Himadri, India's first Arctic research station, is situated in which country's territory?

The correct answer is C, Dakshin Gangotri. It was built during the Indian expedition of 1983 to 1984 in Queen Maud Land and was India's first permanent base on the continent. Because it stood on a floating ice shelf, the movement of the ice and the steady accumulation of snow buried it, and it was given up as a working station in 1990, after which it has served only as a supply base and transit camp.

Option A, Maitri, is the second station, commissioned in 1989, and is the answer most candidates give because it is the station they have heard of. Option B, Bharati, is the third station, commissioned in 2012. Option D, Himadri, is not in Antarctica at all; it is India's Arctic station in Svalbard, Norway, and it is placed here precisely to catch the confusion between the two poles. The order to remember is Dakshin Gangotri, then Maitri, then Bharati.

The correct answer is B, Schirmacher Oasis in Queen Maud Land. Maitri was commissioned in 1989 on the rocky Schirmacher Oasis, a narrow ice-free strip, next to the freshwater lake named Priyadarshini. Standing on rock rather than on ice is precisely why Maitri has survived while the earlier station on the ice shelf did not.

Option A, Larsemann Hills, is the site of Bharati, India's third station, commissioned in 2012 on the east Antarctic coast, and swapping the two sites is the commonest error here. Option C, Ny-Alesund in Svalbard, is in the Arctic and is the site of Himadri, not of any Antarctic station. Option D, the Ross Ice Shelf, is a well known Antarctic feature on the other side of the continent where several other countries have bases, but India has never built there. Fix the pair: Maitri at Schirmacher, Bharati at Larsemann.

The correct answer is C, 2012. Bharati was commissioned in 2012 at the Larsemann Hills on the coast of east Antarctica, roughly three thousand kilometres from Maitri. Having two stations so far apart lets Indian scientists study two very different sectors of the continent in the same summer season, which was the main reason for building it.

Option A, 1989, is the year Maitri was commissioned. Option B, 2008, is the year Himadri, India's Arctic station in Svalbard, was opened, so it belongs to the other pole. Option D, 2016, is the year the Himansh high-altitude glaciology station was set up in the Spiti area of Himachal Pradesh. All four years belong to this topic, which is why the question works; the chain to memorise is 1983-84 Dakshin Gangotri, 1989 Maitri, 2008 Himadri, 2012 Bharati, 2014 IndARC and 2016 Himansh.

The correct answer is B, Goa. The National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research is at Vasco-da-Gama in Goa and works under the Ministry of Earth Sciences. It was established in 1998 as the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research and was renamed in 2018, when its mandate had grown from Antarctica to the Arctic, the Southern Ocean and the Himalayan cryosphere.

Option C, Tamil Nadu, is where the National Institute of Ocean Technology is located, at Chennai; that institute builds Matsya-6000 and other ocean hardware, and candidates often mix the two bodies up. Option A, Kerala, and option D, Maharashtra, host other scientific institutions but not this one. A third name worth remembering in the same ministry is the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services at Hyderabad, which runs the tsunami early warning centre.

The correct answer is A, Dr. Syed Zahoor Qasim. A marine biologist, he led the first Indian scientific expedition to Antarctica in 1981, a voyage that established India's presence on the continent and paved the way for accession to the Antarctic Treaty and for Consultative Party status in 1983. Indian expeditions have gone to Antarctica every year since.

Option B, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, was the founder of the Indian space programme and died in 1971, long before this expedition. Option C, Dr. Satish Dhawan, headed the space programme in the 1970s and 1980s and is associated with the launch centre named after him, not with polar science. Option D, Dr. Harsh Gupta, is a distinguished Indian earth scientist who has worked on seismology and oceanography, but he did not lead the first expedition. Pair Qasim with 1981 and the ship that carried the team south.