4 February 2025 · Shift 1

Government employment scheme Correct option: (d) 2016. The Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY) was announced by the Ministry of Labour and Employment on 9 August 2016 and given effect from 1 April 2016, so the scheme has been in operation since 2016. Under it the Government itself paid the employer's share of provident fund contribution for every new employee earning up to ₹15,000 a month - 8.33% towards EPS at first, and the full 12% (EPF + EPS) from April 2018 - for three years. Memory hook: PMRPY pays the employer for creating a fresh formal job, and it belongs to the same 2016 cluster of EPFO-linked employment schemes; registration of new beneficiaries under it closed on 31 March 2022.

Asian Games history Correct option: (a) New Delhi. The 1st Asian Games were held at New Delhi from 4 to 11 March 1951, the main venue being the National Stadium - today the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium. India has hosted the Asian Games twice, in 1951 and 1982, and the host city was New Delhi both times, so "Asian Games in India" always points to the capital. At the 1951 Games India finished second in the medal table with 15 gold, 16 silver and 20 bronze, behind Japan.

Supreme Court judges Correct option: (b) Hima Kohli. Justice Hima Kohli was given a ceremonial farewell by the Supreme Court on 30 August 2024 and demitted office on 1 September 2024. She had been elevated as the first woman Chief Justice of the High Court for the State of Telangana in January 2021, and on reaching the Supreme Court she became the ninth woman judge in its history. Fix her by the date 31 August 2021: she was sworn in that day along with Justices B V Nagarathna and Bela M Trivedi, taking the number of sitting women judges of the Supreme Court to a record four.

Asian Games disciplines Correct option: (b) Kabaddi. Kabaddi entered the Asian Games as a full medal discipline at the 11th Asian Games, Beijing 1990; before that it had appeared only as a demonstration sport at the 1982 Delhi Games. India won the men's kabaddi gold at Beijing 1990 and then at every edition up to 2014, which is exactly why 1990 is the year every kabaddi question turns on. The distractors are much older or much newer: wrestling was on the programme from Manila 1954 and volleyball from Tokyo 1958, while squash was added only at Bangkok 1998.

Rainfall in India Correct option: (c) Cherrapunji and Mawsynram. Both lie on the southern slopes of the Khasi Hills in Meghalaya and receive more than 1,080 cm of rain a year - the heaviest annual rainfall recorded anywhere on Earth. The cause is orographic or relief rainfall: the moisture-laden Bay of Bengal branch of the south-west monsoon is funnelled into the funnel-shaped Khasi valleys, is forced to rise, cools, condenses and pours down on the windward slope. Hold the contrast in mind: Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and Leh in Ladakh sit in arid and rain-shadow belts and get less than 50 cm a year - the same country, a hundredfold difference.

Multidimensional Poverty Index Correct option: (c) Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu. In NITI Aayog's National Multidimensional Poverty Index of India: A Progress Review 2023, this Union Territory recorded the highest share of multidimensionally poor persons among all the UTs, while Puducherry, Delhi and Chandigarh were far lower. The national MPI follows the global Alkire-Foster method: three equally weighted dimensions - Health, Education and Standard of Living - measured through 12 indicators, using National Family Health Survey data. The headline finding of the 2023 review is worth carrying: about 13.5 crore people escaped multidimensional poverty between 2015-16 and 2019-21, the national headcount ratio falling from 24.85% to 14.96%. Among States, Bihar had the highest incidence of multidimensional poverty and Kerala the lowest - a pairing examiners like as much as the UT pairing above.

Public Examinations Act, 2024 Correct option: (d) Up to ten lakh rupees. Under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, a person who resorts to unfair means or commits an offence in a public examination is punishable with imprisonment of not less than three years, extendable to five years, along with a fine of up to ₹10 lakh. If that fine is not paid, further imprisonment follows as provided in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 - the fine is not an escape route. Keep the two money figures apart: ₹10 lakh applies to an individual, whereas a service provider engaged by the examination authority can be fined up to ₹1 crore and barred for four years. The Act covers examinations of the UPSC, the Staff Selection Commission, Railway Recruitment Boards, IBPS, the National Testing Agency (NEET, JEE, CUET) and central government departments - which makes it directly relevant to this very examination.

Constitution: UPSC articles Correct option: (d) Articles 315 to 323. Part XIV of the Constitution, "Services under the Union and the States", devotes Articles 315 to 323 to the Public Service Commissions - the UPSC, the State Public Service Commissions and Joint Public Service Commissions. The reason the other ranges fail is easy to see: Article 330 and Article 338 belong to Part XVI (reservation of seats and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes), and Articles 210-219 deal with State legislatures and High Court judges. Context worth one line: the first central Public Service Commission was set up in October 1926 under the Government of India Act, 1919, on the Lee Commission's recommendation, and became the UPSC when the Constitution came into force in 1950.

Green Revolution Correct option: (d) Agricultural sector. The Green Revolution of the mid-1960s was a farming package - high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, assured irrigation and mechanisation - so it belongs to agriculture, that is, the primary sector. Its first phase (mid-1960s to mid-1970s) lifted wheat and rice yields mainly in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh; the second phase (mid-1970s to mid-1980s) carried the technology to more States and crops and made India self-sufficient in food grains. Remember the two names together: Norman Borlaug is the Father of the Green Revolution in the world, and M S Swaminathan the Father of the Green Revolution in India.

Classical dance festivals Correct option: (a) Tamil Nadu. The Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) Dance Festival is organised every year by the Tamil Nadu Tourism Department at Mamallapuram in Chengalpattu district, about 55 km south of Chennai on the Coromandel coast. It runs from late December into January, and its stage is the open-air setting of the Pallava rock-cut monuments - the Shore Temple, Arjuna's Penance and the Pancha Rathas, together a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The sculpture itself is the backdrop, which is why dancers of Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathak, Mohiniyattam, Odissi and Kathakali all perform there; the place name Mamallapuram comes from the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I, titled 'Mamalla'.

Indian agriculture data Test each claim separately against the Economic Survey and Ministry of Commerce figures. (i) The growth of the agriculture sector for FY 2022-23 was placed at about $3.5\%$, not $5.5\%$ - so (i) is false. (ii) India's agricultural exports in FY 2021-22 touched a record USD 50.21 billion, i.e. about USD 50.2 billion, a rise of nearly $20\%$ over the previous year's USD 41.87 billion - so (ii) is true. (iii) In Kharif Marketing Season 2021-22 about 581.7 lakh metric tons of rice was procured for the central pool - so (iii) is true. Only (ii) and (iii) survive the check, so the correct option is (b).

Classical dance exponents Lakshmi Vishwanathan (1944-2023) of Chennai was a Bharatanatyam dancer, teacher, author and film-maker. The Music Academy, Madras, conferred on her its highest honour for dance, the Natya (Nritya) Kalanidhi, an award reserved for masters of the Bharatanatyam tradition. Memory hook: the Music Academy of Chennai is the home stage of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam, both arts of Tamil Nadu. Kuchipudi belongs to Andhra Pradesh, Odissi to Odisha and Kathak to north India, so the correct option is (d).

Third Five-Year Plan The Third Five-Year Plan (1961-66) was drafted to make the economy 'self-reliant and self-generating', with stress on agriculture and heavy industry. It was overtaken by two wars - the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Indo-Pak War of 1965 - followed by the severe drought of 1965-66. Defence spending had to be raised sharply, so funds earmarked for development were re-allocated to war-time needs; that reallocation was the plan's central economic challenge. The plan aimed at about $5.6\%$ growth but achieved only about $2.4\%$, and the collapse forced three annual plans, the 'Plan Holiday' of 1966-69. Liberalisation belongs to 1991 and digital technology to a much later era, so the correct option is (d).

Gandhi Jayanti Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat. Number of the birth anniversary = given year − birth year, i.e. 2022-1869=153. So 2 October 2022 was his ${153}^{rd}$ birth anniversary. The day is observed in India as Gandhi Jayanti and by the United Nations as the International Day of Non-Violence, so the correct option is (a).

Iron Age pottery NBPW is the abbreviation of Northern Black Polished Ware. It is a fine, thin, deluxe pottery with a mirror-like black shine, dated roughly to 700 BCE-200 BCE, spread from the Gangetic plains and associated with the Mahajanapadas and the Mauryan period. Memory hook: the 'B' in the middle stands for the glossy black surface that made it the tableware of the rich, unlike the earlier Painted Grey Ware (PGW) of the Vedic period. Hence the correct option is (c).

Parts of the Constitution Part III of the Constitution of India, Articles 12 to 35, contains the Fundamental Rights. The six Fundamental Rights are the Right to Equality (Art. 14-18), Right to Freedom (Art. 19-22), Right against Exploitation (Art. 23-24), Right to Freedom of Religion (Art. 25-28), Cultural and Educational Rights (Art. 29-30) and the Right to Constitutional Remedies (Art. 32). Part III is called the 'Magna Carta of India' because these rights are enforceable in court, Article 32 itself being the 'heart and soul' of the Constitution. Hence the correct option is (d).

Types of plant stems Plants are classed by their stem: herbs (soft, short), shrubs (woody and bushy), trees (tall, thick trunk), creepers (weak stem, spread on the ground) and climbers (weak stem, rise up with support). The pumpkin has a long, weak stem, so on open ground it creeps; but given a wire, trellis or wall it grips with its tendrils and climbs - the same plant behaves as a creeper or a climber depending on the support given. Sunflower is a herb with a stiff erect stem, and lemon and rose are woody shrubs - none of the three needs or uses support to stand. Hence the correct option is (d).

Government of India Act 1919 The Government of India Act, 1919 was built on the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1918, and is therefore also called the Montagu-Chelmsford (Montford) Reforms. Edwin Montagu was the Secretary of State for India and Lord Chelmsford was the Viceroy (1916-1921); the report carries exactly these two names. Its main feature was dyarchy in the provinces - provincial subjects were split into two lists. Lord Curzon (1899-1905), Lord Irwin (1926-1931) and Lord Linlithgow (1936-1943) were Viceroys of quite other periods, so the correct option is (c).

Electromagnetic induction Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831 with his iron-ring and moving-magnet experiments. The law: whenever the magnetic flux linked with a coil changes, an emf is induced in it, and the induced emf equals the rate of change of flux. That single idea is the working principle of the dynamo, the electric generator and the transformer - magnetism made to produce electricity. The trap is 1820: that is the year Oersted showed a current deflects a compass needle, the opposite effect of electricity producing magnetism. Hence the correct option is (d).

Carnatic music legends The singer is M. S. Subbulakshmi - Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi (1916-2004), the Carnatic vocalist who sang at the United Nations General Assembly on UN Day, 1966, and toured Europe and North America. She was the first musician of any kind to be awarded the Bharat Ratna (1998) and the first Indian musician to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1974). Memory hook: her 'Bhaja Govindam' and 'Vishnu Sahasranamam', and Gandhi's wish to hear 'Vaishnava Jana To' in her voice, made her the 'Nightingale of India' in the Carnatic world. Begum Akhtar sang ghazal, dadra and thumri in the Hindustani style, while Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle were film playback singers - none of them is Carnatic. Hence the correct option is (d).