30 November 2025 · Shift 2

Directive Principles of State Policy The Directive Principles of State Policy are contained in Part IV, Articles 36–51, of the Constitution. They were included to direct the State towards a welfare state — that is, to establish social and economic justice through adequate means of livelihood, equal pay for equal work, free legal aid, education, public health and the reduction of inequalities of income and status. They are non-justiciable — a citizen cannot go to court to enforce them — and the idea was borrowed from the Constitution of Ireland. Periodic elections, electoral politics and the party system belong to the machinery of representative democracy, not to the DPSP, so options (a), (c) and (d) are ruled out. Hence option (b) is correct.

National Creators Awards Jaya Kishori was honoured as the 'Best Creator for Social Change'. The first National Creators Awards were presented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 March 2024 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, across about 20 categories. Jaya Kishori is a motivational speaker and devotional storyteller from Rajasthan whose digital content carries social messages, which is why this particular category fits her. Other winners of the same edition include Kamiya Jani (Best Travel Creator), Ankit Baiyanpuria (Best Health & Fitness Creator), Gaurav Chaudhary or Technical Guruji (Best Tech Creator) and Ranveer Allahabadia (Disruptor of the Year). Hence option (b) is correct.

Indian Coast Guard appointment Paramesh Sivamani took charge as the 26th Director General of the Indian Coast Guard in October 2024. He succeeded Rakesh Pal (option a), and brought over 35 years of service as a navigation and direction specialist. The Indian Coast Guard was formally raised on 18 August 1978 under the Coast Guard Act, 1978; it functions under the Ministry of Defence with its headquarters at New Delhi. Its charter covers maritime law enforcement, coastal security, search and rescue and protection of the marine environment. Hence option (c) is correct.

Government scheme full form PM-AJAY stands for Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojana. It is a centrally sponsored scheme of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, formed by merging three earlier schemes for Scheduled Castes. Its three components are: development of SC-majority villages into 'Adarsh Grams', grants-in-aid for income-generating and infrastructure projects, and the construction of hostels for SC students. The word 'Abhyuday' (rise, advancement) is the clue that separates it from the housing-sounding option (a) and the food-and-water option (d). Hence option (c) is correct.

Women in STEM workforce Reports available up to July 2025 place women at about 27% of India's STEM workforce. The figure is striking because women make up roughly 43% of India's STEM graduates — one of the highest shares in the world — so the loss happens between graduating and staying employed, not in education. Workplace barriers, safety and mobility concerns, care responsibilities and limited returnship options are the reasons usually cited for this leaky pipeline. For context, the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24 puts India's overall female labour force participation rate at 41.7%. Hence option (c) is correct.

NPS Vatsalya scheme NPS Vatsalya, launched in September 2024, lets a parent or guardian open a pension account in the name of a minor child; the account turns into a regular NPS account when the child turns 18. Every scheme under the National Pension System is implemented and supervised by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), so NPS Vatsalya too is run by PFRDA. PFRDA was created in 2003 and was given statutory status by the PFRDA Act, 2013. SEBI regulates the securities market and the RBI the banking system, so neither of them administers a pension scheme; hence option (b) is correct.

Employability ranking 2025 The Global University Employability Ranking (GEURS) is compiled by the French consultancy Emerging and published with Times Higher Education; it ranks universities by how employers rate their graduates rather than by research output. In the 2025 edition IIT Delhi was the best-placed Indian institution, at 28th in the world, and the only Indian name inside the global top 50. MIT held the first place globally, while IIT Bombay, IISc Bengaluru and the other Indian entrants came lower in the list. So the correct option is (c).

Sportsperson and sport Tulika Maan is an Indian judoka who competes in the women's +78 kg category. Her best-known result is the silver medal in judo at the 2022 Commonwealth Games at Birmingham, and she went on to represent India in judo at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Judo is a Japanese grappling sport fought on a tatami, where a throw is scored as ippon or waza-ari — quite different from wrestling, boxing and taekwondo offered in the other options. So the correct option is (c).

India's leopard capital A year-long camera-trap survey by the Holematthi Nature Foundation, reported in June 2025, counted about 80-85 free-ranging leopards in and around Bannerghatta National Park on the southern edge of Bengaluru. Mumbai, long called India's leopard capital because of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, has roughly 54 leopards, so Bengaluru now carries the larger urban leopard population. Both cities show the same pattern — a protected forest surviving inside a growing metropolis — which is why leopards and people meet so often there. So the correct option is (b).

Dhrupad Darbhanga gharana Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of Hindustani classical music, and its gharanas are named after the courts that supported them. The Darbhanga gayaki grew under the patronage of the Darbhanga Raj in the Mithila region of Bihar, and is traced to the musicians Radhakrishna and Kartaram in the 18th century. It sings in the Gauhar Vani and Khandar Vani styles and is known for a long, meditative alap before the composed bandish. The name of the gharana is thus the name of a place in Bihar, so the correct option is (c).

Malgudi trilogy author Swami and Friends (1935) was R. K. Narayan's first novel and introduced Malgudi, the imaginary South Indian town in which almost all of his fiction is set. It opens the Malgudi trilogy, completed by The Bachelor of Arts (1937) and The English Teacher (1945). Narayan later wrote The Guide (1958), which won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1960; Rushdie, Seth and Roy belong to a much later generation of Indian writing in English. So the correct option is (a).

Doongri Festival The Doongri (Dhungri) fair is held every May in the cedar grove at Manali in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. It is dedicated to Hidimba Devi, the character of the Mahabharata who married Bhima and became the mother of Ghatotkacha; her wooden pagoda temple of 1553 stands in that grove. The fair is marked by folk dances, the gathering of village deities and cultural performances of the Kullu valley. Losar is the Tibetan New Year and is a different festival altogether, so the correct option is (a).

Victoria Memorial The Victoria Memorial stands on the Maidan in Kolkata, West Bengal. It was proposed by Lord Curzon after Queen Victoria's death in 1901, built between 1906 and 1921 to a design by Sir William Emerson in the Indo-Saracenic style, and opened in 1921. Its white Makrana marble and the bronze Angel of Victory on the dome make it the best-known colonial monument of Kolkata; today it is a museum under the Ministry of Culture. So the correct option is (b).

Sattriya classical dance Sattriya is the classical dance of Assam. It was created in the 15th-16th century by the Vaishnavite saint Srimanta Sankardeva and was preserved for centuries by monks in the sattras (Vaishnava monasteries), where it retold stories from the Bhagavata Purana. The Sangeet Natak Akademi recognised it as a classical dance of India in the year 2000. Bihu, Bagurumba and Jhumur are the folk dances of the same State; so the correct option is (a).

ISRO SpaDeX mission SpaDeX stands for Space Docking Experiment, launched by ISRO on 30 December 2024 on PSLV-C60 from Sriharikota. It carried two satellites of about 220 kg each, SDX01 (Chaser) and SDX02 (Target), whose task was to rendezvous and dock with each other on their own in orbit, then undock and transfer electrical power. The docking was achieved on 16 January 2025, making India the fourth country after Russia, the USA and China to master the technique — a capability needed for Chandrayaan-4, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station and crewed flights. So the correct option is (d).

Samudrayan submersible Samudrayan is the crewed-submersible arm of India's Deep Ocean Mission, run by the Ministry of Earth Sciences. The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, was assigned in February 2025 to design and develop the fourth-generation deep-ocean human submersible named Matsya-6000. The number in the name is the design depth: it is built to carry three crew members in a 2.1 m titanium personnel sphere down to 6,000 m. At that depth it will survey polymetallic nodules and other deep-sea minerals, so the correct option is (a).

Paper tax in India In Indian public finance a levy that exists mainly on paper — heavy in documentation but negligible in collection — is nicknamed a paper tax. Wealth Tax fitted that description exactly: it was charged on the declared value of assets, cost more to administer than it raised, and was abolished in the 2015-16 Budget and replaced by a surcharge on very high incomes. GST, introduced on 1 July 2017, is a broad indirect tax on consumption and is one of the largest sources of government revenue, so it can never be called a paper tax. Statement I alone is correct, so option (b) is correct.

Revenue expenditure Government spending is classified by one test: does it create an asset or reduce a liability? Routine, recurring spending on running the administration — salaries, pensions, interest payments, subsidies, office maintenance and stationery — does neither, so it is revenue expenditure. Capital expenditure is the opposite, as it builds roads, buildings and machinery or repays loans; and a receipt is money coming in, not going out, which rules out options (b) and (d). So the correct option is (a).

FIPB supervision The Foreign Investment Promotion Board was set up in 1991 as part of the liberalisation package, to clear those foreign direct investment proposals that did not qualify for the automatic route. At its creation the FIPB worked directly under the Prime Minister's Office, which gave it the authority to fast-track large investment cases. It was later placed under the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, and was finally abolished in May 2017; since then FDI proposals are cleared by the concerned administrative ministries themselves. Parliament, the Election Commission and the Vice-President have no executive role in clearing investment, so the correct option is (a).

Banking Ombudsman Scheme The Banking Ombudsman Scheme was introduced by the Reserve Bank of India in 1995, using its powers under Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. It gave bank customers a free and informal forum for complaints of deficiency in service — delay in payment, non-observance of RBI directions, unfair practices — without having to go to a court. The scheme was revised several times, notably in 2002 and 2006, and in November 2021 it was merged with two other schemes into the RBI Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2021, on the principle of 'One Nation One Ombudsman'. So the correct option is (a).

Money Bill in State Article 198 of the Constitution deals with Money Bills in the States: such a Bill can be introduced only in the Legislative Assembly and never in the Legislative Council. After the Assembly passes it, the Bill goes to the Council, which must return it within 14 days and may only make recommendations that the Assembly is free to reject. An Ordinary Bill is different — under Article 196 it may be introduced in either House of a State legislature. So statement I alone is correct and option (b) is correct.

Konkan Railway route The Konkan Railway runs along the western coast from Roha in Raigad district of Maharashtra to Thokur near Mangaluru in Karnataka, a line of about 741 km. It crosses the narrow Konkan strip of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka, needing some 92 tunnels and about 2,000 bridges, among them the tall Panval Nadi viaduct. Konkan Railway Corporation Limited was incorporated in 1990, the whole line was opened to traffic in 1998, and its headquarters is at CBD Belapur, Navi Mumbai. So the correct option is (a).

Second Five Year Plan The Second Five Year Plan ran from 1956 to 1961, so it came to an end in 1961. It followed the Mahalanobis model of P. C. Mahalanobis and aimed at rapid industrialisation with priority to heavy and basic industries. Its landmark achievements were the steel plants at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur and a large expansion of the public sector. So the correct option is (c).

Projected sex ratio 2036 MOSPI brings out the report 'Women and Men in India'; its 2024 edition carries the population projections up to the year 2036. The sex ratio, that is the number of females per 1,000 males, is projected to rise from 943 recorded in the 2011 Census to 952 in 2036. The same report expects the share of women in the total population to move up to about 48.8 per cent by 2036, a slow but steady improvement in the balance. So the correct option is (a).

Nerve impulse pathway A neuron receives a signal, integrates it and passes it on, and each part of the cell does one of these three jobs. The dendrites pick up the impulse from a receptor or from another neuron and carry it to the cell body (cyton), where it is integrated; the axon then carries it away to the axon terminals. At the terminal the impulse crosses the synapse as a chemical neurotransmitter to the next neuron or to a muscle, so conduction within a neuron is always one-way. So the correct option is (a).