General Awareness / Business and Management Aptitude
This section combines current affairs, static and economic general knowledge, and basic management concepts. Questions are factual and broad, so the goal is accurate recognition rather than deep analysis.
Core areas
- Current affairs: business news, appointments, awards, sports, summits and government schemes from the exam's stated window.
- Indian economy: GDP and GNP, inflation measured by CPI and WPI, RBI tools such as repo rate, reverse repo, CRR and SLR, budget terms and banking basics.
- Management: planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling; Fayol's principles; Taylor's scientific management; Maslow's hierarchy.
- Marketing: the 4Ps, segmentation by demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioural variables, and the product life cycle.
- Finance and accounting: Assets = Liabilities + Equity; current ratio = current assets / current liabilities; break-even analysis.
Worked example
A firm has fixed costs of ₹50,000, a selling price of ₹100 and a variable cost of ₹60 per unit. Find the break-even quantity. Contribution per unit = selling price − variable cost = 100 − 60 = ₹40. Break-even quantity = fixed costs / contribution = 50,000 / 40 = 1,250 units. At 1,250 units, total contribution equals fixed costs and profit is zero.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing GDP and GNP: GDP covers domestic territory; GNP adds net factor income from abroad.
- Reversing repo and reverse repo: the repo rate is what the RBI charges banks for short-term loans.
- Using current affairs outside the exam's stated cut-off window.
- Confusing organizing with staffing, or directing with controlling.
- Treating a demographic variable as psychographic, or vice versa.
- Using year-end balances only when the question supplies opening and closing figures for a ratio.
Revise management terms with one concrete example each, and link current business news to the concept it illustrates.