Current Affairs 27 September 2026: Today's GK & MCQs

The correct answer is D, Smriti Mandhana. The India opener was named ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year for 2021 and received the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy in January 2022. She had scored 855 international runs across the three formats in that year, including India's first century in a day-night Test, made against Australia at Carrara. The trophy is named after Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the England captain who pushed for women's cricket at Lord's and for the first Women's World Cup in 1973. Option A is wrong because Mithali Raj, India's long-serving captain, has never won this particular trophy. Option B is wrong because Ellyse Perry of Australia won it in 2019, not for 2021. Option C is wrong because Lizelle Lee of South Africa took the ICC Women's ODI Cricketer of the Year award that season, which is a separate prize. Exam tip: the women's award is the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, the men's is the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy.

The correct answer is C, Anga. Champa was the capital of the Anga mahajanapada, and its site lies near modern Bhagalpur in Bihar, where the Champa river meets the Ganga. Anga is one of the sixteen mahajanapadas listed in the Buddhist text Anguttara Nikaya, and Champa was among the six great cities of the Buddha's time. The kingdom was rich because the river port carried trade downstream, which is why Bimbisara of Magadha annexed it and made his son Ajatashatru its governor. Option A is wrong because the capital of Kashi was Varanasi. Option B is wrong because Matsya, in the Alwar-Jaipur region of Rajasthan, had Viratnagar as its capital. Option D is wrong because the Vajji confederacy, a group of clans led by the Lichchhavis, had its centre at Vaishali. Exam tip: pair the capitals - Anga-Champa, Kashi-Varanasi, Vajji-Vaishali, Magadha-Rajgir.

The correct answer is D, Nepal. After India, Nepal has both the largest number of Hindus and the largest Hindu share of any country, with roughly four out of five Nepalis following the faith. Nepal was the world's only officially Hindu kingdom until 2007-08, when the interim constitution and then the new republic declared it a secular federal state. Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu and Janakpur, linked in tradition with Sita, are among its best known Hindu centres. Option A is wrong because Bhutan is a small country whose state religion is Vajrayana Buddhism, with Hindus a minority of Nepali origin. Option B is wrong because Sri Lanka is Buddhist-majority and its Hindus, mostly Tamils, form a far smaller community than Nepal's. Option C is wrong because Myanmar is also Buddhist-majority, with only a small Hindu population of Indian descent. Exam tip: remember Nepal as the Hindu-majority neighbour and Bhutan as the Buddhist one.

The correct answer is B, Indonesia. President Sukarno of Indonesia was the chief guest at India's first Republic Day on 26 January 1950, the day the Constitution came into force. Inviting him fitted Nehru's outreach to newly free Asian nations; India had backed Indonesia's freedom struggle against the Dutch, and both countries later helped found the Non-Aligned Movement after the Bandung Conference of 1955. Option A is wrong because Bhutan's King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck was a Republic Day chief guest later, in 1954, and Bhutan is a monarchy, so it has a king and not a president. Option C is wrong because no Chinese head of state has ever been the chief guest at the parade. Option D is wrong because Japan has an emperor as head of state; its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was chief guest in 2014. Exam tip: first Republic Day 26 January 1950, first chief guest President Sukarno of Indonesia.

The correct answer is C, Chandra Shekhar. Of the four leaders listed, Chandra Shekhar had the shortest run, from 10 November 1990 to 21 June 1991, a little over seven months. He led a breakaway Samajwadi Janata Party with only a small group of MPs and governed with Congress support from outside; when that support was withdrawn he resigned, and the 1991 general election followed. Option A is wrong because HD Deve Gowda was Prime Minister for about ten months, from June 1996 to April 1997. Option B is wrong because VP Singh headed the National Front government for close to a year, from December 1989 to November 1990. Option D is wrong because IK Gujral, remembered for the Gujral Doctrine on neighbourly ties, served about eleven months from April 1997 to March 1998. Exam tip: the shortest tenure overall belongs to Gulzarilal Nanda, acting Prime Minister for 13 days on two occasions.

The correct answer is A, Shehnai. The shehnai is called a mangal vadya, an instrument of auspicious occasions, because it is played at weddings, temple rituals and processions. It is a double-reed wind instrument with a wooden body and a metal bell at the end, and in classical music it belongs to the sushir or wind family. Ustad Bismillah Khan, who played the shehnai from the ramparts of the Red Fort on 15 August 1947 and received the Bharat Ratna in 2001, turned it into a concert instrument. Option B is wrong because the santoor is a trapezoid string instrument of Kashmir struck with light mallets, made famous by Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. Option C is wrong because the tabla is a pair of drums used for rhythm in Hindustani music. Option D is wrong because the damaru is a small two-headed drum linked with Lord Shiva. Exam tip: shehnai-Bismillah Khan, santoor-Shivkumar Sharma, sarod-Amjad Ali Khan.

The correct answer is D, Mallika Sarabhai. She won the best actress award in 1975 for her role in the Gujarati film Meena Gurjari, early in a career that moved between cinema, theatre and dance. Trained by her mother Mrinalini Sarabhai in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, she is also known for playing Draupadi in Peter Brook's stage and screen production of The Mahabharata, and she runs the Darpana Academy in Ahmedabad. Option A is wrong because Sonal Mansingh is an Odissi and Bharatanatyam exponent honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, not a film actress. Option B is wrong because Sitara Devi was the Kathak dancer whom Rabindranath Tagore called Nritya Samragini, and her film work came in the 1940s. Option C is wrong because Shovana Narayan is a Kathak dancer who also served as an officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service. Exam tip: link Mallika Sarabhai with Darpana Academy and her mother Mrinalini Sarabhai.

The correct answer is C, Indira Gandhi. Fundamental Duties were inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment of 1976, passed during the Emergency when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister. The amendment followed the report of the Swaran Singh Committee, and the duties were placed in Part IVA as Article 51A, drawing on the practice of the Soviet constitution. Ten duties were listed at first; an eleventh, on providing education to children between six and fourteen years, was added by the 86th Amendment of 2002. Like the Directive Principles, these duties are not enforceable by the courts. Option A is wrong because P V Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1991 and is linked with the economic reforms. Option B is wrong because Charan Singh was Prime Minister briefly in 1979-80. Option D is wrong because Lal Bahadur Shastri held office from 1964 to 1966. Exam tip: 42nd Amendment 1976 added Fundamental Duties and the words socialist, secular and integrity to the Preamble.

The correct answer is A, Loo. The loo is a hot, dry wind that blows over the plains of north India and Pakistan in May and June, often pushing afternoon temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius and causing heat strokes. Winds are grouped as planetary, which blow across the globe all year, seasonal, which reverse with the seasons, and local, which affect a small area for a short period because of local heating and pressure differences. Other local winds worth remembering are the chinook of North America, the foehn of the Alps, the mistral of France and the sirocco of the Mediterranean. Option B is wrong because the westerlies are planetary winds blowing from the subtropical high towards the subpolar low. Option D is wrong because the easterlies, or trade winds, are also planetary winds moving towards the equator. Option C is wrong because the monsoon is a seasonal wind that reverses direction between summer and winter. Exam tip: loo, chinook, foehn, mistral and sirocco are the standard local winds.

The correct answer is B, 35 years. Article 66(3) of the Constitution says a person must have completed 35 years of age to be eligible for election as Vice-President. The same article requires the candidate to be a citizen of India, to be qualified for election as a member of the Council of States, and to hold no office of profit under the Union, a State or a local authority. The Vice-President is elected for five years by an electoral college of members of both Houses of Parliament, including nominated members, through proportional representation by the single transferable vote. The same age limit of 35 years applies to the President under Article 58. Option A is wrong because 30 years is the minimum age for membership of the Rajya Sabha. Options C and D are wrong because the Constitution fixes no such limits for this post. Exam tip: 25 for Lok Sabha, 30 for Rajya Sabha, 35 for President and Vice-President.

The correct answer is A, Ethanol. CH3CH2OH, also written C2H5OH, is ethanol or ethyl alcohol, the second member of the alcohol family. The -OH group attached to the carbon chain is the functional group that makes it an alcohol. Ethanol is a colourless liquid that boils at about 78 degrees Celsius, mixes with water in every proportion, and is used in alcoholic drinks, as a solvent in medicines and in ethanol-blended petrol. Alcohol free of water is called absolute alcohol, while alcohol made unfit for drinking by adding methanol and a dye is called denatured spirit. Option B is wrong because acetic acid, the acid in vinegar, is CH3COOH and carries the -COOH group. Option C is wrong because chloroform is CHCl3, once used as an anaesthetic. Option D is wrong because methane is CH4, the simplest hydrocarbon and the main part of natural gas. Exam tip: -OH means an alcohol and -COOH means a carboxylic acid.

The correct answer is D, lotus. The star-shaped shrine of Gurudwara Shri Hemkund Sahib is built with a roof shaped like an upturned lotus, a flower that also appears in the story of the site. The gurudwara stands in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand at a height of over 4,600 metres, beside a glacial lake ringed by seven peaks called Sapt Shring. It is dedicated to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, who describes the place in his composition Bachittar Natak, and the shrine stays open only from about May to October because of snow. Options A, B and C are wrong because the rose, the marigold and the sunflower have no place in the design of this gurudwara; the marigold is used in garlands and the other two are garden flowers. The lotus, on the other hand, is a standing symbol of purity in Indian religious architecture. Exam tip: Hemkund Sahib is in Uttarakhand, near the Valley of Flowers National Park.

The correct answer is B, Narendra Modi. Abode of Love is credited to Narendra Modi, who wrote several books in Gujarati long before becoming Prime Minister. His better known titles include Jyotipunj, a set of profiles of people who shaped him, Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe, a collection of poems, and Exam Warriors, written in 2018 for students facing board examinations. Option A is wrong because Shankar Dayal Sharma, President from 1992 to 1997, is not linked with this book. Option C is wrong because APJ Abdul Kalam is remembered for Wings of Fire, Ignited Minds, India 2020 and My Journey, and not for Abode of Love. Option D is wrong because Manmohan Singh's name is attached to writings on economic policy, such as the collection Changing India, rather than to this title. Exam tip: for book questions, fix one sure title to each leader - Kalam and Wings of Fire, Modi and Exam Warriors - and work outwards from there.

The correct answer is D, twelfth. Qutb-ud-din Aibak began the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in 1192, soon after the second battle of Tarain, and the first phase was finished by about 1198, which falls in the last decade of the twelfth century. He laid the foundation of the Qutb Minar beside it in 1199, and Iltutmish completed the minaret. It is counted as the first mosque built in Delhi by the new sultanate, put together with stone taken from earlier temples on the site, which is why its pillars carry older Indian motifs. Iltutmish and later Alauddin Khalji enlarged the courtyard, and the fourth-century iron pillar of Chandra stands within it. Options A, B and C are wrong because the eleventh century is before the sultanate reached Delhi, while the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cover the later additions rather than the original mosque. Exam tip: Tarain 1192, Quwwat-ul-Islam 1192-98, Qutb Minar begun 1199.

The correct answer is B, Leaders of Opposition in Parliament. The Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 gave the post statutory recognition for the first time and fixed the pay and perks of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. The Act describes the Leader of the Opposition as the leader of the largest opposition party recognised as such by the Speaker or the Chairman, and the office carries the rank of a Cabinet minister. The holder sits on the committees that select the Director of the CBI, the Central Vigilance Commissioner, the Lokpal and the Chief Information Commissioner. Option A is wrong because the President's pay comes under a 1951 law. Option C is wrong because the Prime Minister is paid under the law on ministers' salaries of 1952. Option D is wrong because the office of Governor General ended in 1950. Exam tip: Leader of the Opposition, statutory since 1977, ranks with a Cabinet minister.

The correct answer is D, Ashwini Kumar Dutta. He founded the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti at Barisal in 1905, during the movement against the partition of Bengal. The samiti built a network of village volunteers who pushed swadeshi goods, enforced the boycott of foreign cloth, settled local disputes through their own arbitration courts and organised relief work, which made it the strongest of the Swadeshi era volunteer bodies. A teacher by calling, Dutta had earlier set up Brajamohan College in Barisal, and the government banned the samiti and deported him in 1908. Option A is wrong because Chandrasekhar Azad led the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and died at Alfred Park, Allahabad, in 1931. Option B is wrong because Bhagat Singh worked through the Naujawan Bharat Sabha and the HSRA. Option C is wrong because Rajguru was an HSRA member hanged with Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev in 1931. Exam tip: Swadeshi volunteer bodies - Swadesh Bandhab Samiti of Barisal and Anushilan Samiti of Bengal.

The correct answer is C, Mumbai. RBL Bank, a private sector bank, has its corporate office in Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, while its registered office stays in Kolhapur in Maharashtra, where the bank was founded in 1943 as the Ratnakar Bank. It served traders and farmers of the Kolhapur and Sangli belt for decades, was renamed RBL Bank in 2014 and now works across the country in retail, credit card and microfinance business. Option A is wrong because Srinagar is the headquarters of Jammu and Kashmir Bank, a bank promoted by that state. Option B is wrong because no large commercial bank keeps its corporate office in Patna. Option D is wrong because Bengaluru is the headquarters of Canara Bank, which was started in Mangaluru in 1906. Exam tip: RBL Bank was born as Ratnakar Bank in Kolhapur, 1943, and is run from Mumbai.

The correct answer is B, tuberculosis (TB). The BCG vaccine takes its name from Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin, the two French scientists who developed it from a weakened strain of Mycobacterium bovis. In India it is given as a single dose soon after birth under the Universal Immunisation Programme, and it protects infants mainly from the severe forms of the disease, such as tuberculous meningitis and miliary tuberculosis. Tuberculosis itself is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, identified by Robert Koch in 1882, and it spreads through droplets when a patient coughs. Option A is wrong because typhoid, caused by Salmonella typhi, has its own conjugate vaccine. Option C is wrong because mumps is a viral disease covered by the MMR vaccine along with measles and rubella. Option D is wrong because plague, caused by Yersinia pestis and carried by rat fleas, needs a different vaccine. Exam tip: BCG at birth for TB, and World TB Day falls on 24 March.

The correct answer is B, Teller. ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine. A teller is the bank employee who takes and pays out cash at the counter, and the machine was built to do that same job without a person, which is how it got the name. The first ATM in India was installed by HSBC in Mumbai in 1987. Machines set up and run by non-bank companies, under the rules of the Reserve Bank, are called White Label ATMs, the first of which was Indicash, launched by Tata Communications in 2013. Option A is wrong because a transfer is a movement of money between accounts, not part of this abbreviation. Option C is wrong because a transaction is any banking entry, again not what the T stands for. Option D is wrong because trunk belongs to telephone terminology, such as trunk call. Exam tip: PIN means Personal Identification Number and ATM means Automated Teller Machine.

The correct answer is C, Ghiyas ud din Balban. Balban, who ruled from 1266 to 1287, brought the Persian court customs of sijda, bowing low before the Sultan, and paibos, kissing his feet, into the Delhi court. They went with his idea of kingship, in which the Sultan was Zill-i-Ilahi, the shadow of God on earth, a person set far above his nobles. He also celebrated the Persian festival of Nauroz, broke the power of the group of forty nobles known as the Chalisa, and used a policy of blood and iron against rebels. Option A is wrong because Muhammad bin Tughlaq is remembered for token currency and the shift of the capital to Daulatabad. Option B is wrong because Nasir-ud-din Mahmud was the mild ruler under whom Balban held real power as naib. Option D is wrong because Qutb-ud-din Aibak founded the Slave dynasty and was called Lakh Baksh. Exam tip: Balban - sijda, paibos, Nauroz and Zill-i-Ilahi.

The correct answer is D, Original. Article 131 of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court exclusive original jurisdiction in disputes between the Government of India and one or more states, and in disputes among states themselves. Exclusive means no other court can hear such a case, and original means it starts in the Supreme Court and does not come on appeal. The article does not cover disputes arising from a treaty or agreement that was in force before the Constitution began. Option A is wrong because appellate jurisdiction, under Articles 132 to 134, is about appeals from High Court judgments in constitutional, civil and criminal cases. Option B is wrong because advisory jurisdiction under Article 143 lets the President seek the Court's opinion on a question of law, and that opinion does not bind him. Option C is wrong because writ jurisdiction under Article 32 is for enforcing fundamental rights of citizens. Exam tip: Article 131 original, 143 advisory, 32 writs.

The correct answer is D, Diwan-i-insha. The Diwan-i-insha was the department of royal correspondence in the Delhi Sultanate. It drafted the Sultan's letters and orders to provincial governors and other rulers, kept copies of them and was headed by the Dabir-i-khas, who had to be a careful writer of Persian because the wording of a farman carried the Sultan's authority. Option A is wrong because the Diwan-i-arz was the military department, under the Ariz-i-mumalik, which recruited soldiers, paid them and held the horse-branding and descriptive roll system. Option B is wrong because the Diwan-i-khairat was the department of charity, set up by Firoz Shah Tughlaq to give help to the poor and to arrange marriages of poor girls. Option C is wrong because the Diwan-i-risalat looked after religious matters and grants to scholars. Exam tip: insha for letters, arz for the army, wizarat for finance.

The correct answer is C, Finance Commission. Article 280 requires the President to constitute a Finance Commission every fifth year, or earlier if needed, with a chairman and four other members. It recommends how the net proceeds of taxes should be divided between the Union and the states and shared among the states, what grants-in-aid the states should get from the Consolidated Fund of India, and how state funds can be strengthened to support panchayats and municipalities. The first Finance Commission was set up in 1951 under K C Neogy, and its advice is recommendatory, not binding. Option A is wrong because the Advocate General of a state is appointed under Article 165. Option B is wrong because the Central Vigilance Commission began as an executive body in 1964 and became statutory under an Act of 2003. Option D is wrong because the National Commission for Women is statutory, created by an Act of 1990. Exam tip: Article 280 Finance Commission, Article 148 CAG, Article 324 Election Commission.

The correct answer is D, Article 149. Article 149 says the Comptroller and Auditor General shall perform such duties and exercise such powers as Parliament may by law prescribe. Under that law the CAG audits the accounts of the Union and of every state, and of bodies substantially financed from public funds, and his reports go to the President or the Governor, who lays them before the legislature. Dr B. R. Ambedkar called the CAG the most important officer under the Constitution, because no rupee of public money can be spent without this audit. Option A is wrong because Article 146 deals with the officers, servants and expenses of the Supreme Court. Option B is wrong because Article 147 is the interpretation clause for constitutional questions. Option C is wrong because Article 148 covers the appointment, oath, tenure and service conditions of the CAG, not his duties. Exam tip: Article 148 appointment, 149 duties, 150 form of accounts, 151 audit reports.

The correct answer is C, Garhwal Himalayas. The Chipko movement began in 1973 in the Garhwal Himalayas, in Chamoli district of what is now Uttarakhand, when villagers hugged trees to stop contractors from felling them. Its name comes from the Hindi word chipko, to cling. Chandi Prasad Bhatt led the first protest at Mandal village, Gaura Devi led the women of Reni village in 1974, and Sunderlal Bahuguna carried the message across the hills with the slogan that the soil, water and pure air are the real produce of a forest. The movement led to a fifteen-year ban on green felling above 1,000 metres in the Himalayan forests of Uttar Pradesh in 1980. Option A is wrong because Patna in Bihar has no link with it. Option B is wrong because Thrissur is in Kerala, far from the movement. Option D is wrong because Jammu was never its centre. Exam tip: Chipko 1973, Garhwal; Appiko 1983, Karnataka.

The correct answer is A, Federal. The Preamble describes India as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic; the word federal appears nowhere in it, or indeed anywhere in the Constitution. Article 1 instead calls India a Union of States, a wording the drafters chose to show that the states did not join by agreement and cannot leave. The words socialist and secular, along with integrity, were inserted by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976, which is why they are part of the description today. Option B is wrong because republic is in the Preamble and means the head of state is elected, not hereditary. Option C is wrong because socialist was added in 1976 and stands in the Preamble. Option D is wrong because secular is also in the Preamble and means the state has no religion of its own. Exam tip: Preamble order is Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic, Republic; federal is absent.

The correct answer is B, September 2014. Make in India was launched on 25 September 2014 at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, on the birth anniversary of Deendayal Upadhyaya. Its aim is to turn India into a global manufacturing hub by making it easier to do business, drawing in investment, building skills and protecting intellectual property, and it began with twenty-five sectors from automobiles and textiles to electronics and defence production. Its logo is a striding lion made of gears, standing for strength and manufacture. Option A is wrong because November 2012 is before this government took office and no such programme existed then. Option C is wrong because January 2014 is also earlier than the launch; it is often confused with Startup India, which came on 16 January 2016. Option D is wrong because September 2016 is two years after the launch. Exam tip: Make in India 25 September 2014, Digital India 1 July 2015, Startup India 16 January 2016.

The correct answer is A, Port. A port is the socket on a computer where an external device is plugged in, so that the keyboard, mouse, printer, monitor or pen drive can exchange data with the machine. Common ones are the USB port, the HDMI and VGA display ports, the audio jack and the Ethernet port, and older machines had serial and parallel ports. Ports may be physical sockets or, in networking, numbered software ports such as 80 for HTTP. Option B is wrong because a ring is a network topology in which computers are joined in a closed loop. Option C is wrong because a bus is the set of internal wires that carries data, addresses and control signals inside the computer, not a socket for accessories. Option D is wrong because Zip is a file compression format and the name of an old removable disk drive. Exam tip: port connects, bus carries.

The correct answer is B, Article 13. Article 13 declares that any law inconsistent with or in derogation of the fundamental rights is void, and it binds both the laws made before the Constitution and those made after it. It is the article that makes the rights enforceable, because it gives the Supreme Court and the High Courts the power of judicial review over ordinary legislation. Article 13(3) defines law widely enough to cover ordinances, orders, rules, notifications and even custom, and clause (4), added by the 24th Amendment, keeps constitutional amendments out of this definition. Option A is wrong because Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws. Option C is wrong because Article 11 lets Parliament regulate the right of citizenship by law. Option D is wrong because Article 12 only defines the term State for this Part. Exam tip: 12 defines State, 13 voids inconsistent laws, 14 equality.

The correct answer is A, Buffer memory situated between the CPU and RAM. Cache is a small, very fast memory that sits between the processor and the main memory and holds the instructions and data the processor has used most recently. Because reading from RAM is slower than the speed at which the CPU works, the cache saves the processor from waiting, and a request that is served from it is called a cache hit. It is built from static RAM and is arranged in levels, L1 inside the core, then L2 and the shared L3, growing larger and slower at each step. Option B is wrong because ROM holds permanent start-up instructions and is not the memory the cache speeds up. Option C is wrong because the cache serves the CPU, not the path between ROM and RAM. Option D is wrong because MOS names a transistor technology, not a memory unit. Exam tip: speed order registers, cache, RAM, secondary storage.

The correct answer is D, All of the above. A high-level language is written in words close to English and has to be turned into machine code by a compiler or an interpreter, so the programmer need not know the processor at all. All three named languages are of this kind. COBOL, from 1959, was built for business data processing and Grace Hopper was central to its design. PASCAL, designed by Niklaus Wirth around 1970 and named after Blaise Pascal, was made for teaching structured programming. BASIC, written by Kemeny and Kurtz in 1964, was the beginners language of early home computers. Options A, B and C are each individually correct but incomplete, and the question asks for the choice that covers every high-level language listed, so the fuller option D is the right one. Exam tip: machine and assembly language are low level, C, COBOL, BASIC, PASCAL, FORTRAN and Java are high level.

The correct answer is B, Vinoba Bhave. Acharya Vinoba Bhave won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1958, in the category of community leadership, and was the first Indian to receive it. The award was created in 1957 in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, the President of the Philippines who died in an air crash that year, and it is often called Asia’s Nobel Prize. Vinoba Bhave was honoured for the Bhoodan movement he began at Pochampally in 1951, walking from village to village to persuade landowners to give land to the landless. Option A is wrong because the cartoonist R. K. Laxman received the award much later, in 1984. Option C is wrong because Jawaharlal Nehru never received it. Option D is wrong because Mahatma Gandhi died in 1948, nine years before the award was instituted. Exam tip: Magsaysay Award began 1957, first Indian Vinoba Bhave 1958, Mother Teresa 1962.

The correct answer is B, Painting. Amritlal Vegad, born in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh in 1928, was a painter and collage artist who trained at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose, and later taught art in Jabalpur. He is remembered for collages made from torn pieces of coloured paper, and for the sketches and paintings with which he filled his Hindi travel writing on the Narmada, a river he walked along for thousands of kilometres. That is why Madhya Pradesh papers place him with the visual arts rather than the performing arts. Option A is wrong because he worked on flat surfaces in paper and colour, not in stone or metal. Option C is wrong because he was never a singer. Option D is wrong because he had no place in music; that misreading comes from grouping every artist under the performing arts. Exam tip: Vegad, Jabalpur, painting and collage, Narmada travelogues in Hindi.

The correct answer is A, Licence-Permit-Quota Raj. The New Industrial Policy of 24 July 1991 abolished industrial licensing for all but a short list of industries, so a firm no longer needed a government permit to start production, to expand or to import. That system of licences, permits and quotas, named the Licence-Permit-Quota Raj by C. Rajagopalachari, had governed Indian industry since the Industries Act of 1951. The reforms came in a balance of payments crisis under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, and are remembered as liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Option B is wrong because the banks nationalised in 1969 and 1980 stayed in public hands. Option C is wrong because subsidies on fertiliser, food and power continue to this day. Option D is wrong because cooperative banks still work under the Reserve Bank and state registrars. Exam tip: 1991 reforms, licensing kept for only a handful of industries.

The correct answer is B, ISRO. Vyommitra is a half-humanoid robot built by the Indian Space Research Organisation and shown to the public in January 2020. Its name joins the Sanskrit words vyoma, meaning sky or space, and mitra, meaning friend. The robot is meant to ride on an uncrewed test flight of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, where it will sit in the crew seat, work the panels, monitor the cabin and speak with the ground station, so that engineers learn how a crew module behaves before astronauts fly in it. Option A is wrong because C-DAC in Pune builds the PARAM series of supercomputers. Option C is wrong because the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai does basic research in physics and mathematics. Option D is wrong because the DRDO develops missiles, radars and other defence systems. Exam tip: Gaganyaan and Vyommitra belong to ISRO, PARAM to C-DAC.

The correct answer is C, Avanti. Chanda Pradyota ruled Avanti, the mahajanapada of western and central India whose capital was Ujjayini, the modern Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. He founded the Pradyota dynasty and was a contemporary of the Buddha, of Bimbisara of Magadha and of Udayana of Vatsa, and his fiery temper earned him the name Chanda, the cruel. Avanti was one of the four strong powers, with Magadha, Kosala and Vatsa, that swallowed the smaller states in the sixth century BCE, and it was finally absorbed by Magadha under the Shishunaga dynasty. Option A is wrong because Kashi, with its capital at Varanasi, was ruled by kings such as Brahmadatta. Option B is wrong because Anga had its capital at Champa and was annexed by Bimbisara. Option D is wrong because Vajji was a confederacy of clans led by the Lichchhavis with its centre at Vaishali, not a monarchy. Exam tip: Avanti, Ujjayini, Chanda Pradyota.

The correct answer is B, F. The hexadecimal system has base sixteen, so it needs sixteen symbols for a single place. The digits 0 to 9 give the first ten values and the letters A to F stand for the remaining six, with A as 10, B as 11, C as 12, D as 13, E as 14 and F as 15. One hexadecimal digit therefore holds exactly four bits, which is why memory addresses, colour codes such as FF0000 for red and machine code are written in hex: a long binary string becomes short and easy to read. Option A is wrong because stopping at C would give only thirteen symbols, too few for base sixteen. Option C is wrong because stopping at B leaves twelve. Option D is wrong because stopping at D leaves fourteen, still short of sixteen. Exam tip: binary base 2, octal base 8 using 0 to 7, hexadecimal base 16 using 0 to 9 and A to F.

The correct answer is C, Pisciculture. The Blue Revolution means the rapid rise in fish production, so it belongs to pisciculture, the rearing of fish. In India it began with the Fish Farmers Development Agency set up in the early 1970s, and Dr Hiralal Chaudhuri, who worked out induced breeding in carp, is called its father. The effort continued through the Neel Kranti Mission and then the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, and India today is among the largest fish producers in the world, with inland fisheries giving most of the catch. Option A is wrong because floriculture, the growing of flowers, comes under the Golden Revolution in horticulture. Option B is wrong because sericulture is the rearing of silkworms for silk. Option D is wrong because horticulture, the growing of fruit and vegetables, is linked to the Golden Revolution. Exam tip: Blue for fish, White for milk, Yellow for oilseeds, Green for food grains.

The correct answer is D, Ability. Bias in an artificial intelligence system is traced to three sources, the data it learns from, the algorithm that learns, and the people who build and use it; ability is not one of them, because the skill of a model is a measure of how well it performs, not a place where unfairness enters. Data bias appears when the training set leaves out or under-represents a group, as with a face recognition system trained mostly on one kind of face. Algorithmic bias comes from the choices made in designing a model, such as the features it is allowed to use. Human bias enters through labelling, sampling and the assumptions of the team. Options A, B and C are therefore wrong answers to this question because each one is a genuine source of bias. Exam tip: remember data, algorithm and people as the three sources of AI bias.

The correct answer is B, Papaver Somniferum. Opium is the dried latex of the opium poppy, whose botanical name is Papaver somniferum; the second word means sleep bringing. The milky latex is collected by making shallow cuts in the unripe capsule, and from it come the medicines morphine and codeine, used to control pain and cough. India grows the crop only under licence from the Narcotics Commissioner at Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, and the licensed districts lie in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which is why state papers ask this question. Option A is wrong because Emblica officinalis is amla, the Indian gooseberry, rich in vitamin C. Option C is wrong because Rauvolfia serpentina is sarpagandha, the source of reserpine used for high blood pressure. Option D is wrong because Cinchona species yield quinine, the old treatment for malaria. Exam tip: opium Papaver somniferum, amla Emblica officinalis, quinine from Cinchona.

The correct answer is C, Ctrl + tab. In Google Chrome, holding Control and pressing Tab moves to the next open tab on the right, and the pair Control, Shift and Tab moves back to the previous one. Chrome also lets a tab be opened with Control and T, closed with Control and W, and the last closed tab reopened with Control, Shift and T, while Control with a number from 1 to 8 jumps straight to that tab. Option A is wrong because Alt and Tab is a Windows shortcut that switches between open programs, not between tabs inside the browser. Option B is wrong because Shift, Control and Alt together are only modifier keys and do nothing on their own. Option D is wrong because Control, Alt and Delete opens the Windows security screen from which the Task Manager can be started. Exam tip: Ctrl + Tab next tab, Ctrl + T new tab, Ctrl + W close tab.

The correct answer is B, Impact. A daisy wheel printer prints by striking the paper, so it is an impact printer. It carries a flat wheel with spokes, each spoke ending in a moulded letter or figure, and the wheel looks like the petals of a daisy, which gives it its name. A hammer hits the chosen petal against an inked ribbon and presses the character onto the paper, exactly as a typewriter does. It gives clean letter quality text but is noisy, slow and cannot draw pictures. Option A is wrong because non impact printers such as inkjet, laser and thermal printers never touch the paper with a type element. Option C is wrong because a laser printer forms the image with a laser beam and toner powder, without any striking. Option D is wrong because a daisy wheel is a character printer, printing one character at a time, while a line printer prints a whole line. Exam tip: impact printers are dot matrix, daisy wheel, drum and chain.

The correct answer is D, Zero-Based Budgeting. In zero based budgeting every item of expenditure starts from a zero base and has to be justified afresh for the coming period, instead of being carried over because it existed last year. Each activity is examined for whether it is needed at all, and only then for how much it should get, so wasteful schemes are cut out. The method was developed by Peter Pyhrr at Texas Instruments around 1970, and the Government of India adopted it for the expenditure of its ministries from the second half of the 1980s. Option A is wrong because incremental budgeting simply adds a margin to last year figures. Option B is wrong because a flexible budget is one that changes with the level of output or activity. Option C is wrong because a static budget is fixed for a single planned level of activity and is not revised. Exam tip: zero based budgeting starts from zero, Peter Pyhrr, adopted in India in the 1980s.

The correct answer is C, The Competition Act, 2002. Competition policy in India rests on the Competition Act of 2002, which was passed on the advice of the Raghavan Committee after liberalisation, and it replaced the older monopolies law. The Act forbids agreements that harm competition, such as cartels that fix prices or share markets, forbids the abuse of a dominant position, and requires large mergers and acquisitions to be cleared in advance. It is enforced by the Competition Commission of India, which was set up in 2003 and began hearing cases in 2009, with appeals going to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal. Option A is wrong because the Companies Act of 2013 governs the formation and running of companies. Option B is wrong because the MRTP Act of 1969 was repealed when this Act came into force. Option D is wrong because the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 protects buyers against unfair trade practices. Exam tip: MRTP 1969 replaced by Competition Act 2002, regulator CCI.

The correct answer is B, John McCarthy. The American computer scientist John McCarthy is called the father of artificial intelligence because he coined the term itself in his proposal for the Dartmouth summer research project of 1956, the meeting at which the field was born. He also created LISP in 1958, the language in which most early artificial intelligence work was written, argued for time sharing on computers, and received the Turing Award in 1971. Option A is wrong because Alan Turing is honoured as the father of computer science and of the Turing test, which asks whether a machine can be told apart from a person in conversation, but he did not name the subject. Option C is wrong because Blaise Pascal built the Pascaline, a mechanical adding machine, in the seventeenth century. Option D is wrong because Dartmouth is the college where the 1956 conference was held, not a person. Exam tip: McCarthy named artificial intelligence in 1956 and wrote LISP.

The correct answer is D, 2010. The National Green Tribunal was set up on 18 October 2010 under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010. It is a special court for cases about environmental protection, forests and other natural resources, and it is required to dispose of an application within six months. India was the third country in the world, after Australia and New Zealand, to create such a body. Its principal bench sits in New Delhi, with zonal benches at Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai, and it is headed by a retired Supreme Court judge. Option A is wrong because 2007 is the year the Tribunal was first proposed, not created. Option B is wrong because 2008 saw no such law. Option C is wrong because 2009 is the year the Ministry of Environment moved the bill, which became law only in 2010. Exam tip: NGT Act 2010, tribunal from 18 October 2010, principal bench New Delhi.

The correct answer is C, Application software. MS Word is a word processor made by Microsoft, and any program written to do a particular job for the user is application software. It runs on top of an operating system and is used to type, edit, format and print documents, saving them with the .docx extension. Software is broadly of two kinds: system software, which runs the machine itself, and application software, which does the user’s work. Option A is wrong because an operating system such as Windows, Linux or Android manages the hardware and gives other programs a place to run; MS Word needs one to work. Option B is wrong because a processing device is hardware, like the CPU, and MS Word cannot be touched. Option D is wrong because input devices such as the keyboard, mouse and scanner feed data into the computer. Exam tip: Windows is system software, MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint are application software.

The correct answer is C, Kanpur. The Indian Institute of Pulses Research works at Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and is one of the institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. It began in 1984 as the Project Directorate on Pulses and was raised to an institute in 1993. Its work is on chickpea, pigeonpea, lentil, mungbean, urdbean and field pea: breeding better varieties, protecting the crop from disease and pests, and advising farmers, which matters because India is the largest producer and consumer of pulses in the world. Option A is wrong because Bhopal has the Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering. Option B is wrong because Patna has the ICAR Research Complex for the Eastern Region. Option D is wrong because Hyderabad has the Indian Institute of Rice Research and the Institute of Millets Research. Exam tip: Kanpur pulses, Hyderabad rice and millets, Shimla potato, Lucknow sugarcane.

The correct answer is C, c. The Attorney General of India is dealt with in Article 76, which falls in Part V of the Constitution, the part on the Union, and not in Part XIII. Part XIII carries Articles 301 to 307 on trade, commerce and intercourse within the territory of India, so the pairing in c is the mismatched one. The Attorney General is appointed by the President, must be qualified to be a Supreme Court judge, is the first law officer of the country and has the right to speak in both Houses without a vote. Option A is wrong because the Fundamental Duties in Article 51A really are in Part IV A, added by the 42nd Amendment. Option B is wrong because Part VI, Articles 152 to 237, does cover the States. Option D is wrong because Part XIV, Articles 308 to 323, does cover services under the Union and the States. Exam tip: Attorney General Article 76, Part V; Advocate General Article 165, Part VI.

The correct answer is B, It is not enforceable. The Preamble states the aims and the source of authority of the Constitution, but it gives no right and imposes no duty that a court can enforce, so no one can go to court merely on the strength of the Preamble. In the Berubari Union case of 1960 the Supreme Court called it a key to the makers’ minds and held it was not part of the Constitution; in Kesavananda Bharati in 1973 the Court corrected that and held the Preamble is part of the Constitution and can be amended without touching the basic structure, yet it remains non-justiciable. Option A is wrong because courts do not grant relief on the Preamble alone. Option C is wrong because there is no special situation in which it becomes enforceable. Option D is wrong because option B is right. Exam tip: Preamble is part of the Constitution but non-justiciable; amended once, by the 42nd Amendment in 1976.