DAY – 64 (InstaTest-64): Insta 75 Days Revision Plan-2022: Topic – MODERN INDIA, PREVIOUS YEAR UPSC PAPER 2012, January 2022 CA – INSIGHTSIAS

Solution: C

Lord Macaulay’s Minute (1835)

The famous Lord Macaulay’s Minute settled the row in favour of Anglicists—the limited government resources were to be devoted to teaching of Western sciences and literature through the medium of English language alone. Lord Macaulay held the view that “Indian learning was inferior to European

learning”—which was true as far as physical and social sciences in the contemporary stage were concerned.

Wood’s Despatch (1854)

In 1854, Charles Wood prepared a despatch on an educational system for India. Considered the “Magna Carta of English Education in India”, this document was the first comprehensive plan for the spread of education in India.

1. It asked the government of India to assume responsibility for education of the masses, thus repudiating the ‘downward filtration theory’, at least on paper. Hence, statement 1 is incorrect.
2. It systematised the hierarchy from vernacular primary schools in villages at bottom, followed by Anglo-Vernacular High Schools and an affiliated college at the district level, and affiliating universities in the presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.
3. It recommended English as the medium of instruction for higher studies and vernaculars at school level.
4. It laid stress on female and vocational education, and on teachers’ training.
5. It laid down that the education imparted in government institutions should be secular.
6. It recommended a system of grants-in-aid to encourage private enterprise.

Solution: C

The Indian National Congress raised the demand, after it was set up in 1885, for

• lowering of age limit for recruitment, and
• holding the examination simultaneously in India and Britain.

The Aitchison Committee on Public Services (1886), set up by Dufferin, recommended— Hence, statement 1 is incorrect.

• dropping of the terms ‘covenanted’ and ‘uncovenanted’;
• classification of the civil service into Imperial Indian Civil Service (examination in England), Provincial Civil Service (examination in India) and Subordinate Civil Service (examination in India); and,
• raising the age limit to 23.

Lee Commission (1924)

The Lee Commission recommended that—

• the secretary of state should continue to recruit the ICS, the Irrigation branch of the Service of Engineers, the Indian Forest Service, etc.;
• the recruitments for the transferred fields like education and civil medical service be made by provincial governments;
• direct recruitment to ICS on basis of 50:50 parity between the Europeans and the Indians be reached in 15 years;
• a Public Service Commission be immediately established (as laid down in the Government of India Act, 1919).

Solution: B

At the Congress meeting in Haripura, Gujarat, in February 1938, Bose was unanimously elected president of the session.

He was firm in his belief that the Congress ministries in the provinces had immense revolutionary potential, as he said in his presidential address. Bose also talked of economic development of the country through planning and was instrumental in setting up a National Planning Committee later. The session adopted a resolution that the Congress would give moral support to those who were agitating against the governance in the princely states.

Solution: A

The CWC authorized Gandhi to initiate discussions with the viceroy. As a result of these discussions, a pact was signed between the viceroy, representing the British Indian Government, and Gandhi, representing the Indian people, in Delhi on February 14, 1931. This Delhi Pact, also known as the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, placed the Congress on an equal footing with the government. Irwin on behalf of the government agreed on—

1. immediate release of all political prisoners not convicted of violence;
2. remission of all fines not yet collected;
3. return of all lands not yet sold to third parties;
4. lenient treatment to those government servants who had resigned;
5. right to make salt in coastal villages for personal consumption (not for sale);
6. right to peaceful and non-aggressive picketing; and
7. withdrawal of emergency ordinances.

The viceroy, however, turned down two of Gandhi’s demands—

(i) public inquiry into police excesses,

(ii) commutation of Bhagat Singh and his comrades’ death sentence to life sentence.

Solution: C

1929

1. All Parties Muslim Conference formulates the “fourteen points” under the leadership of Jinnah.
2. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt drop bomb in the central legislative Assembly to protest against the Public Safety Bill.
3. Jatin Das dies in Jain after 64 days of fast.
4. Lord Irwin’s announcement that the goal of British policy in India was the grant of domination status.
5. Lahore session of the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru adopts the goal of complete independence (Poorna Swaraj) for India.

1930

1. Jawaharlal Nehru hoists the tricolour of India on the banks of Ravi in Lahore.
2. First Independence Day observed.
3. Working committee of INC meets at Sabarmati and passed the Civil Disobediences Movement with his epic Dandi march.
4. Mahatma Gandhi launches the Civil Disobedience Movement with his epic Dandi march.
5. First Round table conference begins in London to consider the report of Simon Commission for the future constitutional set-up in India.

1931

1. Gandhi Irwin pact signed. Civil Disobedience movement suspended.
2. Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Raj Guru executed (in Lahore Case).
3. Second Round Table conference begins Mahatma Gandhi arrives in London to attend it.

1932

1. British Prime Minister Ramsay Mac Donald announces the Communal Awards giving separate electorate to Harijans get reserved seats in place of separate electorate.
2. Gandhi’s fast unto death.
3. Poona pact signed by which the Harijans get reserved seats in place of separate electorate.
4. Third Round table Conference begins at London.

Solution: D

Hindustan Republican Association/Army or HRA

(later renamed Hindustan Socialist Republican Association or HSRA). The HRA was founded in October 1924 in Kanpur by Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Sachin Sanyal, with an aim to organise an armed revolution to overthrow the colonial government and establish in its place the Federal Republic of United States of India whose basic principle would be adult franchise.

The HSRA

Determined to overcome the Kakori setback, the younger revolutionaries, inspired by socialist ideas, set out to reorganize Hindustan Republic Association at a historic meeting in the ruins of Ferozshah Kotla in Delhi (September 1928). Under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar Azad, the name of HRA was changed to Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). The participants included Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Bhagwaticharan Vohra from Punjab and Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma and Jaidev Kapur from the United Provinces. The HSRA decided to work under a collective leadership and adopted socialism as its official goal.

Solution: D

At this stage, some leaders like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, G.S. Kharpade and B.C. Pal left the Congress as they believed in a constitutional and lawful struggle while some others like Surendranath Banerjea founded the Indian National Liberal Federation and played a minor role in national politics henceforward.

Solution: B

December 1920 At the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress—

(i) The programme of non-cooperation was endorsed.

(ii) An important change was made in the Congress creed: now, instead of having the attainment of self-government through constitutional means as its goal, the Congress decided to have the attainment of swaraj through peaceful and legitimate means, thus committing itself to an extraconstitutional mass struggle.

(iii) Some important organisational changes were made: a congress working committee (CWC) of 15 members was set up to lead the Congress from now onwards; provincial congress committees on linguistic basis were organised; ward committees were organised; and entry fee was reduced to four annas.

(iv) Gandhi declared that if the non-cooperation programme was implemented completely, swaraj would be ushered in within a year.

Many groups of revolutionary terrorists, especially those from Bengal, also pledged support to the Congress programme.

Solution: B

Because of drought in 1918, the crops failed in Kheda district of Gujarat. According to the Revenue Code, if the yield was less than one-fourth the normal produce, the farmers were entitled to remission. The Gujarat Sabha, consisting of the peasants, submitted petitions to the highest governing authorities of the province requesting that the revenue assessment for the year 1919 be suspended. The government, however, remained adamant and said that the property of the farmers would be seized if the taxes were not paid.

Gandhi asked the farmers not to pay the taxes. Gandhi, however, was mainly the spiritual head of the struggle. It was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and a group of other devoted Gandhians, namely, Narahari Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravi Shankar Vyas, who went around the villages, organized the villagers and told them what to do and gave the necessary political leadership. Patel along with his colleagues organized the tax revolt which the different ethnic and caste communities of Kheda supported.

The revolt was remarkable in that discipline and unity were maintained. Even when, on non-payment of taxes, the government seized the farmers’ personal property, land and livelihood, a vast majority of Kheda’s farmers did not desert Sardar Patel. Gujaratis in other parts who sympathised with the cause of the revolt helped by sheltering the relatives and property of the protesting peasants. Those Indians who sought to buy the confiscated lands were socially ostracised. Ultimately, the government sought to bring about an agreement with the farmers. It agreed to suspend the tax for the year in question, and for the next; reduce the increase in rate; and return all the confiscated property.

Solution: B

1. Rajagopalachari, realising the necessity of a settlement between the Congress and the Muslim League for the attainment of independence by India, evolved in 1944, a formula, called the C R Formula.

Its main contents were:

The Muslim League should cooperate with the Congress in the formation of provisional interim government for the transitional period.

After the close of war, a commission shall be appointed to demarcate the boundaries of the Muslim-dominated districts in the north-west and east of India. The people of these districts shall decide, by plebiscite, the issue of separation from India. ‘In the event of separation, a mutual agreement shall be entered into between the two governments for jointly safeguarding defence, commerce, communications and other essential sectors, etc.

Solution: B

Butler Committee (1927)

Along with the Simon Commission, the British government also announced the setting up of a three-member committee consisting of Harcourt Butler, W.S. Holdsworth and S.C. Peel to inquire into the relationship between the Indian States and the Paramount Power and to suggest ways and means for a more satisfactory adjustment of the existing economic relations between them and British India.

Officially called the Indian States Committee, it visited 16 Indian States. Its report, submitted in 1929, observed that the relationship of the Paramount Power with the States was not merely a contractual relationship, but a living, growing relationship shaped by circumstances and policy, and resting on a mixture of history and theory. Further, it maintained that in view of this historical nature of the relationship, the States should not be transferred without their own agreement to a relationship with a new government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature.

Solution: B

Kuka Movement

The Kuka Movement was founded in 1840 by Bhagat Jawahar Mal (also called Sian Saheb) in western Punjab. A major leader of the movement after him was Baba Ram Singh.

(He founded the Namdhari Sikh sect.) After the British took Punjab, the movement got transformed from a religious purification campaign to a political campaign. Its basic tenets were abolition of caste and similar discriminations among Sikhs, discouraging the consumption of meat and alcohol and drugs, permission for intermarriages, widow remarriage, and encouraging women to step out of seclusion.

On the political side, the Kukas wanted to remove the British and restore Sikh rule over Punjab; they advocated wearing hand-woven clothes and boycott of English laws and education and products. So, the concepts of Swadeshi and non-cooperation were propagated by the Kukas, much before they became part of the Indian national movement in the early twentieth century.

As the movement gained in popularity, the British took several steps to crush it in the period between 1863 and 1872.

Solution: D  

Misings are an indigenous community inhabiting parts of the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. They were also known as Miris in the past and still recognized as Miris in the Constitution of India.

Toda people are a Dravidian ethnic group who live in the Nilgiri Mountains of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Before the 18th century and British colonisation, the Toda coexisted locally with other ethnic communities, including the Kota, Badaga and Kurumba, in a loose caste-like society, in which the Toda were the top ranking. During the 20th century, the Toda population has hovered in the range 700 to 900.

Reang (aka Bru in Mizoram) are one of the 21 scheduled tribes of the Indian state of Tripura. The Bru can be found all over the Tripura state in India. However, they may also be found in Mizoram and Assam. They speak the Reang dialect of Kokborok language which is of Tibeto-Burmese origin and is locally referred to as Kau Bru.

Solution: A

Ijara

It was the practice of revenue farming. According to this practice, the right to farm or collect revenue was granted temporarily to the highest bidder in an auction by the government through the zaminder. In return for this function, the ijaradar (revenue farmer) was rewarded with a commission of 4 to 6 per cent and few other benefits.

Having its origins in the reign of Shah Jahan, it become common during Aurangzeb’s period and widely practiced under the Later Mughals. The British also used this practice for some time in eastern India.

Solution: C

Akbar

Akbar was responsible for establishment of an entire department devoted to the paintings and scribing of his documents. He established a formal artistic studio called Tasvir Khana where the artists were hired on salary and they developed their own styles.

Shah Jahan

The tenor of the Mughal paintings changed rapidly in the period of Shah Jahan. Unlike his father and grandfather who liked naturalistic depictions, Shah Jahan liked to create artificial elements in the paintings. It is said that he tried to reduce the liveliness of the paintings and bring in unnatural stillness as he was inspired by the European influence.

He brought a change in the technique of drawing and painting from the earlier period. He eschewed the use of charcoal to draw and encouraged the artists to draw and sketch using a pencil. He also ordered to increase the use of gold and silver in the paintings.

Solution: D

Solution:

• SUNSCREEN CHEMICALS Common names for chemicals to avoid in your sunscreen are Benzophenone, PABA, Avobenzone, Homosalate and Ethoxycinnmate. These chemicals function as sun-blocking agents, absorbing UV rays. They are known endocrine disruptors, and are easily absorbed into the bloodstream. They may also cause cellular damage and be carcinogenic. Not only that, but they are toxic to aquatic life.

Solution: A

Solution:

• NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated.
• NFTs can represent real-world items like artwork and real estate.
• “Tokenizing” these real-world tangible assets makes buying, selling, and trading them more efficient while reducing the probability of fraud.
• NFTs can also function to represent individuals’ identities, property rights, and more.

Solution: C

Solution:

• Nutrition-sensitive agriculture is a food-based approach to agricultural development that puts nutritionally rich foods, dietary diversity, and food fortification at the heart of overcoming malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. This approach stresses the multiple benefits derived from enjoying a variety of foods, recognizing the nutritional value of food for good nutrition, and the importance and social significance of the food and agricultural sector for supporting rural livelihoods. The overall objective of nutrition-sensitive agriculture is to make the global food system better equipped to produce good nutritional outcomes.
• FAO/WHO initiated the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2).

Solution: D

Solution:

• The first experimental mission of ISRO’s Scramjet Engine towards the realisation of an Air Breathing Propulsion System was successfully conducted on August 28, 2016 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota.

• After a flight of about 300 seconds, the vehicle touched down in the Bay of Bengal, approximately 320 km from Sriharikota. The vehicle was successfully tracked during its flight from the ground stations at Sriharikota. With this flight, critical technologies such as ignition of air breathing engines at supersonic speed, holding the flame at supersonic speed, air intake mechanism and fuel injection systems have been successfully demonstrated.

Solution: A

Solution:

• Genetically engineered crops have genes added or removed using genetic engineering techniques,originally including gene guns, electroporation, microinjection and agrobacterium. More recently, CRISPR and TALEN offered much more precise and convenient editing techniques.

Answer C

The lake receives water from six rivers: Mantha, Rupangarh, Khari, Khandela, Medtha and Samod.

30% of the Sambhar Lake’s area had been lost to mining and other activities, including the illegal salt pan encroachments.

Flamingoes, pelicans and the waterfowls are commonly sighted.

Answer D

In India there are two species of flamingos — 

Greater Flamingo :They are widespread in India, and they migrate to South India during winter IUCN status: Least concern. 

Lesser Flamingo : They mainly breed at the Rann of Kutch/North-western India. IUCN status: Not threatened.

Greater flamingoes are found in various regions of Africa, the southeastern parts of Asia as well as southern Europe. In Asia, their distribution range includes the coastal areas of India and Pakistan.

Flamingo Festival is held every year to promote tourism in Pulicat and Nellapattu

Answer C

Answer D

A vaccine (Formalin inactivated KFDV vaccine) does exist for KFD and is used in endemic areas of India.However, it is found that vaccines are not effective once the person is infected with fever.

Kyasanur forest disease or KFD is a viral hemorrhagic fever spread by ticks that is endemic to India’s southwestern region. The virus that causes the sickness is from the Flaviviridae family.

Answer A

The Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, 2009 (the Hong Kong Convention), was adopted at a diplomatic conference held in Hong Kong, China in 2009.

It was adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2009.

The Convention is aimed at ensuring that ships, when being recycled after reaching the end of their operational lives, do not pose any unnecessary risks to human health, safety and to the environment.

India ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2019

Answer : D

A is a conclusion, not corollary. B and C are extraneous to the above passage. D is correct

because BAT is a low cost device which can assist the visually impaired people of India.

Answer : B

SI for 5 Yrs = PTR/100 = 5PR/100

SI for 5 Yrs if invested at 3% more interest rate = 5P(R+3)/100

From data: Difference between the above interest rates = Rs.150

ie., 5PR/100 – 5P(R+3)/100 = 150

P= Rs. 1000, The principle amount

Answer : C

Total capacity of the cistern = LCM of 24 & 36 = 72

Time taken by Pipe A to fill cistern = 72/24 = 3

Time taken by Pipe B to fill cistern = 72/36 = 2

Pipe B should be closed after some , rest filling would be done by pipe A alone

Logic —> Pipe A worked for whole 18 minutes

Pipe A work = 18 * 3 = 54 units

Remaining work = 72 – 54 = 18

18 units of work is being done by pipe B in = 18/2 = 9 minutes

Therefore pipe B has to be shut after 9 minutes

Correct Answer : C

A’s oxen total days = 12 * 10 = 120 days

B’s oxen total days = 8 * 12 = 96 days

C’s oxen total days = 9 * 16 = 144 days

A : B : C = 120 : 96 : 144 = 10 : 8 : 12

C’s share = 12/30 * 7500 = ₹ 3000

Answer : B

Since we know that the difference between the age of any two persons remains always

constant, while the ratio of their ages gets changed as the time changes.

So, if the age of his child be x (presently)

Then the age of wife be x + 26 (presently)

Thus, the tool age = x + (x + 26) = 32 [ 252 – 220 =32]

x = 3

Therefore the age of her child is 3 years and her self is 29 years. Hence her age at the time of

the birth of her child was 26 years.

Alternatively: As we have mentioned above that the age difference remains always constant.

Therefore her age at the time of her child’s birth was 26 years.