UPHESC Assistant Professor English 2025 PYQs

Concept: A floating body displaces its own weight of liquid (law of flotation).

1. Sea water (≈1.025 g/cm³, due to dissolved salts) is denser than river water (≈1.000 g/cm³).
2. The ship's weight is unchanged, so it needs a smaller displaced volume in sea water – it floats higher (rises a little).
3. Thus R is true and directly explains A.

Short trick: Denser liquid → less sinking (ships carry 'Plimsoll' load lines for fresh vs salt water).

Concept: The AICC met in Delhi on 14–15 June 1947 to ratify the Mountbatten (3 June) Plan.

1. 3 June 1947: Mountbatten announced the partition plan.
2. 14 June 1947: at the AICC meeting Gandhiji, though opposed to partition, advised Congressmen to accept it as the only way out.
3. The AICC then passed the resolution accepting the plan (157 for, 29 against).

Short trick: 3 June = Plan announced; 14 June = AICC (Gandhi) accepts.

Concept: Public health and sanitation is Entry 6 of the State List.

1. The 42nd Amendment (1976) moved five subjects from State to Concurrent List: education (Entry 25), forests, weights and measures (33A), protection of wild animals & birds, and administration of justice (11A).
2. Public health stayed in the State List.

Short trick: 42nd Amendment's five: Education, Forests, Wildlife, Weights & measures, Justice – health is NOT among them.

Concept: Megasthenes was sent by Seleucus Nicator to the court of Chandragupta Maurya at Pataliputra (c. 302 BCE).

1. He wrote 'Indica', describing Mauryan society and administration.
2. Deimachus came to Bindusara's court; Dionysius was sent by Ptolemy II (to Bindusara/Ashoka).
3. Brihadratha was the last Mauryan, killed by Pushyamitra Shunga.

Short trick: Seleucus → Megasthenes → Chandragupta; Antiochus → Deimachus → Bindusara.

Concept: Dyarchy in the provinces was introduced by the Government of India Act, 1919 (Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms), in force from 1921.

1. Provincial subjects were split into 'transferred' (ministers responsible to legislature) and 'reserved' (Governor and executive council).
2. 1909 = Morley–Minto Reforms (separate electorates); 1935 Act abolished provincial dyarchy and introduced it at the Centre; 1937 = provincial elections/ministries.

Short trick: 1919 = dyarchy in provinces; 1935 = provincial autonomy + dyarchy at Centre.

Concept: Article 21A (inserted by the 86th Amendment, 2002) guarantees free and compulsory education to children aged 6–14 years.

1. Implemented through the RTE Act, 2009 (in force 1 April 2010).
2. Article 45 (DPSP) now covers early childhood care and education below 6 years.
3. Article 19 = six freedoms; Article 32 = right to constitutional remedies.

Short trick: 21A = 'A' for Akshar (education); 86th Amendment, 6–14 years.

Concept: The 97th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2011 gave constitutional status to co-operative societies.

1. It added 'co-operative societies' to Art. 19(1)(c), inserted Art. 43B (DPSP) and Part IXB (Arts. 243ZH–243ZT).
2. 96th (2011) = 'Oriya' → 'Odia'; 99th (2014) = NJAC; 101st (2016) = GST.

Short trick: 97 → Co-operatives (Part IXB); 101 → GST.

Concept: In 2020-21 India's real GVA contracted; the contact-intensive services sector was hit hardest and agriculture was the only sector to grow.

1. Provisional estimates (May 2021): services ≈ −8.4%, industry ≈ −7.0%, agriculture ≈ +3.6%.
2. Trade, hotels, transport and communication alone shrank by about 18%.
3. Worst to least affected: Service, Industry, Agriculture.

Short trick: Lockdown hit 'contact' jobs most; the farm sector was the 'silver lining'.

Concept: Disguised (hidden) unemployment: more people are engaged than needed, so the marginal productivity of the extra workers is zero.

1. Typical case: five family members working on a farm that needs only three – removing two does not reduce output.
2. Underemployment = working below capacity/hours; seasonal = jobless in the off-season; 'formal unemployment' is not a standard category.

Short trick: Disguised = 'looks employed, adds nothing' (MP = 0).

Concept: Budget 2025-26 announced a social security scheme for the welfare of online platform (gig) workers.

1. Platform workers will get identity cards, registration on the e-Shram portal and health care under PM Jan Arogya Yojana.
2. About 1 crore gig workers were expected to benefit.
3. Farm, factory and women workers already had schemes; the 'first time' scheme was for platform workers.

Short trick: Gig workers (delivery/cab apps) → e-Shram + PM-JAY, Budget 2025-26.

Concept: In Chaucer's General Prologue the Knight travels with his son the Squire and one servant, the Yeoman.

1. The Knight is the 'verray, parfit gentil knyght'.
2. "With hym ther was his sone, a yong Squier" – the Squire is the Knight's son.
3. "A Yeman hadde he, and servantz namo" – the Yeoman is the Knight's only attendant.

Short trick: Knight → Squire (son) → Yeoman (servant): Father, son, attendant.

Concept: Gorboduc (1561) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville is the first English tragedy in blank verse.

1. Its 1570 edition was titled The Tragedie of Ferrex and Porrex.
2. Ferrex and Porrex are the two sons of King Gorboduc who divides his kingdom between them.
3. 'Senecan tragedy' is its type, not its title; the other two options are invented.

Short trick: Gorboduc's two sons = Ferrex & Porrex = the alternative title.

Concept: The line is Faustus's address to the spirit of Helen of Troy in Act V, Scene i of Doctor Faustus.

1. Mephistopheles conjures Helen; Faustus says: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"
2. He continues: "Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss."
3. Tamburlaine, Dido and Edward II have no such Helen scene.

Short trick: Helen + kiss + thousand ships = Faustus.

Concept: In Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Tess's child by Alec d'Urberville is baptised by her as 'Sorrow'.

1. The sickly baby is dying; Tess herself baptises him at night and names him Sorrow (from Genesis).
2. He dies in infancy and is buried in a neglected corner of the churchyard.
3. The name sums up Phase the Second, 'Maiden No More'.

Short trick: Tess's baby = 'Sorrow, the Undesired'.

Concept: Each line is a famous line from a Romantic or Modernist poem.

1. a. "Surely some revelation is at hand" – Yeats, The Second Coming (iii).
2. b. "Who are these coming to the sacrifice?" – Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn (i).
3. c. "If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear" – Shelley, Ode to the West Wind (ii).
4. d. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" – Eliot, The Waste Land (iv).

Short trick: Revelation → Second Coming; sacrifice → Urn's procession; dead leaf → West Wind; dust → Waste Land.

Concept: Ramanujan published three volumes in his lifetime; the fourth appeared posthumously.

1. The Striders (1966) → Relations (1971) → Second Sight (1986).
2. The Black Hen was published posthumously in Collected Poems (1995) – his last volume.
3. Collected Poems (1995) won the Sahitya Akademi Award.

Short trick: S-R-S-B: Striders, Relations, Second Sight, Black Hen (last).

Concept: A metrical foot is named by its pattern of stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables.

1. Spondee = / / (two stresses), e.g. 'heartbreak'.
2. Anapest = x x /; Trochee = / x; Dactyl = / x x.
3. Only the spondee has two stressed syllables.

Short trick: Spondee – 'Strong-Strong'.

Concept: Harold Bloom's A Map of Misreading (1975) is the sequel to The Anxiety of Influence (1973).

1. It argues that strong poets 'misread' (misprision) their precursors to create space for themselves.
2. Hartman (Yale critic) wrote Criticism in the Wilderness; Kermode wrote The Sense of an Ending; Drakakis edited Alternative Shakespeares.

Short trick: Bloom: Anxiety of Influence → Map of Misreading.

Concept: The words come from Raja Rao's Foreword to Kanthapura (1938).

1. In it he discusses conveying 'in a language that is not one's own the spirit that is one's own'.
2. He says English is the language of our intellectual make-up but not of our emotional make-up, and that our style must be distinctively Indian.

Short trick: Kanthapura Foreword = manifesto of Indian English → Raja Rao.

Concept: Four American poems: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and Frost.

1. a. 'They know not well the subtle ways I keep' – Emerson, Brahma (iii).
2. b. 'A worship new I sing… O soul' – Whitman, Passage to India (ii).
3. c. 'To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need' – Dickinson, Success is Counted Sweetest (i).
4. d. 'Spring is the mischief in me… good neighbors' – Frost, Mending Wall (iv).

Short trick: Brahma speaks of 'ways I keep'; Whitman's engineers; Dickinson's nectar; Frost's neighbours.