5 February 2025 · Shift 2

Water pollution - siltation Siltation is the water pollution caused by a rise in suspended solids - silt, clay and fine sand washed in by soil erosion, deforestation, construction or farm run-off - which finally settle on the bed. Picture a muddy river after heavy rain: the cloudy water blocks sunlight from reaching aquatic plants and the settled silt smothers fish eggs and the river bed, which is exactly why the deposit is called undesirable. Microbiological pollution means disease-causing bacteria and viruses, nutrient pollution means excess nitrogen and phosphorus that trigger algal blooms, and thermal pollution means hot water discharged by industry - none of them is about solid particles settling at the bottom. So the correct option is (a).

Snell's law of refraction Willebrord Snell (1580-1626), the Dutch mathematician and astronomer, is remembered for the law of refraction - which is why that law is simply called Snell's law. It states that when light crosses from one medium into another the ratio $\frac{\sin i}{\sin r}$ is a constant for that pair of media, or $n_1\sin i=n_2\sin r$. The everyday proof is the straw that looks broken in a glass of water: light changes speed at the surface, so it changes direction. The laws of electrolysis are Faraday's, and both the laws of motion and the law of viscous flow are Newton's, so none of the other three can belong to Snell. So the correct option is (c).

Green Revolution package The Green Revolution of the mid-1960s arrived as a package: high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, tractors, and above all assured irrigation from tube wells and canals. Modern irrigation is the only genuinely new practice in the list, and it is the one that made the rest work - HYV seeds give a big harvest only when water is guaranteed, which is why Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh gained first. Traditional seeds, animal labour and organic manuring are exactly what the Green Revolution replaced, so none of them can be the new practice it introduced. M.S. Swaminathan is called the father of India's Green Revolution and Norman Borlaug the father of the world's. So the correct option is (b).

Landforms of a river's course In its upper course a river runs down a steep slope, so it erodes downwards far faster than sideways; this vertical erosion cuts deep, narrow valleys - gorges, along with V-shaped valleys, waterfalls and rapids. Meanders, oxbow lakes and floodplains all need a gentle gradient and a wide valley in which the river can swing from side to side, so they belong to the middle and lower courses. The Bhagirathi below Gangotri and the Indus gorge in Ladakh are the textbook upper-course examples. So the correct option is (c).

Attorney General of India Article 76 creates the office of the Attorney General for India, the highest law officer of the country; he is appointed by the President and holds office during the President's pleasure. The same Article fixes his duty - to give advice on such legal matters as are referred to him by the Government of India, that is the Union Government, and to appear for it in the Supreme Court. A State's legal adviser is its Advocate General under Article 165, so the Governor and the Chief Minister are advised by him, not by the Attorney General; and the Chief Justice of India heads the judiciary, which cannot be advised by the government's own lawyer. The Attorney General may speak in both Houses of Parliament and in their committees, but he has no right to vote there. So the correct option is (c).

MSP principle, Budget 2018-19 The Union Budget for 2018-19 announced a pre-determined principle for the minimum support price: the MSP of all notified crops would be fixed at least one-and-a-half times the cost of production, that is a margin of 50 per cent over cost. The cost used for this promise is A2+FL - the farmer's paid-out expenses plus the imputed value of family labour - and the MSP itself is recommended crop by crop by the CACP, at present for 22 crops. Read the options as multiples of cost: 1.5 times is the announcement, a price equal to cost would leave the farmer no profit, double the cost was never promised, and a price below cost would guarantee a loss. So the correct option is (b).

Rann Utsav, Gujarat Rann Utsav begins in November and runs on till February on the White Rann, the salt desert of Kachchh in Gujarat, with the tent city at Dhordo as its base. The desert itself fixes those months: by November the monsoon water has dried off and left a white salt crust to walk on, and the winter nights are cool enough for the full-moon viewing the festival is famous for. April and May fall in the fierce Kachchh summer when the Rann is unusable, and February is when the festival closes rather than when it starts. Dhordo, the festival's tent city, was named one of the UN Tourism Best Tourism Villages in 2023. So the correct option is (b).

Government of India Act, 1935 The Government of India Act, 1935 divided legislative power between the federation and the provinces through three lists - the Federal List of 59 items, the Provincial List of 54 items and the Concurrent List of 36 items. Residuary power went to neither level: it was kept with the Viceroy, and that is the one place where the 1935 scheme differs from our Constitution, where residuary subjects belong to the Union. The Seventh Schedule of our own Constitution copies this three-list design, so remembering that the Constitution borrowed its federal scheme from the 1935 Act fixes the number three. So the correct option is (d).

Timed Out - cricket "Timed Out" is a mode of dismissal in cricket: once a wicket falls, the incoming batter must be ready to take strike within the allowed time - three minutes under the MCC Laws - failing which the fielding side may appeal and the umpire gives him out. It is the rarest dismissal in the game, which makes one instance easy to remember: Angelo Mathews of Sri Lanka, delayed by a broken helmet strap against Bangladesh in the 2023 ODI World Cup, became the first batter ever timed out in international cricket. Wrestling, badminton and judo are all played to clocks of their own, but a batter waiting to come in exists only in cricket, so no other sport can carry this rule. So the correct option is (c).

PM-RKVY, October 2024 On 3 October 2024 the Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister approved the PM Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (PM-RKVY) to promote sustainable agriculture, along with the Krishonnati Yojana (KY) for food security and self-sufficiency. The two umbrella schemes carry a proposed outlay of ₹1,01,321.61 crore and are implemented through the State Governments; PM-RKVY is the flexible one, in which a State may shift funds between components to suit its own needs. The National Mission on Oilseeds and Oil Palm and the National Food Security Mission are older, narrower missions that were folded in as components of these umbrellas, so neither is the scheme approved in October 2024. So the correct option is (d).

Census 2011 - literacy rates Among the northern States, Himachal Pradesh had the highest literacy rate in Census 2011 - 82.80 per cent, far above the all-India figure of 74.04 per cent. Uttarakhand at 78.82 per cent is a clear second, while Punjab (75.84%) and Haryana (75.55%) are almost level at the bottom of this group, so the tempting choice Punjab is about seven points short of Himachal Pradesh. A useful pair to carry with it: Kerala led the whole country at about 94 per cent and Bihar was last at 61.80 per cent; C. Chandramauli was the Registrar General and Census Commissioner for 2011. So the correct option is (d).

Origin of Chandragupta Maurya Dhundiraja, the commentator on the Vishnu Purana, says that Chandragupta was the son of the Nanda king Sarvarthasiddhi by Mura, the daughter of a hunter. The memory hook is the name itself: Mura gives Maurya, which is how this tradition explains the name of the dynasty. Option (a) is only half the account - the same tradition does place Mura in the Nanda household, but what the Purana actually tells us about the mother is her name and her hunter father, and that is what the question asks for. Other traditions differ: the Buddhist texts trace Chandragupta to the Moriya clan of Pippalivana, and the Jaina Parishishtaparvan to the daughter of the headman of a village of peacock-rearers; Subhadrangi was the mother of Ashoka, not of Chandragupta, and a Greek noblewoman appears in none of the accounts. So the correct option is (b).

President Droupadi Murmu Droupadi Murmu was the Governor of Jharkhand from 2015 to 2021, and in 2022 she became the 15th President of India. Odisha is the trap in this question: she was born at Uparbeda in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha and began in public life as a councillor at Rairangpur, but the State she governed was the neighbouring Jharkhand. She was the first Governor of Jharkhand to complete a full five-year term, and she is the first tribal woman - a member of the Santhal community - to hold the office of President. So the correct option is (a).

Sangeet Natak Akademi Award Mukund Nayak of Jharkhand is a Nagpuri folk singer and Jhumar exponent, and his Sangeet Natak Akademi Award was given in the folk music category. He is the best known voice of the Nagpuri tradition and was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2017, so the word attached to his name in every citation is "folk". Qawwali, Carnatic and Hindustani classical are trained, text-bound traditions of a very different world from the village Jhumar songs he sings, so none of them fits a Nagpuri singer. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, was set up in 1953 and works under the Ministry of Culture from New Delhi. So the correct option is (a).

First Five-Year Plan India's First Five-Year Plan ran from 1 April 1951 to 1956, so it was launched in 1951 under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who chaired the Planning Commission. It was built on the Harrod-Domar model and put its money into agriculture, irrigation and power - the Bhakra, Hirakud and Damodar Valley projects belong to it. Its target growth was 2.1 per cent a year and it achieved about 3.6 per cent, making it the rare plan that overshot its target. The other years are the ones normally confused with it: 1947 is Independence, 1950 is when the Planning Commission itself was set up, and 1956 is when the Second Plan began. So the correct option is (a).

Hockey field dimensions A standard international field hockey pitch is 91.4 m long and 55 m wide - exactly 100 yards by 60 yards in the older measure, which is why the metric figures look odd. Every other marking follows the same yard conversion: the shooting circle is an arc 14.63 m (16 yards) from the goal, and the goal is 3.66 m wide and 2.14 m high. A hockey pitch is a little narrower than a football field, so 60 m and 50 m feel plausible, but only 55 m is the figure fixed by the International Hockey Federation. So the correct option is (b).

Classical dance - Kuchipudi Kuchipudi takes its very name from Kuchelapuram, the village in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh where the dance-drama tradition settled - the village name shortened into Kuchipudi. In the 17th century Siddhendra Yogi shaped it out of the older Yakshagana dance-drama and wrote its best known play, the Bhama Kalapam; Vempati Chinna Satyam and Raja-Radha Reddy are famous modern exponents. Kathakali and Mohiniyattam belong to Kerala and Kathak to the courts of north India, so no other option can come from a village in the Krishna district. So the correct option is (c).

Padma awards, 2024 Ramlal Bareth, the last living Kathak dancer of the Raigarh court tradition of Chhattisgarh, was given the Padma Shri in 2024 in the field of art. The Padma Shri, instituted in 1954, is the fourth-highest civilian award of the Republic and is the one given for distinguished service in any field, while Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan stand above it for higher orders of service. The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary prize of an academy, not a civilian honour of the State, so it cannot be given to a dancer for dance. The context in the question is worth remembering: the Raigarh court under Raja Chakradhar Singh was a famous patron of Kathak and gave the art its Raigarh gharana. So the correct option is (c).

Quit India Movement, 1942 The Quit India Resolution was passed on 8 August 1942 by the All India Congress Committee at its Bombay session, held at Gowalia Tank Maidan - today's August Kranti Maidan. There Gandhiji gave the call "Do or Die", and by the next morning the whole Congress leadership was in jail, so the movement was carried forward by the people themselves. The other three are the sessions usually confused with it - Lahore 1929 for the Purna Swaraj resolution, Karachi 1931 for Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Programme, and the Calcutta special session of 1920 that approved Non-Cooperation. So the correct option is (b).

Literacy gender gap, 2011 Rajasthan shows the widest male-female literacy gap in Census 2011: male literacy 79.19 per cent against female literacy 52.12 per cent, a gap of about 27 percentage points. Bihar is the trap, because it has the lowest literacy of the four; but its men are barely literate above 71 per cent, so its gap is under 20 points - lowest literacy and widest gender gap are two different questions. For comparison, the all-India gap in 2011 was 16.7 points (82.14% male, 65.46% female), and among the large States Kerala's gap was the narrowest. So the correct option is (a).