HPSCB Junior Clerk cheat sheet

RBI was established on 1 April 1935 under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, and was nationalised on 1 January 1949.

Monetary policy is set by the six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC); the inflation target is 4% CPI with a tolerance band of 2% to 6%.

CRR is the share of net demand and time liabilities (NDTL) kept as cash with the RBI and earns no interest; SLR is held in approved securities and government bonds.

Bank rate is the rate at which the RBI lends long-term funds to banks without collateral; the repo rate is against government securities with a buyback agreement.

Deposit insurance under DICGC covers up to Rs 5 lakh per depositor per bank, covering principal plus interest across all accounts in the same right.

Priority sector lending target is 40% of adjusted net bank credit for commercial banks, including 18% for agriculture and 7.5% for micro enterprises.

Nationalised banks: 14 in 1969 and 6 in 1980; the four largest public sector banks after the 2020 merger are SBI, PNB, Bank of Baroda and Canara Bank.

Himachal Pradesh State Cooperative Bank (HPSCB) is the apex cooperative bank of the state, with headquarters at Shimla; it works under the state cooperative department and NABARD refinance.

Key institutions: SEBI (1988, statutory 1992) regulates securities; IRDAI (1999) regulates insurance; NABARD (1982) handles agriculture and rural credit; SIDBI (1990) handles MSME finance.

Alphabet positions: A=1 to Z=26; reverse position = 27 minus forward position, so A=26 and Z=1.

Opposite-letter pairs are A-Z, B-Y, C-X, D-W, E-V, F-U, G-T, H-S, I-R, J-Q, K-P, L-O, M-N.

In a linear row facing north, left is your left; when facing south, left and right are reversed.

Blood relation notation: use a family tree with generations stacked vertically and siblings on one horizontal line; mark gender with + for male and minus for female.

Syllogism: 'All A are B' gives A inside B; 'No A is B' gives disjoint circles; 'Some A are B' gives overlapping circles; conclusions must hold in every possible diagram.

Coding-decoding: check letter shifts (+1, -1, +2), reverse alphabet (A=26), and positional sums before assuming a word-substitution code.

Direction sense: net displacement uses Pythagoras; the classic triplets are 3-4-5, 5-12-13, 8-15-17 and 7-24-25.

Seating arrangement with mixed facing: fix one person first, then place neighbours using the stated facing, and verify the final arrangement against every clue.

Percentage change = (new minus old) divided by old, times 100; successive changes of a% and b% give a net change of a + b + ab/100.

Simple interest = P x R x T / 100; compound interest = P[(1 + R/100)^T minus 1]; for two years CI minus SI = P(R/100)^2.

Speed = distance/time; to convert km/h to m/s multiply by 5/18, and to convert m/s to km/h multiply by 18/5.

Boats: downstream speed = boat + stream, upstream = boat minus stream; boat speed = (down + up)/2 and stream speed = (down minus up)/2.

Ratio and mixture: alligation rule gives the ratio of quantities as (mean price minus cheaper) : (dearer minus mean price).

Profit and loss: profit% is always calculated on cost price unless stated otherwise; selling price = cost price x (100 + profit%)/100.

Time and work: if A finishes in x days and B in y days, together they take xy/(x + y) days; use LCM of days as total units of work.

Average = sum of observations / number of observations; for evenly spaced numbers the average equals the middle term or (first + last)/2.

Permutation nPr = n!/(n-r)! and combination nCr = n!/[r!(n-r)!]; nCr = nC(n-r).

Subject-verb agreement: singular subjects take singular verbs; 'one of the' takes a plural noun but a singular verb, as in 'one of the boys is'.

Neither/nor and either/or agree with the nearer subject: 'Neither the clerk nor the managers were present'.

Articles: 'a' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds; 'the' with superlatives, unique things and rivers, but not with abstract nouns used generally.

Prepositions of time: in for months, years and seasons; on for days and dates; at for clock times and night.

Tenses: since and for take the perfect tense; 'since' marks a point in time, 'for' marks a duration.

Active to passive: move the object to subject position and use the past participle with the correct form of 'be'; only transitive verbs can be made passive.

Direct to indirect speech: change present to past, 'this' to 'that', 'today' to 'that day', and 'tomorrow' to 'the next day'.

Common confusions: affect (verb) versus effect (noun); principal (head or main) versus principle (rule); stationary (still) versus stationery (writing material).

Cloze and error-spotting: read the full sentence for context, then check collocations such as 'comply with', 'consist of', 'deprived of' and 'capable of'.