4 February 2025 · Shift 3

Shaka ruler Rudradaman Rudradaman I, the greatest ruler of the Western Kshatrapas (the Shakas), had the Junagadh rock inscription cut at the foot of Girnar hill in Gujarat around 150 CE. One line fixes it in memory: it is the first long inscription written in pure Sanskrit, and it records his repair of the Sudarshana lake first built in Chandragupta Maurya's time. Menander and Demetrius were Indo-Greek kings, not Shakas, so neither can be the answer, and Rudrabhuti is not a ruler connected with Girnar. Hence the correct option is (d).

All India Muslim League The All India Muslim League was founded at Dhaka on 30 December 1906, at the close of the annual Muhammadan Educational Conference, and Aga Khan III was chosen as its first President. He led the League till 1912, and the same year he headed the deputation that had met Lord Minto at Simla in 1906 asking for separate electorates - the demand the League was created to pursue. Muhammad Ali Jinnah joined the League only in 1913, so he could not have been its first President, and Nawab Salimullah Khan of Dhaka hosted the founding session but never presided over the organisation. Hence the correct option is (b).

Ali-Aye-Ligang festival Ali-Aye-Ligang is the spring sowing festival of the Mising (Miri) tribe of Assam, held on the first Wednesday of the Assamese month of Phagun (February-March). The name itself is the memory aid: 'Ali' is root or seed, 'Aye' is fruit and 'Ligang' is to sow - the day the season's first paddy seed goes into the ground. It is marked by the Gumrag dance and rice beer (apong), chiefly in Majuli, Dhemaji and Lakhimpur. Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala have no Mising population at all, so the festival cannot belong to any of them. Hence the correct option is (b).

Mosquito-borne diseases Japanese encephalitis is a viral disease carried by Culex mosquitoes that breed in flooded paddy fields; the virus attacks the brain and causes encephalitis, which means inflammation of the brain. Pigs and water birds are its reservoir hosts, which is why outbreaks cluster in the rice-growing districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam, and why JE vaccination is run there under the Universal Immunisation Programme. Lymphatic filariasis is mosquito-borne but is caused by a worm and swells the limbs, not the brain; Francisella tularensis is a bacterium, not a virus; yellow fever virus damages the liver and causes jaundice. Hence the correct option is (b).

Basketball ring dimensions Rule 1 of the NBA rule book fixes the basket: a pressure-release, NBA-approved metal safety ring 18" in inside diameter, carrying a white cord net 18" long. The easy way to hold this is that the two numbers in the rule are the same - the ring's inside diameter and the net's length are both 18 inches. A basketball is only about 9.5" across, so an 18" ring is just under two ball-widths wide; the ring is fixed 10 feet (3.05 m) above the floor and 6" clear of the backboard face. 19", 20" and 17" are simply not the regulation size, so none of them can complete the rule. Hence the correct option is (b).

Right to Property The 44th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1978, passed by the Janata government, deleted Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 and shifted the Right to Property to a new Article 300A. So property today is only a constitutional or legal right: the State can take your property, but only by the authority of a law, and you cannot go straight to the Supreme Court under Article 32 for it. The 42nd Amendment (1976) is the tempting choice because it is the famous 'mini-Constitution', but it added Socialist, Secular and Integrity to the Preamble and the Fundamental Duties - it never touched the right to property. Hence the correct option is (d).

Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M K Stalin of the DMK has been the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu since 7 May 2021, so he held the office in September 2024 as well. He is the son of M Karunanidhi, took over as DMK president in 2018 and had earlier been Mayor of Chennai and Deputy Chief Minister of the state. The other three are all serving Chief Ministers, but of other states, so each of them fails on the state named in the question. Hence the correct option is (c).

Minister of Tribal Affairs Jual Oram took charge as the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs on 11 June 2024, in the third Modi ministry. The link worth remembering is that this is a return, not a debut: he was India's first-ever Tribal Affairs Minister when the ministry was created in 1999, and he is a long-serving MP from Sundargarh in Odisha. The other three did get Cabinet berths in June 2024, but with different portfolios, so none of them fits the ministry named in the question. Hence the correct option is (b).

Mridangam exponent Yella Venkateswara Rao is a Carnatic percussionist from Andhra Pradesh known as a mridangam maestro; he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the Padma Shri. The mridangam is the chief drum of a Carnatic concert - a barrel-shaped, two-headed drum laid across the lap and played with the fingers and palms of both hands. The nadaswaram is a wind instrument and so cannot be played by a percussionist; the pakhawaj belongs to Hindustani Dhrupad music, and the ghatam is only an accompanying clay pot, never the lead drum of a Carnatic concert. Hence the correct option is (c).

Powers of the Governor A Governor holds executive power under Article 154, legislative power (summoning and dissolving the House, addressing it, and issuing ordinances under Article 213), financial and judicial powers, and discretionary power under Article 163. 'Obligatory power' appears nowhere in the Constitution - an obligation is a duty owed, not a power held, so the phrase itself is the giveaway. Discretionary power is the tempting choice because it sounds unusual, but it is very real: it is what lets a Governor reserve a Bill for the President or choose a Chief Minister in a hung Assembly. Hence the correct option is (a).

Fourth Five-Year Plan The Fourth Five-Year Plan (1969-1974), drafted on D R Gadgil's approach, took as its stated objective 'growth with stability and progressive achievement of self-reliance'. The context makes it easy to remember: it followed the three-year plan holiday of 1966-69 caused by the wars with China and Pakistan and two droughts, so its whole point was to stop leaning on foreign aid and PL-480 food imports. The Second Plan is the tempting answer because it is the famous Mahalanobis plan, but its aim was rapid industrialisation through heavy industry, not stability. Hence the correct option is (c).

Factors behind globalisation Globalisation is the rapid integration of countries through trade, investment and the movement of people, and what made it possible was rapid technological improvement - container shipping, air transport, satellite links and above all information technology. IT has cut the cost of moving goods, money and information almost to nothing, so a firm can design in one country, produce in a second and sell in a third; that is why India's liberalisation after 1991 could actually translate into integration. Isolationist policies and higher tariffs and trade barriers do the opposite - they shut trade down, so options (a) and (c) slow globalisation rather than help it. Multinational corporations are the main carriers of globalisation, so their decline would work against it, ruling out option (d). Hence the correct option is (b).

Mrinalini Sarabhai Mrinalini Sarabhai, the Bharatanatyam and Kathakali dancer who founded the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts at Ahmedabad in 1949, was awarded a gold medal by the Mexican government in 1968 for the best choreography. Two threads make her easy to place: she was married to the space scientist Vikram Sarabhai, and her daughter Mallika Sarabhai carries on the Darpana tradition; she herself received the Padma Bhushan. Rukmini Devi Arundale is remembered for founding Kalakshetra in 1936 and for reviving Bharatanatyam, and Shovana Narayan is a Kathak dancer of a much later generation - neither is linked to a Mexican award in 1968. Hence the correct option is (d).

Tertiary sector The tertiary sector produces services instead of goods - trade, transport, storage, communication, banking, education, health and public administration; it is therefore also called the service sector. Public administration is government service delivered to citizens and creates nothing physical, so it sits squarely in the tertiary sector, which today contributes the largest share of India's GDP. Forestry takes its produce straight from nature and is primary; manufacturing turns raw material into goods and electricity supply is counted with industry, so both of those are secondary. Hence the correct option is (b).

Migration streams, Census 2011 Census 2011 counted about 45.6 crore internal migrants, and the rural-to-rural stream was by far the largest, taking in roughly half of them. The reason is marriage, not jobs: across rural India a bride moves to her husband's village, and the Census records that change of residence as migration - which is why women dominate this stream. Rural-to-urban is the tempting answer because it is the stream that makes cities grow and gets talked about, but it is only about a quarter of all migrants; urban-to-rural is the smallest of the four. Hence the correct option is (d).

Fit India Freedom Run 2.0 The nationwide Fit India Freedom Run 2.0 was launched on 13 August 2021 by Anurag Thakur, the Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports. It was timed to Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, the 75th year of Independence, and its idea was 'run anywhere, anytime, any distance' - a participant logged the run himself, so no organised race was needed. The parent Fit India Movement is the one launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on 29 August 2019, National Sports Day - that is the launch students most often confuse with this one. Hence the correct option is (a).

Natyashastra The Natyashastra, the oldest surviving Indian treatise on drama, dance and music, was compiled by sage Bharata Muni, roughly between 200 BCE and 200 CE. It is often called the fifth Veda, and it gives the rasa theory - the nine rasas - along with the mudras, postures and stagecraft on which every Indian classical dance form still rests, which is why every dance question traces back to it. Valmiki composed the Ramayana and Agastya is a Vedic sage revered in the Tamil tradition; neither wrote on the performing arts, and Sakya is a clan name, not the name of a sage. Hence the correct option is (d).

Work done by gravity Work done by a force is $W=Fd\cos \theta$, where $\theta$ is the angle between the force and the displacement. The gravitational force on the book is its weight mg, acting vertically downwards, while the displacement d is along the horizontal table, so $\theta ={90}^{\circ }$. $W=mgd\cos {90}^{\circ }=mgd\times 0=0$. So gravity does no work here - a force acting at right angles to the motion never does work, which is also why the string tension does no work on a body in uniform circular motion. Option (b) mgd would be the work only if the book fell through a height d, which is not what happens on a horizontal table. Hence the correct option is (c).

Official language of Maldives Dhivehi is the official language of the Maldives; it is an Indo-Aryan language written in the Thaana script, which runs from right to left. That one detail is the hook: the Maldives is India's smallest neighbour, a chain of about 1,190 coral islands with Male as its capital, and its language is the only Indo-Aryan tongue written right to left. Myanmar's official language is Burmese, Bhutan's is Dzongkha and Sri Lanka has Sinhala and Tamil, so none of the other three can carry Dhivehi. Hence the correct option is (a).

Dead Sea The Dead Sea is a salt lake with Jordan on its east and Israel and the West Bank on its west, and its water is about 34% salt - nearly ten times as salty as ocean water. That density is why a swimmer floats without any effort and why no fish or plant survives in it, which is exactly how it got its name; its shore, about 430 m below sea level, is the lowest land point on Earth, and the river Jordan drains into it. Don Juan Pond is the temptation, because it really is the saltiest water body on Earth - but it lies in Antarctica; the Great Salt Lake is in Utah in the United States, and the World Ocean is only about 3.5% saline. Hence the correct option is (b).