30 November 2025 · Shift 1

Alauddin Khalji market reform Alauddin Khalji employed the Banjaras — the traditional nomadic grain-carriers — to bring grain from the countryside to the urban markets of Delhi. They were registered under the Shahna-i-Mandi, the officer who supervised the grain market, and were required to settle along the Yamuna with their families so that supply never failed. This was one piece of his celebrated market-control system, which fixed the rate of every commodity so that a large standing army could be maintained on low cash salaries. Sher Shah Suri is remembered for the silver rupiya and the Grand Trunk Road, Muhammad bin Tughlaq for the token currency and the shifting of the capital, and Humayun for losing and regaining his throne. Hence option (b) is correct.

Borrowed features of Constitution The Fundamental Duties were taken from the Constitution of the erstwhile USSR; the ideal of justice — social, economic and political — in the Preamble also comes from the same source. They were inserted by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee; ten were added then and an eleventh by the 86th Amendment, 2002, all listed in Article 51A. The Directive Principles came from Ireland, the idea of a Preamble and the Fundamental Rights from the USA, while an independent Election Commission was the Constituent Assembly's own arrangement. Hence option (a) is correct.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation The SCO was founded at Shanghai in June 2001 by six countries — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, that is the 'Shanghai Five' of 1996 together with Uzbekistan. So Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are founder members, and India, though it joined only at the Astana summit of 2017 along with Pakistan, is today a full member. Iraq, by contrast, has no place in the grouping at all — it is neither a founder nor a member, an observer or a dialogue partner, so it is the country that stands apart. The SCO secretariat is at Beijing and its Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) is at Tashkent. Hence option (a) is correct.

Revolt of 1857 Mangal Pandey, a sepoy of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry, attacked his British officers at Barrackpore on 29 March 1857 — the first open act of the revolt. He fired at Lieutenant Baugh and Sergeant-Major Hewson in protest against the greased cartridges of the new Enfield rifle, which were believed to be smeared with cow and pig fat. He was court-martialled and hanged on 8 April 1857, and the general mutiny broke out at Meerut on 10 May 1857. Rani Lakshmibai led the revolt at Jhansi only later in 1857, while Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai belong to the national movement of a much later generation. Hence option (a) is correct.

Lakhpati Didi Sammelan 2025 At the Lakhpati Didi Sammelan held at Navsari in Gujarat on 8 March 2025 — International Women's Day — Prime Minister Narendra Modi disbursed ₹450 crore. The assistance reached about 2.5 lakh women belonging to roughly 25,000 self-help groups of the state. A 'Lakhpati Didi' is a woman member of a self-help group whose household earns at least ₹1 lakh a year; the mission's national target is 3 crore such women. The same event saw the launch of the G-SAFAL and G-MAITRI initiatives for women-led rural enterprise. Hence option (d) is correct.

Women borrowers report 2024 The figure comes from the report 'From Borrowers to Builders', brought out by NITI Aayog with TransUnion CIBIL, the Women Entrepreneurship Platform and MSC on the credit behaviour of Indian women. It records that in 2024 the top five states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana — were home to 49% of all self-monitoring women borrowers in the country. 'Self-monitoring' means a woman checks her own credit score and credit report; the number of such women rose about 42% in a single year, a direct sign of rising financial awareness. So the correct option is (a).

PM POSHAN scheme PM POSHAN — Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman — is run by the Department of School Education and Literacy, which is a department of the Ministry of Education. It is the Mid-Day Meal Scheme renamed in 2021: one hot cooked meal on every school day for children from Balvatika up to Class 8 in government and government-aided schools. The scheme sits with Education because its aims are as much educational as nutritional — raising enrolment and attendance and removing classroom hunger. The Ministry of Women and Child Development runs Anganwadi nutrition under Poshan Abhiyaan, which is why that option tempts, but the mid-day meal is a school programme, not an Anganwadi one. So the correct option is (b).

Origin of judo Judo grew out of jujutsu, the traditional unarmed combat system of Japan, so its parent art is Japanese. Jigoro Kano reworked jujutsu in 1882, dropped its most dangerous strikes and founded the Kodokan school of judo, built on throws, holds and the principle of maximum efficiency with minimum effort. Judo entered the Olympic Games at Tokyo 1964; a bout is decided by ippon, waza-ari, holds and submissions. China gave the world kung fu and wushu, Korea gave taekwondo and Thailand gave Muay Thai — none of them is the source of judo. So the correct option is (a).

Sports and equipment Golf is a club-and-ball game: the player strikes a small ball with a club and tries to sink it in each hole in the fewest possible strokes. A full course has 9 or 18 holes with fairways, bunkers and putting greens, and the ball is the one implement common to every shot, from the tee to the green. Wrestling is a body-contact combat sport with no equipment, archery uses a bow and arrows, and chess is a board game with 32 pieces — none of the three uses a ball. So the correct option is (a).

India's updated NDC India's updated NDC, submitted to the UNFCCC in August 2022 and still in force in December 2024, promises to cut the emission intensity of GDP by 45% by 2030 from the 2005 level. Emission intensity is the greenhouse gas emitted per unit of GDP, so the target lets the economy keep growing while the emission attached to each rupee of output falls. The first NDC of 2015 had promised only 33-35%; the update also raised the non-fossil share of installed power capacity to 50% by 2030, both steps towards net zero by 2070. So the correct option is (a).

Chillai Kalan winter Chillai Kalan is the 40-day spell of harshest cold in the Kashmir Valley, that is, in Jammu and Kashmir; it runs from 21 December to 30 January. Through it the night temperature stays well below freezing, the Dal Lake and water pipes freeze over, and households fall back on the kangri and the hammam. It is followed by Chillai Khurd, 20 days of milder cold, and then Chillai Bacha, a last 10 days of 'baby cold' — a local calendar that tells people how long the winter still has to run. So the correct option is (a).

WPL 2025 champion Mumbai Indians won the Women's Premier League 2025, beating Delhi Capitals by 8 runs in the final played at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai, on 15 March 2025. It was the franchise's second WPL title after 2023, making Mumbai Indians the first team to win the league twice; the side was captained by Harmanpreet Kaur. The WPL is the BCCI's five-team women's T20 league, launched in 2023 and played on a round-robin plus playoff format. Royal Challengers Bengaluru had taken the 2024 title, while Delhi Capitals have reached the final in each of the first three seasons without winning once. So the correct option is (b).

Jagannath temple, Puri The main shrine (deul) of the Jagannath temple at Puri rises about 65 metres, roughly 214 feet, above its raised platform. It is the grandest surviving example of Kalinga architecture — a curvilinear rekha deul crowned by the amalaka, above which stand the Nilachakra and the Patitapavana flag. The temple was built in the 12th century by the Eastern Ganga ruler Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva and stands on a platform called the Jagati inside two enclosure walls. It is one of the four Char Dham shrines and is famous for the annual Rath Yatra, when the three deities are drawn in chariots to the Gundicha temple. So the correct option is (a).

Ranapa folk dance Ranapa is a martial folk dance of Odisha, at its liveliest in the Ganjam district. 'Ranapa' means stilt: the dancers perform standing on tall bamboo stilts, leaping and keeping balance to the beat of the dhol and the mahuri. Its theme is the boyhood of Lord Krishna among the cowherds, so it is danced mainly by the gopala community at festival time. Odisha's other well-known dance forms are Odissi, Chhau, Gotipua, Ghumura and Sambalpuri; Chhattisgarh has Panthi, Jharkhand has Paika and West Bengal has Raibenshe — martial dances of their own, but none of them is Ranapa. So the correct option is (a).

Minimum satellite orbit Under normal conditions an artificial satellite is not placed lower than about 180 km above the Earth's surface. Below that height the thin air of the thermosphere is still dense enough for drag to rob the satellite of speed, so the orbit decays within days and the satellite burns up on re-entry. Holding such an orbit would mean firing thrusters almost continuously, which no satellite can afford in terms of fuel. Low Earth Orbit is therefore taken to begin near 180-200 km, and most LEO satellites actually fly between 300 km and 800 km, while a geostationary satellite sits far higher at about 36,000 km. So the correct option is (a).

Latent heat of fusion The heat needed to turn 1 kg of a solid into liquid at its melting point, at atmospheric pressure, is called the latent heat of fusion. It is 'latent', that is hidden, because the thermometer does not move while the change of state goes on: the energy is spent in breaking the bonds that hold the particles in the lattice, not in raising the temperature. For ice the value is $3.34\times {10}^5$ J/kg. Sensible heat, in contrast, is heat that does change the temperature, and specific heat capacity is the heat needed to raise 1 kg of a substance by $1^{\circ }$C. So the correct option is (a).

Economic crisis of 1991 The crisis of 1991 was a balance-of-payments crisis rooted in external debt: through the 1980s India had borrowed abroad on commercial terms to pay for imports, and by mid-1991 it could no longer service that debt. Foreign exchange reserves had fallen to about one billion US dollars, enough for barely two weeks of imports, and the government had to pledge gold with the Bank of England and take an IMF loan. The Gulf War of 1990-91 was the trigger, because it raised the oil bill and cut remittances from West Asia, but the underlying weakness was the external debt built up on unproductive spending. The response was the New Economic Policy of 1991 — liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation — with the rupee devalued and industrial licensing largely abolished. So the correct option is (a).

Champaran Satyagraha Mahatma Gandhi led the Champaran Satyagraha in 1917, the first satyagraha he conducted on Indian soil. He went to Champaran in north Bihar at the insistence of the cultivator Rajkumar Shukla, to look into the plight of indigo growers held under the tinkathia system, which forced them to plant indigo on $\frac{3}{20}$ of their holding. Ordered to leave the district, Gandhiji refused and offered himself for arrest; the government withdrew the case and appointed an inquiry committee with him as a member. The Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 ended the tinkathia system and returned part of the illegal dues to the peasants. The other years mark different events: 1915 was his return from South Africa, 1919 the Rowlatt Satyagraha and 1920 the Non-Cooperation Movement. So the correct option is (a).

Types of coal in India Nearly 80% of India's coal reserves are bituminous coal, and most of that is of the non-coking variety. Bituminous is the medium-rank coal of the Gondwana fields in the Damodar, Son, Mahanadi and Godavari valleys — Jharia, Raniganj, Korba and Talcher — carrying roughly 60-80% carbon. Because it is largely non-coking, this coal is burnt in thermal power stations, while coking coal for the steel industry has to be imported. Anthracite, the highest rank, occurs in India only in small pockets in Jammu and Kashmir; lignite or brown coal is concentrated at Neyveli in Tamil Nadu, and peat is the youngest, lowest-carbon stage. So the correct option is (a).

Fourth Five Year Plan The plan that began in 1969 was the Fourth Five Year Plan, which ran from 1969 to 1974 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It followed a three-year plan holiday (1966-69) forced by the wars and droughts of the mid-1960s, and its resources were shared with the states by the Gadgil formula. Its watchwords were 'growth with stability' and 'progressive achievement of self-reliance'; its landmarks were the nationalisation of 14 major banks in 1969, the spread of the Green Revolution and the Drought Prone Areas Programme. The target growth rate was 5.7% but only 3.3% was achieved, largely because of the 1971 war and the cost of the refugee influx. So the correct option is (a).

Eighth Five Year Plan Both statements are correct. The Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-97) was launched in the shadow of the 1991 crisis, when the balance of payments was worsening and the debt burden was rising. Inflation was high and industry was in recession as well, so the plan's declared task was to manage the transition to a market economy while correcting these imbalances. It therefore stressed modernisation of industry, human resource development, energy and infrastructure, and made the Panchayats and Nagar Palikas partners in local development. India joined the World Trade Organization on 1 January 1995 during this plan, and against a target of 5.6% the economy actually grew at 6.8%. So the correct option is (a).

First EPZ in India India's first Export Processing Zone was set up at Kandla in Gujarat in 1965 — it was also the first EPZ in Asia. An EPZ is a duty-free enclave treated as foreign territory for trade purposes: units inside it import inputs without customs duty and sell the finished goods abroad. Santacruz in Mumbai followed in 1973 as the second EPZ, meant for electronics and for gems and jewellery. The EPZ scheme was converted into the Special Economic Zone scheme announced in the EXIM Policy of 2000, and given statutory backing by the SEZ Act, 2005. So the correct option is (a).

Gender Budget Statement The Gender Budget Statement, printed as Statement 13 of the Expenditure Profile of the Union Budget, now has three parts, and the schemes that spend less than 30% of their provision on women and girls are listed in Part C. Part A carries the wholly women-specific schemes with 100% allocation, such as Mission Shakti, and Part B carries the schemes with 30% to 99%. Part C was added in the Budget for 2024-25 so that pro-women spending inside large general schemes, such as PM-KISAN, could also be tracked; there is no Part D. So the correct option is (c).

Plant hormones Both statements describe plant hormones (phytohormones) correctly. Statement I is true: auxins, gibberellins, cytokinins, abscisic acid and ethylene together control cell division and elongation, flowering, fruit ripening, dormancy and the plant's response to light, gravity and water stress. Statement II is also true: a plant has neither glands nor a circulatory system, so a hormone is made at one site — usually a growing tip — and simply diffuses through the tissues to the region where it acts. The classic illustration is phototropism: auxin made at the shoot tip diffuses to the shaded side, makes those cells elongate more, and so the shoot bends towards the light. So the correct option is (a).

Jambudvipa in Mahabharata Jambudvipa literally means 'the island of the jambu tree', and jambu is the Sanskrit name of the jamun, the Indian blackberry (Syzygium cumini). In the cosmology of the Mahabharata and the Puranas, Jambudvipa is the innermost of the seven concentric island-continents, with Mount Meru at its centre and Bharatavarsha as its southern division. The name is traced to a giant jambu tree on Mount Meru whose enormous fruits fall to the earth and whose juice is said to form the Jambu river. The term outlived mythology: Ashoka's inscriptions use Jambudvipa for the land he ruled, and Jain and Buddhist texts use it in the same sense. So the correct option is (a).