Static GK Mixed Quiz: Set 34

The correct answer is A, Dhaka. The BIMSTEC Secretariat was opened at Dhaka in Bangladesh in 2014, seventeen years after the grouping was created by the Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997. Option B is wrong because Kathmandu is the seat of the SAARC Secretariat and also hosted a BIMSTEC summit, which makes it the strongest distractor. Option C is wrong because Bangkok is where the founding declaration was signed, and Thailand leads the connectivity sector, but the permanent office is not there; the same founded-here, housed-there pattern appears with ASEAN. Option D is wrong because Colombo hosted the fifth summit in 2022, at which the BIMSTEC Charter was adopted, and Sri Lanka leads the science, technology and innovation sector, but it holds no secretariat. BIMSTEC has seven members, five from South Asia and two from Southeast Asia.

The correct answer is B, Unity, Faith, Sacrifice. The Indian National Army took 'Ittehad, Etmad, Qurbani' as its motto, and those three words mean unity, faith and sacrifice.

Subhas Chandra Bose reorganised the INA at Singapore in 1943 and gave it the war cry 'Jai Hind' and the marching song 'Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja'. The army had a women's regiment named after Rani Lakshmibai, which was led by Captain Lakshmi Sahgal.

Option A, Unity and Discipline, is the motto of the National Cadet Corps. Option C, Do or Die, was Gandhi's call to the people in the Quit India Movement of 1942. Option D, Service before self, is a general service slogan and was not the motto of the INA.

Exam tip: INA — motto Ittehad, Etmad, Qurbani; slogan Jai Hind; founded 1942 and reorganised by Bose in 1943.

The correct answer is C, 9 October. The Universal Postal Union was created by the Treaty of Bern signed on 9 October 1874, and the anniversary of that treaty is kept as World Post Day; India observes National Postal Week from this date. Option A is wrong because 1 July 1876 is the day India itself joined the Universal Postal Union, becoming the first Asian member, which is a different fact. Option B is wrong because 15 August is the date the PIN code system came into use, as well as Independence Day. Option D is wrong because 21 November 1947 is the day the first commemorative stamp of independent India was issued. All four dates belong to this topic, which is exactly why the question is set this way.

The correct answer is D, Foreign Policy of India. Panchsheel is the name given to the five principles that guide India's conduct towards other countries.

The five are mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. They were written into the preamble of the agreement on trade and intercourse with the Tibet region of China, signed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai on 29 April 1954. The word itself comes from Buddhist usage, where the five rules of conduct are called panchsheel, and these principles later fed into the non-aligned movement.

A is wrong: the Fundamental Duties were added by the 42nd Amendment in 1976 and now number eleven. B is wrong: NITI Aayog is a policy think tank set up in 2015 and has nothing to do with this term. C is wrong: inter-state relations are dealt with in Articles 261 to 263 of the Constitution.

Exam tip: Panchsheel means the five principles signed by Nehru and Zhou Enlai on 29 April 1954, the base of India's non-alignment.

The correct answer is C, Pakistan. BIMSTEC has seven members: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand, of which five are in South Asia and two in Southeast Asia. Pakistan is a member of SAARC but not of BIMSTEC, which is the main reason India has given the Bay of Bengal grouping greater weight since the SAARC summit process stalled after Kathmandu in 2014. Option A is wrong because Nepal joined in 2004, along with Bhutan, and leads the people-to-people contact sector. Option B is wrong because Bhutan joined in the same year and leads the environment and climate change sector. Option D is wrong because Myanmar joined in December 1997, turning BIST-EC into BIMST-EC, and leads the agriculture and food security sector. Note also that the Maldives, a SAARC member, is not in BIMSTEC either.

The correct answer is B, the cow. Nepal declares the cow its national animal, and the choice follows from its religious standing in the country. Option A, the yak, is the familiar high-altitude animal of the Himalayas and is the obvious guess, which is why it is placed first. Option C, the Himalayan monal, locally called the danphe, is the national bird of Nepal, so this option tests whether the stem was read as animal or bird. Option D, the snow leopard, is the national animal of Afghanistan and is found in the Himalayas as well, which makes it plausible here. The set of Nepali symbols worth memorising is the cow as animal, the danphe as bird, the rhododendron or lali gurans as flower, and a flag that is the only national flag in the world which is not a quadrilateral.

The correct answer is C, 1876. India joined the Universal Postal Union on 1 July 1876 and was the first country in Asia to do so, which gave Indian mail access to the Union's common rules for international post. Option A is wrong because 1854 is the year of the Post Office Act that reorganised the posts within India and of the first all-India postage stamps. Option B is wrong because 1874 is the year the Universal Postal Union itself was founded by the Treaty of Bern, two years before India's accession, and mistaking the founding year for the year of joining is the usual error. Option D is wrong because 1898 is the year of the Indian Post Office Act, the consolidating law that remained in force until the Post Office Act of 2023 replaced it.

The correct answer is C, 1959. Parliament passed the Arms Act in 1959, and it came into force in 1962 along with the Arms Rules. It replaced the colonial Indian Arms Act of 1878, which the British had brought in after the Revolt of 1857 to disarm Indians while exempting Europeans. The 1959 Act governs who may acquire, keep, carry, make, sell or import firearms and ammunition, and it makes a licence necessary for almost all of them. An amendment in 2019 cut the number of licensed firearms a person may hold from three to two and raised the punishment for illegal manufacture and trade. Option A is wrong because 1951 is the year of the first general election and the first constitutional amendment. Option B is wrong because 1955 gave India the Citizenship Act and the Hindu Marriage Act. Option D is wrong because no arms law was enacted in 1964. Exam tip: Indian Arms Act 1878 was colonial; the Arms Act 1959 is the law in force, amended in 2019.

The correct answer is B, 1 January 2006. SAFTA was signed at the twelfth SAARC summit held at Islamabad in 2004 and came into force on 1 January 2006, replacing the SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement, which had been signed in 1993 and had come into force in 1995. Option A is wrong because 2004 is the year of signature, not of entry into force, and the two-year gap between them is exactly what this question tests. Option C is wrong because 2007 is the year Afghanistan was admitted to SAARC at the New Delhi summit, a different landmark of the same decade. Option D is wrong because 2010 is the year the South Asian University opened at New Delhi as a SAARC institution. Keep the pairs apart: SAPTA signed 1993 and in force 1995, SAFTA signed 2004 and in force 2006.

The correct answer is B, Brahmaputra. Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam and is the largest river island in India. It is inhabited, it has been made a district of Assam, and it is famous for the satras, the Vaishnava monasteries founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva. Its area has been shrinking steadily because of erosion by the river.

Option A, the Ganga, is the longest river of India and forms the Sundarbans delta with the Brahmaputra and the Meghna, but Majuli is not on it. Option C, the Godavari, is the longest river of peninsular India and is called the Dakshin Ganga; it forms a large delta on the eastern coast. Option D, the Mahanadi, flows through Chhattisgarh and Odisha and is dammed at Hirakud, the longest dam in India. All four are major rivers, so the question checks a single precise pairing rather than a general idea.

The correct answer is A, Dal Lake, Srinagar. The post office was opened in 2011 on a houseboat on the Dal Lake in Jammu and Kashmir and is the first of its kind anywhere in the world, offering ordinary counter services along with a small philately museum. Option B is wrong because Vembanad in Kerala is India's longest lake and is known for the Nehru Trophy boat race, not for a post office. Option C is wrong because Loktak in Manipur is famous for its floating phumdis and the Keibul Lamjao National Park, the only floating national park in the world, which is a related but distinct fact. Option D is wrong because Chilika in Odisha is Asia's largest brackish water lagoon and a Ramsar site, again with no floating post office.

The correct answer is A, Alfred Nobel. The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patented dynamite in 1867, a safe way of handling nitroglycerine, and the fortune he made from explosives endowed the Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901. Option B is wrong because Rudolf Diesel invented the compression ignition engine that carries his name, not an explosive. Option C is wrong because Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction and built the first dynamo, a machine that generates electricity; the similarity between the words dynamite and dynamo is exactly the trap the paper setter is laying. Option D is wrong because James Watt improved the steam engine, and the unit of power is named after him. Keep the chain in mind: Nobel, dynamite, 1867, and the prizes that began in 1901 on the anniversary of his death, 10 December.

The correct answer is B, Tashkent. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, created at Shanghai in 2001 out of the Shanghai Five of 1996, keeps its Secretariat at Beijing and its Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, usually shortened to RATS, at Tashkent in Uzbekistan, where it coordinates intelligence and joint exercises against terrorism, separatism and extremism. Option A is wrong because Beijing holds the Secretariat, the other of the two seats, and the question is built on the pair. Option C is wrong because Astana in Kazakhstan hosted the summit of 2017 at which India and Pakistan were admitted as full members, having been observers until then. Option D is wrong because Moscow, although Russia is a founder, holds neither organ. For Indian papers the two facts to keep are the 2017 accession at Astana and the split of the two seats between Beijing and Tashkent.

The correct answer is C, Bengaluru. The airport is named after Kempegowda, the sixteenth century chieftain regarded as the founder of the city. Option A is wrong because Hyderabad is served by the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad, which replaced the older Begumpet airport. Option B is wrong because Chennai is served by the Chennai International Airport at Meenambakkam. Option D is wrong because Pune has its own airport at Lohegaon and is not connected with the Kempegowda name. Airport naming is a steady source of matching questions, so group the big ones together: Indira Gandhi for Delhi, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj for Mumbai, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for Kolkata, Kempegowda for Bengaluru, Rajiv Gandhi for Hyderabad and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for Ahmedabad. Guwahati, the gateway to the North East, carries the name of Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi, and Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is named after Veer Savarkar.

The correct answer is B, Himachal Pradesh. The post office at Hikkim, a village in the Lahaul and Spiti district, stands at roughly 14,567 feet and is counted as the highest in the world; mail from it is carried down the valley on foot and by road. Option A is wrong because Uttarakhand, despite its high Himalayan settlements and shrines such as Badrinath, has no post office at this altitude. Option C is wrong because Sikkim, although entirely mountainous, holds no such record. Option D is wrong because Arunachal Pradesh is known in this topic for other firsts, such as being the first state in India to see the sunrise, and not for the highest post office. Hikkim is also often paired in questions with the floating post office at Srinagar.

The correct answer is A, the Althing of Iceland. The Althing was founded in 930 at Thingvellir, where free men gathered in the open to settle disputes and declare law, and it still functions as the legislature of Iceland, which makes it the oldest surviving parliament in the world. Option B is wrong because the British Parliament, though called the mother of parliaments and the model for the Westminster system, grew from the thirteenth century councils and is younger. Option C is wrong because the Storting of Norway was set up in 1814 with the Norwegian constitution. Option D is wrong because the Riksdag of Sweden, although it has medieval roots, took its modern form much later. Oldest means Iceland, mother of parliaments means Britain.

The correct answer is C, 2018. India Post Payments Bank was launched on 1 September 2018 and is wholly owned by the Government of India under the Department of Posts. As a payments bank it may accept deposits within the limit set by the Reserve Bank and offer remittances, bill payments and direct benefit transfers, but it cannot lend or issue credit cards. Option A is wrong because 2014 is the year the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was launched, a financial inclusion scheme often confused with this one. Option B is wrong because 2016 is the year the Reserve Bank granted licences to several payments banks, but India Post's own bank began work only two years later. Option D is wrong because no such launch took place in 2020.

The correct answer is A, Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Ram Mohan Roy brought out Mirat-ul-Akhbar in Persian from 1822, besides the Bengali Sambad Kaumudi from 1821, and he closed the Persian journal in protest when the Licensing Regulations of 1823 required a licence to print. He also petitioned against those regulations, which is why he is counted among the first defenders of press freedom in India. Option B is wrong because Devendranath Tagore led the Brahmo Samaj after Roy and is associated with the journal Tattvabodhini Patrika. Option C is wrong because Harish Chandra Mukherjee edited the Hindu Patriot, which exposed the oppression of indigo planters in Bengal. Option D is wrong because Fardunjee Marzban started the Gujarati paper Bombay Samachar in 1822. Sambad Kaumudi is also the paper through which Roy campaigned against sati before its abolition in 1829.

The correct answer is B, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Lakshadweep. Zone 6 covers the far south of the peninsula together with the Lakshadweep islands, so PIN codes in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai both begin with 6. Option A is wrong because Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka form zone 5, immediately to the north of zone 6, and this neighbouring pair is the commonest mix-up. Option C is wrong because Bihar and Jharkhand together form zone 8, the smallest of the geographical zones. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa make up zone 4 in the centre and west of the country. Remembering that the zones sweep clockwise from the north-west makes this group easy to place. Candidates should also note that zone 6 contains the southernmost post offices of the mainland, and that Lakshadweep, although an island group in the Arabian Sea, is attached to this zone for postal purposes rather than to the western zone 4.

The correct answer is C, Kothari commission 1966. The Kothari Commission, which worked from 1964 to 1966, recommended the three language formula for schools, and the policy of 1968 later adopted it. The commission was headed by Daulat Singh Kothari, then chairman of the University Grants Commission, and its report was titled Education and National Development. Under the formula a pupil learns the regional language or mother tongue, Hindi and English, so that the country keeps a link language while regional languages are respected. The same commission is remembered for asking that six per cent of national income be spent on education. A is wrong because the National Policy on Education of 1968 only accepted and announced what the commission had proposed. B is wrong because the policy of 1986 restated the formula and added the idea of a national system of education. D is wrong because the Chattopadhyaya Commission, which sat from 1983 to 1985, examined teachers and their status. Exam tip: the Kothari Commission of 1964 to 1966 proposed it and the 1968 policy adopted it.