Static GK Mixed Quiz: Set 13

The correct answer is B, France. The International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, was founded at Vienna in 1923 and moved its headquarters to Lyon in France in 1989, where its general secretariat works today. It helps police forces of member countries exchange information, issues notices such as the red notice for wanted persons, and runs databases on stolen documents and vehicles. In India the Central Bureau of Investigation acts as the national central bureau for Interpol.

Option A, Austria, is where the body was founded, which makes it the trap, and Vienna still holds the IAEA and OPEC. Option C, Switzerland, holds many international bodies at Geneva and Basel but not Interpol. Option D, Belgium, is the seat of NATO and the European Union at Brussels, and also of Europol's partner institutions, but Europol itself is at The Hague.

The correct answer is A, Brazil. Brazil is called the Coffee Bowl of the World because it grows and sends out more coffee than any other country and has done so for more than a century. Its coffee belt lies in the south-east, in the states of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo and Parana, where the deep red soil called terra rossa, the warm climate and the rolling plateau suit the plant. The large estates there are known as fazendas, and the port of Santos handles much of the export. Coffee needs a hot, wet climate with well drained slopes, which is why it is a plantation crop of the tropics. B is wrong because Mexico is a smaller coffee grower and is better known for maize and silver. C is wrong because India grows coffee mainly in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu but is far behind Brazil. D is wrong because Serbia has a cool climate that cannot support coffee at all. Exam tip: Brazil Coffee Bowl of the World, Sri Lanka Pearl of the Indian Ocean, Cuba Sugar Bowl of the World.

The correct answer is B, Kolkata. The Geological Survey of India was founded in 1851, mainly to look for coal for the railways, and it remained in Kolkata, which was then the capital. It maps the rocks and minerals of the country, and the Botanical Survey of 1890 and the Zoological Survey of 1916 also have their headquarters in the same city.

Option A, Dehradun, is the headquarters of the Survey of India, which maps the land surface, and of the Forest Research Institute, so the two surveys are easily confused. Option C, Nagpur, holds the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the central office of the Indian Bureau of Mines. Option D, Hyderabad, holds the National Geophysical Research Institute and the Atomic Minerals Directorate, both of which also work on the earth sciences.

The correct answer is D, India, Australia, Japan and the US. Malabar 2020 was held in two phases in November 2020, the first in the Bay of Bengal off Visakhapatnam and the second in the Arabian Sea, and Australia joined India, Japan and the United States in it. Malabar began in 1992 as a bilateral naval exercise between the Indian Navy and the US Navy. Japan became a permanent participant in 2015. Australia had taken part once in 2007 and then returned in 2020, which brought the navies of all four Quad countries together in the same exercise. The drills cover anti-submarine warfare, air defence, cross-deck flying and live firing. Option A is wrong because that was the three-nation line-up from 2015 to 2019, before Australia rejoined. Option B is wrong because Israel has never been part of Malabar. Option C is wrong for the same reason, and it also leaves out Japan, a permanent member. Exam tip: Malabar started 1992 as India-US, Japan permanent from 2015, Australia from 2020 — the four Quad navies.

The correct answer is A, Dadabhai Naoroji. Naoroji was a founder of the Indian National Congress, its President three times, and the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons. His book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India set out the drain theory, which argued that British rule was transferring India's wealth to Britain, and his long service to the national cause earned him the name Grand Old Man of India.

Option B, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, is remembered as the political guru of Gandhi and the founder of the Servants of India Society. Option C, Surendranath Banerjee, is called the Indian Burke and founded the Indian Association. Option D, Pherozeshah Mehta, was called the Lion of Bombay. All four are moderate leaders of the same generation, which is what makes this question a genuine test of recall.

The correct answer is B, Cambodia. Angkor Wat stands near Siem Reap in Cambodia and is the largest religious monument in the world. It was built in the early twelfth century by King Suryavarman II of the Khmer empire as a temple of Vishnu, and it later became a Buddhist place of worship. The temple faces west, is ringed by a wide moat, and its towers are shaped like lotus buds; UNESCO put the whole Angkor complex on the World Heritage list in 1992. Angkor Wat also appears on the national flag of Cambodia, which is the only national flag in the world that carries a building. Option A is wrong because Vietnam is known for Ha Long Bay and the My Son Cham temples. Option C is wrong because Thailand's best known temple is Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. Option D is wrong because the Philippines is known for its rice terraces and baroque churches. Exam tip: Angkor Wat, Cambodia, built by Suryavarman II and shown on that country's flag.

The correct answer is D, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO is the military alliance of European and North American states, formed by the North Atlantic Treaty signed at Washington on 4 April 1949 by twelve founding members, and its membership has grown in rounds since then. Its headquarters is at Brussels in Belgium, and Article 5 of the treaty is its core promise: an armed attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. Note that the paper's figure of 30 members belongs to the year the question was set, as the alliance has admitted more states since. Options A, B and C name no real body; they are invented labels built from military-sounding words, and none of them appears in any list of international organisations. A useful contrast is the Warsaw Pact of 1955, the Soviet-led bloc that stood against NATO until it dissolved in 1991. Exam tip: NATO — treaty signed 4 April 1949 at Washington, headquarters Brussels, Article 5 for collective defence.

The correct answer is B, 2004. The committee on civil services reforms under P. C. Hota, a former Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission, was set up in 2004 and gave its report the same year. It looked at how officers are recruited, trained, posted and promoted, and suggested a fixed minimum tenure in a post, a sounder system of performance appraisal, mid-career training with examinations, and lateral entry of specialists for jobs needing domain knowledge. Many of its ideas later fed into the work of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission set up in 2005 under Veerappa Moily. Option A is wrong because 2003 saw no such committee. Option C is wrong because 2005 is the year of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission and of the Right to Information Act. Option D is wrong because by 2006 the Hota report was already being examined. Exam tip: Hota Committee 2004 on civil services reform; Second ARC 2005 under Veerappa Moily.

The correct answer is C, Survey of India. It was founded in 1767, soon after the battle of Plassey, to map the territory the East India Company had acquired, and it is therefore counted as the oldest scientific department of the country. James Rennell was its first Surveyor General, and the Great Trigonometrical Survey that measured the subcontinent and the Himalayan peaks was carried out under it. Its headquarters is at Dehradun.

Option A, the Geological Survey of India, came much later, in 1851, and works from Kolkata. Option B, the India Meteorological Department, was founded in 1875 and has its headquarters at New Delhi. Option D, the Archaeological Survey of India, was founded in 1861 with Alexander Cunningham as its first head and works from New Delhi. Only the Survey of India goes back to the eighteenth century.

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, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Valentine Chirol, a British journalist, used the phrase Father of Indian Unrest for Tilak in his writing on Indian politics, and Tilak sued him for libel in England. Tilak ran the newspapers Kesari in Marathi and The Mahratta in English, gave the country the slogan that Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it, and is called Lokmanya, meaning accepted by the people.

Option A, Aurobindo Ghosh, was tried in the Alipore bomb case and later turned to spiritual work at Pondicherry. Option B, Bipin Chandra Pal, formed the Lal Bal Pal trio with Tilak and Lajpat Rai. Option D, Lala Lajpat Rai, is Punjab Kesari and died after the lathi charge in Lahore in 1928. The three extremists are offered together on purpose, but Chirol's phrase belongs to Tilak.

The correct answer is C, Honours Your Trust. UCO Bank uses this line in its logo and advertising.

UCO Bank was founded in Kolkata in 1943 as the United Commercial Bank, and the industrialist G. D. Birla was behind its creation. It was one of the fourteen banks nationalised in July 1969, took its present name in 1985, and still has its head office in Kolkata. Taglines are a favourite one-mark question because each public sector bank keeps the same line for years.

Option A, 'Good People to bank with', belongs to Union Bank of India. Option B, 'Where every individual is committed', is the line of Bank of India. Option D, 'Faithful And Friendly', is used by Bank of Maharashtra.

Exam tip: UCO Bank - Kolkata, 1943, 'Honours Your Trust'; Union Bank - 'Good People to bank with'.

The correct answer is B, Karnal. The National Dairy Research Institute, an institution of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, works from Karnal in Haryana and does research on milk production, dairy technology and cattle breeding. The Central Soil Salinity Research Institute is in the same town.

Option A, Anand in Gujarat, is the home of Amul and of the National Dairy Development Board, so a candidate who thinks of dairy cooperatives marks it wrongly; the Board and the Institute are separate bodies. Option C, Izatnagar near Bareilly, is the seat of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, which works on animal disease. Option D, Hisar in Haryana, has the Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes and an agricultural university, but not the NDRI.

The institute began at Bengaluru in 1923 as the Imperial Institute of Animal Husbandry and Dairying and was moved to Karnal in 1955, so an older question may name Bengaluru as its first home.

The correct answer is A, Unity and Discipline. The motto of the National Cadet Corps is Unity and Discipline, in Hindi Ekta aur Anushasan. The NCC was set up in 1948 under the National Cadet Corps Act, 1948, and works under the Ministry of Defence with its headquarters in New Delhi. It trains school and college students through its Army, Navy and Air wings, and cadets holding the C certificate can become Army officers through the NCC Special Entry without writing the CDS paper. NCC Day is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of November every year. An easy way to remember the motto: a cadet's two first lessons are to stand together and to follow orders. B is wrong, because Unity and Integrity is not the NCC motto. C is wrong, because Unity and Command is a made-up pairing. D is wrong, because the word service belongs to the Indian Army's motto, Service Before Self, not to the NCC's. Exam tip: NCC, 1948, Ministry of Defence, motto Unity and Discipline, NCC Day on the fourth Sunday of November.

The correct answer is A, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He organised the Khudai Khidmatgar, the servants of God, also known as the Red Shirts, in the North West Frontier Province, and he held to non-violence so completely that he became known as the Frontier Gandhi, or Sarhadi Gandhi. His own people called him Badshah Khan, and he was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1987, the first non-Indian citizen to receive it.

Option B, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was the youngest President of the Indian National Congress and the first Education Minister of independent India, remembered on National Education Day. Option C, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, led the Muslim League and was called Quaid-e-Azam. Option D, Hakim Ajmal Khan, was a founder of Jamia Millia Islamia. Only Ghaffar Khan carries the Frontier Gandhi name.

The correct answer is B, Insat-1B. It was the first working satellite of the Indian National Satellite (INSAT) system, carried to orbit by the US Space Shuttle Challenger in August 1983. INSAT-1B was a multipurpose satellite: its transponders gave national television coverage, telephone links and weather pictures from one spot in geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km above the equator. It made nationwide Doordarshan broadcasts possible and began the INSAT series that still serves communication and meteorology. Its predecessor INSAT-1A, launched in 1982, failed early, which is why 1B is remembered as the real start. A is wrong because Bhaskara-I, launched in 1979 on a Soviet rocket, was an experimental earth-observation satellite, not a geostationary broadcaster. C is wrong because GSAT-7, launched in 2013, is the Indian Navy's dedicated communication satellite, often called Rukmini. D is wrong because RISAT-1, launched in 2012 on a PSLV, is a radar imaging satellite for earth observation. Exam tip: INSAT = communication and weather in geostationary orbit; Bhaskara and RISAT = observing the earth.

The correct answer is A, Mysuru. The Central Food Technological Research Institute, a laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, works at Mysuru in Karnataka on food processing, preservation, packaging and nutrition, and many processes used by the Indian food industry were developed there. The defence food laboratory DFRL is in the same city.

Option B, Pune, holds the National Chemical Laboratory of the CSIR and the National Institute of Virology. Option C, Lucknow, holds the Central Drug Research Institute and the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research. Option D, Nagpur, holds the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute. All four are real CSIR or research cities, which is what makes the distractors work in this question.

CFTRI was set up in 1950 in the Cheluvamba Mansion given by the Mysore royal family, which makes it one of the earliest laboratories of the CSIR chain.

The correct answer is B, Samudragupta. The historian V. A. Smith first described Samudragupta as the Napoleon of India, because of the long list of kings and republics he subdued, recorded in the Allahabad pillar inscription, or Prayag Prashasti, composed by his court poet Harisena. His coins show him as a lyre player and as a performer of the ashvamedha sacrifice.

Option A, Chandragupta Maurya, founded the Mauryan empire with the help of Chanakya and is not given this title. Option C, Harshavardhana, ruled from Thanesar and Kannauj and is the subject of Banabhatta's Harshacharita. Option D, Ashoka, is called Devanampiya Piyadasi in his own edicts and is remembered for giving up war after Kalinga, which is the opposite of a Napoleonic reputation. So B alone is correct.

The correct answer is C, Bengaluru. ISRO was formed in 1969 and its headquarters, along with the office of the Department of Space, is at Bengaluru, which also holds the U R Rao Satellite Centre where satellites are assembled and the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network.

Option A, Thiruvananthapuram, is the seat of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, where launch vehicles are designed, and of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre and IIST. Option B, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, is the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, the launch site, and is often marked by candidates who confuse the launch pad with the head office. Option D, Ahmedabad, holds the Space Applications Centre and the Physical Research Laboratory, where payloads and space science are worked on.

ISRO grew out of INCOSPAR, the committee Vikram Sarabhai set up in 1962, and it works under the Department of Space, which reports directly to the Prime Minister.

The correct answer is C, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Kalam worked on the SLV-3 launch vehicle and then led the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, out of which the Agni, Prithvi, Trishul, Akash and Nag missiles came, and that work gave him the name Missile Man of India. He served as the eleventh President of India and is also remembered as the People's President; his birthday, 15 October, is observed as World Students' Day.

Option A, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, is called the father of the Indian nuclear programme and founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Option B, Satish Dhawan, headed ISRO and gave his name to the space centre at Sriharikota. Option D, Raja Ramanna, led the Pokhran test of 1974. All four are Indian scientists, so the sobriquet, not the field, decides the answer.