UPSC CSE Indian Society — practice questions
120 free MCQs with worked solutions. Tap any question for the answer + explanation, or practice them all in the app.
Practice UPSC CSE Indian Society in the app →Demography comes from the Greek demos, meaning people, and graphein, meaning:The first modern census was probably the American census of:Regular decennial censuses in India have been conducted since:Malthus outlined his pessimistic theory in his Essay on Population of:According to Malthus, population grows in geometric progression while food grows in:Malthus called famines and diseases that curb population:The theory of demographic transition describes how many basic phases of population growth?The birth rate is the number of live births per:The fertility rate counts live births per 1000 women in the child-bearing age group of:The infant mortality rate counts deaths of babies before the age of one year per:The sex ratio in India is expressed as the number of females per:Nature produces roughly how many female babies for every 1000 males?The working age group used for the dependency ratio is generally:India's population according to the Census of 2011 was:Between 1911 and 1921 India's population showed negative growth because of the:The influenza epidemic of 1918-19 killed about how many people in India?India's annual population growth rate rose to what level during 1961-1981?Birth and death rates in India began to diverge after the decade of:Surat witnessed a small epidemic of plague in:Amartya Sen showed famines were often caused by a failure of:Which states had brought their total fertility rate down to 1.7 by 2016?Like the East Asian economies earlier and which country today, India is said to enjoy a demographic dividend?Bourdieu divided social resources into economic, cultural and which third form of capital?Educational qualifications and status are examples of which form of capital?Sociologists call a system ranking categories of people in a hierarchy:Marriage restricted to members of the same caste is called:The caste system is justified ideologically through the opposition of:Pre-conceived opinions of one group about another, literally pre-judgement, are:Fixed and inflexible characterisations of a whole group are:While prejudice describes attitudes, actual behaviour towards another group is:Historically the caste system classified people by their occupation and:In South Africa, apartheid became law in:Under apartheid, Blacks were relocated to poor districts called:Nelson Mandela's African National Congress formed the government in:The three dimensions of untouchability are exclusion, exploitation and:Manual scavengers in India are estimated to number about:Mahatma Gandhi popularised which term in the 1930s for ex-untouchable castes?The term Dalit gained wide currency through which radical group of the early 1970s?The Schedules listing castes and tribes for special treatment were first drawn up in:One of the earliest laws against caste discrimination, allowing Dalits into government schools, was the Caste The Ninety Third Constitution Amendment of 2005 introduced reservation for OBCs in:Untouchability is abolished by which Article of the Constitution?The Prevention of Atrocities Act protecting Dalits and adivasis was passed in:The Dalit Sangharsh Samiti is a Dalit political organisation of:Community identities determined by birth and involving no choice are called:In Max Weber's definition, a state successfully claims a monopoly of legitimate force in a:The box on assimilation and integration policies is based on the UNDP Human Development Report of:India's billion-plus people speak about how many languages and dialects?India is the world's third largest Muslim country after Indonesia and:The Report of the States Reorganisation Commission was implemented on:Potti Sriramulu's fast unto death in October 1953 led to the creation of:In 1956, the same year as the SRC, which country proclaimed Sinhala its sole official language?The civil war in Sri Lanka raged from:Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand were created as new states in:The Finance Commission deciding tax sharing between Centre and States is set up every:Which leader's book On Nationalism, first published in 1917, warned against exclusive nationalism?In sociology a minority is more than a numerical distinction; it involves relative disadvantage and:According to Census 2011, Hindus numbered about 966 million and formed what share of the population?Muslims, the largest religious minority, numbered 172 million in 2011, or:Which state had the highest Christian share, 88 per cent, in 2011?Sikhs formed 1.7 per cent of India's population and a majority of what share in Punjab?The highest proportion of Buddhists, 27 per cent, is found in:Dr Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly that minorities are:The anti-Sikh riots of Delhi took place in:The anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat occurred in:Whose poems synthesising Hindu and Muslim devotion are cherished symbols of pluralism?Chartism was a social movement for parliamentary representation in:In 1842 the Chartists collected how many signatures?When Rammohun Roy campaigned against sati, defenders of sati formed the:E. P. Thompson showed that the crowd and mob had their own shared sense of right and wrong, a:The theory that conflict arises when a group feels worse off than others is called:Resource mobilisation theory, rejecting Olson, was proposed by:James Scott's Weapons of the Weak studied everyday resistance by peasants and labourers in:A social movement that changes the personal consciousness of its members, like Narayana Guru's among Ezhavas, The 1960s reorganisation of states on language and the Right to Information campaign are examples of which typRamachandra Guha's book on the Chipko movement is titled:The 1970 flood that turned villagers to Chipko struck which valley?The head of the Reni village Mahila Mandal who led women to stop the felling was:The Bengal revolt of 1859-62 was directed against the:The All India Kisan Sabha was founded in:The Tebhaga movement of 1946-47 was a struggle of sharecroppers for what share of their produce?The Telangana movement of 1946-51 was directed against feudal conditions in the princely state of:The Naxalite movement started in 1967 from:The first trade union in India was established in April 1918 in Madras by:The All India Trade Union Congress was formed in Bombay in:The fourth Factories Act of 1922 reduced the working day to:Jharkhand was carved out of south Bihar in:The charismatic adivasi leader of the Jharkhand movement who rose against the British was:Unlike pre-capitalist conquerors who took tribute, British colonialism directly interfered with the:Colonial Forest Acts most affected which group by shutting them out of forests?Colonial forest policy in Assam turned interventionist because of the demand for:By the end of the nineteenth century, forests under the department in Assam province covered what share of itsUnder colonialism, people from present-day Jharkhand moved to work on tea plantations in:From 1834 to 1920, ships carried Indians to work for at least five years on plantations in:Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are:Before which war were passports not widely used for international travel?Industrialisation refers to machine production based on inanimate power such as:The first society to undergo industrialisation was:By 1900 what share of Britain's population lived in towns of over 10,000 people?London's population grew from about 1.1 million in 1800 to over how many million by 1900?Indian cotton and silk exports declined in the face of competition from:Which cities declined further in the colonial period while Bombay and Madras grew?Unlike Britain, the initial impact of British industrialisation in India pushed more people into:Calcutta exported jute to which Scottish city?In 1690 Job Charnock leased three villages by the Hugli to set up a trading post, giving rise to:Fort William was established by the Hugli in:The tea industry began in India in:In 1903 the tea industry employed how many permanent workers?Tea garden labourers in Assam were recruited under the Transport of Native Labourers Act of:Nehru visualised a modern India built on giant steel plants, power stations and:The English word caste is borrowed from the Portuguese casta, meaning:Varna, literally colour, names a division of society into how many parts?Scholars treat varna as an all-India classification and jati as a:The four varna classification is generally agreed to be roughly how old?In the late Vedic period, roughly 900 to 500 BC, the caste system was really a:Sub-castes and sub-sub-castes within a caste are referred to as:The hierarchical ordering of castes rests on the distinction between:Some scholars argue that caste as known today is more a product of:The 1901 Census that recorded the social hierarchy of castes was directed by:Legal recognition to the lists of castes and tribes for special treatment came through the Government of India