10 February 2025 · Shift 1

Cabinet Secretary of India The Cabinet Secretary is the senior-most civil servant of India, head of the Cabinet Secretariat and ex-officio Chairman of the Civil Services Board. Dr. T. V. Somanathan, a 1987-batch IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre and until then the Finance Secretary, took charge of the office on 30 August 2024, so he is the Cabinet Secretary in September 2024. He succeeded Rajiv Gauba, whose 2019-2024 stint was the longest tenure the post has seen; Pradeep Kumar Sinha and Ajit Kumar Seth held it still earlier, which is why all three make plausible-looking options. The post was created in 1950 with N. R. Pillai as its first holder, and its tenure is fixed at two years, extendable to a maximum of four.

Malwa Chalcolithic culture The Malwa culture (about 1700-1200 BCE) is the best known Chalcolithic culture of central India, and its settlements are packed most densely in the central Narmada basin. The Malwa plateau, lying east of the Banas valley and the Aravallis, is the bridge between the Indo-Gangetic plain and the peninsula, and it is drained by two great rivers, the Chambal and the Narmada; the deep, fertile black soil of the central Narmada valley is what drew the thickest settlement. Navdatoli, Eran, Nagda and Kayatha are its chief sites, Navdatoli on the bank of the Narmada being one of the largest Chalcolithic settlements excavated in India. The Indus basin belongs to the Harappan tradition and the Ganga basin to the later Ochre Coloured Pottery and Painted Grey Ware cultures, so neither of them is the Malwa heartland.

Tennis court dimensions The International Tennis Federation fixes the court at 78 ft (23.77 m) in length, 27 ft (8.23 m) wide for singles and 36 ft (10.97 m) wide for doubles. The extra width is the pair of doubles alleys, 4.5 ft (1.37 m) on each side: 27+4.5+4.5=36 ft. The net is 3 ft 6 in high at the posts and 3 ft high at the centre, and the service boxes are 21 ft deep, measured from the net.

Plate tectonic boundaries Plate tectonics treats the lithosphere as a set of rigid plates drifting over the plastic asthenosphere, and the margins where they meet are of three kinds. Divergent margins pull apart so fresh crust wells up, convergent margins push together so crust is destroyed by subduction or crumpled into fold mountains, and transform margins simply slide past each other. A useful check on the count: because the third type neither makes nor destroys crust, it is also called a conservative boundary - constructive, destructive and conservative make exactly three.

Gandhian idea of freedom Mahatma Gandhi held that the end of British rule by itself was not real freedom: India would be truly independent only when its poorest people were free of suffering. This is the thought behind his famous talisman - recall the face of the poorest and weakest person you have seen, and ask whether your next step will be of any use to him - and behind Sarvodaya, 'the welfare of all', the word he coined while rendering Ruskin's Unto This Last into Gujarati. The other names carry different signature ideas: Nehru's was the 'tryst with destiny' of 1947 and Bose's was 'Give me blood and I will give you freedom', neither of which makes the condition of the poorest the test of independence.

Khilafat Movement The Khilafat Movement (1919-1924) was launched by Indian Muslims, so it was associated with the Muslim community. Its cause was the Ottoman Sultan, the Khalifa, regarded as the spiritual head of the Muslim world; after Turkey's defeat in the First World War the harsh Treaty of Sevres stripped him of his authority, and Indian Muslims demanded that the Caliphate be restored. The All India Khilafat Committee was formed at Bombay by the Ali brothers, Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Hakim Ajmal Khan; Gandhiji joined it and merged the Khilafat cause with the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920, which made this the high point of Hindu-Muslim unity. The movement collapsed after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself abolished the Caliphate in 1924.

Food chain and predators In the chain Grass → Impala → Hyena the hyena is the top carnivore, and its predation is the only thing holding the impala herd inside the carrying capacity of the grassland. Take the hyenas away and the impala population grows unchecked, overgrazes the grass faster than it can regenerate, and then crashes - the impalas ultimately die of starvation. That also disposes of the other options: the grassland is severely affected, so (a) is wrong, and the impala number cannot stay stable once its only natural check is gone, so (b) and (d) are wrong.

NFHS-5 drinking water As per NFHS-5, which covers the years 2019-21, 7.32% of India's population was deprived of drinking water. Deprivation here has a precise meaning: the household has no access to an improved source of drinking water - piped water, a tube well or borehole, a protected well or spring, or collected rainwater - within a reasonable distance. Drinking water is one of the twelve indicators of NITI Aayog's National Multidimensional Poverty Index, whose health, education and standard-of-living dimensions are all built on NFHS data. The National Family Health Survey is conducted for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, with the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, as the nodal agency; NFHS-5 was the fifth round of the survey.

Expansionary fiscal policy Expansionary fiscal policy means the government raises its own spending, cuts taxes, or does both, so the expected outcome is a stimulation of economic growth. It is the standard response to a slowdown: higher outlay on infrastructure, welfare and public services and lower tax rates leave more purchasing power in people's hands, which lifts aggregate demand, output and employment. Options (b) and (c) describe the opposite, contractionary stance, in which spending is cut and the government saves more. Higher interest rates (a) are the instrument of tight monetary policy, not of fiscal expansion; a deficit financed by heavy borrowing may push rates up as a side effect, but that is never the aim of the policy.

Gombe Habba festival Gombe Habba, literally the doll festival, is celebrated in Karnataka during Dasara and Navaratri, so it is a festival of dolls. Dolls of gods, kings, saints and everyday folk are arranged on a stepped platform of an odd number of tiers, usually seven or nine, and neighbours are invited to view the display and share the offerings. The same custom runs down the south under other names - Bommai Golu in Tamil Nadu and Bommala Koluvu in Andhra Pradesh - which makes the doll display, rather than any local detail, the thing to remember. Karnataka's other well-known celebrations are the Mysuru Dasara, the Hampi Utsav, Kambala and Karaga.

Right to Constitutional Remedies The Right to Constitutional Remedies is guaranteed by Article 32 of the Constitution. It lets a citizen move the Supreme Court directly whenever a Fundamental Right is violated, and it empowers the Court to issue five writs - habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari and quo warranto. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar called Article 32 the heart and soul of the Constitution, because the other Fundamental Rights would be unenforceable without it; it can be suspended only by a Presidential order under Article 359 during a National Emergency. The neighbouring articles in the options are about quite different matters, and Article 31, the old right to property, is no longer a Fundamental Right at all after the 44th Amendment of 1978.

Money Bill in a State A Money Bill cannot be introduced in a State Legislative Assembly without the prior recommendation of the Governor. Article 198 lays down the procedure: such a Bill may originate only in the Legislative Assembly, never in the Legislative Council, and only on the Governor's recommendation. Once the Assembly passes it, the Council may hold it for at most 14 days and can only suggest changes; whether the Assembly accepts those suggestions or not, the Bill is then deemed passed by both Houses. The Speaker is a tempting choice, but his role under Article 199 is only to certify that a Bill is in fact a Money Bill, which is a different function from permitting its introduction; at the Centre the corresponding recommendation, under Article 117, comes from the President.

Lona in Kabaddi A Lona is worth two points in kabaddi. A Lona, also called an all-out, is scored when a team puts every one of the seven opponents out; the two bonus points are added to whatever the team earned in getting them out, and all seven players of the losing side are then revived. The rest of the scoring is worth keeping alongside it: an ordinary touch or tackle earns one point, a touch of the bonus line one point, and a super tackle two points. Kabaddi is played 7-a-side on a court 13 m by 10 m for men, and India has won the Asian Games gold in it since the sport was introduced there in 1990.

Bossa nova in film music Rahul Dev Burman, known as Pancham, was the first to bring the Brazilian bossa nova rhythm into Hindi film music. Son of the composer S. D. Burman, he began blending Latin American and Western pop rhythms with Indian melody from the mid-1960s, and the songs of Teesri Manzil (1966), such as 'O Haseena Zulfonwali' and 'O Mere Sona Re', are the ones usually cited for this smooth, jazzy bossa nova flavour. He also popularised the cabasa, the resonator guiro and other Latin percussion in Bombay's studios, which is why the rhythm is identified with him rather than with any later composer. A. R. Rahman and Anu Malik belong to a much later generation, and O. P. Nayyar's signature was the Punjabi tanga rhythm, not Latin American percussion.

Green Revolution The central change the Green Revolution brought was the shift from traditional low-yield varieties to high-yielding varieties (HYV) of seed. Begun in India in the mid-1960s, it packaged HYV seeds of wheat and rice with heavy doses of chemical fertiliser, assured irrigation, pesticides and mechanisation, and carried the country to self-sufficiency in food grains. So (d) is wrong because fertiliser use rose sharply rather than fell, (a) is wrong because rice gained along with wheat and the change was not confined to one crop, and (b) is the reverse of what happened, since farming became more commercial, not more subsistence-based. M. S. Swaminathan is called the Father of the Green Revolution in India, and Norman Borlaug, who bred the dwarf wheat varieties, holds that title worldwide.

Greek symbol nu The Greek letter ν (nu) stands for the frequency of a wave, the number of complete cycles passing a point per second, measured in hertz. It appears in the wave relation $v=\nu \lambda$, which ties wave speed to frequency and wavelength, and in Planck's equation $E=h\nu$ for the energy of a photon. The trap is that ν looks almost exactly like the Latin v, which is the symbol for velocity; the coefficient of friction is μ (mu) and density is ρ (rho), so each wrong option belongs to a different letter.

Comptroller and Auditor General Girish Chandra Murmu was the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in October 2024. A 1985-batch IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre and earlier the first Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, he took over as the 14th CAG in August 2020, served as external auditor of the World Health Organization and chaired the United Nations Panel of External Auditors. He was succeeded by K. Sanjay Murthy, who was sworn in as the 15th CAG on 21 November 2024 - after the date the question asks about, which is exactly why the question fixes a month. The CAG is appointed by the President under Article 148 for six years or until the age of 65, whichever comes first, and can be removed only in the manner laid down for a judge of the Supreme Court.

SGSY scheme Only statement i is incorrect: the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana was launched on 1 April 1999, not in 2009. Statement ii is correct - SGSY was a self-employment programme that organised the rural poor into Self Help Groups and gave each swarozgari an income-generating asset through a mix of bank credit and government subsidy, backed by training, technology, infrastructure and marketing support. Statement iii is correct as well: Andhra Pradesh, with the strongest SHG movement in the country, was among the states where the scheme worked best. In 2011 SGSY was restructured into the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, later renamed Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - NRLM, so 2009 belongs to no milestone of the scheme at all.

Kathakali dance texts Kathakali is the dance form whose textual sanction comes from the Balarama Bharatam and the Hastalakshana Deepika. It is the dance-drama of Kerala, famous for its towering headgear, green pacha make-up, billowing costume and silent storytelling; the Hastalakshana Deepika codifies the 24 basic mudras it uses, and the Balarama Bharatam was composed by Prince Kartika Thirunal Balarama Varma of Travancore. The clue in the question is 'southern India' plus a Malayalam text tradition, which narrows the field to Kerala at once. Of the other options Mohiniyattam, also from Kerala, is the graceful lasya solo form that follows the Hastalakshana Deepika only for gestures, Kuchipudi belongs to Andhra Pradesh, and Sattriya comes from the Vaishnava sattras of Assam, so it is not even a southern form.

Padma Shri 2024 folk dance Mahabir Singh Guddu, a Padma Shri awardee of 2024, is a folk dancer and singer from Haryana. He is honoured for reviving Haryanvi folk traditions such as Shiv Gaayan and the Been dance and for training a new generation of artists in them, which is why the award citation places him in the art category. The Padma Shri, instituted in 1954, is the fourth-highest civilian award of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan; the names are announced on the eve of Republic Day and the awards are conferred by the President later in the year.