Q&A: practice questions with answers

Concept: The question asks for the option that is not presented as an outcome of globalisation in the standard (NCERT) account of its gains for India.

1. Globalisation since 1991 brought wider consumer choice (foreign brands, cheaper goods), new technology through MNCs and FDI, and integration of India with world markets – options A, B and C are recognised results.
2. "Negative cultural impact" is a debated criticism, not a listed economic result of globalisation; hence it is the odd one out here.

Yaad rakhein: In such "NOT" questions, the three positive/standard textbook outcomes form a group; the lone negative statement is the answer.

Answer: (D) Negative Cultural Impact

Concept: Vallabhbhai Patel led the Bardoli Satyagraha (1928) in Gujarat against a steep increase in land revenue; the peasant women of Bardoli gave him the title "Sardar".

1. The no-tax campaign forced the Bombay government to appoint the Broomfield Committee and cut the enhancement – a landmark peasant victory.
2. Option B (Punjab, Rowlatt) relates to Dr Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew; C (INA, Burma) to Subhas Chandra Bose; D (Lucknow Pact, 1916) to Tilak and Jinnah.

Yaad rakhein: Kheda (1918) + Bardoli (1928) = Patel's two great peasant satyagrahas in Gujarat.

Answer: (A) Leading the Bardoli Satyagraha that established him as the "Sardar"

Concept: The stored-program concept – instructions and data kept in the same read-write memory – is called the von Neumann architecture, after John von Neumann's 1945 "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC".

1. Almost every modern computer (CPU + memory + I/O connected by a bus) follows this design.
2. Pascal built a mechanical calculator (Pascaline), Babbage designed the Analytical Engine ("father of the computer"), and Turing gave the theoretical Turing machine – none is credited with the stored-program architecture as such.

Yaad rakhein: Babbage = father of computer; von Neumann = stored program; Turing = father of computer science/AI.

Answer: (D) John von Neumann

Concept: Under the Competition Act, 2002 (Sections 27 and 48), the CCI can not only penalise an enterprise or association but also hold its officials personally liable when they were in charge of the conduct.

1. In September 2025 the Supreme Court, in CCI v. Kerala Film Exhibitors Federation, upheld the CCI's order that had penalised the Federation for boycotting a theatre and fixed liability on its office-bearers (President and General Secretary).
2. The Court thus affirmed that CCI may impose behavioural remedies and attribute liability to the persons running a trade body – not merely fines on the body (option A), and without any Cabinet clearance (option B).

Yaad rakhein: Section 48 = liability of persons in charge of a company/association for its anti-competitive conduct.

Answer: (D) CCI may impose remedies and fix liability on office-bearers

Concept: Tundra is the treeless, frozen vegetation zone of the Arctic fringe; its fauna is adapted to extreme cold – walrus, polar bear, seal, musk ox, Arctic fox and reindeer.

1. The walrus lives on Arctic sea ice and coasts, squarely in the tundra belt.
2. Iberian lynx – Mediterranean scrub of Spain; jackal – grasslands/scrub of Asia-Africa; desert horned viper – Sahara/Arabian deserts.

Yaad rakhein: Tundra animals have thick fur or blubber: walrus, seal, polar bear, musk ox.

Answer: (C) Walrus

Concept: Bharatmala Pariyojana (2017, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways) is the umbrella highway programme for economic corridors, inter-corridor and feeder routes, border/coastal roads and expressways.

1. Phase I targets about 34,800 km of highways, including greenfield expressways such as Delhi–Mumbai.
2. Sagarmala deals with ports, Smart Cities with urban development, and PM Gati Shakti is a multi-modal planning platform, not a road-building scheme itself.

Yaad rakhein: Bharat-mala = roads; Sagar-mala = ports; Gati Shakti = master-plan portal.

Answer: (A) Bharatmala Pariyojana

Concept: Sleep keeps the session in RAM and keeps the RAM powered (low power); Hibernate writes the RAM contents to the hard disk (hiberfil.sys) and switches the PC off completely (zero power).

1. Because RAM must stay powered, Sleep consumes more power than Hibernate, but it resumes in seconds.
2. Option B states the reverse of the truth, option A/C confuse the modes – in Hibernate the screen is off and in Sleep the system is not shut down.

Yaad rakhein: Sleep = RAM (fast, small power); Hibernate = Disk (slower, no power).

Answer: (D) Sleep uses more power than Hibernate.

Concept: Light entering the glass core of an optical fibre strikes the core–cladding boundary at an angle greater than the critical angle and is totally internally reflected again and again, so it travels along the fibre with almost no loss.

1. Total Internal Reflection (TIR) needs light to go from a denser medium (core) to a rarer one (cladding) at an angle above the critical angle – the fibre is designed exactly for this.
2. Refraction, interference and dispersion do not confine light inside a thin fibre; dispersion in fact is a source of signal spreading that engineers try to minimise.

Yaad rakhein: TIR applications – optical fibre, diamond sparkle, mirage, prism periscope/binoculars.

Answer: (B) Total Internal Reflection

Concept: IRENA's Renewable Energy Statistics 2025 ranks countries by installed capacity at the end of 2024.

1. In solar power India stood 3rd globally (after China and the USA), having crossed about 100 GW of installed solar capacity.
2. In wind power India is 4th (after China, USA, Germany); overall renewable capacity 4th; hydropower 5th – so the 3rd rank asked here belongs to solar.

Yaad rakhein: India: Solar 3rd, Wind 4th, total RE 4th (IRENA 2025).

Answer: (B) Solar Power

Concept: The early Congress (1885–1905), led by Dadabhai Naoroji, Gokhale, W.C. Bonnerjee, Pherozeshah Mehta etc., believed in the British sense of justice and used constitutional agitation – petitions, prayers, memoranda, resolutions and debates in councils.

1. Because of these peaceful, gradual methods ("3 P's" – prayer, petition, protest) they were called Moderates.
2. Options B and C describe the Extremists (Lal-Bal-Pal) after 1905, and option D the revolutionaries – the opposite of moderate politics.

Yaad rakhein: Moderates = "political mendicancy" (as Extremists mocked it) – petitions, not mass agitation.

Answer: (A) They adopted constitutional methods such as petitions and discussions to seek political reforms.

Concept: The basic structure doctrine was laid down in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973); judicial review was among the features the judges named as part of that unamendable core.

1. In Kesavananda Bharati, Justices such as Khanna and Shelat listed supremacy of the Constitution, separation of powers and judicial review as basic features.
2. Minerva Mills (1980) later reaffirmed judicial review and limited amending power, but the original recognition came in 1973.
3. Indra Sawhney concerns OBC reservation; Maneka Gandhi concerns Article 21 and due process.

Yaad rakhein: 1973 Kesavananda – doctrine born; 1980 Minerva Mills – doctrine strengthened.

Answer: (D) Keshavananda Bharati case

Concept: Qawwali is the devotional music of Sufi shrines (dargahs), sung in praise of God, the Prophet and Sufi saints, with chorus, handclaps, harmonium and dholak.

1. It is traditionally traced to Amir Khusrau (13th century) at the Chishti dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya, Delhi.
2. Dhrupad is the oldest classical form (temple/court), Tappa comes from Punjab camel-drivers' songs, Tarana uses meaningless syllables – none is specifically Sufi.

Yaad rakhein: Sufi + dargah + Amir Khusrau = Qawwali.

Answer: (D) Qawwali

Concept: CD stands for Compact Disc – an optical storage medium (about 700 MB) read by a laser, introduced by Philips and Sony in 1982.

1. Variants: CD-ROM (read only), CD-R (recordable once), CD-RW (rewritable); successors are DVD and Blu-ray.
2. The other expansions are made-up terms and are not standard computer abbreviations.

Yaad rakhein: CD = Compact Disc (700 MB) → DVD = Digital Versatile Disc (4.7 GB) → Blu-ray (25 GB).

Answer: (A) Compact Disk

Concept: Part III of the Constitution groups the Right to Equality in Articles 14 to 18.

1. Art. 14 – equality before law; Art. 15 – no discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, birthplace; Art. 16 – equality of opportunity in public employment; Art. 17 – abolition of untouchability; Art. 18 – abolition of titles.
2. Articles 12–13 are definitions/laws inconsistent with FRs, 19–22 are Right to Freedom, 23–24 Right against Exploitation, 25–28 Freedom of Religion.

Yaad rakhein: 14–18 Equality, 19–22 Freedom, 23–24 Exploitation, 25–28 Religion, 29–30 Culture & Education, 32 Remedies.

Answer: (D) Articles 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18

Concept: Automated identification (Auto-ID) technologies – barcodes and especially RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags – let a computer system read item identities without manual entry, giving real-time inventory visibility.

1. RFID readers scan tagged goods as they move through warehouses and shops, updating stock counts instantly in the supply-chain software.
2. Presentation software, e-mail alerts and OCR editing do not identify physical items automatically.

Yaad rakhein: Barcode needs line-of-sight; RFID reads many tags at once by radio – hence "real-time" tracking.

Answer: (D) RFID-driven supply chain systems

Concept: Successive changes multiply: take the original price as 100 and track the multipliers.

1. After $+15\%$ and $+20\%$: $100\times 1.15\times 1.20=138$.
2. Final price must be $105$ (overall $+5\%$).
3. Decrease needed $=138-105=33$ on a base of $138$.
4. $\%$ decrease $=\frac{33}{138}\times 100\approx 23.91\%$.

Trick: Percentage decrease is always calculated on the current (higher) price, not on the original 100.

Answer: (C) 23.91

Concept: Overall profit $=$ sum of individual profits/losses; $\text{Profit}\%=\frac{\text{Profit}}{\text{Total CP}}\times 100$.

1. Net gain $=300-50+200=₹450$ (positive, so profit).
2. Total CP $=₹3,951$.
3. Profit$\%=\frac{450}{3951}\times 100\approx 11.39\%$.

Trick: Individual cost prices are not needed – only the total CP and the net rupee gain matter.

Answer: (D) 11.39% profit

Concept: Convert fractional ratios to whole numbers by multiplying with the LCM of denominators.

1. $\frac{1}{2}:\frac{1}{4}:\frac{5}{16}$ – multiply by 16: $8:4:5$.
2. Total parts $=8+4+5=17$; one part $=\frac{9520}{17}=560$.
3. Share of Y $=4\times 560=₹2,240$.

Trick: Check: $9520$ is divisible by $17$ ($17\times 560$) – a quick sanity test for the ratio.

Answer: (B) ₹2,240

Concept: Solve innermost brackets first; convert decimals to fractions.

1. $\frac{1}{0.01}=100$.
2. $\frac{5}{8}+0.25=\frac{5}{8}+\frac{2}{8}=\frac{7}{8}$.
3. $\frac{7}{8}\times \frac{4}{5}=\frac{7}{10}$.
4. $100\times \frac{7}{10}=70$.

Trick: $0.25=\frac{1}{4}=\frac{2}{8}$ – pick the denominator that matches the other fraction.

Answer: (A) 70

Concept: Average of a mixed group $=$ weighted mean $=\sum (\text{fraction}\times \text{average})$.

1. Men: $0.60\times 51=30.6$.
2. Women: $0.40\times 55=22.0$.
3. Overall average $=30.6+22=52.6$ years.

Trick: Alligation: ages differ by 4; men are $60\%$, so the mean lies $\frac{2}{5}\times 4=1.6$ above 51 $\Rightarrow 52.6$.

Answer: (C) 52.6