General Knowledge Questions

Name the first Indian to get Nobel prize in economics.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

The Amazon basin has been continuously inhabited for at least 10, 000 years, possibly more. Its earliest inhabitants were stone-age peoples, living in hundreds of far-flung tribes, some tiny, others numbering in the tens of thousands. It was from the west that Europeans explorers first arrived. In 1541 a Spanish expedition from Quito, led by Gonzalo Pizarro, ran short of supplies while exploring east of the Andes in what is today Peru. Pizarro’s cousin Francisco de Orellana offered to take 60 men along with the boats from the expedition and forage for supplies. De Orellana floated down the Rio Napo to its confluence with the Amazon, near Iquitos (Peru), and then to the mouth of the Amazon. Along the way his expedition suffered numerous attacks by Indians; some of the Indian warriors, they reported, were female, like the Amazons of Greek mythology, and thus the world’s greatest river got its name. No one made a serious effort to claim this sweaty territory, however, until the Portuguese built a fort near the mouth of the river at Belém in 1616, and sent Pedro Teixeira up the river to Quito and back between 1637 and 1639. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Portuguese bandeirantes (groups of roaming adventurers) penetrated ever further into the rain forest in pursuit of gold and Indian slaves, exploring as far as present-day Rondônia, and the Guaporé and Madeira river valleys. Amazonian Indians had long used the sap from rubber trees to make waterproof bags and other items. European explorers recognized the potential value of natural latex, but were unable to market it because it tended to grow soft in the heat, or brittle in the cold, and thus had limited appeal outside the rain forest. However, in 1842 American Charles Goodyear developed vulcanization (made natural rubber durable) and in 1890 Ireland’s John Dunlop patented pneumatic rubber tires. Soon there was an unquenchable demand for rubber in the recently industrialized USA and Europe, and the price of rubber on international markets soared. As profits skyrocketed, so did exploitation of the seringueiros, or rubber tappers, who were lured into the Amazon, mostly from the drought-stricken northeast, by the promise of prosperity only to be locked into a cruel system of virtual slavery dominated by seringalistas (owners of rubber-bearing forests). Rigged scales, hired guns, widespread illiteracy among the rubber tappers, and monopoly of sales and purchases all combined to perpetuate the workers’ debt and misery. In addition, seringueiros had to contend with jungle fevers, Indian attacks and all manner of deprivation.

Seringalistas refers to

In the following question, a sentence has been given in Direct/Indirect speech. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Indirect/Direct speech.

He said, "I started the job today."

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and click the button corresponding to it.

In the world today we make health an end in itself. We have forgotten that health really means to enable a person to do his work and do it well. A lot of modern medicine, and this includes many patients as well as many physicians, pay very little attention to health but very much attention to those who imagine they are ill. Our great concern with health is shown by the medical columns in newspapers, the health articles in popular magazines and the popularity of television programmes and all those books on medicine. We talk about health all the time. Yet for the most part the only result is more people with imaginary illness. A healthy man should not be wasting time talking about health : he should be using health for work.

Modern medicine is primarily concerned with

Which is the largest continent in the world?

In the following question, the sentence given with blank to be filled in with an appropriate word. Select the correct alternative out of the four and indicate it by selecting the appropriate option.

The demand of self-esteem is that never stand _______ for what you have the power to earn

Which  one  of  the  following  constitutional authorities  inquires  and  decides  in  case  of doubts  and  disputes  arising  out  of  election of  the  President  and  Vice  President  Of India?

Which Mughal Emperor was deported to Rangoon by the British?