18 February 2025 · Shift 3

Post-Mauryan dynasties The Mauryan Empire (321-185 BCE) came to an end when its last ruler, Brihadratha, was assassinated by his own commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra Shunga. Pushyamitra then founded the Shunga dynasty, which ruled northern and eastern India from 185 BCE to about 73 BCE, keeping Pataliputra as its capital. Order is what this question tests: the Kanvas came after the Shungas and not after the Mauryas, the Kushanas rose in the north-west only in the 1st century CE, and the Guptas as late as the 4th century CE. Hence the correct option is (c).

Rural employment schemes Jawahar Rozgar Yojana was launched on 1 April 1989 by merging the National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) with the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP), so i pairs with 2. The Employment Assurance Scheme was launched on 2 October 1993 to guarantee unskilled manual work to the rural poor in the lean farming season, so ii pairs with 4. The Million Wells Scheme started in 1988 as a sub-scheme of NREP and RLEGP, giving free irrigation wells to small and marginal SC/ST farmers and freed bonded labourers, so iii pairs with 1. The National Social Assistance Programme was launched on 15 August 1995 to pay old-age, widow and disability pensions, so iv pairs with 3. Hence the correct option is (d).

SRS death rate Death rate is the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a year, and the Sample Registration System is the large sample survey that estimates it for India. The SRS Bulletin for 2020 puts the all-India death rate at 6.0, made up of 6.4 in rural India and 5.1 in urban India. The question asks for the gap between the two, so subtract: 6.4-5.1=1.3 per 1,000. The three wrong options are the raw rates themselves - 6.0 all-India, 6.4 rural and 5.1 urban - put there for a candidate who stops before doing the subtraction. Hence the correct option is (a).

Asian Games hosts India has hosted the Asian Games twice, both times at New Delhi - the very first edition in 1951 and the ninth edition in 1982. The 1982 Asiad ran from 19 November to 4 December, was the first Games run by the newly created Olympic Council of Asia, and is remembered for its mascot Appu the elephant and for bringing colour television to India. No Asian Games have been held in India since, so 1982 is the last time; the other years belong to other hosts - Seoul 1986, Beijing 1990 - and 1983 was not an Asiad year at all, since the Games come every four years. Hence the correct option is (a).

Separation of mixtures Filtration works only if the particles are too big to pass through the pores of filter paper; centrifugation works on anything denser than the liquid, because rapid spinning throws such particles outward and settles them. Suspension particles are larger than about 1000 nm, so filter paper already holds them back - a suspension can be separated by filtration too, which rules out options (a) and (c). A true solution has particles smaller than 1 nm that stay dispersed even in a centrifuge, so option (b) fails as well. Colloidal particles lie in between, about 1 nm to 1000 nm: small enough to slip through filter paper, dense enough to be thrown down in a centrifuge - that is the one mixture the question describes. Hence the correct option is (d).

Sattriya dance Oli Jerang is a Sattriya dancer who belongs to Arunachal Pradesh - the question asks for the dancer's home state, not the home of the dance form. That distinction is the whole trap. Sattriya itself grew inside the sattras, the Vaishnava monasteries of Assam, where it was introduced in the 15th century by the saint-reformer Srimanta Sankardeva, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi recognised it as a classical dance of India in the year 2000. So Assam is the right answer to 'where does Sattriya come from' and the wrong answer here; Meghalaya and Sikkim have no link with either the dancer or the form. Hence the correct option is (a).

37th National Games The 37th National Games were held in Goa from 26 October to 9 November 2023, and their motto was a pun on the host state's name - 'Get Set Goa'. The mascot was Moga, a stylised Indian gaur (the state animal of Goa), and Maharashtra topped the medal tally to win the Raja Bhalindra Singh Trophy. Every distractor is a variation of the ordinary starting call 'ready, get set, go'; what makes the official motto different is exactly one letter - the 'a' that turns 'Go' into 'Goa' - and there is no 'Ready' in front of it. Hence the correct option is (b).

Collective responsibility Article 164(2) of the Constitution states that the Council of Ministers of a state is collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly of that state. This is the working rule of the parliamentary system: the ministry stays in office only while it holds the confidence of the popularly elected House, and a no-confidence motion carried there brings down the entire Council, not one minister alone. Ministers are individually responsible to the Governor, who appoints them under Article 164(1), but that responsibility is individual, not collective; the President has no such role inside a state; and the Chief Minister heads the Council rather than being the body it answers to. Note also that even in a state with two Houses the responsibility runs only to the Legislative Assembly, never to the Legislative Council. Hence the correct option is (a).

Indian Association 1876 The Indian Association was founded at Calcutta on 26 July 1876 by Surendranath Banerjee and Anandamohan Bose. It was the most important nationalist body before the Congress: it led the agitation to raise the age limit for the Indian Civil Service examination and to hold it in India, and it deliberately kept its subscription low so that the ordinary educated middle class could join. It merged with the Indian National Congress after the Congress was founded in 1885. Banerjee was the second Indian to qualify for the ICS, after Satyendranath Tagore. The other three pairs belong to a later generation altogether - the Lal-Bal-Pal extremists of the 1905 Swadeshi years and the Swarajists of the 1920s - so none of them could have founded a body of 1876. Hence the correct option is (a).

Western disturbances Western disturbances are extra-tropical low-pressure systems that form over the Mediterranean Sea region in winter. The subtropical westerly jet stream, which sits over the northern plains of India from about October to May, steers these systems eastward across Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan into north-west India. They bring the winter rain of the plains and snow to the western Himalaya, which is why they are so valuable for the rabi crop, especially wheat; they also cause the cold waves and fog of December and January. They are named 'western' because of the direction they arrive from, so the Arabian, East Siberian and Caspian regions - none of which lies on that westerly track - are wrong. Hence the correct option is (b).

Election Commission appointment Gyanesh Kumar, a 1988-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre, was appointed an Election Commissioner in March 2024 and so joined the Election Commission of India. Both Election Commissioner posts had fallen vacant at the same time, and he and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu were appointed together under the new selection law of 2023. He went on to become the 26th Chief Election Commissioner of India on 19 February 2025. The Election Commission is a constitutional body under Article 324, formed on 25 January 1950 - the date now observed as National Voters' Day - with its headquarters at New Delhi. Hence the correct option is (b).

Fundamental Duties source Fundamental Duties were not in the original Constitution; they were inserted as Part IVA (Article 51A) by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976, on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee. The idea of setting out the citizen's duties alongside his rights was taken from the Constitution of the erstwhile USSR, the Soviet Union - India is the only major democracy to have borrowed it. The other three options are the sources of other borrowings, which is why they are tempting: Fundamental Rights from the US, the parliamentary system and rule of law from the UK, and 'procedure established by law' from Japan. The original ten duties became eleven when the 86th Amendment, 2002 added the duty of a parent or guardian to give education to a child between six and fourteen years. Hence the correct option is (d).

Bihu festivals of Assam Bohag Bihu is named after Bohag, the first month of the Assamese calendar, and falls in mid-April; its other name is Rongali Bihu, from 'rong', meaning joy or merriment - exactly the 'festival of merriment' the sentence describes. It marks the Assamese New Year and the start of the sowing season, and is the Bihu of husori singing and the Bihu dance. Kati Bihu comes in October and is the sombre Kongali Bihu of the lean season, so it is a different festival, not another name for this one. Goru Bihu and Manuh Bihu are only the first two days inside Bohag Bihu itself - the cattle day and the human day - so neither names the whole festival. Hence the correct option is (d).

Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana The Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 April 2015. It gives collateral-free loans of up to ₹10 lakh to non-corporate, non-farm micro and small enterprises through banks, NBFCs and microfinance institutions, in three categories - Shishu up to ₹50,000, Kishor up to ₹5 lakh and Tarun up to ₹10 lakh. MUDRA stands for Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency, the institution set up to refinance these loans; the scheme is run by the Ministry of Finance, but the launch itself was by the Prime Minister. Hence the correct option is (c).

Republic Day tableau 2023 The best tableau award for Republic Day 2023, among the 17 state and union territory tableaux, went to Uttarakhand for its tableau on the theme 'Manaskhand'. 'Manaskhand' is the name the Skanda Purana gives to the Kumaon region, and the tableau displayed its temple circuit along with the state bird, the Himalayan monal, and the wildlife of the Corbett landscape. The theme was chosen because Uttarakhand had just begun its Manaskhand Mandir Mala Mission to develop those Kumaon temples - the clue in the question is therefore the Himalayan word 'Manaskhand', which points to no other state. Hence the correct option is (d).

Union ministry portfolios Pralhad Joshi inaugurated the 2nd India Sugar & Bio-Energy Conference in New Delhi, held on 26 and 27 September 2024. In the Union Council of Ministers formed in June 2024 he holds two portfolios together - Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, and New and Renewable Energy. Both explain why he was the minister to open that particular conference: sugar is an essential commodity handled by the Department of Food and Public Distribution, and the 'bio-energy' half of the event is ethanol blending, which falls under New and Renewable Energy. Joshi had earlier been Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Coal and Mines; the three wrong options were held in that Council by Bhupender Yadav, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Jyotiraditya Scindia respectively. Hence the correct option is (a).

Green Revolution drawbacks The Green Revolution replaced a very large number of traditional local varieties with a handful of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, grown as monocultures season after season, and that narrowing of the gene pool is its classic ecological cost - a loss of biodiversity. The same package brought heavy fertiliser and pesticide use and irrigation-intensive cropping, so soils were degraded and groundwater drawn down, especially in Punjab and Haryana. The other three options describe the opposite of what happened: industrial growth rose with the demand for fertilisers, tractors and pumps; technology use rose sharply rather than fell; and urbanisation is not a consequence attributed to it, since the revolution kept employment in the countryside. Hence the correct option is (c).

Progressive taxation A tax is progressive when the rate itself rises as the taxable amount rises, so a richer taxpayer pays not merely more rupees but a higher percentage of income. It rests on the ability-to-pay principle, and India's income tax with its rising slab rates is the standard example; the poorest are kept below the exemption limit altogether. Option (b) is the definition of a regressive tax and option (c) of a proportional or flat tax, while option (a) merely compares two categories of taxpayer and says nothing about how the rate moves with income - which is the only thing 'progressive' describes. Hence the correct option is (d).

Indi-pop album Breathless 'Breathless' is the 1998 Indi-pop album of Shankar Mahadevan, with lyrics by Javed Akhtar, and its eponymous title track is his best-known work. The track is famous because the whole song is delivered in what sounds like one unbroken breath, with no stanza break or audible pause - which is where the name comes from. Shankar Mahadevan is also one third of the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy composing trio; Shaan, Mohit Chauhan and A R Rahman had no part in this album. Hence the correct option is (a).

Nutrition in sports The question asks for the statement that is NOT true, so three options will be sound nutrition and one will not. Fat is the body's densest energy store, but it is oxidised slowly and needs a great deal of oxygen, so it fuels low-to-moderate intensity work of long duration; during hard exercise and competition the body draws mainly on carbohydrate, that is muscle glycogen, which releases energy fast. Statement (a) is therefore the incorrect one. Vitamins A, E and C are the classic antioxidant vitamins, mopping up the free radicals that heavy training produces, so (b) is correct. Vitamin C reduces ferric iron to the ferrous form and so sharply improves the absorption of non-haem iron from plant foods, so (c) is correct. Vitamin C is the cofactor for the hydroxylation of proline and lysine during collagen synthesis - the reason scurvy shows as poor wound healing - so (d) is correct. Hence the correct option is (a).