SSC 2021 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is C, Epithelial tissue. Epithelium covers the body and lines its organs, so it is the protective tissue.

It forms the outer layer of the skin, the lining of the mouth, stomach, intestine, blood vessels and kidney tubules. Its cells sit tightly packed with almost no material between them, resting on a basement membrane, and they act as a barrier against germs, injury and water loss. Epithelium also takes part in absorption and secretion, which is why glands are made of it. Its types are squamous, cuboidal, columnar, ciliated and glandular.

Option A is wrong because muscular tissue contracts to produce movement. Option B is wrong as nervous tissue carries impulses and controls responses. Option D is wrong because connective tissue, such as bone, cartilage, blood and adipose tissue, joins and supports other tissues rather than covering the body.

Exam tip: the four animal tissues - epithelial protects, muscular moves, nervous conducts, connective supports.

The correct answer is B, Banking. The Basel Norms are international standards for banking supervision.

They are issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which works under the Bank for International Settlements at Basel in Switzerland. Their purpose is to make sure a bank holds enough capital against the risks it takes, so that losses fall on its shareholders and not on depositors. Basel I of 1988 dealt with credit risk, Basel II of 2004 added market and operational risk along with supervision and disclosure, and Basel III, framed after the crisis of 2008, raised the quality of capital and brought in liquidity and leverage rules. In India the Reserve Bank applies them and asks for a capital to risk weighted assets ratio of nine per cent.

Options A, C and D are wrong because insurance is governed by IRDAI, and the share and commodity markets by SEBI.

Exam tip: Basel Committee, Basel, Switzerland; India's CRAR requirement is nine per cent.

The correct answer is A, Andhra Pradesh. Tholu Bommalata is the leather shadow puppet theatre of Andhra Pradesh.

The name means the dance of leather dolls. Puppets are cut from goat or deer hide, dyed on both sides so the colours glow when a lamp throws their shadow on a cloth screen, and worked from behind while singers and a harmonium and drums carry the story. The plays are drawn from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and often run through the night. India has four famous shadow puppet forms: Tholu Bommalata here, Togalu Gombeyaata in Karnataka, Ravanachhaya in Odisha and Tholpavakoothu in Kerala.

Option B is wrong because Karnataka's shadow form is Togalu Gombeyaata. Option C is wrong as Kerala has Tholpavakoothu, performed in Bhagavati temples. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra's puppet tradition is Kalasutri Bahulya, worked with strings.

Exam tip: leather shadow puppets - Andhra Pradesh; string puppets - Rajasthan's Kathputli.

The correct answer is D, gold. Calaverite is gold telluride, with the formula AuTe2.

It is one of the very few minerals in which gold occurs chemically combined rather than as the free metal, because gold is a noble metal that usually resists reaction. Calaverite was named after Calaveras County in California, where it was found in 1861, and it is an important gold ore in Kalgoorlie in Australia and in Cripple Creek in Colorado. It looks brassy yellow to silvery white and is brittle.

Option A is wrong because the common silver telluride is hessite, and silver's chief ore is argentite. Option B is wrong as zinc is mined mainly as zinc blende, a sulphide. Option C is wrong because copper comes largely from copper pyrites, malachite and cuprite.

Exam tip: link ore to metal - calaverite gold, argentite silver, zinc blende zinc, bauxite aluminium, haematite iron, cinnabar mercury.

The correct answer is B, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He founded ISKCON in New York in 1966.

Born Abhay Charan De in Calcutta in 1896, he sailed to the United States at the age of sixty-nine with a few rupees and a trunk of books, and began chanting the Hare Krishna mantra in a park in Manhattan. ISKCON follows Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the devotional tradition of Bengal, and is often called the Hare Krishna movement. Prabhupada translated the Bhagavad Gita As It Is and much of the Bhagavata Purana, and the society now runs temples and food relief programmes across the world.

Option A, Sri Chaitanya, was the sixteenth century Bengal saint whose teachings ISKCON follows, but he founded no such society. Option C, Sri Ramakrishna, inspired the Ramakrishna Mission, started by Swami Vivekananda in 1897. Option D was Prabhupada's own guru.

Exam tip: ISKCON, 1966, New York, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition of Chaitanya.

The correct answer is A, Hicky's Bengal Gazette. It was started in Calcutta in 1780 and was the first printed newspaper in India.

James Augustus Hicky brought it out as a weekly and called it the Bengal Gazette or Calcutta General Advertiser. It carried sharp attacks on Warren Hastings and the officials of the East India Company, so the government stopped its postal circulation and shut the paper down in 1782, jailing Hicky. It remains the starting point of press history in India and of the long fight over press freedom.

Option B, The Madras Courier, appeared in 1785, five years later, as the first paper in Madras. Option C, The Bombay Herald, began in 1789. Option D, Maratha, was an English weekly founded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1881, a century later.

Exam tip: 1780 Bengal Gazette, 1785 Madras Courier, 1789 Bombay Herald; Tilak ran Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English.

The correct answer is D, green. Barium compounds such as barium nitrate give fireworks and signal flares a bright green flame.

The colour comes from a flame test. Heat excites the electrons of the metal ion, and as they fall back they release light of a fixed wavelength that is typical of that metal. Barium gives apple green, so barium nitrate is the standard green agent in pyrotechnics, where it also supplies oxygen to the burning mixture.

Option A is wrong because orange comes from calcium salts such as calcium chloride. Option B is wrong because blue is produced by copper compounds, notably copper chloride. Option C is wrong because yellow is the signature of sodium, which is why a sodium vapour lamp glows yellow.

Exam tip: remember the flame colours - sodium yellow, potassium lilac, calcium brick red, copper blue-green, barium apple green, strontium crimson.

The correct answer is C, Ahsanabad. Gulbarga was renamed Ahsanabad and made the first capital of the Bahmani kingdom.

The Bahmani sultanate was founded in 1347 by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah, also called Hasan Gangu, after Deccan nobles revolted against Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He took Gulbarga in present-day Karnataka as his seat and gave it the name Ahsanabad. In 1425 Ahmad Shah Wali shifted the capital to Bidar, which was renamed Muhammadabad. The kingdom's long rivalry was with the Vijayanagara empire across the Tungabhadra, and it broke into five Deccan sultanates by the early sixteenth century.

Option A, Devagiri, was the Yadava capital. Option B, Daulatabad, is the name Muhammad bin Tughlaq gave Devagiri when he moved his own capital there. Option D, Berar, was a province and later one of the five successor sultanates, not the first capital.

Exam tip: Bahmani capitals - Gulbarga (Ahsanabad) 1347, then Bidar 1425.

The correct answer is D, Dantidurga. Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta kingdom in the Deccan in about 753 CE.

Dantidurga was a feudatory of the Chalukyas of Badami and overthrew the Chalukya ruler Kirtivarman II to set up independent rule, with Manyakheta, today's Malkhed in Karnataka, becoming the capital. The Rashtrakutas were one of the three powers in the long tripartite struggle for Kannauj, along with the Palas and the Pratiharas. Arab traveller Al-Masudi called their ruler one of the great kings of the world.

A is wrong: Ashoka was a Mauryan emperor of the third century BCE. B is wrong: Amoghavarsha was a later Rashtrakuta king, the author of Kavirajamarga in Kannada. C is wrong: Krishna I was Dantidurga's successor and is remembered for the rock-cut Kailasa temple at Ellora.

Exam tip: Rashtrakutas - founded by Dantidurga about 753 CE, capital Manyakheta, Kailasa temple built by Krishna I.

The correct answer is D, Wang Chhu River. The Wang Chhu flows through western Bhutan and joins the Brahmaputra system in India.

The Wang Chhu rises in the Himalayas of Tibet, passes Thimphu and Paro in Bhutan, and enters West Bengal, where it is known as the Raidak. It then flows through Assam and meets the Brahmaputra. Several other Brahmaputra tributaries also come down from Bhutan, among them the Manas, the Sankosh and the Torsa, while the Subansiri, Dibang and Lohit join it in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

A is wrong: the Ayeyarwady, or Irrawaddy, is the main river of Myanmar and drains into the Andaman Sea. B is wrong: the Sittaung is also a river of Myanmar. C is wrong: the Chindwin is the largest tributary of the Ayeyarwady in Myanmar.

Exam tip: Brahmaputra tributaries from Bhutan - Wang Chhu (Raidak), Manas, Sankosh, Torsa; the Ayeyarwady, Sittaung and Chindwin belong to Myanmar.

The correct answer is B, Tamil Nadu. C. Rajagopalachari led the salt march in the Madras Presidency, in the area that is now Tamil Nadu.

When the Civil Disobedience Movement began in 1930, Rajagopalachari marched from Tiruchirappalli to Vedaranyam on the Tanjore coast and broke the salt law there in April 1930. He was arrested soon after. Rajagopalachari, often called Rajaji, later became the first Indian and the last Governor-General of India in 1948, and was the first recipient of the Bharat Ratna in 1954 along with C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan.

A is wrong: no salt march of his was held in Maharashtra. C is wrong: Rajasthan is landlocked, so a coastal salt satyagraha was not possible there. D is wrong: Gujarat is where Gandhi himself marched, from Sabarmati to Dandi.

Exam tip: Dandi in Gujarat - Gandhi; Vedaranyam in Tamil Nadu - C. Rajagopalachari; Dharasana salt works - Sarojini Naidu.

The correct answer is C, Two. A normal umbilical cord contains two arteries and one vein, three blood vessels in all.

The umbilical cord joins the developing foetus to the placenta. The two umbilical arteries carry deoxygenated blood, carbon dioxide and wastes from the foetus to the placenta, while the single umbilical vein brings oxygen-rich blood and nutrients from the placenta back to the foetus. This is the reverse of the usual pattern in the body, where arteries carry oxygenated blood. The vessels are cushioned by a jelly-like tissue called Wharton's jelly, and a mature cord is about 50 to 55 cm long.

A is wrong: three is the total number of vessels, not of arteries. B is wrong: one is the number of umbilical veins. D is wrong: four vessels are never present in a normal cord.

Exam tip: Umbilical cord - two arteries plus one vein; the vein is the one carrying oxygenated blood to the foetus.

The correct answer is D, He was the founder of Brahmo Samaj. This statement is incorrect, because the Brahmo Samaj was founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy at Calcutta in 1828.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati was born in 1824 as Mool Shankar at Tankara in the Morbi region of present-day Gujarat. He founded the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875 and gave the call 'Back to the Vedas'. He attacked idol worship, caste rigidity and child marriage, and supported widow remarriage, women's education and the Shuddhi movement.

A states a true fact, so it is not the answer: he wrote 'Satyarth Prakash' in Hindi in 1875, and it remains the main text of the Arya Samaj. B is also true: the Arya Samaj was his creation. C is true as well, because Tankara, his birthplace, lies in Gujarat.

Exam tip: Arya Samaj - Dayanand Saraswati, 1875; Brahmo Samaj - Ram Mohan Roy, 1828.

The correct answer is A, Bihar. Kabartal Wetland, known locally as Kanwar Jheel, lies in Begusarai district of Bihar and was designated a Ramsar site in 2020, becoming the first Ramsar site in the state. It is an oxbow lake left behind by the shifting course of the Burhi Gandak in the Indo-Gangetic plain, spreads over about 2,600 hectares, and works as a natural flood buffer for the area. It is an important halt on the Central Asian Flyway, where migratory birds such as the greylag goose and the endangered sociable lapwing have been recorded. Option B is wrong because Himachal Pradesh's Ramsar sites are Renuka, Pong Dam Lake and Chandertal. Option C is wrong because Punjab's include Harike, Kanjli, Ropar, Nangal, Beas Conservation Reserve and Keshopur-Miani. Option D is wrong because Haryana's Sultanpur and Bhindawas were both named in 2021. Exam tip: Kanwar Jheel or Kabartal in Begusarai is Bihar's first Ramsar site, an oxbow lake of the Burhi Gandak.

The correct answer is A, 32. An IPv4 address, which is what the question means by an IP address, is thirty-two bits long. It is written in dotted-decimal form as four numbers separated by full stops, and each number stands for eight bits, or one octet, so it can run only from 0 to 255 — for example 192.168.1.1. Thirty-two bits give about 4.3 billion possible addresses, and because these began to run out, IPv6 was designed with 128-bit addresses written in hexadecimal. Every IPv4 address has a network part and a host part, separated by the subnet mask, and the addresses fall in classes A to E. Option B is wrong because 24 bits is the length of the manufacturer's OUI prefix in a MAC address. Option C is wrong because 16 bits is the size of a port number. Option D is wrong because 12 bits is not the length of any address. Exam tip: IPv4 is 32 bits, a MAC address 48 bits and IPv6 128 bits.

The correct answer is B, United States of America. The Fundamental Rights in Part III of the Indian Constitution were drawn from the Bill of Rights, the name given to the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Along with them, India borrowed judicial review, the independence of the judiciary, the impeachment of the President, the removal of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and the office of the Vice-President from the American model. Option A is wrong because Canada gave a federation with a strong Centre, the vesting of residuary powers in the Union, the appointment of Governors by the Centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Option C is wrong because Ireland gave the Directive Principles of State Policy, the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha and the method of electing the President. Option D is wrong because Australia gave the Concurrent List, freedom of trade and commerce, and joint sittings of the two Houses. Exam tip: Bill of Rights from the USA, Directive Principles from Ireland, Emergency provisions from Germany.

The correct answer is D, Lonar. Lonar Lake, in Buldhana district of Maharashtra, was added to the list of Ramsar sites in November 2020 along with Sur Sarovar in Uttar Pradesh. The lake fills a crater punched into the Deccan basalt by a meteorite about fifty thousand years ago, which makes it the only such crater in basaltic rock in India, and its water is unusual for being saline and alkaline at the same time, supporting rare micro-organisms. The Ramsar Convention on wetlands was signed in 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar, and India became a party in 1982. Option A is wrong because Vihar is a reservoir that supplies water to Mumbai. Option B is wrong because Venna is a man-made lake at Mahabaleshwar. Option C is wrong because Rankala is a lake inside Kolhapur city, and none of these carries Ramsar status. Exam tip: Nandur Madhmeshwar was Maharashtra's first Ramsar site, followed by Lonar and Thane Creek.

The correct answer is C, 1955. The All India Rural Credit Survey Committee found that rural credit needed a bank with a nationwide branch network, so Parliament passed the State Bank of India Act, 1955, and the Imperial Bank of India was taken over and renamed the State Bank of India with effect from 1 July 1955. The Imperial Bank itself had been formed in 1921 by joining the presidency banks of Bengal, Bombay and Madras.

Option A, 1947, is the year of independence and of no banking statute of this kind. Option B, 1965, is far too late; by then the State Bank already had its associate banks under the Act of 1959. Option D, 1950, is the year the Constitution came into force, and candidates pick it by association. Note also that 1949 was the year the Reserve Bank was nationalised, which is a different event from the creation of the State Bank.

The correct answer is D, Elephant. The Indian elephant, Elephas maximus indicus, was declared the National Heritage Animal in 2010 on the recommendation of the Elephant Task Force, so that its protection could be given the same weight as that of the tiger. The step went with Project Elephant, which works on elephant corridors and on reducing conflict between elephants and people.

Option A, the lion, was the National Animal of India until 1972 and survives in the wild only in the Gir forest of Gujarat, but it holds no heritage animal status. Option B, the horse, is not a national symbol at all, although a horse appears on the abacus of the State Emblem. Option C, the tiger, is the National Animal of India, adopted in 1972, and the distinction between National Animal and National Heritage Animal is exactly what this question tests.

The correct answer is B, 1934. The Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 is the statute that created the Bank and it carries the provisions on the custody and deployment of the country's foreign exchange reserves, which the Bank holds and invests. The day to day dealings of residents in foreign exchange are separately governed by the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, which replaced the older regulation Act of 1973, but the Bank's own reserve management powers flow from its founding Act.

Option A, 1947, is the year of independence and of the earlier foreign exchange regulation law, which makes it tempting. Option C, 1923, is simply too early, as the Hilton Young Commission that recommended the Bank reported only in 1926. Option D, 1971, matches no relevant statute of the Reserve Bank.