SSC 2021 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, 1956. Parliament passed the Life Insurance Corporation Act in 1956, and the Life Insurance Corporation of India began work on 1 September that year, after the life insurance business of 245 private insurers and provident societies was taken over and merged into it. The aim was to carry insurance into the villages and to give policyholders the security of a sovereign guarantee on their savings. LIC is headquartered in Mumbai and its motto is Yogakshemam Vahamyaham. General insurance was nationalised much later, in 1972, and the regulator IRDAI was set up in 1999. B is wrong because in 1948 life insurance was still entirely in private hands. C is wrong because by 1971 LIC had already been working for fifteen years. D is wrong because 1965 also falls after the Act, not in the year it was passed. Exam tip: LIC Act 1956, LIC began 1 September 1956; general insurance nationalised 1972, IRDAI 1999.

The correct answer is C, Girish Karnad. Girish Karnad wrote Yayati in 1961, his first play, which takes from the Mahabharata the story of the old king who asks his son to trade youth with him, and Tughlaq in 1964, on the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He wrote in Kannada and translated his own work into English, and his other plays include Hayavadana, Nagamandala and Tale-Danda. He received the Jnanpith Award in 1998 and the Padma Bhushan, and he also worked widely as an actor and film director. A is wrong because Viju Khote was a Hindi film actor. B is wrong because Shreeram Lagoo was a Marathi and Hindi actor and stage director rather than the author of these plays. D is wrong because Mohammed Zahur Khayyam was a music composer. Exam tip: Girish Karnad — Yayati, Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Nagamandala; wrote in Kannada, Jnanpith 1998.

The correct answer is D, Gujarat. Amul grew out of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union, started at Anand in Gujarat in 1946 when the farmers of Kheda district organised against the low prices paid to them by middlemen. Tribhuvandas Patel led the farmers and Verghese Kurien built the dairy into a modern enterprise, so that milk from lakhs of small producers could be collected, chilled, processed and sold under one brand. The Anand pattern was carried across the country through Operation Flood from 1970, which made India the largest milk producer in the world, and Kurien is remembered as the father of the White Revolution. A is wrong because Delhi is a market for milk, not the home of the cooperative. B is wrong because Karnataka's cooperative brand is Nandini. C is wrong because Uttar Pradesh produces a great deal of milk but Amul did not begin there. Exam tip: Amul — Anand in Gujarat, 1946; Operation Flood 1970 under Verghese Kurien.

The correct answer is A, Isotopes of Hydrogen. Hydrogen has three isotopes: protium with one proton and no neutron, deuterium with one proton and one neutron, and tritium with one proton and two neutrons. All three have atomic number 1, so they occupy the same place in the periodic table, but their mass numbers are 1, 2 and 3. Deuterium forms heavy water, used as a moderator in nuclear reactors, while tritium is radioactive and is used with deuterium in fusion research. Hydrogen is the only element whose isotopes are given separate names of their own. B is wrong because carbon's isotopes are written as carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14. C is wrong because uranium's main isotopes are uranium-235 and uranium-238. D is wrong because titanium's isotopes carry no special names of this kind. Exam tip: protium, deuterium and tritium all have atomic number 1 and mass numbers 1, 2 and 3.

The correct answer is D, Tamil Nadu. Hogenakkal Falls lies on the river Kaveri in the Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, close to the border with Karnataka. The river breaks into many channels over carbonatite rock here and drops in sheets, throwing up so much spray that the Kannada name hogenakkal, meaning smoking rocks, describes it exactly. Visitors are carried across the pools in round coracle boats, and the place is often called the Niagara of India; a drinking water project for Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri draws from the river here. A is wrong because Andhra Pradesh has falls such as Talakona and Ettipothala. B is wrong because Kerala's best known falls are Athirappilly and Palaruvi. C is wrong because Maharashtra has falls such as Thoseghar and Randha, not Hogenakkal. Exam tip: Hogenakkal is on the Kaveri in Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu — smoking rocks and coracle rides.

The correct answer is C, Banda Bahadur. Guru Gobind Singh died at Nanded in 1708, and before his death he had sent Banda Singh Bahadur to Punjab to lead the Khalsa against Mughal authority. Banda Bahadur took Sirhind in 1710 after defeating its governor Wazir Khan, struck coins in the name of the Gurus, issued orders under his own seal from Lohgarh and gave peasants rights over the land they tilled. Emperor Bahadur Shah and then Farrukhsiyar turned the weight of the empire against him; he was besieged and captured at Gurdas Nangal in 1715 and put to death at Delhi in 1716. A is wrong because Guru Angad was the second Sikh Guru, of the sixteenth century. B is wrong because Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, belongs to the same early period. D is wrong because Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, died in 1539. Exam tip: Banda Singh Bahadur — Sirhind 1710, captured 1715, executed 1716.

The correct answer is A, golf. In golf an albatross, also called a double eagle, means holing out in three strokes fewer than the par of that hole, which is among the rarest feats in the game. The same bird family gives birdie for one stroke under par and eagle for two under, while a score over par is a bogey. Option B is wrong because polo is played on horseback and its period of play is a chukker, its stick a mallet. Option C is wrong because fencing uses foil, epee and sabre, with terms such as riposte, lunge and parry. Option D is wrong because rugby speaks of a try, a conversion, a scrum and a line-out. When a question offers a bird name among the options, golf is almost always the intended sport.

The correct answer is C, 1761. The Third Battle of Panipat was fought on 14 January 1761 between the Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau, with Vishwasrao the Peshwa's son, and Ahmad Shah Abdali, also called Durrani, supported by the Rohillas and the Nawab of Awadh. The Marathas were defeated with very heavy losses, and Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao died within months. Option A is wrong because 1781 falls in the First Anglo-Maratha War, which ended in the Treaty of Salbai in 1782. Option B is wrong because by 1851 the Maratha confederacy had already been dissolved after 1818 and Punjab too had been annexed. Option D is wrong because 1831 belongs to the period of Company dominance and no Panipat battle was fought then. The three battles of Panipat are 1526, 1556 and 1761.

The correct answer is C, the right mix of minerals and organic matter. Fertility needs mineral nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from the weathered rock, and organic matter, that is humus from decayed plants and animals, which holds water, feeds soil organisms and releases nutrients slowly. Option A is wrong because an excess of acid lowers the availability of nutrients and harms root growth, which is why lime is added to strongly acidic fields. Option B is wrong because it leaves out organic matter and mentions only inorganic material; a soil of pure mineral grains, such as desert sand, is not fertile however rich its minerals. Option D is wrong because high salt content is the mark of saline or usar land, which is among the least productive soil in the country and has to be reclaimed with gypsum and drainage before it can be cropped.

The correct answer is A, Maithon. The Maithon dam is built across the Barakar, a tributary of the Damodar, in Jharkhand, and is one of the reservoirs of the Damodar Valley Corporation, so it has nothing to do with the Kaveri. The other three are all on the Kaveri and should be memorised together. Option B, Mettur in Tamil Nadu, holds back the Stanley Reservoir and is the main storage for the Kaveri delta. Option C, Kallanai or the Grand Anicut, was built by the Chola king Karikala to divert the river into the delta channels and is the oldest water-diversion structure in India still in use. Option D, Krishna Raja Sagara in Karnataka, was built near Mysuru with Sir M. Visvesvaraya as the engineer, and the Brindavan Gardens lie below it.

The correct answer is D, Perfluorocarbons. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in Japan in December 1997 and in force from February 2005, set binding cuts for six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. Perfluorocarbons come mostly from aluminium smelting and from making semiconductors; they are released in tiny amounts but survive in the atmosphere for thousands of years and trap far more heat than the same weight of carbon dioxide, which is why the Protocol counted them. Nitrogen trifluoride was added as a seventh gas later, under the Doha amendment of 2012. A is wrong because chlorine is not a greenhouse gas; chlorine released from CFCs harms the ozone layer, a matter the Montreal Protocol deals with. B is wrong because phosgene is a poisonous industrial gas and is not on the Kyoto list. C is wrong because carbon monoxide is an air pollutant that the Protocol does not cover. Exam tip: the six Kyoto gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, HFCs, PFCs and sulphur hexafluoride.

The correct answer is A, Burma. The Reserve Bank of India, which began work on 1 April 1935 on the recommendation of the Hilton Young Commission, was also the central bank of Burma, then part of British India, and it stayed in that role until April 1947, a few months before India became independent. Burma had been separated from India administratively in 1937, yet the RBI continued to manage its currency and banking. In the same way it served as central bank for Pakistan until June 1948, while the State Bank of Pakistan was being set up. The RBI itself was nationalised on 1 January 1949. B is wrong because Nepal has had its own central bank, the Nepal Rastra Bank, since 1956. C is wrong because Bhutan's Royal Monetary Authority was set up in 1982, though the ngultrum is still pegged to the rupee. D is wrong because Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, was never under the RBI and started its own central bank in 1950. Exam tip: the RBI acted for Burma till April 1947 and for Pakistan till June 1948.

The correct answer is B, Ovum. The female egg cell, or ovum, is the largest cell in the human body. It measures about 100 to 130 micrometres across, roughly the thickness of a hair, and is the only human cell that can just be seen without a microscope. It is this big because it carries the cytoplasm, food store and machinery an embryo needs in its first days, and a girl is born with her whole stock of these cells already formed. A is wrong because the sperm is the smallest human cell, a few micrometres in the head, built only to swim and carry a nucleus. C is wrong because a nerve cell is the longest cell, since a single axon can run about a metre from the spinal cord to the toe, but it is extremely thin and not the largest in volume. D is wrong because an osteoclast, the cell that dissolves bone, is large and has many nuclei yet stays smaller than the ovum. Exam tip: ovum is the largest cell, sperm the smallest and the nerve cell the longest.

The correct answer is D, 100. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 promises every rural household at least 100 days of unskilled manual wage work in a financial year. The scheme began in 200 districts in February 2006, covered the whole country by 2008, and was renamed after Mahatma Gandhi in 2009. Any adult member of a rural household can demand work; the job must be given within fifteen days of the demand and within five kilometres of the village, and if it is not given the state must pay an unemployment allowance. At least one third of the workers are to be women, wages are paid into bank or post office accounts, and the works taken up are mostly water conservation, ponds, roads and land development. A is wrong because 45 days is not the guarantee. B is wrong because 365 days would mean work all year, which the Act never promised. C is wrong because 250 days is not the figure in the law. Exam tip: MGNREGA 2005, 100 days a year, work within 15 days or an unemployment allowance.

The correct answer is D, Vernacular Press Act. The Vernacular Press Act was enacted in 1878 by Lord Lytton to silence Indian-language newspapers, which had begun to criticise British rule sharply, especially over the famine and the cost of the Delhi Durbar. It allowed a magistrate to demand a bond and a deposit from the printer of any Indian-language paper and to seize the press if the paper printed anything judged seditious, while English papers were left untouched. Because of this open discrimination it was nicknamed the Gagging Act, and Lord Ripon repealed it in 1882. A is wrong because the Indian Contract Act was passed in 1872. B is wrong because the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act belongs to 1873, when the Company's stock was wound up. C is wrong because the Transfer of Property Act came in 1882, the same year the Vernacular Press Act was withdrawn. Exam tip: Lytton brought the Vernacular Press Act in 1878 and Ripon repealed it in 1882.

The correct answer is A, 1905. Lord Curzon announced the partition of Bengal on 19 July 1905 and it came into effect on 16 October 1905, splitting the province into a Muslim-majority eastern half and the rest of Bengal. The reason given in public was that Bengal had grown too large to administer, but the real aim was to weaken the nationalist movement there by dividing Hindus and Muslims. The protest against it began the Swadeshi and boycott movement, in which foreign cloth was burnt and Indian goods, schools and banks were promoted, and Rabindranath Tagore's song Amar Sonar Bangla belongs to those days. The anger was so wide that the partition was finally cancelled in 1911, when the capital was also moved from Calcutta to Delhi. B is wrong because 1901 is the year Queen Victoria died. C is wrong because 1907 is the year of the Surat split in the Congress. D is wrong because 1911 is the year the partition was revoked, not made. Exam tip: announced in 1905 by Curzon, revoked in 1911 under Hardinge.

The correct answer is D, land gifted to temples. Chola inscriptions use a separate term for every kind of land grant, and tirunamattukkani is the land whose produce was set apart for a temple. The Cholas ruled the Kaveri delta from the ninth to the thirteenth century and had their land settlements cut into temple walls in Tamil, which is why historians can still name each category. In the same lists, brahmadeya was land given to Brahmanas, vellanvagai was the land of ordinary non-Brahmana peasant owners who paid tax to the state, shalabhoga was land whose income ran a school, and pallichchhandam was land given to Jaina establishments. A is wrong because land gifted to Brahmanas was called brahmadeya. B is wrong because the holdings of non-Brahmana peasant proprietors were vellanvagai. C is wrong because a grant to Jaina institutions was pallichchhandam. Exam tip: brahmadeya to Brahmanas, vellanvagai to peasants, shalabhoga to a school, pallichchhandam to Jainas, tirunamattukkani to a temple.

The correct answer is D, Tropical deciduous forests. Sandalwood is a tree of the tropical deciduous or monsoon forests, and in India it grows best on the dry eastern slopes of the Western Ghats in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Tropical deciduous forests are the most widespread forests of India, found where the yearly rainfall is roughly between 70 and 200 centimetres, and their trees shed their leaves for about six to eight weeks in the dry season to save water. Teak, sal, shisham, sandalwood, khair, mahua and amla belong to them, and they are the most useful of Indian forests for timber. A is wrong because savanna is a tropical grassland with scattered trees, not a forest belt of sandalwood. B and C are wrong because equatorial evergreen forests and tropical rainforests get very heavy rain through the year, are thick and dark, and carry trees such as rosewood, ebony and mahogany instead. Exam tip: tropical deciduous – teak, sal, sandalwood, shisham; evergreen – rosewood, ebony, mahogany.

The correct answer is A, 1928. The Bardoli Satyagraha began in February 1928 in Bardoli taluka of Surat district in Gujarat, after the Bombay government raised the land revenue by about twenty-two per cent in a year when the crop had already been poor. Vallabhbhai Patel led the peasants, who refused to pay a single rupee, held together across castes and communities, and faced the seizure of land, cattle and carts without answering back. The government at last appointed the Broomfield and Maxwell enquiry, which found the increase unjustified and cut it to roughly six per cent. It was the women of Bardoli who gave Vallabhbhai the title Sardar. B is wrong because 1934 is the year the Congress Socialist Party was founded. C is wrong because 1919 is the year of the Rowlatt Satyagraha and Jallianwala Bagh. D is wrong because 1943 is the year of the Bengal famine. Exam tip: Bardoli 1928, Sardar Patel, a no-tax satyagraha, Broomfield and Maxwell enquiry.

The correct answer is C, Joint Photographic Experts Group. The format is named after the committee of experts that drew up the standard, which was published in 1992 for compressing photographs. A JPEG file uses lossy compression: it throws away the fine detail the human eye is least likely to miss, so a picture that would need several megabytes as raw data is stored in a few hundred kilobytes. That is why photographs on websites and in phone galleries are saved as .jpg or .jpeg, while logos, line drawings and screenshots are better kept as PNG or GIF, which are lossless. A is wrong because it puts Photography and Exports in place of Photographic and Experts. B is wrong because it replaces Photographic with Pixel. D is wrong on both counts, using Pixel as well as Exports. Exam tip: JPEG is the Joint Photographic Experts Group and is lossy; PNG and GIF are lossless; MPEG is the Moving Picture Experts Group.