21 February 2025 · Shift 3

Jainism: Tirthankaras Jainism recognises 24 Tirthankaras, and the twenty-fourth - the last of them - was Mahavira. He was born as Vardhamana at Kundagrama near Vaishali (Bihar) to Siddhartha of the Jnatrika clan and to Trishala; he renounced home at the age of 30, and his birth is observed as Mahavir Jayanti. Parsvanatha was the 23rd Tirthankara, Naminatha the 21st and Ajitanatha the 2nd, so none of them closes the list. So the correct option is (c).

Sports terminology Every term in the list is the name of a gymnastics skill, so the sport is Gymnastics. The give-away is the apparatus named inside the terms: the vault and the bars are gymnastics apparatus, while a handstand, a split leap and a back handspring are floor and beam elements. Skateboarding names its tricks ollie, kickflip and grind; archery speaks of nocking, draw and anchor point; fencing uses lunge, parry and riposte - none of those vocabularies contains a single word from the list. So the correct option is (a).

Musical instruments: exponents Ustad Asad Ali Khan (1937-2011) was the foremost modern exponent of the rudra veena. He played in the austere Dhrupad style of the Jaipur beenkar gharana, taught at Delhi University, and was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2008. The other instruments belong to other names: santoor to Shivkumar Sharma, tabla to Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain, and sarod to Ali Akbar Khan and Amjad Ali Khan. So the correct option is (b).

37th National Games The Best Male Athlete of the Year at the 37th National Games was the swimmer Srihari Nataraj. Those Games, informally Goa 2023, were held in Goa from 26 October to 9 November 2023, and Nataraj dominated the pool events there. He is a backstroke specialist from Bengaluru who swam the 100 m backstroke for India at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics. Arokia Rajiv is a 400 m sprinter, Sajan Prakash a butterfly swimmer and Shivpal Singh a javelin thrower; none of them took the male athlete award at Goa. So the correct option is (a).

Fundamental Rights: Article 19 Freedom of speech and expression is the first of the freedoms listed in Article 19(1), so it is guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a). Article 19 is available to citizens only, and each of its freedoms may be limited by reasonable restrictions imposed under Articles 19(2) to 19(6). Article 21 protects life and personal liberty and has no lettered sub-clauses, Article 25 covers freedom of conscience and religion, and Article 141 makes the law declared by the Supreme Court binding on all courts. So the correct option is (b).

All India Women's Conference The All India Women's Conference (AIWC) was founded in 1927, its first session being held at Pune in January of that year. Margaret Cousins was its moving spirit; the body began with a demand for women's education and then widened to child marriage, purdah and legal rights. It is one of the oldest national women's organisations of India, is headquartered in New Delhi and is affiliated to the International Alliance of Women. A useful anchor for the year: 1927 also gave India the Simon Commission's appointment, so the two dates can be remembered together. So the correct option is (d).

Human Development Index In the Human Development Report 2021-22 Sri Lanka stood at rank 73 with an HDI value of 0.782, the best placing among India's neighbours. A smaller rank number means higher human development, so 73 is ahead of Bhutan's 127, Bangladesh's 129 and Nepal's 143 (India itself was 132). Sri Lanka is the only one of the four in the high human development band, carried there by its long life expectancy and near-universal literacy rather than by income. So the correct option is (d).

Distribution of Earth's water About 2.5% of all the water on Earth is freshwater; the remaining 97.5% is saline water, held almost entirely in the oceans. That 2.5% is itself mostly out of reach - roughly two-thirds of it is frozen in the polar ice caps and glaciers, and most of the rest is groundwater. Barely a hundredth of the freshwater, well under 1% of the world's water, sits in the rivers, lakes and soil moisture that people actually draw on. So the correct option is (c).

National security appointments In July 2024 Rajinder Khanna, until then Deputy National Security Advisor, was elevated to the newly created post of Additional National Security Advisor. He is a career intelligence officer who headed the Research and Analysis Wing from 2014 to 2016 and had been serving in the National Security Council Secretariat since 2018. The full NSA is a single post and continued to be held by Ajit Doval, so option (a) is ruled out; 'Reserved NSA' is not a post that exists at all. The CAG is a constitutional auditor appointed under Article 148 and has nothing to do with the security establishment. So the correct option is (c).

Temple festivals of India Thrissur Pooram is celebrated at the Vadakkunnathan Temple in Thrissur, Kerala, in the Malayalam month of Medam (April-May). It is known for its parade of caparisoned elephants, the panchavadyam percussion ensemble and the kudamattam, the rhythmic exchange of ceremonial parasols. The pooram was organised in its present form by Raja Rama Varma, better known as Sakthan Thampuran of Cochin, in the late eighteenth century. The very name is the clue: Thrissur is a district of Kerala, and 'pooram' is a Malayalam word for a temple festival. So the correct option is (d).

Green Revolution The primary goal of the Green Revolution was to raise agricultural productivity - more foodgrain from the same land - so that India could feed itself instead of importing grain. From 1966-67 it spread high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds of wheat and rice together with assured irrigation, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and tractors, chiefly in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. M. S. Swaminathan is called the Father of the Green Revolution in India, and Norman Borlaug its father worldwide. Industrial growth, population control and export promotion were separate policy tracks of the same decades; the Green Revolution itself was purely a farm-production programme. So the correct option is (b).

Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh, known as AP Singh, took over as the 28th Chief of the Air Staff on 30 September 2024. He succeeded Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari, under whom he had been Vice Chief of the Air Staff; he is a test pilot closely associated with the LCA Tejas programme. The dates settle the other names: R. K. S. Bhadauria was chief from 2019 to 2021 and B. S. Dhanoa from 2016 to 2019, so neither could be appointed in September 2024. Chaudhari is the outgoing chief named in the same handover, not the incoming one. So the correct option is (c).

First Five Year Plan The First Five Year Plan (1951-56) was launched under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, whose socialist ideal of a state-led mixed economy shaped Indian planning. Nehru himself chaired the Planning Commission set up in 1950, and the plan was built on the Harrod-Domar model with priority to agriculture, irrigation, power and refugee rehabilitation after Partition. Ambedkar led the drafting of the Constitution, Rajendra Prasad was the President and a constitutional head, and Lal Bahadur Shastri became Prime Minister only in 1964. So the correct option is (c).

Constellation Cassiopeia Cassiopeia is picked out in the northern sky by a cluster of 5 bright stars that form a distinctive W, seen as an M when the sky has turned. The five are Caph, Schedar, Gamma Cassiopeiae, Ruchbah and Segin, and the constellation is named after the boastful queen of Greek mythology. Because it lies across Polaris from the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia is a standard circumpolar pointer to the Pole Star - the seven-star pattern of the Dipper is what makes option (a) tempting. So the correct option is (d).

Multidimensional Poverty Index Among the states offered, Bihar shows the steepest decline in the proportion of multidimensionally poor people in NITI Aayog's National Multidimensional Poverty Index. Bihar begins from by far the highest base - about 51.9% of its people multidimensionally poor, ahead of Jharkhand at 42.2% and Uttar Pradesh at 37.8% - so it has the most ground to cover and records the sharpest fall. The national MPI follows the global method: ten indicators grouped under health, education and standard of living, so it measures deprivation rather than income alone. Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat were already far below Bihar's level, and Kerala sits at the bottom of the poverty table, so none of them could fall as steeply. So the correct option is (b).

Classical dance: Kathakali Kalamandalam Gopi is the best-known living exponent of Kathakali, the classical dance-drama of Kerala. He is celebrated for pacha, the noble-hero roles such as Nala, Rugmangada and Karna, and he trained at the Kerala Kalamandalam, from which he takes his name. His honours include the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi Award in 1995, the Padma Shri in 2009 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 2011. Odissi belongs to Odisha and Kuchipudi to Andhra Pradesh; Mohiniyattam is Keralan too, but it is a gentle lasya solo danced by women, not the elaborately painted, masked male theatre that Gopi performs. So the correct option is (d).

Folk dances of India Giddha is the folk dance of Punjab, performed by women. The dancers stand in a ring and clap to sung couplets called boliyan, most often at weddings and at Teej and Lohri, in bright salwar-kameez and heavy jewellery. Its male counterpart in the same state is Bhangra; Ghoomar and Kalbeliya belong to Rajasthan, Raslila and Charkula to Uttar Pradesh, and Matki to Madhya Pradesh. So the correct option is (d).

Plant antioxidants The compound abundant in both coffee and tea and valued for antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity is chlorogenic acid. It is a polyphenol, formed as an ester of caffeic acid with quinic acid, and it is the principal phenolic acid of the coffee bean; green unroasted beans carry the most of it. It scavenges free radicals and is studied for slowing glucose absorption in the gut and for supporting heart health. The distractors come from other foods entirely: lycopene from tomato, anthocyanins from berries and black grapes, and curcumin from turmeric. So the correct option is (d).

Assent to state bills Article 200 gives the Governor four choices when a bill passed by the state legislature is presented to him: assent, withhold assent, return a non-money bill for reconsideration, or reserve the bill for the consideration of the President. Reserving it is therefore the Governor's power alone, and once reserved the President acts on the bill under Article 201. Reservation is compulsory in one case: the second proviso to Article 200 requires it where the bill would derogate from the powers of the High Court. The Chief Minister and the Opposition act inside the House and the Speaker only certifies its passage; none of them has any channel to the President. So the correct option is (b).

Clean Plant Programme The Atmanirbhar Clean Plant Programme, announced in the Union Budget 2023-24, exists to enhance the availability of disease-free, virus-free quality planting material for horticulture. Certified clean planting material raises yields and export quality in fruit crops and cuts India's dependence on imported saplings. It carries an outlay of about ₹2,200 crore and is run through clean plant centres under the National Horticulture Board with ICAR, within the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture. The name is the clue: 'clean plant' here means free of pathogens, not clean energy, and the programme sits wholly inside agriculture - so defence, energy and manufacturing are all outside its scope. So the correct option is (a).