hybrid rocket, was built by Space Zone India, a Chennai-based start-up, in collaboration with the Martin Group. It was launched in August 2024 from Thiruvidanthai near Chennai, carrying three cube satellites and fifty PICO satellites meant to study the atmosphere. 'Hybrid' here means a solid fuel burnt with a liquid oxidiser: the two meet only inside the combustion chamber, so the rocket is far safer to store and its thrust can be throttled or shut off. Hence option (c) is correct.

Poverty estimation committees The Planning Commission constituted the Expert Group under Dr. C. Rangarajan in 2012 to review the methodology of measuring poverty; the group submitted its report in June 2014. The review was ordered because the Tendulkar line — about ₹27 a day in rural and ₹33 a day in urban India — had been widely attacked as too low to live on. Rangarajan raised the line to ₹972 per person per month in rural areas and ₹1,407 in urban areas, so poverty in 2011-12 worked out to 29.5% instead of Tendulkar's 21.9%. His line was built from three parts — food enough to meet nutritional norms, a normative spend on education, health, clothing and housing, and observed spending on the remaining non-food items. Hence option (b) is correct.

British annexations The East India Company annexed Sindh in 1843. Sir Charles Napier defeated the Talpur Amirs at the Battle of Miani in February 1843 and again at Hyderabad (Sindh) in March 1843, and the province was absorbed under Governor-General Lord Ellenborough. It helps to fix the neighbouring dates together: Punjab was annexed in 1849 after the Second Anglo-Sikh War and Awadh in 1856 on the plea of misgovernment. Hence option (d) is correct.

SEBI regulations SEBI issued the SEBI (Underwriters) Regulations in 1993. An underwriter promises to take up whatever part of a public issue the investors do not subscribe to, so the company is certain of its money; SEBI therefore requires him to register, to keep a minimum net worth and to follow a prescribed code of conduct. The order of events is easy to remember: SEBI became a statutory body under the SEBI Act, 1992, and the regulations for each class of intermediary followed immediately after — merchant bankers in 1992, underwriters in 1993. Hence option (c) is correct.

Petroleum resources of India Both the statements are correct. Statement I: the sedimentary basins of Assam form India's oldest oil province — Digboi, where Asia's first oil well was drilled in 1889, together with Naharkatiya, Moran and Hugrijan in the Brahmaputra valley. Statement II: the offshore Arabian Sea holds Mumbai High, India's single largest oil field, discovered in 1974, along with the Bassein gas field and Aliabet off the Gujarat coast. Petroleum forms only in sedimentary rock, so every Indian oil field lies in a sedimentary basin — on land in Assam and Gujarat, offshore in the Arabian Sea and in the Krishna-Godavari basin. Hence option (c) is correct.

Five-Year Plans Planning in the true sense is taken to begin with the Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61). The First Plan (1951-56) was largely a repair job after Partition — irrigation, power and refugee rehabilitation — and had no long-term model of the economy behind it. The Second Plan was built on P. C. Mahalanobis's two-sector model and deliberately chose heavy and basic industry as the engine of growth, supported by the Industrial Policy Resolution, 1956 and its 'socialistic pattern of society'. Its target growth was 4.5% against an achievement of about 4.3%; the steel plants at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur date from this plan. Hence option (b) is correct.

Industrial Policy 1977 Both the statements are correct. The Industrial Policy Statement of 1977 was brought in by the Janata Party government, with George Fernandes as Industry Minister, and turned policy away from heavy industry towards a Gandhian, small-is-beautiful approach. Statement II: it gave clear priority to the small sector, dividing it into cottage and household industries, the tiny sector and small-scale industries, and greatly widening the list of items reserved for them. Statement I: it pushed decentralisation, steering new industry to small towns and rural areas so that growth would not pile up in the big cities, and set up District Industries Centres as a single window for credit, raw material, training and marketing. Hence option (c) is correct.

Distribution of population Both the factors influence where people live. Topography: level land is easy to plough, to lay roads on and to build factories on, so plains hold most of the people — the Ganga plain is among the most densely settled tracts on earth, while the high Himalayas and the rugged north-east are thinly peopled. Climate: people avoid extremes and gather where the temperature is moderate and the rainfall adequate; the Sahara, the Atacama and the polar lands are nearly empty for exactly this reason. Alongside these physical factors work economic, social, cultural and political ones — minerals, industry, transport, religious centres and government policy. Hence option (c) is correct.

Push and pull factors Better job opportunities is a pull factor, not a push factor, so it is the exception asked for. Push factors act at the place of origin and drive people out — unemployment, poor living conditions, political turmoil, drought, war. Pull factors act at the destination and draw people in — jobs, higher wages, schools and hospitals, safety and a better climate. The test is simply where the factor sits: at the place a person is leaving, or at the place he is going to. Hence option (b) is correct.

Ascent of sap During the day the main driving force is the transpiration pull. Stomata stay open in daylight for gas exchange, and water evaporates from the moist walls of the mesophyll cells into the air spaces and out through the stomata. This evaporation creates a negative pressure, or tension, at the top of the plant. Water molecules cling to one another by cohesion and to the xylem walls by adhesion, so the whole column is pulled up unbroken from the root to the leaf. Root pressure does push water upward, but it is weak, shows mainly at night when transpiration is low, and cannot lift water to the top of a tall tree; capillarity and diffusion are far too feeble to account for the daytime flow. Hence option (c) is correct.

Human endocrine system Growth hormone, also called somatotropin, regulates the growth and general development of the body. It is secreted by the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland; it lengthens the long bones at their growth plates, builds muscle by promoting protein synthesis and mobilises fat for energy. Its disorders are the usual test of the fact: too little in childhood gives dwarfism, too much gives gigantism, and an excess after the growth plates close gives acromegaly. The other options belong to other hormones — TSH controls thyroid activity, insulin and glucagon come from the pancreas, and ADH (vasopressin) maintains water balance. Hence option (c) is correct.

Buddhist councils The Second Buddhist Council was held in the reign of Kalashoka, about 383 BC, roughly a hundred years after the Buddha's death. It met at Vaishali and was presided over by Sabakami. The dispute was over ten relaxations in monastic discipline that the monks of Vaishali had taken up, such as accepting gold and silver. The council rejected these relaxations, and the sangha split for the first time into the orthodox Sthaviravadins and the liberal Mahasanghikas. Ashoka is remembered for the Third Council at Pataliputra, so he is the tempting but wrong choice here. Hence option (c) is correct.