The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India has its headquarters in which city?

The correct answer is D, Mumbai. Axis Bank, which began in 1994 as UTI Bank and was renamed in 2007, has its corporate office in Mumbai, the city that also holds the Reserve Bank of India, SEBI, the State Bank of India, the Central Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Bank of India and both stock exchanges. Mumbai is the financial capital of the country, so most private banks and insurers are based there.

Option A, Ahmedabad, is where Axis Bank was registered and has a large office, which makes it the trap in this question, and it is also the home of the Space Applications Centre and the Physical Research Laboratory. Option B, Bengaluru, is the headquarters of Canara Bank and of ISRO. Option C, Chennai, is the headquarters of Indian Bank and Indian Overseas Bank. None of these is the headquarters of Axis Bank.

The correct answer is A, Lucknow. SIDBI was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1990 as the principal financial institution for the promotion, financing and development of micro, small and medium enterprises, and its head office is at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. It refinances banks that lend to small units and runs the funds that support start-ups and microfinance institutions.

Option B, Mumbai, is the headquarters of NABARD and of the Export-Import Bank of India, the two institutions a candidate tends to group with SIDBI. Option C, Kanpur, is an industrial city of the same state and is the home of the Indian Institute of Technology and the National Sugar Institute, not of SIDBI. Option D, New Delhi, holds the National Housing Bank. The pair to remember is SIDBI with Lucknow.

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 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 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.