5 February 2025 · Shift 3

Indian cricketers Roger Binny played for India. He was the highest wicket-taker of the 1983 World Cup with 18 wickets, in the campaign that Kapil Dev's side won at Lord's, and he later became the 36th President of the BCCI in October 2022. Binny was born in Bengaluru to a family of Scottish descent, which is what makes England or Australia look tempting - but the only cap he ever wore was India's, in 27 Tests and 72 ODIs.

Lok Sabha election 2024 Baharampur is a Lok Sabha constituency of West Bengal. It lies in Murshidabad district, and in June 2024 Yusuf Pathan of the Trinamool Congress won it by unseating Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who had held Baharampur without a break since 1999. Pathan is a Gujarati who played Ranji cricket for Baroda, which is why a northern or western state feels natural - but he contested on a TMC ticket, and the TMC fields candidates only in West Bengal.

Weather instruments A pyranometer measures solar irradiance. Its glass dome collects sunlight arriving from the whole hemisphere of the sky and reports the power received per square metre, the figure a solar plant designer or a climate scientist actually needs. The other three quantities are each read by a different instrument, so none of them can fit the blank.

Blind Cricket World Cup 2022 The final was played at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. On 17 December 2022 India beat Bangladesh there by 120 runs - Sunil Ramesh made 136 not out and captain Ajay Kumar Reddy 100 not out - to take the 3rd T20 World Cup for the Blind, India's third title in a row after 2012 and 2017. The tournament was run by CABI with the Samarthanam Trust, and Yuvraj Singh was its brand ambassador. Ahmedabad tempts because the Narendra Modi Stadium hosts the marquee ICC finals, but this event was hosted in Bengaluru, the home city of Samarthanam.

Directive Principles Article 42 directs the State to secure just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief. It is a Directive Principle in Part IV, and it is the constitutional anchor of laws such as the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 and the factory safety and welfare codes. Article 41 is the tempting neighbour, but it is about providing work, education and assistance - not about the conditions under which work is done.

Planning Commission The Prime Minister was the ex-officio Chairman of the Planning Commission. Set up by a Cabinet resolution in March 1950 - not by the Constitution and not by any Act - it drew up the Five-Year Plans; the PM chaired it by virtue of his office while a full-time Deputy Chairman ran it from day to day. 'Ex-officio member' fails because the PM did not merely sit on the body, he headed it - and the same design continues in NITI Aayog, which replaced the Commission on 1 January 2015 with the PM as its Chairperson.

Human rights bodies The International Human Rights Commission has no role in investigating human rights complaints in India. It is a private non-governmental organisation registered abroad; inside India that work belongs to the NHRC, a statutory commission created by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 and headed by a former Chief Justice of India. The other two are ruled out because they do inquire into complaints in their own fields - and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes is even a constitutional body under Article 338.

Treaty of Bassein The Treaty of Bassein was signed in 1802. Beaten by Yashwantrao Holkar at Poona and driven out of his own capital, Peshwa Baji Rao II signed on 31 December 1802 and accepted a British subsidiary force, ceded territory worth ₹26 lakh a year, gave up Surat and placed his foreign affairs under Company control. 1818 tempts because it is the famous Maratha year, but that is when the Third Anglo-Maratha War ended and the Peshwaship was abolished; Bassein is the treaty that began the collapse and led straight to the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803-05.

Kinetic energy in free fall A body dropped from rest starts with zero velocity, so its speed on hitting the ground is v=gt. Formula: $KE=\frac{1}{2}m{v}^2=\frac{1}{2}m{g}^2{t}^2$ - so only the mass and the time of fall matter, and the heights are not needed. For A: $K{E}_A=\frac{1}{2}\times 2\times g^2\times 5^2=25g^2$ For B: $K{E}_B=\frac{1}{2}\times 3\times g^2\times 3^2=13.5g^2$ $\frac{K{E}_A}{K{E}_B}=\frac{25}{13.5}=\frac{50}{27}$ $\frac{2}{3}$ is the trap: it is the mass ratio by itself, which forgets that A fell for longer and therefore struck the ground much faster.

Fermentation and yeast Yeast is the organic leavener used in baking. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a single-celled fungus, ferments the sugars in the dough and releases carbon dioxide; the trapped bubbles push the dough up and leave bread soft and spongy, and the same fermentation adds the familiar flavour. Moulds, smuts and rusts are fungi too, which is what makes them tempting, but they are spoilage organisms and crop pathogens - smuts and rusts attack standing cereal crops rather than raise dough.

Environmental legislation 2024 The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change introduced the Bill. It was placed in the Rajya Sabha on 5 February 2024 to amend the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974: minor violations are decriminalised and replaced by monetary penalties, and the change applies first to Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Union Territories. Water pollution is an environmental subject, so no other ministry could pilot it - MoEFCC is the ministry that administers the parent 1974 Act and the Central and State Pollution Control Boards it created.

Nationalisation of coal mines Coal mines were nationalised in the 1971-1975 period. Unscientific mining and poor labour conditions in private collieries, at a time when the steel plants needed assured coking coal, pushed the State to take the mines over in stages. Any window ending before 1971 is therefore too early, and by 1976-1980 the job was already done - Coal India Limited was formed in 1975 to operate what had been taken over.

Classical dance instruments The pung is the central instrument of Manipuri dance. It is a barrel drum slung from the shoulder, and in the Pung Cholom the male dancers play it while leaping and spinning - here the drum and the dance are one and the same performance. Kathakali is driven by the chenda and maddalam and Kathak by the tabla and pakhawaj, so neither can claim the pung.

Pakhawaj gharana Dalchand Sharma belongs to the Nathdwara gharana of the pakhawaj. Nathdwara is the pakhawaj school grown around the Shrinathji temple in Rajasthan; Dalchand Sharma, born in Bharatpur, learnt it from Acharya Pandit Totaram Sharma in the guru-shishya tradition and accompanies dhrupad singing. Rampur-Sahaswan and Atrauli-Jaipur are khayal vocal gharanas and Lucknow is a tabla and Kathak gharana, so none of them is a pakhawaj school at all.

Types of industry The extractive industry draws raw material directly from nature. Mining, quarrying, forestry, fishing and hunting are all extractive: they take what the earth, the forest and the water already hold, which is why they stand at the head of every production chain. Manufacturing is the tempting choice, but it does the opposite - it consumes raw material and converts it into finished goods.

Padma Shri 2023 Rani Machaiah received the Padma Shri in March 2023 for Ummathat. Ummathat is a graceful circular folk dance of the Kodava women of Kodagu in Karnataka, danced to drums and cymbals; Machaiah has taught and popularised it for decades and is known as 'Ummathat ki Rani'. The other three are not dancers at all - Vani Jairam and Suman Kalyanpur are playback singers, and Subhadra Devi is honoured for the folk craft of Bihar.

Republic Day 2023 Egypt's contingent marched alongside the Indian troops on Republic Day 2023. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was the chief guest at the 74th Republic Day parade on Kartavya Path, and a 144-member Egyptian Army contingent led off the marching columns - the first time Egypt had ever taken part. France tempts because a French contingent did march in Delhi - but that was the following year, in 2024, when President Emmanuel Macron was the chief guest.

Rivers in the Rigveda The Ganga is mentioned only once in the Rigveda. That single reference comes in the Nadistuti Sukta of the tenth Mandala, the hymn that recites the rivers in order - a clue that Rigvedic life was centred on the Sindhu and the Saraswati in the north-west, with the Ganga at the far eastern edge of the known world. '3' is the tempting number because that is how often the Yamuna appears; the Ganga's single mention is the smaller count that marks the limit of Rigvedic geography.

Government schemes The Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana provided work for 125 days. Launched on 20 June 2020 from Khagaria in Bihar with an outlay of ₹50,000 crore, it was a 125-day campaign to give returning migrant workers work near home in 116 districts of six States - Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha and Jharkhand. The confusion is with MGNREGA, which guarantees 100 days of wage employment every year; the Garib Kalyan Abhiyaan was a one-time 125-day COVID-19 relief drive, not an annual guarantee.

Brahmaputra river course The Brahmaputra does not flow through Nepal. It rises from the Chemayungdung glacier near Mansarovar in the Kailash range, runs east across southern Tibet as the Tsangpo, turns sharply south into Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang or Dihang, crosses Assam as the Brahmaputra and enters Bangladesh as the Jamuna. Nepal's great rivers - the Kosi, the Gandak and the Ghaghara - all drain south into the Ganga, so Nepal lies in the Ganga basin and outside the Brahmaputra's course altogether.