6 February 2025 · Shift 2

Public debt Public debt is the total amount of money the government has borrowed and still owes to its creditors - its internal debt (market loans, treasury bills, small savings) plus its external debt. Memory hook: it is the government's borrowing, not the citizens' borrowing, and it appears on the liabilities side of the government account, not the income side. Option (c) is the tempting one, but revenue is what the government earns from taxes and duties; money earned can never be money owed. Option (b) describes an asset the government builds, and (a) wrongly shifts the liability to citizens.

State executive The Chief Minister is the real executive of a state; the Governor is only its nominal or constitutional head. Memory hook: Article 163 gives every state a Council of Ministers headed by the Chief Minister to 'aid and advise' the Governor, and the Governor normally has to act on that advice - so the power to decide rests with the Chief Minister. Governor is the tempting option because every executive action of the state runs in his name (Article 154), but he is appointed by the President and acts on ministerial advice. The Speaker only presides over the Assembly, and Deputy Chief Minister is not a separate constitutional office.

Folk dances of India Bhangra is the popular folk dance of Punjab. Memory hook: it is a harvest dance performed on Baisakhi to the beat of the dhol, with dancers in kurta, lungi and turban; Giddha is its women's counterpart. Each distractor belongs to another state, so learning the dance-state pair once removes all three at a glance.

Directive Principles The Directive Principles of State Policy run from Article 36 to Article 51, in Part IV of the Constitution. Memory hook: Fundamental Rights end at Article 35, so the Directive Principles begin at the very next Article, 36, and close at 51 (promotion of international peace); Article 51A that follows is the separate list of Fundamental Duties. The other ranges all start after 36 or stop before 51, so they cut off either Article 38 (welfare of the people) or Article 50 (separation of the judiciary from the executive), both of which are Directive Principles.

National Akademis The Sangeet Natak Akademi was set up in 1953 - it was inaugurated on 28 January 1953 by President Dr Rajendra Prasad, and it is India's first national academy of the arts. Memory hook: the three national Akademis came one after another in the early 1950s, music-dance-drama first, then literature and fine arts; all three sit in Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi, under the Ministry of Culture. 1949 is too early - it precedes the Constitution itself - and 1961 and 1963 belong to institutions of the next decade, such as the National School of Drama's separation in 1959 and later bodies.

Second Five-Year Plan The Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61) set a target growth rate of 4.5%, and the economy actually grew at about 4.27%. Memory hook: this is the Mahalanobis plan - heavy industry, the public sector and the 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution; it aimed high and finished just short of its target. 5.6% and 3.6% look familiar for a reason: 5.6% was the Third Plan's target and 3.6% was the growth the First Plan actually achieved, so both belong to neighbouring plans, not to this one.

Awards and records Kumar Sanu, born Kedarnath Bhattacharya, recorded 28 songs in a single day in 1993 and the feat entered the Guinness Book of World Records. Memory hook: 1993 sat in the middle of his run of five straight Filmfare awards for Best Male Playback Singer (1991-1995 ceremonies, for the years 1990-1994); he was awarded the Padma Shri in 2009. The other three singers rose to fame either alongside him or later, and none of them holds a Guinness entry for a single day's recording.

Multidimensional Poverty Index Puducherry has the smallest share of multidimensionally poor people among the union territories in the National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023. Memory hook: the index is published by NITI Aayog from NFHS-5 (2019-21) data and scores 12 indicators of health, education and standard of living; Puducherry scores well on all three because of near-universal electricity, sanitation, schooling and health-centre access. Delhi, Chandigarh and Lakshadweep are the natural traps because they are prosperous and highly urban, but urban income alone does not clear the deprivation indicators the index actually counts.

Political parties K Chandrasekhar Rao heads the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). Memory hook: he founded the party as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in 2001 to win statehood for Telangana, became its first Chief Minister in 2014, and renamed it Bharat Rashtra Samithi in October 2022 to take it national. The Congress is the trap here, because it is the party that defeated him in the 2023 Telangana election and formed the government - it is the winner, not his party.

Cricket World Cup 2023 Mohammed Shami finished the 2023 ODI World Cup as the leading wicket-taker with 24 wickets in only 7 matches. Memory hook: he did not play India's first four games, came in and still topped the chart - his 7 for 57 against New Zealand in the semi-final is the best ODI figures by an Indian bowler. Jasprit Bumrah is the tempting answer because he opened the bowling in every match, but he finished behind Shami; Australia's Adam Zampa was the closest challenger with 23.

Socio-religious reform Swami Dayananda Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875, with the slogan 'Back to the Vedas'. Memory hook: he treated the Vedas as infallible and rejected idol worship, caste by birth and child marriage; his book Satyarth Prakash carries the argument, and he was the first to give the call for Swaraj - 'India for Indians'. Brahmo Samaj is the tempting option, but Raja Ram Mohan Roy's reform rested on reason and the Upanishads rather than on a return to Vedic authority.

Festivals of India Cheiraoba is the New Year festival of Manipur, celebrated by the Meitei community in April. Memory hook: its full Meitei name is Sajibu Nongma Panba Cheiraoba; families cook a festive meal, share it with neighbours and then climb the nearest hilltop, a symbol of rising higher in life. The other three states have New Year festivals of their own, which is exactly why they are offered here - learn the festival with its state and the confusion disappears.

Tooth enamel Tooth enamel is made of calcium hydroxyapatite, a crystalline calcium phosphate mineral with the formula $C{a}_{10}{\left(P{O}_4\right)}_6{\left(OH\right)}_2$. Memory hook: enamel is about 96% mineral, which makes it the hardest tissue in the human body - harder than bone - yet it has no living cells, so once it is worn away the body cannot grow it back. Calcium and sodium are single elements, not the compound asked for, and hydrochloric acid is the acid of the stomach; acid does the opposite of forming enamel, it dissolves it.

Sports events 2023 The AAI 50th All India Inter-Institutional Table Tennis Championships 2023 was organised by the Andhra Pradesh State Table Tennis Association. Memory hook: the golden-jubilee edition was played at the Swarna Bharati Indoor Stadium in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, under the Table Tennis Federation of India, with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) as the title sponsor whose initials the tournament carries. The host state is the clue the question is really testing: fix Visakhapatnam in mind and the Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat associations drop out at once.

Goa ST Reservation Bill The Central Government appoints the Census Commissioner, because that appointment is made under the Census Act, 1948, which is a central law. Memory hook: the Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2024, reserves Assembly seats for Scheduled Tribes in Goa; the Census Commissioner first estimates the ST population from 2001 Census data, and the Election Commission then readjusts the constituencies. State Government is the trap because the seats being readjusted are Goa's own, but the census machinery is a Union subject - the state neither runs the census nor appoints its Commissioner.

Momentum and free fall Zero initial momentum means the body starts from rest, so u=0, h=20 m and g=10 m/s${}^2$. Speed on hitting the ground, from $v^2=u^2+2gh$: $v=\sqrt{2\times 10\times 20}=\sqrt{400}=20$ m/s Momentum: p=mv, so $40=m\times 20$ $m=\frac{40}{20}=2$ kg The 4 kg trap comes from dividing the momentum by g itself ($40÷10$); g is an acceleration, and only the final speed 20 m/s may be divided into the momentum.

Vedic literature The prayers of the Rigveda are called Suktas, a word that literally means 'well said'. Memory hook: the Rigveda has 1,028 suktas arranged in 10 mandalas, and each sukta is a hymn addressed to a deity such as Indra, Agni or Varuna. Richa is the tempting option because it is genuinely Vedic, but a richa is a single verse inside a sukta, not the prayer as a whole; shloka and kavya belong to later classical Sanskrit poetry.

Employment statistics Women made up 35.6% of the jobseekers on the Live Register in 2022, as reported in Employment Exchange Statistics 2023. Memory hook: the Live Register is the running list of people who have registered with an employment exchange and are still waiting to be placed, so the figure says a little over one in three registered jobseekers was a woman. 50% and 33% are round numbers that no survey ever lands on exactly, and 35.9% is placed next to the answer to punish half-remembering - fix the digit 6 with the phrase 'a little over a third'.

Water conservation Rainwater harvesting conserves water: rain that would have run off is collected from roofs and catchments, stored or sent into the ground, and it also recharges wells and raises the water table. Memory hook: conservation means saving water that already falls or flows, so the correct option is always the one that adds to the available stock without taking anything away from anyone. Setting up treatment plants only cleans water, it does not create or save any; halving the drinking-water supply is rationing, which denies people a basic need rather than conserving a resource; and culling animals has nothing to do with water at all.

Committee reports The report is titled Shramshakti, submitted in 1988 by the National Commission on Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector. Memory hook: the Commission was chaired by Ela Bhatt, founder of SEWA, and Shramshakti was the first document to count India's unorganised women workers - vendors, home-based workers, agricultural labour - as workers with rights. The other three titles are invented echoes of familiar scheme names; only Shramshakti, literally 'labour power', names the workers the Commission was set up to study.