7 February 2025 · Shift 2

Classical dance and state Kalamandalam Kshemavathy is a Mohiniyattam exponent from Thrissur, Kerala, awarded the Padma Shri in 2011. The dance itself settles the question - Mohiniyattam is one of the eight classical dances of India and belongs wholly to Kerala; the name means 'the dance of Mohini', the enchantress form of Vishnu. Her prefix is the second clue: 'Kalamandalam' is taken by artistes trained at the Kerala Kalamandalam, the state academy at Cheruthuruthy. Tamil Nadu is the tempting choice because it is the neighbouring dance capital, but its classical dance is Bharatanatyam, not Mohiniyattam.

Schedules of the Constitution The Seventh Schedule divides law-making power between the Centre and the States through three Lists - the Union List, the State List and the Concurrent List. It is the working text of Indian federalism: defence and foreign affairs are in the Union List, police and public health in the State List, education and forests in the Concurrent List. Where a Union law and a State law clash on a Concurrent subject, the Union law prevails. The Sixth Schedule is the near-miss, but it only creates autonomous district councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram - local administration, not a division of powers.

UNESCO intangible heritage Chhau was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. It is a masked martial dance in three styles named after their homes - Purulia in West Bengal, Seraikella in Jharkhand and Mayurbhanj in Odisha - which is exactly the 'Eastern India' of the stem. Danced to the Dhol, Dhumsa and Mohuri, it stages episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Bihu is the trap, since Assam is eastern too, but Bihu has never been inscribed; Lavani (Maharashtra) and Garba (Gujarat) are western, and Garba's inscription came only in 2023.

Fats in food The fat stored in the groundnut is what appears as oil - the kernel is about 45 to 50 per cent fat, and grinding tears open the cells that hold it. Groundnut is an oilseed for exactly this reason; cumin is a spice seed carrying only a trace of fixed oil, so grinding it releases aroma but leaves no oily film. This is the school 'oil-spot' test for fats: press the food on paper and a translucent patch that does not dry off means fat is present. Protein cannot explain it - groundnut is protein-rich too, but protein is a solid that does not flow out on crushing; only the stored fat does.

August Offer 1940 The August Offer of 8 August 1940 was announced by Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936 to 1944. Made weeks after the fall of France, it promised Dominion status after the war, more Indians in the Viceroy's Executive Council and a War Advisory Council, in return for Indian support in the Second World War. Both the Congress and the Muslim League rejected it, and the Congress answered with the Individual Satyagraha of October 1940. Churchill is the tempting name because he was Prime Minister in August 1940, but the Offer was issued in India by the Viceroy, not in London by the Prime Minister.

Khelo India Winter Games The 3rd Khelo India Winter Games were held at Gulmarg, Jammu and Kashmir, from 10 to 14 February 2023. Jammu and Kashmir topped the medal tally there, taking the overall title for the third successive time. The dates are dictated by the snow - Gulmarg's ski season peaks in February, which is why every edition so far has been a February event. February 2022 is the trap, but no edition was held in 2022 at all: the second was in 2021 and the third slipped to 2023.

Asian Games hockey India beat Pakistan 4-2 in the Incheon final of 2014; the previous men's hockey gold at the Asian Games had come in 1998 at Bangkok. The gap is therefore 2014 minus 1998, that is 16 years. That 2014 gold also carried a direct qualification for the Rio Olympics, which is why it is quoted so often. 11 and 14 years can be ruled out without any recall at all - the Asian Games are held only every four years, so a gap that is not a multiple of four cannot land on an earlier edition.

Savanna climate Deciduous forest with grassland scattered through it is the signature vegetation of the tropical wet and dry climate, better known as the savanna or Koppen's Aw type. It lies just outside the equatorial belt, roughly between 5 and 20 degrees on either side, with one short rainy season and a long dry season; the trees shed their leaves through that dry spell, which is what makes the forest deciduous. The East African savanna, the campos of Brazil and the llanos of Venezuela are the classic examples. Subtropical steppe is the tempting neighbour, but its rainfall is too small to support forest at all - it carries short grass with almost no trees.

MNCs and globalisation Multinational corporations are the chief carriers of globalisation because they own or control production in several countries and link those units and their markets into a single chain. A car or a phone is then designed in one country, has its parts made in a second and is assembled in a third - production itself becomes global, not merely the trade in finished goods. With them travel capital, technology and management practice, which is why foreign investment rises wherever they set up. Regulating national trade policy is not their role - that power rests with governments and with the WTO; MNCs may lobby, but they cannot make the policy.

SRS natural growth rate Bihar had the highest natural growth rate in SRS 2020, about 20 per 1000 population. Natural growth rate is simply birth rate minus death rate, and Bihar led on the first while staying low on the second - a crude birth rate of 25.5 against a crude death rate of about 5.5. The same report gave Bihar the highest total fertility rate in the country, 3.0 children per woman against a national 2.0, so the two figures corroborate each other. Uttar Pradesh is the tempting answer because it is the most populous state, but population is a stock and growth rate is a flow; UP's natural growth rate was lower than Bihar's.

Union Council of Ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat became Union Minister of Culture when the new Council of Ministers took charge on 9 June 2024; he holds Tourism along with it. He is the BJP member of the Lok Sabha from Jodhpur, Rajasthan, and had held Jal Shakti in the previous government. The Culture portfolio passed to him from G. Kishan Reddy, who moved to Coal and Mines. Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu is the trap - he did join the same June 2024 Cabinet, but as Minister of Civil Aviation.

Article 94, Speaker Article 94 deals with vacation, resignation and removal from the offices of Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of the People. The holder vacates on ceasing to be a member of the House, resigns by writing to the other of the two, and may be removed by a resolution passed by a majority of all the then members after 14 days' notice. Dissolution does not empty the chair - the Speaker stays on until immediately before the first sitting of the new House, so there is always someone to administer it. Article 101 is the tempting one, but it covers vacation of seats by ordinary members of Parliament, not the two presiding officers.

Sectors of an economy In the circular flow of income an economy is split into four sectors, and the firms sector is the one that holds every producing business - sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations alike. Firms hire land, labour and capital from households and sell them goods and services in return; households receive rent, wages, interest and profit for those factors. The government sector taxes and spends, and the foreign sector handles exports and imports. The household sector is the tempting answer, but a household is a consuming and factor-supplying unit; the moment it organises itself to produce for sale it is counted as a firm.

First two Five-Year Plans The First Five-Year Plan (1951-56) was built around agriculture and irrigation, the Second (1956-61) around heavy industry - so the pair is agriculture and industry. The First Plan followed the Harrod-Domar model and answered the food crisis that Partition had deepened, funding multipurpose projects such as Bhakra Nangal; it exceeded its 2.1 per cent target with 3.6 per cent growth. The Second Plan used P. C. Mahalanobis's model and put the state at the centre of heavy industry, raising the public sector steel plants at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur; it grew 4.27 per cent against a 4.5 per cent target. The two options naming services can be dropped at once - services were never the declared focus of any plan of the 1950s; they came to the front of policy only decades later.

Census 2011, north-east Assam, with 3.12 crore people in the 2011 Census, is by far the most populous of the north-eastern states. It alone accounts for roughly two-thirds of the whole region; the other seven states put together are smaller than it. The rest are not close - Manipur 28.6 lakh, Arunachal Pradesh 13.8 lakh, Mizoram 10.9 lakh, and Sikkim, at 6.1 lakh, is the least populous state in India. Arunachal Pradesh tempts because it is the largest north-eastern state by area, but area and population are different questions - it has the lowest population density in the country.

Vedic literature The hymns of the Rigveda are called suktas - 1,028 of them, arranged in 10 mandalas and running to about 10,600 verses or richas. The Rigveda is the oldest of the four Vedas and the oldest surviving text in any Indo-European language; mandalas 2 to 7 are its oldest core, the 'family books'. Its famous suktas are still quoted by name - the Nadi Sukta on the rivers, the Purusha Sukta on the four varnas and the Nasadiya Sukta on creation. Samaveda is the tempting choice because it is entirely sung, but its verses are borrowed from the Rigveda and are called samans, not suktas.

Ohm's law Ohm's law, published in 1827 in Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet, says the current in a conductor is directly proportional to the potential difference across it and inversely proportional to its resistance. In symbols $I=\frac{V}{R}$, or V=IR, so resistance is just the ratio $R=\frac{V}{I}$ and is measured in ohms, the unit named after him. It holds only at constant temperature and for ohmic conductors, which is why a glowing filament lamp stops obeying it. The other three are real laws but not his: the junction statement is Kirchhoff's current law, the flux and charge statement is Gauss's law, and the induced EMF statement is Faraday's law of induction.

Marathi New Year Gudi Padwa, falling on the first day of Chaitra in the bright fortnight, is the Marathi New Year. The festival is named after the gudi itself - a bamboo pole dressed in bright silk with neem leaves and a garland, capped by an inverted copper pot and raised at the doorway as a sign of victory. It also marks the start of the spring harvest in Maharashtra, so it is a seasonal as well as a calendrical new year. Ugadi is the tempting option because it falls on the very same lunar day, but Ugadi is the Telugu and Kannada name for that new year, not the Marathi one.

PM Surya Ghar Yojana PM - Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, launched on 29 February 2024, is a rooftop solar scheme for residential consumers only, so a cut in the private sector's electricity cost is not among its stated benefits. It aims to cover 1 crore households, gives up to 300 units of free electricity a month and pays a central subsidy of up to ₹78,000 on a 3 kW rooftop system. The three benefits it does claim are exactly the other options - free power for the household, savings of about ₹75,000 crore a year in the government's electricity costs, and a larger share of renewable energy. The scheme is run by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy; commercial and industrial consumers fall outside it, which is what makes option (d) the exception the question asks for.

Musician and instrument Sikkil Mala Chandrasekhar is a Carnatic flautist, so the flute is the instrument she is associated with. She belongs to the Sikkil flute family: her mother Sikkil Neela and aunt Sikkil Kunjumani were the celebrated Sikkil Sisters, and the surname itself comes from the town of Sikkil in Tamil Nadu. Her honours include the Tamil Nadu government's Kalaimamani and the Music Academy's Mali award for flute. Pakhawaj, tabla and rudra veena are all Hindustani instruments, and two of them are drums - none of them fits a Carnatic performer of the Sikkil lineage.