SSC 2021 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is C, Maharashtra. The Warli are a tribal community of the Palghar and Thane districts of northern Maharashtra, on the border of Gujarat. Their painting is made with a rice paste white on a wall coated with red ochre and cow dung, and it is built out of a few geometric units: the circle for the sun and moon, the triangle for mountains and trees, and the square for the sacred enclosure called the chauk. The commonest subject is the tarpa dance, a spiral of dancers around a musician. Jivya Soma Mashe was the artist who took Warli painting to the wider world.

Option A, Bihar, is the home of Madhubani. Option B, Kerala, is known for its temple murals. Option D, Assam, has manuscript painting of the Sattras, not Warli work.

The correct answer is D, Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri. The Malayalam poet, known simply as Akkitham, received the 55th Jnanpith Award, given for the year 2019. He was the sixth Malayalam writer to be honoured, the language whose G. Sankara Kurup had won the very first Jnanpith for 1965.

Option A, Amitav Ghosh, won the 54th Jnanpith, for 2018, and was the first writer in English to receive it, English having become an eligible language only in 2013. Option B, Raghuveer Chaudhari, is a Gujarati novelist and poet who won the 51st award, for 2015. Option C, Chandrashekhara Kambara, is the Kannada playwright and poet who won the 53rd award, for 2017. All four are genuine Jnanpith laureates from consecutive years, which is what makes the question testing, and the safe way to answer it is to anchor one pair in memory, such as Amitav Ghosh with 2018, and count forward or back from there.

The correct answer is D, Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri. The Malayalam poet, known simply as Akkitham, received the 55th Jnanpith Award, given for the year 2019. The Jnanpith is instituted by Bharatiya Jnanpith and is regarded as the highest literary award in India.

Option A, Amitav Ghosh, won the 54th Jnanpith, for 2018, and was the first writer in English to receive it, English having become an eligible language in 2013. Option B, Raghuveer Chaudhari, is the Gujarati novelist who won the 51st award, for 2015. Option C, Chandrashekhara Kambara, is the Kannada playwright and poet who won the 53rd award, for 2017. All four are real laureates from nearby years, so the safe method is to anchor one pair, such as Amitav Ghosh with 2018, and count from there. Note also that the numbered award and the year of the award go together, while the announcement usually falls in a later calendar year.

The correct answer is C, Balbir Singh Dosanjh, the hockey centre forward known as Balbir Singh Sr. He won Olympic gold with India in 1948, 1952 and 1956, scored five goals in the 1952 final against the Netherlands, and in 1957 became the first sportsperson of any game to be given the Padma Shri, which opened the civilian honours to sport.

Option A, Manpreet Singh, is a much later player who captained the team to the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Option B, Milkha Singh, the athlete called the Flying Sikh, did receive the Padma Shri, but after Balbir Singh Sr and for athletics, not hockey. Option D, Dhanraj Pillay, was a celebrated forward of the 1990s and 2000s and was honoured much later still, so none of the three came first.

The correct answer is C, Tanvi Shah. She sang the Spanish lines of Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire and also wrote them, and when the song won the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media in 2010 she became the first Indian woman to win a Grammy award. A. R. Rahman won two Grammy awards at the same ceremony for the music of the film.

Option A, Monali Thakur, is a playback singer who won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer, an Indian honour and not a Grammy. Option B, Neeti Mohan, is a singer who came to notice through a television talent show and has sung for many Hindi films, but she has not won a Grammy. Option D, Palak Muchhal, is a playback singer known as much for her charity work for children with heart ailments. None of the three has won this award.

The correct answer is A, Bhanu Athaiya. She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, sharing the award with John Mollo, and became the first Indian of any kind to receive an Oscar. She had begun her career with the film CID and designed costumes for more than a hundred Hindi films.

Option B, Satyajit Ray, is the answer most candidates choose wrongly. His Academy Award of 1992 was an honorary one for lifetime achievement, given nine years after Athaiya's win and in the year of his death. Option C, A. R. Rahman, won two Oscars in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, for the original score and for the song Jai Ho. Option D, Resul Pookutty, won the award for sound mixing for the same film in the same year, so both are much later than 1983.

The correct answer is D, Gupta Dynasty. Gupta imperial rule is conventionally dated from about 320 CE, the epoch of the Gupta era that begins with the accession of Chandragupta I, and it faded out by about 550 CE after the Huna invasions. Those two dates are the ones textbooks attach to the dynasty, which is why the question frames the period as 320 to 550 AD.

Option A, the Mauryan dynasty, is far older and ruled from about 322 BCE to 185 BCE. Option B, the Hoysala dynasty, was a later Karnataka power of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, famous for the temples at Belur and Halebidu. Option C, the Magadha dynasty, is not a dynasty at all but a region and kingdom in south Bihar; its ruling houses were the Haryankas, Shishunagas, Nandas and Mauryas, each of which held power centuries before 320 CE.

The correct answer is A, Nahapana. Nahapana belonged to the Kshaharata family of the Shakas, the Western Kshatrapas who ruled in western India, and not to the Kushanas at all. He is remembered because the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni defeated him and restruck his silver coins, a hoard of which was found at Jogalthembi in Maharashtra.

Option B, Vasishka, was a Kushana ruler of the family of Kanishka and is known from inscriptions of the line. Option C, Vasudeva, was the last important Kushana king, whose coins and devotion to Shiva mark the Indianisation of the dynasty; he should not be confused with Vasudeva the founder of the Kanva dynasty. Option D, Huvishka, ruled between Kanishka and Vasudeva and is known from a large coinage and from the Mat shrine near Mathura.

The correct answer is A, global warming. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: it lets in the short wave radiation of the sun but absorbs a part of the long wave infrared radiation that the warmed earth sends back, and radiates it downwards again. As its concentration rises with the burning of coal, oil and gas and with deforestation, more heat is held in the lower atmosphere and the average surface temperature of the earth rises. That rise is global warming, and it is the central driver of present day climate change.

Option B, air pressure, depends on temperature, altitude and the mass of air above a place, not on the share of a trace gas. Option C, conservation, is the protection and wise use of resources and is a human activity, not a consequence. Option D, rains, may change in pattern as the climate warms, but that is an indirect effect rather than the direct result asked for here.

The correct answer is Gulzarilal Nanda. When Jawaharlal Nehru died on 27 May 1964, Gulzarilal Nanda, the senior-most minister, was sworn in as acting Prime Minister and held office for about two weeks until the Congress party chose Lal Bahadur Shastri. When Shastri died at Tashkent in January 1966, Nanda again served as acting Prime Minister until Indira Gandhi took over. He is the only person to have been acting Prime Minister twice, and he received the Bharat Ratna in 1997.

Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister only in 1966, after Shastri's death, not after Nehru's. Morarji Desai was a contender for the post in 1964 and 1966 but became Prime Minister only in 1977, as the first non-Congress Prime Minister. Zakir Husain was Vice-President in 1964 and later became President; he never held the office of Prime Minister. The Constitution has no post of acting Prime Minister; the President simply appoints a Prime Minister to fill the gap.

The correct answer is C, Mumbai. RBL Bank, a private sector bank, has its corporate office in Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, while its registered office stays in Kolhapur in Maharashtra, where the bank was founded in 1943 as the Ratnakar Bank. It served traders and farmers of the Kolhapur and Sangli belt for decades, was renamed RBL Bank in 2014 and now works across the country in retail, credit card and microfinance business. Option A is wrong because Srinagar is the headquarters of Jammu and Kashmir Bank, a bank promoted by that state. Option B is wrong because no large commercial bank keeps its corporate office in Patna. Option D is wrong because Bengaluru is the headquarters of Canara Bank, which was started in Mangaluru in 1906. Exam tip: RBL Bank was born as Ratnakar Bank in Kolhapur, 1943, and is run from Mumbai.

The correct answer is B, Narendra Modi. Abode of Love is credited to Narendra Modi, who wrote several books in Gujarati long before becoming Prime Minister. His better known titles include Jyotipunj, a set of profiles of people who shaped him, Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe, a collection of poems, and Exam Warriors, written in 2018 for students facing board examinations. Option A is wrong because Shankar Dayal Sharma, President from 1992 to 1997, is not linked with this book. Option C is wrong because APJ Abdul Kalam is remembered for Wings of Fire, Ignited Minds, India 2020 and My Journey, and not for Abode of Love. Option D is wrong because Manmohan Singh's name is attached to writings on economic policy, such as the collection Changing India, rather than to this title. Exam tip: for book questions, fix one sure title to each leader - Kalam and Wings of Fire, Modi and Exam Warriors - and work outwards from there.

The correct answer is B, Fencing. Chadalavada Anandha Sundhararaman Bhavani Devi is an Indian fencer from Chennai who competes in the sabre event. She became the first Indian fencer to qualify for the Olympic Games, at Tokyo in 2021, and won her opening bout there. She has taken gold at the Commonwealth Fencing Championship and a medal at the Asian Fencing Championship, and she trains with support from the Target Olympic Podium Scheme. Fencing is a sword-fighting sport with three weapons - foil, epee and sabre - fought on a strip called a piste, where hits are recorded electronically. Option A is wrong because rowing is a water sport, in which India has been represented by athletes such as Bajrang Lal Takhar. Option C is wrong because Bhavani Devi has never been a boxer. Option D is wrong because she is not a wrestler. Exam tip: Bhavani Devi is a fencer in the sabre event and the first Indian fencer at the Olympics.

The correct answer is D, 1927. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry was set up in 1927 by G.D. Birla and Purshottamdas Thakurdas on the advice of Mahatma Gandhi, so that Indian business would have a voice of its own during the freedom struggle. It is the oldest and largest apex business organisation in the country, a non-government body funded by its member companies and chambers, with its head office in New Delhi. Its well known arms include the FICCI Frames media conference and its ladies' organisation, FLO. Option A is wrong because 1948 is the year of the first Industrial Policy Resolution, not of FICCI. Option B is wrong because 1952 saw the first Parliament meet after the general election. Option C is wrong because 1939 is the year the Second World War began. Exam tip: FICCI 1927 with its head office in New Delhi; CII traces itself to 1895 and ASSOCHAM to 1920.

The correct answer is D, 1.6 W/kg. The Specific Absorption Rate measures how much radio energy from a handset the body takes in, in watts per kilogram of tissue. From 1 September 2012 the Department of Telecommunications made 1.6 W/kg, averaged over one gram of human tissue, the limit for every new mobile handset design sold in India. Before that India followed the older figure of 2.0 W/kg averaged over ten grams. The rules also require the SAR value to be printed on the handset and its box, and a buyer can check it by dialling a code given by the maker. India's limit matches the standard used in the United States. Option A is wrong because 1.8 W/kg is not a prescribed limit anywhere. Option B is wrong because 2.1 W/kg is not a SAR standard. Option C is wrong because 2.2 W/kg is only a distractor. Exam tip: India's SAR limit is 1.6 W/kg over 1 gram of tissue, in force from 1 September 2012.

The correct answer is A, .tmp. A file with the .tmp extension is a temporary file, created by a program while it is working and normally deleted once the work is done. Word processors, browsers and installers make them to hold data they may need for recovery, and Windows keeps many of them in the Temp folder, which can be cleared safely. Option B is wrong because .txt is a plain text file that stores unformatted text and opens in Notepad. Option C is wrong because .tnt is not a standard file extension at all. Option D is wrong because .tar is an archive format from Unix that bundles many files into one, often compressed further as .tar.gz. Questions on extensions come up in every shift, so learn the common ones: .docx for Word, .xlsx for Excel, .pptx for PowerPoint, .exe for a program and .bak for a backup. Exam tip: .tmp is temporary, .bak is a backup and .tar is an archive.

The correct answer is B, Pinjore. India's first vulture breeding centre, the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, was set up at Pinjore in the Panchkula district of Haryana in 2001. It was started because the population of white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed vultures had crashed by more than ninety per cent in the 1990s. The cause was diclofenac, a painkiller given to cattle, which caused kidney failure in vultures that fed on the carcasses; its veterinary use was banned in India in 2006. The centre breeds these three critically endangered species in captivity and releases them into the wild. Option A is wrong because Pushkar in Rajasthan is known for its lake and the Brahma temple. Option C is wrong because Rampur in Uttar Pradesh has no such centre, though a vulture centre works at Rani in Assam. Option D is wrong because Agra is known for the Taj Mahal and a bear rescue facility. Exam tip: Pinjore in Haryana for vultures, and diclofenac as the reason for their decline.

The correct answer is D, gross domestic product. Gross domestic product, or GDP, is the money value of all final goods and services produced inside the borders of a country in one year. Two words in the definition matter. Domestic means the output is counted where it is produced, no matter who owns the factor of production, so the earnings of a foreign company working in India are inside India's GDP. Gross means depreciation, the wear and tear of machines and buildings, has not been deducted. In India the National Statistical Office estimates GDP and releases it every quarter. Option A is wrong because per capita income is national income divided by population, an average per person. Option B is wrong because net domestic product is GDP minus depreciation. Option C is wrong because national income, or net national product at factor cost, counts the output of the residents of a country wherever they earn it. Exam tip: domestic means inside the borders, national means by the residents; gross keeps depreciation, net removes it.

The correct answer is A, Ayodhya. The city stands on the Sarayu in eastern Uttar Pradesh and is one of the oldest towns named in Indian literature. The Sarayu is fed by waters coming down from the Himalaya through the Ghaghara system and joins the Ganga further east, and the ghats of Ayodhya lie along it.

Option C, Kanpur, is also in Uttar Pradesh but stands on the Ganga, which makes it the closest wrong answer in the list. Option D, Haridwar, is in Uttarakhand and is the town where the Ganga leaves the hills for the plain. Option B, Bhopal, is the capital of Madhya Pradesh and is known for its lakes rather than for a river. The pairs worth holding are Varanasi and Prayagraj on the Ganga, Agra and Mathura on the Yamuna, Lucknow on the Gomti and Ayodhya on the Sarayu.

The correct answer is Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. The philosopher and teacher Dr S. Radhakrishnan was India's first Vice-President, from 1952 to 1962, serving two full terms. He then became the second President of India (1962–67). His birthday, 5 September, is celebrated as Teachers' Day, and he received the Bharat Ratna in 1954.

The other three were also Vice-Presidents, which is exactly why they appear in the options. Dr Zakir Husain was the second Vice-President (1962–67) and then the third President. V.V. Giri was the third Vice-President (1967–69) and later the fourth President. Gopal Swarup Pathak was the fourth Vice-President (1969–74). A pattern worth noticing: the first three Vice-Presidents all went on to become President. Only two people have served two full terms as Vice-President: S. Radhakrishnan and M. Hamid Ansari. The current Vice-President, C.P. Radhakrishnan, took office in September 2025; do not confuse the two Radhakrishnans.