7 February 2025 · Shift 3

Fifth Five-Year Plan The Fifth Five-Year Plan (1974-79) rested on two slogans - removal of poverty (Garibi Hatao) and attainment of self-reliance. Drafted under D.P. Dhar, it targeted 4.4% growth, achieved about 4.8%, and was cut short in 1978 by the Janata government. Agricultural development tempts, but that was the First Plan's priority; by 1974 the Green Revolution had delivered it and the focus had shifted to poverty and self-reliance.

Synthesis of methane Marcellin Berthelot made methane in 1856 by passing carbon disulphide vapour ($C{S}_2$) along with hydrogen sulphide ($H_{2}S$) over red-hot copper. The copper pulls the sulphur out as copper sulphide, leaving the carbon to bond with hydrogen: $C{S}_2+2H_{2}S+8Cu\to C{H}_4+4C{u}_{2}S$. The value of the experiment was that an organic compound had been built from purely inorganic materials, which finished off the old 'vital force' theory. Antoine Lavoisier tempts because he named and classified the gases, but he died in 1794, more than sixty years before this synthesis.

Olympic shooting medals Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won silver in the men's double trap shooting event at the 2004 Athens Olympics. It was India's first individual Olympic silver medal in any sport, and the result that turned shooting into a serious medal hope for India. 2008 Beijing tempts because an Indian shooter did stand on the podium there, but that was Abhinav Bindra's gold in the 10 m air rifle, not a silver.

Sports equipment Lawn bowls needs exactly these three things - the bowl, the weighted ball a player rolls; the jack, the small target ball; and the mat, the strip he must stand on while delivering. The bowl is deliberately made off-centre, so it travels in a curve and the skill lies in stopping it nearest the jack. Table tennis tempts because it too is played with a ball, but its kit is a racket, a celluloid ball and a net - there is no jack and no mat.

Source of the Brahmaputra The Brahmaputra rises from the Chemayungdung glacier of the Kailash range near Lake Manasarovar, which lies on the northern side of the Himalayas in Tibet. It runs east for about 1,200 km as the Yarlung Tsangpo, turns sharply round Namcha Barwa and enters India in Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang. Eastern tempts because the river does cut through the Eastern Himalayas on its way in, but the question asks for the source, and the source lies north of the range.

Indian classical musicians Pt. Ravi Shankar, the sitar maestro, became a counter-culture icon of the 1960s after George Harrison of the Beatles took lessons from him. He played at the Monterey Pop Festival and at Woodstock, and received the Bharat Ratna in 1999; Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones are his daughters. Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt tempts because he too won a Grammy with a Western musician, Ry Cooder - but he plays the Mohan veena, and that collaboration belongs to 1994.

India's envoys to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu, a 1988-batch IFS officer, retired in January 2024 after serving as India's Ambassador to the United States from February 2020. He had earlier been High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, and his Washington tenure covered the Quad leaders' summits and the 2023 state visit of the Prime Minister. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit tempts as the best-known Indian envoy to Washington, but she held the post in 1949-52 and later became the first woman President of the UN General Assembly.

Literacy rate, Census 1951 The 1951 Census recorded India's literacy rate at 18.33% - 27.16% among males and only 8.86% among females. By the 2011 Census it had risen to 74.04%, Kerala highest at 93.91% and Bihar lowest at 63.82%. 45.8% tempts as 'about half', but India's literacy crossed 45% only at the 1991 Census; in 1951 fewer than one person in five could read and write.

Partition of Bengal, 1905 Lord Curzon, Viceroy from 1899 to 1905, announced the Partition of Bengal on 19 July 1905, and it came into force on 16 October 1905. Bengal was split into Bengal (with Bihar and Odisha) and Eastern Bengal and Assam; the stated reason was administrative convenience, the real one was to divide the province along religious lines. Lord Minto tempts because the Swadeshi agitation and the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 followed the partition, but he became Viceroy only in November 1905, after the decision had already been enforced.

Kathakali exponents Guru Chemancheri Kunhiraman Nair (1916-2021) was a Kathakali maestro of Kerala who taught and performed past the age of 100 and received the Padma Shri in 2017. Kathakali is Kerala's story-play form, recognised by its towering headgear and the green pacha make-up worn by noble characters. Kathak tempts because the name sounds close, but it is a north Indian form with the Lucknow, Jaipur and Banaras gharanas - not a tradition a Kerala guru would carry.

Tanjore Quartet The 'Tanjore Chatushka' or Tanjore Quartet - the brothers Chinnayya, Ponnayya, Sivanandam and Vadivelu - served the Maratha court of Thanjavur in the early nineteenth century. They fixed the order of a Bharatanatyam recital, the margam: alarippu, jatiswaram, shabdam, varnam, padam and tillana, which is still the concert format today. Kathak tempts because it too was shaped by court patronage, but that patronage was Mughal and Awadhi in the north, not the Maratha court of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu.

Directive Principles Article 42 directs the State to make provision for just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief. It lies in Part IV (Articles 36-51), the Directive Principles, so it is not enforceable in court but guides laws such as the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. Article 39 tempts because it also protects workers, but it deals with livelihood, equal pay and the health and strength of workers; maternity relief is named only in Article 42.

Planning Commission Gulzarilal Nanda was the first Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, which was created by a Cabinet resolution on 15 March 1950. The Prime Minister chaired it ex officio, so Jawaharlal Nehru was Chairman and the Deputy Chairman, ranking as a Cabinet Minister, actually ran the body. Chintaman Deshmukh tempts because he was Finance Minister and a Commission member in those very years, but he never headed it; Nanda went on to serve twice as acting Prime Minister.

Powers of the Governor The Governor is not a member of the State Legislature, so he never votes in it - a no-confidence motion is decided by the elected MLAs alone. Article 174 gives him the power to summon, prorogue and dissolve the Legislative Assembly, and Article 175 lets him address it or send messages to it. Dissolving the Assembly tempts as a power too large for a nominal head, but it is expressly his under Article 174(2)(b), exercised on ministerial advice.

Iron Age urban sites Kaushambi, on the Yamuna near Prayagraj, is the standard Middle Iron Age example of planning - a massive mud rampart, planned gateways, a broad moat and burnt-brick housing. It was the capital of the Vatsa mahajanapada and belongs to the Northern Black Polished Ware phase, the 'second urbanisation' of the Ganga plain. Mohenjodaro, Harappa and Lothal tempt because their grid streets are the textbook picture of town planning, but all three are Bronze Age Harappan sites of about 2500 BCE, long before iron.

Infant mortality rate The Sample Registration System (SRS) 2020 placed Madhya Pradesh at the top of the infant mortality table, a position the state has held for many years. IMR counts deaths of children below one year per 1,000 live births; India's figure for 2020 was 28 - 31 in rural areas and 19 in urban - and Mizoram was the lowest. Bihar tempts because it trails on most social indicators, but its IMR sits near the national average; on this particular measure Madhya Pradesh is the outlier.

Second Five-Year Plan The Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61) was built on the two-sector model of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, which is why it is also called the Mahalanobis Plan. The model puts capital goods first, so the Plan poured investment into heavy and basic industry rather than consumer goods. Mahalanobis also founded the Indian Statistical Institute and gave statistics the Mahalanobis distance; Ghosh, Basu and Roy were distinguished ISI statisticians but had no hand in the Plan.

Causes of obesity Green vegetables are bulky, watery and rich in fibre, so even a large helping adds very little energy - of the four they are the least likely cause of obesity. Obesity is a positive energy balance: a sedentary life burns too little, fat is the densest fuel at 9 kcal per gram, and genes decide how readily the surplus is stored. Over consumption of fat tempts as 'just another excess', but a gram of fat carries more than twice the energy of a gram of carbohydrate or protein.

CCPA coaching guidelines The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) notified the Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisement in the Coaching Sector, 2024 on 13 November 2024. They bar a coaching centre from using a successful candidate's name or photograph without written consent, and require the course actually taken, its duration and its fee to be shown as prominently as the claim of success. The CCPA was itself set up under Section 10 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and works under the Department of Consumer Affairs. 'The Central Costumer Protection Authority' is only a misspelling of the same body; there is no Central Vigilance Authority (the watchdog is the Central Vigilance Commission) and no Central Student Protection Authority.

Independence Day themes The theme of Independence Day 2023, India's 77th, was 'Nation First, Always First'. It ran alongside the 'Meri Mati Mera Desh' campaign, the closing phase of the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. 'Towards True Freedom' sounds like an Independence Day slogan but has never been an official theme; 2022 used 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav' and 2024 'Viksit Bharat @ 2047'.