State Exams Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is C, Turkish. Babur wrote his memoirs in Chagatai Turkish, the language of his homeland in Central Asia, and the book is admired for its plain, observant prose about the men, fruits, animals and rivers of the countries he passed through. Option A is wrong for the language of composition although it is the language of the famous translation, made for the Mughal court, in which form the work is known as the Baburnama; the question asks in which language it was written. Option B is wrong because Arabic was the language of religious scholarship rather than of Mughal memoirs, and the well known Arabic work on India is Al Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind. Option D is wrong because Urdu took shape long after Babur's death in 1530.

The correct answer is D, Madurai. Tamil tradition holds that assemblies of poets, called Sangams, met under the patronage of the Pandya kings, and Madurai, the Pandya capital, is the seat remembered in the accounts that survive; the poems collected there form the oldest body of Tamil literature. Option A is wrong because Nagapattinam was a port on the Coromandel coast, known for trade and later for its Buddhist and Christian associations, not for a literary academy. Option B is wrong because Thiruvarur is famous as a temple town and as the birthplace of the great composers of Carnatic music, which belongs to a much later age. Option C is wrong because Thiruvallur lies near the northern edge of Tamil Nadu and has no connection with the Sangam assemblies. The safe pairing to memorise is Madurai with the Pandyas and with the Sangam, and the same city with the burning in the Silappadikaram.

The correct answer is C, Municipal corporation and holding elections for it. The 74th Amendment Act of 1992 created Part IXA for urban local bodies, of which the municipal corporation is the largest form under Article 243Q. It also made regular elections compulsory by fixing a five-year term under Article 243U and by placing the conduct of municipal elections with the State Election Commission under Article 243ZA.

Option A is wrong because district councils in the tribal areas of the North East are governed by the Sixth Schedule, which was part of the original Constitution of 1950. Option B is wrong because panchayats were the subject of the companion 73rd Amendment, which inserted Part IX. Option D is wrong because the Gram Sabha is recognised by Article 243A of Part IX and is not an elected body at all; it is the assembly of all registered voters of a village.

The correct answer is B, Madras. The East India Company set up the first municipal corporation in India at Madras in 1688, with a mayor and aldermen, mainly to raise local taxes for the maintenance of the town. It is the oldest municipal body in the country and is the standard answer to questions on the beginnings of urban local government in India.

Option A is wrong because Calcutta received its municipal corporation in 1726, nearly four decades later, under a Royal Charter. Option C is wrong for the same reason: Bombay also got its corporation in 1726 along with Calcutta, so neither was the first. Option D is wrong because Delhi was not a Presidency town of the Company in the seventeenth century and its municipal corporation was created much later, in 1958, by an Act of Parliament. Only Madras fits the year 1688.

The correct answer is D, Targeted Public Distribution System. The public distribution system was made targeted in 1997, when households were divided into those above and those below the poverty line and the subsidy was concentrated on the poorer group. Grain from the central pool, procured largely by the Food Corporation of India, is issued to the States and sold through fair price shops under this system.

Option A is wrong because it is a made-up phrase about population spread and has no place in food policy. Option B is wrong for the same reason; it describes nothing in the administration of food subsidy. Option C is wrong because although it borrows the word target, there is no scheme by that name; the development programmes of that period were the Integrated Rural Development Programme and its successors. Only option D is the correct expansion.

The correct answer is B, 22. The Government of India announces a Minimum Support Price for twenty-two mandated crops on the recommendation of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. These cover cereals, pulses, oilseeds and commercial crops such as copra, raw cotton and raw jute. Sugarcane is kept outside this list and is dealt with separately through a Fair and Remunerative Price.

Option A is wrong because twenty is short of the mandated list and matches no official grouping. Option C is wrong because twenty-four is often chosen by candidates who count sugarcane and one or two minor crops along with the mandated list. Option D is wrong because eighteen is far too small; the pulses and oilseeds alone account for more than ten of the twenty-two. The figure to remember is twenty-two mandated crops plus a separate FRP for sugarcane.

The correct answer is A, cotton. The pink bollworm is the most damaging pest of the cotton plant. Its larva bores into the boll and feeds on the developing seed and lint, so the damage is hidden until the boll opens, and it has developed resistance to some insect-resistant cotton varieties, which is why it keeps returning to the news.

Option B is wrong because silk is produced by the silkworm, which is reared rather than protected from pests of this kind, and the word bollworm itself points to a boll, a cotton structure. Option C is wrong because the main pests of mustard are the aphid and the sawfly. Option D is wrong because apple orchards suffer from the codling moth and the woolly aphid. Only cotton forms bolls, so only cotton can host a bollworm.

The correct answer is B, rayon. Rayon is made by dissolving the cellulose of wood pulp in a chemical and forcing the solution through fine holes to form filaments. Because it is made from a natural polymer rather than built from small molecules, it is called a regenerated or semi-synthetic fibre, and its silk-like sheen has earned it the name artificial silk.

Option A is wrong because nylon is fully synthetic, the first fibre made entirely from coal, water and air, with no plant material in it. Option C is wrong because silk is a natural animal fibre obtained from the cocoon of the silkworm and is not man-made at all. Option D is wrong because polyester, of which terylene is the best known form, is a fully synthetic fibre made from petroleum products. Only rayon starts from wood pulp.

The correct answer is C, Machilipatnam. Machilipatnam, also written as Masulipatnam, was the first Dutch factory in India, opened in 1605, and the English and the French also traded there; it was never a Portuguese possession. Option A, Bombay, was Portuguese until 1661, when it was given to Charles II of England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza and passed to the East India Company in 1668. Option B, Hooghly, was a Portuguese settlement in Bengal from the sixteenth century until Shah Jahan expelled them in 1632 for piracy and slave trading. Option D, Chaul, on the Konkan coast south of Bombay, was one of the early Portuguese ports and the site of a famous naval battle with the Egyptian fleet in 1508. Reading a settlement as Dutch when it is on the Coromandel coast is a reliable short cut in such questions.

The correct answer is B, Reserved forests. Indian forests are classified administratively into reserved, protected and unclassed forests, and the first two together are described as the permanent forest estate, that is land maintained permanently for timber and other forest produce and for the protection of soil and water. Reserved forests are the most valuable of the three and enjoy the strictest protection, with grazing and cultivation prohibited or closely regulated. Option A, unprotected forests, is not one of the recognised administrative classes at all. Option C, unclassed forests, covers the remaining wooded land, a great deal of it owned by communities and private persons in the north-east and in Gujarat, and it lies outside the permanent estate. Option D, community forests, again describes ownership rather than an administrative class, and such land usually falls within the unclassed category.

The correct answer is C, Deciduous forest. Tropical deciduous forest is called monsoon forest because it is the natural vegetation of the monsoon climate, growing where rainfall lies between 70 and 200 centimetres and where a marked dry season follows the rains. Its trees shed their leaves for six to eight weeks in the dry months to save water, and it is the most widespread forest type in India, yielding teak, sal, shisham and sandalwood. Options A and B, rain forest and equatorial forest, describe the evergreen forest of the heavy rainfall belt above 200 centimetres, which has no leafless season at all. Option D, mountain forest, is classified by altitude rather than by the rainfall regime and changes from oak and chestnut through pine and deodar to alpine meadow as one climbs, so it is not tied to the monsoon rhythm.

The correct answer is D, Red sandal. Red sanders, or red sandalwood, is a tree of the dry deciduous forest and grows almost entirely in the Seshachalam and Palakonda hills of the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh, where it is prized for its dark red heartwood; it is not a thorn forest species. Options A, B and C are all classic trees of the tropical thorn forest, which grows in the semi-arid belt receiving less than 70 centimetres of rainfall. Khair, the catechu tree, yields the katha used in paan. Keekar and babool are names for the acacia that dots the plains of Rajasthan, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. All three carry thorns, small leaves and long tap roots, the standard adaptations for a dry habitat, while red sanders is a taller tree of a moister and shadier forest type.

The correct answer is A, low coefficient of friction. Teflon is the trade name of polytetrafluoroethylene, a polymer whose surface is one of the most slippery among solids, with a coefficient of friction of about 0.04. A bearing has to let a shaft turn with as little rubbing as possible, so this slipperiness is the reason Teflon is chosen; it also lets many such bearings work without any oil or grease. The polymer was found by accident by Roy Plunkett in 1938, resists almost every chemical and holds up to about 260 degrees Celsius, which is why it also coats non-stick cookware and is wound as sealing tape on pipe threads. B is wrong because Teflon is a poor conductor of heat, so it is not chosen to carry heat away. C is wrong because saving space depends on the design of the bearing, not on the material. D is wrong because only the first reason holds. Exam tip: Teflon is PTFE, the non-stick polymer with the lowest friction.

The correct answer is B, Static friction > Kinetic friction > Rolling friction. For the same pair of surfaces the order of friction is always static, then kinetic, then rolling. Static friction is the largest because the surfaces interlock while at rest and that grip has to be broken to start motion. Once sliding begins the contact keeps breaking and remaking, so kinetic friction is smaller. Rolling friction is the smallest of the three, since a rolling wheel does not slide over the road but only presses and deforms it slightly at the point of contact. This is exactly why wheels, rollers and ball bearings are used to shift heavy loads. A and D are wrong because they place rolling friction at the top, though it is the least of the three. C is wrong because it puts rolling friction above kinetic friction, reversing the true order. Exam tip: static greater than kinetic greater than rolling; the smallest of them gave us the wheel.

The correct answer is A, The principle of conservation of energy is not violated. As the body falls its height shrinks, so the potential energy m g h falls, but exactly that much energy reappears as kinetic energy, half m v squared, because the body speeds up. The sum of the two stays the same at every point of the fall, so the total mechanical energy is conserved and energy is only changing form. At the moment of release the energy is all potential; just before the body strikes the ground it is almost all kinetic. When air resistance acts, the small shortfall leaves as heat and sound, so the energy is still accounted for. B is wrong because no energy is destroyed, only converted. C and D are wrong because gravity is a force, not a law that can be obeyed or broken, and neither statement answers what happens to the lost potential energy. Exam tip: for free fall, m g h plus half m v squared stays constant.

The correct answer is A, By microphone. A microphone is a transducer: sound waves strike a thin diaphragm, the diaphragm vibrates, and that mechanical vibration is turned into a varying electric signal. In a moving-coil microphone the diaphragm carries a small coil that moves in the field of a permanent magnet, so the changing magnetic flux induces a current by electromagnetic induction; a condenser microphone instead works by changing the capacitance between two plates. Either way the output is an electrical signal that can be amplified, recorded or transmitted. Option B is wrong because a loudspeaker does the opposite, converting an electrical signal back into sound. Option C is wrong because a sonometer is a wire-and-box apparatus used to study the frequency and the laws of vibrating strings; it converts nothing. Option D is wrong because an earphone, like a loudspeaker, turns electrical energy into sound energy. Exam tip: microphone converts sound to electrical energy, while loudspeaker and earphone convert electrical energy to sound.

The correct answer is C, Red color scatters less than other colors. At sunset the Sun is close to the horizon, so its light travels through a much thicker layer of atmosphere before it reaches the eye. Air molecules scatter short wavelengths, blue and violet, far more strongly than long ones; this is Rayleigh scattering, in which the scattering falls off as the fourth power of the wavelength. Over that long slanting path almost all the blue is scattered sideways out of the beam, and mostly the long-wavelength red and orange light survives to reach us, so the Sun and the sky around it look red. Option A is wrong because sunlight is white and contains all seven colours. Option B is wrong because red is scattered the least, not the most; blue is scattered most, which is why the midday sky is blue. Option D is wrong because the effect lies in the atmosphere, not in the sensitivity of the eye. Exam tip: Rayleigh scattering gives a blue sky at noon and a red Sun at sunrise and sunset.

The correct answer is D, Thermal Power Plant. Fly ash is the fine, powdery residue that rises with the flue gases when pulverised coal is burnt to raise steam in a coal-fired power station. Because it is so light it escapes up the chimney unless electrostatic precipitators trap it, and untrapped fly ash settles on fields and water bodies carrying heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury. India's Fly Ash Notification makes it compulsory for thermal power stations to use this ash, so today most of it goes into cement, bricks, road embankments and mine filling, turning a pollutant into a building material. Option A is wrong because an oil refinery mainly releases sulphur dioxide, hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds. Option B is wrong because a fertilizer plant emits ammonia and oxides of nitrogen. Option C is wrong because a cement plant gives out cement dust and carbon dioxide; it consumes fly ash rather than producing it. Exam tip: fly ash comes from coal-based thermal power plants, is captured by electrostatic precipitators and is reused in cement and bricks.

The correct answer is A, 250 cm. In an astronomical telescope set for normal adjustment, the magnifying power equals the focal length of the objective divided by the focal length of the eyepiece. Here the magnification is 100 and the eyepiece is 2.5 cm, so the objective must be 100 multiplied by 2.5, that is 250 cm. This is why astronomical telescopes are long instruments: a large objective focal length with a short eyepiece focal length gives high magnification, and in normal adjustment the tube length is roughly the sum of the two focal lengths. B is wrong because an objective of 40 cm would give a magnification of only 16. C is wrong because a focal length smaller than the eyepiece would shrink the image instead of enlarging it. D is wrong because 100 cm gives a magnification of 40. Exam tip: for a telescope magnification is objective divided by eyepiece, so the objective is the longer lens.

The correct answer is C, M3. The Reserve Bank of India publishes four measures of money supply, and M3 is the one called broad money, also known as aggregate monetary resources. It is made of currency with the public, demand deposits with banks, other deposits with the RBI and, above all, time deposits with banks. Adding time deposits captures almost all the money the banking system has created, which is why M3 is the figure policy makers watch. A is wrong because M1, currency plus demand deposits plus other deposits with the RBI, is narrow money, the most liquid measure of all. B is wrong because M2 is M1 plus savings deposits with post office savings banks, and it is still a narrow measure. D is wrong because M4 is M3 plus total post office deposits, the widest measure, but the name broad money belongs to M3. Exam tip: M1 and M2 are narrow, M3 and M4 are broad, and M3 is the benchmark.