SSC 2019 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, Kushana. The Gandhara school of art grew in the north-west, around Peshawar and Taxila, and reached its height under the Kushana rulers, above all Kanishka, in the first and second centuries. Its sculptors worked in grey schist and later in stucco, and they gave the Buddha a Greek-Roman face: wavy hair, a sharp nose, heavy drapery falling in folds, and a halo behind the head. This blending of styles is why it is called the Greco-Buddhist or Indo-Greek school. The Mathura school flourished in the same Kushana period but used red sandstone and a purely Indian idiom. B is wrong because the Mauryas are known for polished stone pillars and their animal capitals. C is wrong because the Nandas left no distinct school of sculpture. D is wrong because the Cholas are remembered for bronze images such as the Nataraja, many centuries later. Exam tip: Gandhara grey schist and a Greco-Roman Buddha, Mathura red sandstone — both under the Kushanas.

The correct answer is B, Villi. Villi are the small finger-like folds on the inner wall of the small intestine, so they belong to the digestive system. Their work is to enlarge the surface through which digested food is absorbed; each villus does hold a capillary and a lymph vessel inside it, but the villus itself is not a part of the circulatory system. The human circulatory system is made of the heart, the blood and the blood vessels. A is wrong because capillaries are the thinnest vessels, where gases and nutrients pass between blood and the tissues. C is wrong because veins carry blood back to the heart and have valves to stop it flowing backwards. D is wrong because arteries carry blood away from the heart and have thick elastic walls to take the pressure. Exam tip: villi absorb digested food in the small intestine; the heart, blood and blood vessels make up the circulatory system.

The correct answer is D, Puducherry. Puducherry is a Union Territory with a legislature of its own, which is why it is said to have partial statehood. Article 239A, added in 1962, allowed Parliament to create a legislature and a council of ministers for such a territory, and the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963 gave Puducherry an Assembly and a Chief Minister, while an administrator styled Lieutenant Governor still represents the President. Delhi has a similar arrangement under Article 239AA, and Jammu and Kashmir became a Union Territory with a legislature in 2019. A is wrong because Chandigarh is administered directly, with the Governor of Punjab acting as its administrator. B and C are wrong because Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, merged into a single Union Territory in 2020, have no legislature and are run by an administrator. Exam tip: the Union Territories with legislatures are Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir.

The correct answer is B, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The Statue of Unity stands on Sadhu Bet, an island in the Narmada near the Sardar Sarovar Dam in the Narmada district of Gujarat, and it shows Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, independent India's first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, who brought the princely states into the Union. The statue is 182 metres tall, a height chosen to match the number of seats in the Gujarat Assembly, and it was unveiled on 31 October 2018, Patel's birth anniversary. Ram V. Sutar designed it, and iron collected from farmers across the country went into the work. A is wrong because M. K. Gandhi has no statue of this scale. C is wrong because Vinoba Bhave, who led the Bhoodan movement, is not its subject. D is wrong because Dr B. R. Ambedkar is honoured by other memorials, not by this statue. Exam tip: Statue of Unity — 182 m, Sardar Patel, on the Narmada in Gujarat, unveiled 31 October 2018.

The correct answer is A, To protect the lining of the stomach. The gastric glands in the stomach wall release three things: hydrochloric acid, the enzyme pepsin and mucus. The acid makes the contents strongly acidic so that pepsin can act, and the mucus coats the inner wall as a thick slippery layer so that this acid and the enzyme do not digest the stomach's own tissue. When the mucus layer breaks down the acid attacks the wall and an ulcer forms; the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is a common cause. B is wrong because fat is digested by lipase, helped by bile from the liver, mainly in the small intestine. C is wrong because germs in food are killed by the hydrochloric acid and not by mucus. D is wrong because protein is broken down by pepsin in the stomach and by trypsin further along. Exam tip: gastric juice — HCl for acid, pepsin for protein, mucus for protection of the lining.

The correct answer is A, Odisha. Odisha is the largest producer of bauxite in India and accounts for more than half of the country's output. Its ore lies in the plateau belt of Koraput and Kalahandi, where the Panchpatmali deposit worked by NALCO is the biggest in the country, and it is also mined in Sundargarh and Bolangir. Bauxite is the ore from which alumina and then aluminium is obtained, so the state carries large refineries and smelters as well. Gujarat, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh follow at a distance. B is wrong because Bihar has almost no bauxite; its old reserves went to Jharkhand when the state was divided in 2000. C is wrong because Madhya Pradesh mines bauxite in Katni and Balaghat but on a far smaller scale. D is wrong because Jharkhand's mines in Lohardaga and Gumla also yield much less than Odisha's. Exam tip: Odisha leads in bauxite, chromite and iron ore; Panchpatmali in Koraput is the largest bauxite deposit.

The correct answer is B, Nana Sahib. Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the last Peshwa Baji Rao II, led the revolt of 1857 at Kanpur. The Company had refused him the pension his father had drawn, and when the sepoys at Kanpur rose in June 1857 he joined them, was proclaimed Peshwa and drove the British garrison out of the city; Tantia Tope was his commander. The British under Havelock retook Kanpur in July, and Nana Sahib is believed to have escaped into Nepal. A is wrong because Rani Lakshmibai led the fighting at Jhansi. C is wrong because Begum Hazrat Mahal led the revolt at Lucknow in the name of her young son Birjis Qadr. D is wrong because Kunwar Singh, the old zamindar of Jagdishpur, led it in Bihar. Exam tip: Kanpur Nana Sahib, Jhansi Lakshmibai, Lucknow Begum Hazrat Mahal, Bihar Kunwar Singh, Delhi Bahadur Shah Zafar.

The correct answer is C, Jammu & Kashmir. Pashmina is the very fine wool combed from the undercoat of the Changthangi goat, reared by herders on the cold high plateau of Ladakh, and it was first spun and woven into shawls in the valley of Kashmir. The craft is traced to the fifteenth century, when Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin is said to have brought weavers from Central Asia; the shawls later reached Europe and gave English the word cashmere. A single Kani or Jamawar shawl can take months on the loom, and Kashmir Pashmina now carries a GI tag. A is wrong because Uttar Pradesh is known for Banarasi silk and chikankari. B is wrong because Punjab is known for phulkari embroidery. D is wrong because Himachal Pradesh weaves Kullu shawls and Kinnauri patterns from sheep wool. Exam tip: Pashmina — Changthangi goat of Ladakh, woven in Kashmir, GI tagged.

The correct answer is C, Thomas Munro. The Ryotwari settlement was worked out by Thomas Munro, along with Captain Alexander Read, and introduced from 1820 in the Madras Presidency, where Munro was then Governor. Under it the revenue was settled directly with the ryot, the individual cultivator, who was treated as the owner of his field for as long as he paid; there was no zamindar in between, and the demand was revised every thirty years after a survey of the soil. The system later covered much of Madras, Bombay, Assam and Berar, close to half of British India, and its high, cash demand pushed many peasants into debt. A is wrong because Warren Hastings tried the farming of revenue by auction in Bengal. B is wrong because Lord Cornwallis brought in the Permanent Settlement of 1793 with zamindars. D is wrong because Lord Ripon is remembered for local self-government and the Ilbert Bill. Exam tip: Permanent Settlement 1793 Cornwallis, Ryotwari Munro in Madras, Mahalwari in the North-Western Provinces.

The correct answer is C, Police. The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution divides subjects into three lists, and public order and police are the first two entries of the State List, so each state makes its own laws on them and runs its own force. That is why policing is called a state subject, and why central armed police forces go into a state mainly at its request or in a Union Territory. A is wrong because banking is in the Union List, which is why the Reserve Bank and the regulation of banks rest with the Centre. B is wrong because defence is the first entry of the Union List. D is wrong because forests, which were once a State List subject, were moved to the Concurrent List by the 42nd Amendment of 1976, along with education, weights and measures, and the protection of wild animals and birds. Exam tip: police and public order are State List subjects; forests and education moved to the Concurrent List in 1976.

The correct answer is A, Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh, founded Grameen Bank. He grew it out of a lending experiment begun in the village of Jobra in 1976, and the bank was given formal status by law in 1983. It lends small sums without collateral, mostly to poor rural women organised in small groups whose members stand behind one another's repayment, and this model of microcredit has since been copied across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Yunus and the bank shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for creating economic and social development from below. B is wrong because Abdullah Abu Sayeed is a Bangladeshi writer and educationist. C is wrong because Anu Muhammad is an economist known for his writing on development, not the bank's founder. D is wrong because Atiur Rahman served as Governor of Bangladesh Bank. Exam tip: Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, microcredit, Nobel Peace Prize 2006.

The correct answer is D, Conduct local elections. Article 324 places the superintendence, direction and control of elections to Parliament, to the State Legislatures and to the offices of President and Vice-President in the hands of the Election Commission of India. Elections to panchayats and municipalities are not on that list. The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments of 1992 added Articles 243K and 243ZA, which give that work to a State Election Commission headed by a State Election Commissioner appointed by the Governor. Local body polls are therefore run by the states, and the ECI has no role in them. A, B and C are wrong as answers here because controlling, supervising and directing elections are the very words Article 324 uses for the Commission's own duties, so each of them is a main duty rather than an exception. Exam tip: ECI under Article 324 for Parliament, Assemblies, President and Vice-President; State Election Commission under Article 243K for panchayat and municipal polls.

The correct answer is D, Whale. A whale is a mammal, not a fish, so it breathes with lungs and must come to the surface to take air through a blowhole on top of its head. It has no gills at any stage of its life. Whales are warm blooded, give birth to live young and feed them on milk, which is why they are grouped with dolphins and porpoises as marine mammals and not with fish; the blue whale is the largest animal known. A is wrong because an octopus draws water into its mantle cavity and passes it over gills. B is wrong because a squid, another cephalopod mollusc, also breathes through gills inside the mantle. C is wrong because a clown fish is a bony fish whose gills lie behind a bony flap called the operculum. Exam tip: whales, dolphins and porpoises are aquatic mammals — lungs and a blowhole, never gills.

The correct answer is A, disguised unemployment. Disguised unemployment is the situation in which more people work at a job than it actually needs, so taking some of them away would not reduce output at all. Indian agriculture is the standard example: a family holding of two hectares may keep five or six members busy when two could finish the same work, and the extra hands live on a share of the produce without adding to it. Their marginal productivity is close to zero, which is why the unemployment is called hidden or disguised. NCERT's Class 9 economics chapter on people as resource uses this very example. B is wrong because seasonal unemployment means being idle only in certain months, such as between sowing and harvest. C is wrong because structural unemployment comes from a mismatch between the skills workers have and the jobs the economy creates. D is wrong because marginal unemployment is not a standard category of this kind. Exam tip: disguised unemployment means surplus workers with nearly zero marginal productivity.

The correct answer is C, Russian revolution. The call ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ closes the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, and it became the rallying cry of the socialist movement that carried the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in 1917. Lenin's party used it to bind industrial workers behind the party, and the words were later carved on Marx's tomb in London and printed on Soviet emblems. The February revolution of 1917 ended tsarist rule and the October revolution brought the Bolsheviks in. A is wrong because the French revolution of 1789 raised liberty, equality and fraternity. B is wrong because the American revolution of 1776 was fought over taxation without representation. D is wrong because Japan had the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a drive to modernise from above rather than a workers' revolution. Exam tip: Communist Manifesto 1848 by Marx and Engels; Russian revolution 1917 under Lenin, slogan of the working class.

The correct answer is D, 1950. The Planning Commission was set up in March 1950 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet, not by the Constitution and not by an Act of Parliament, which made it an extra-constitutional advisory body. The Prime Minister was its chairman; Jawaharlal Nehru was the first chairman and Gulzarilal Nanda the first deputy chairman. Its work was to assess the country's resources and draw up five-year plans. The First Five Year Plan ran from 1951 to 1956, was based on the Harrod-Domar model and put agriculture and irrigation first. The Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015, which advises rather than allocates funds. A is wrong because 2019 is decades after the Commission was created. B is wrong because no such body was founded in 2000. C is wrong because 1947 is the year of independence, three years before the Commission came into being. Exam tip: Planning Commission March 1950, First Five Year Plan 1951-56, NITI Aayog 1 January 2015.

The correct answer is A, heavy water. The CANDU design, from which India's pressurised heavy water reactors descend, burns natural uranium, and natural uranium contains only about seven parts in a thousand of the fissile isotope uranium 235. Such a lean fuel can sustain a chain reaction only if very few neutrons are wasted, and heavy water absorbs far fewer neutrons than ordinary water while still slowing them down, so it serves as both moderator and coolant. Option B is wrong because light water absorbs too many neutrons, which is why reactors that use it must be fuelled with enriched uranium. Option C is wrong because carbon dioxide is used as a coolant in gas cooled reactors, where graphite is the moderator. Option D is wrong because liquid sodium is the coolant of a fast breeder reactor, which deliberately has no moderator at all.

The correct answer is B, the 92nd Constitution Amendment Act of 2003. That amendment added four languages, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali, to the Eighth Schedule and took the count from 18 to 22, where it stands. Option A is wrong because the 73rd Amendment of 1992 is the Panchayati Raj amendment, which inserted Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule; the language amendment of that year was the 71st, which added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali. Option C is wrong because the 103rd Amendment provides reservation for the economically weaker sections and has nothing to do with language. Option D is wrong because the 101st Amendment introduced the Goods and Services Tax. Remember the three language amendments in order: the 21st of 1967 added Sindhi, the 71st of 1992 added three languages and the 92nd of 2003 added four.

The correct answer is C, Tanaji Malusare. Tanaji led the night assault that recovered the fort of Kondana from the Mughal garrison in 1670 and was killed in the fighting. Shivaji is said to have mourned that the lion was gone though the fort was won, and the fort was renamed Sinhagad, the fort of the lion. Option A is wrong because Chimaji Appa was a brother of Peshwa Baji Rao I and is remembered for taking Vasai from the Portuguese in 1739, seventy years later. Option B is wrong because Baji Prabhu Deshpande died holding the pass of Pavan Khind in 1660 so that Shivaji could reach Vishalgad safely, a different episode that papers deliberately place among the options. Option D is wrong because Baji Pasalkar was an early companion from the Pune region and is not connected with Kondana.

The correct answer is D, weathering. Weathering is the natural breaking down of rock by temperature, water, wind and living things, and it is the process that makes soil in the first place; it is not a technique that a farmer applies to save soil, so it cannot be a conservation method. Option A is wrong as an answer because intercropping, growing two crops together in alternate rows, keeps the ground covered through the season and reduces the impact of rain on bare soil. Option B is wrong as an answer because mulching covers the bare ground between plants with straw or crop residue, which cuts evaporation and stops the topsoil from being washed or blown away. Option C is wrong as an answer because contour ploughing runs furrows across the slope instead of down it, so each furrow acts as a small barrier to running water.