SSC 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, It has no moving parts. A solar cell turns sunlight straight into electricity by the photovoltaic effect at a semiconductor junction, usually of silicon, so nothing inside it turns or slides. Having no moving parts means it needs almost no maintenance, makes no noise and lasts for decades once installed, which is why panels are used on satellites, in lighthouses and in village homes far from any grid. A single silicon cell gives about 0.5 to 0.6 volt, so cells are joined into modules and modules into panels for useful power. A is wrong because a solar cell shows no oscillatory motion; it is a static device. B is wrong because metal on the outer area describes the contacts and is not an advantage. C is wrong because having moving parts is the opposite of the cell's real strength. Exam tip: solar cell — photovoltaic effect in silicon, no moving parts, about 0.5 V per cell.

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 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, 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 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, Purma Banerjee. India marched behind its own flag at the Olympics for the first time at Antwerp in 1920, and the athlete Purma Banerjee carried it at the opening ceremony. That was India's first real team at the Games: six members, four athletes and two wrestlers, sent with the help of the industrialist Dorabji Tata, whose support also led to the founding of the Indian Olympic Association in 1927. Earlier, at Paris in 1900, India had been represented by Norman Pritchard competing alone. B is wrong because Dhyan Chand was the hockey great whose teams took gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936, but he was not the first flag bearer. C is wrong because Lal Shah Bokhari carried the flag later, at Los Angeles in 1932. D is wrong because the hockey player Zafar Iqbal was flag bearer at Los Angeles in 1984. Exam tip: 1920 Antwerp — India's first Olympic team, flag carried by Purma Banerjee.

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 B, Article 17. Article 17 abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form. It sits in Part III among the Fundamental Rights, under the right to equality, and it is one of the few rights that works against ordinary citizens as well as against the State. Parliament backed it with the Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955, renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act in 1976, and later with the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The Constitution nowhere defines untouchability; the courts read it as the social practice tied to caste, not as a general insult. A is wrong because Article 14 gives equality before the law and equal protection of the laws. C is wrong because Article 19 lists the six freedoms such as speech and movement. D is wrong because Article 32 lets a citizen move the Supreme Court for a writ. Exam tip: the equality rights run from Article 14 to 18 — 15 discrimination, 16 public employment, 17 untouchability, 18 titles.

The correct answer is D, Narendra Modi. The Prime Minister commissioned INS Vikrant at Kochi on 2 September 2022; built by Cochin Shipyard, it is the first aircraft carrier designed and built in India and it carries the name of the older Vikrant that served in the 1971 war. At the same ceremony the new naval ensign was unveiled. Option A is wrong because Rajnath Singh, as Defence Minister, has commissioned and launched other warships but not this carrier. Option B is wrong because Amit Shah holds the Home portfolio, which deals with the central armed police forces rather than the Navy. Option C is wrong because Jyotiraditya Scindia held the civil aviation portfolio and had no role in the commissioning. India's other carrier is INS Vikramaditya, rebuilt from the Russian Admiral Gorshkov.

The correct answer is C, X-Rays. Roentgen, a German physicist, noticed in 1895 that a screen in his darkened laboratory glowed while a covered discharge tube was running, and he named the unknown radiation X-rays. For this he received the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. Option A is wrong because the conservation of electric charge is a principle established through the work of Benjamin Franklin and others, not a discovery of Roentgen. Option B is wrong because a practical incandescent electric bulb was made by Thomas Alva Edison in 1879, sixteen years before the X-ray. Option D is wrong because thermodynamics grew out of the work of Carnot, Joule, Clausius and Kelvin and is a body of laws rather than a single discovery. Remember the pairing of Roentgen, X-rays, 1895 and the first physics Nobel of 1901 together.