General Awareness and Current Affairs
General Awareness and Current Affairs rewards steady reading of the previous six to twelve months in polity, economy, banking and appointments, combined with permanent facts that do not change from year to year.
Stable facts to lock in
- RBI: established 1935, nationalised 1949, headquarters in Mumbai; monetary policy is set by the six-member Monetary Policy Committee, chaired by the Governor.
- CAG: Article 148. GST Council: Article 279A, created by the 101st Constitutional Amendment Act, 2016. Finance Commission: Article 280.
- The Union Budget is presented on 1 February, with the Economic Survey generally a day earlier.
- GDP = GVA + net taxes on products; the two measures differ because of tax treatment.
Worked example
Question: 'Which body decides India's repo rate?' Reasoning: the RBI Act, as amended in 2016, created the MPC - the Governor plus two RBI members and three government nominees - meeting at least four times a year. Answer: the Monetary Policy Committee, not the Governor alone and not the Ministry of Finance.
Traps that cost marks
- Quoting figures from an old budget or from a superseded GDP revision.
- Confusing repo (RBI lends to banks against securities) with reverse repo (RBI absorbs liquidity).
- Answering from a remembered headline without checking the year it belongs to.