Social Science GK

The elected head of a gram panchayat is usually called the:

• Sarpanch
• Patwari
• Tehsildar
• Block Development Officer

Answer: Sarpanch. The sarpanch (called pradhan or mukhiya in some states) chairs the gram panchayat. A patwari keeps village land records, and tehsildars and BDOs are government officials, not elected ones.

The Great Depression began with a stock market crash on Wall Street in October 1929. In which city is Wall Street?

• London
• Chicago
• New York
• Washington, DC

Answer: New York. The New York crash set off the worst economic slump of the 20th century. NCERT's Class 10 history shows how it reached India too, as crop prices fell sharply and farmers sank into debt.

UN population estimates in April 2023 showed India overtaking which country as the world's most populous?

• United States
• China
• Indonesia
• Russia

Answer: China. The UN projected India would reach about 1.426 billion people by the end of April 2023, matching and then passing China, whose population had peaked in 2022 and begun to fall. India's last full census was in 2011, so the figure is an estimate.

NCERT's Class 10 economics praises a bank in Bangladesh that lends small sums to poor villagers, mostly women, without asking for collateral. It shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with its founder. Which bank?

• BRAC Bank
• SEWA Bank
• NABARD
• Grameen Bank

Answer: Grameen Bank. Muhammad Yunus started Grameen ('village') Bank as a project in 1976, and it became a bank in 1983. Borrowers work in small groups, and the group's trust takes the place of collateral.

In which part of Kerala do farmers grow rice on land 1 to 3 metres below sea level, a system the UN's FAO lists as a globally important agricultural heritage?

• Kuttanad
• Wayanad
• Idukki
• Palakkad

Answer: Kuttanad. Kuttanad, near Alappuzha, is one of the lowest-lying places in India and is called the rice bowl of Kerala. Farmers keep out salty water with bunds and drain the fields; FAO recognised the system in 2013.

Asia's oldest stock exchange grew out of a group of brokers who traded under a banyan tree in the 1850s and later settled on a lane now called Dalal Street. What is it called today?

• National Stock Exchange
• Calcutta Stock Exchange
• BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange)
• Tokyo Stock Exchange

Answer: BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange). In 1875 the brokers formed the Native Share and Stock Brokers' Association, which became BSE. Its best-known index, the Sensex, tracks 30 large companies.

Germany's empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors of a French palace in 1871. In 1919, Germany was made to sign the treaty ending World War I in the same room. Which treaty?

• Treaty of Paris
• Treaty of Versailles
• Treaty of Vienna
• Treaty of Westphalia

Answer: Treaty of Versailles. France chose the hall on purpose, to turn the humiliation of 1871 around. The treaty was signed on 28 June 1919, five years to the day after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot.

In 1945, the USA and the Soviet Union split an Asian peninsula into two zones along a line of latitude, and that line still roughly separates two countries. Which line?

• 17th parallel
• 49th parallel
• Tropic of Cancer
• 38th parallel

Answer: 38th parallel. The 38th parallel divided Korea into a Soviet-backed north and a US-backed south. After the Korean War (1950 to 1953) the border became the Demilitarised Zone, close to the old line. The 17th parallel split Vietnam in 1954, and the 49th marks much of the US-Canada border.

Schoolteacher Shyam Saran Negi became independent India's first voter in October 1951, because his snowbound area voted months before the rest of the country. In which district of Himachal Pradesh is it today?

• Kinnaur
• Kullu
• Chamba
• Lahaul and Spiti

Answer: Kinnaur. Negi voted at Kalpa on 25 October 1951, while most of India voted in early 1952. He kept voting all his life and died in 2022, aged 106, days after casting a postal ballot.

Indians shipped to Mauritius, Trinidad and later Fiji as contract workers from 1834 came to be named after the way they said one English word: 'agreement'. What were they called?

• Lascars
• Girmitiyas
• Sepoys
• Kanganis

Answer: Girmitiyas. 'Girmit' was how many workers said 'agreement', the indenture contract that bound them for about five years. Their descendants form large communities in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and Guyana today.