Defence GK Questions 2026

The Union Cabinet approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission on 4 January 2023 with this outlay, to be spent up to the financial year 2029-30 across incentives, hubs, pilot projects, research and skilling.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy notified the Green Hydrogen Standard for India in August 2023, fixing the limit at two kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent for each kilogram of hydrogen, averaged over twelve months, and covering the whole chain from water treatment through electrolysis, purification, drying and compression…

Blue hydrogen is made by the same fossil route as grey hydrogen, usually steam reforming of natural gas, but the carbon dioxide produced is captured and stored underground instead of being released, so its emissions are much lower though not zero.

Hydrogen is called green only when the electricity that splits the water comes from a renewable source such as solar or wind, so that no carbon dioxide is released in making it.

Diu, on the coast of Gujarat, was declared the first union territory in India to run entirely on solar power.

Nelson Mandela, the leader of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and later its President, received the Bharat Ratna in 1990, the same year in which Dr B. R. Ambedkar was honoured posthumously.

The Bharat Ratna is a medallion shaped like a peepal leaf, about an inch and three-eighths wide, bearing a sun on the front with the words Bharat Ratna below it in Devanagari, and the State Emblem with the motto Satyameva Jayate on the reverse.

The Carnatic vocalist M. S. Subbulakshmi received the Bharat Ratna in 1998 and was the first musician in the list.

Article 18 abolishes titles and forbids the State from conferring any title except a military or academic distinction. The civilian awards survive because they are treated as decorations and not as titles, and for the same reason a recipient may not write Bharat Ratna before or after a name.

Until December 2011 the Bharat Ratna could be given only for art, literature, science and public service. The rules were then widened to cover any field of human endeavour, and in 2014 Sachin Tendulkar became the first sportsperson to receive the award, along with the scientist C. N. R. Rao.

The Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, called the Frontier Gandhi and the founder of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, received the Bharat Ratna in 1987 and was the first recipient who was not an Indian citizen.

Indira Gandhi received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she is the first woman in the list.

The original rules of 1954 did not allow a posthumous award; the provision was added in 1955, and the first person honoured after his death was Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second Prime Minister of India, in 1966, the year he died at Tashkent.

The first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna, all in 1954, were C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, the physicist C. V. Raman and the philosopher S. Radhakrishnan, who later became President.

The Bharat Ratna was instituted on 2 January 1954 by President Dr Rajendra Prasad, on the same day as the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, and the first awards were conferred later the same year on C. Rajagopalachari, C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan.

Abundant rainfall, warm temperatures and thick vegetation together supply the water, the heat and the organic acids that speed up solution, hydrolysis, hydration, carbonation and oxidation, so minerals are decomposed deeply.

A valley glacier reaching the coast scoops its floor below present sea level; when the ice melts and the sea rises, water floods the trough and leaves a long, narrow, steep-sided inlet with great depth.

The term comes from the Kras or Karst plateau of the Dinaric region, which lies largely in present-day Slovenia and extends into the neighbouring coastal belt.

A moraine is the ridge of unsorted rock debris that a glacier carries and dumps; it is named by position as lateral, medial, ground or terminal moraine, and the terminal moraine marks the farthest point the ice reached.

Loess is a depositional landform of wind: very fine silt lifted from desert and glacial margins is carried far away and settles as a yellow, porous, loosely packed sheet.