Miscellaneous — PPSC previous year questions

Aristotle, in his Politics, declared that 'man is by nature a political animal' (zoon politikon). He meant that human beings realise their nature only by living in a polis, or political community. A person who lives outside it is 'either a beast or a god'. Plato, his teacher, wrote The Republic. Socrates left no writings of his own.

M. Karunanidhi was popularly known as 'Kalaignar' (artist) for his work in Tamil literature, drama and films. He was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu five times and head of the DMK. He died on 7 August 2018.

The Bibek Debroy Committee (2014-15) was set up to suggest how to restructure Indian Railways and raise resources. Its report led to reforms. One was the merger of the Railway Budget with the Union Budget, from 2017. The Rangarajan Committee dealt with poverty estimation, as did the Tendulkar Committee before it. The Justice Lodha Committee suggested reforms in the BCCI and cricket administration.

Statement 1 is false: the first newspaper in India was Hicky's Bengal Gazette (1780), not the Calcutta Chronicle. Statement 2 is false: the couplet 'Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast...' is attributed to Amir Khusrau, not Abul Fazl. Statement 3 is true: Sukhmani Sahib was composed by Guru Arjan Dev Ji.

The country is Bangladesh. India holds the SAMPRITI army exercise with it, runs the Petrapole-Benapole rail link, built the India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline to carry high-speed diesel to Parbatipur, and shares with it a land border of about 4,096 km, the longest India has with any neighbour.

Utilitarianism, developed by Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill, judges any policy by whether it produces 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Marxism focuses on class struggle, cosmopolitanism on world citizenship.

Post-truth politics is the term for a style of politics in which appeals to emotion and personal belief matter more than objective facts; 'post-truth' was Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year in 2016. 'Orwellian' refers to state surveillance and propaganda, and 'Fabian' to gradual socialist reform.

The KMP (Kundli-Manesar-Palwal) Expressway runs around Delhi from Kundli in the north, past Kharkhoda in Sonipat, then Manesar near Gurugram, then Sohna, and ends at Palwal in the south. So the order is 2-4-3-1.

The main language of Assam is Assamese, with Bodo and Bengali also widely spoken; Garo is a language of Meghalaya, so the Assam pair is wrong. Mizoram (Mizo, English), Sikkim (Nepali, Bhutia, Lepcha, Limboo) and Tripura (Bengali, Kokborok) are correctly matched.

Only pairs 3 and 4 are correct: Renault SA is headquartered at Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, and Volkswagen AG at Wolfsburg, Germany. BMW AG is a German company based in Munich, not the USA, and Daimler AG (Mercedes-Benz) is based in Stuttgart, Germany, not Sweden.