Static GK GK Questions with Answers – Page 16

The Golden Quadrilateral, the first and best known phase of the National Highways Development Project, is a four-lane and six-lane ring of about 5,846 kilometres joining the four metropolitan cities, and it is the single most asked fact in this chapter.

NH-44 begins at Srinagar in the Kashmir valley and ends at Kanyakumari at the southern tip of the peninsula, covering about 3,745 kilometres and passing through Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

It was created in the renumbering of 2010 by merging several older highways, including the old NH-1A, NH-1, NH-2, NH-3, NH-75, NH-26 and NH-7, and it passes through about a dozen states and union territories.

The institute, which lies at Izatnagar near Bareilly, is the country's premier centre for veterinary research and teaching, covering animal diseases, vaccines and livestock production, and it has a second campus at Mukteswar in the Nainital district.

The institute is the country's reference laboratory for viral diseases, it tests and confirms outbreaks and it also works on vaccines; the National AIDS Research Institute is in the same city.

The institute works on food processing, preservation, packaging and nutrition, and it shares the city with the Defence Food Research Laboratory, so Mysuru is best remembered as the food research city.

The institute is a laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and studies the physics, chemistry, biology and geology of the seas around India, with regional centres at Kochi, Visakhapatnam and Mumbai.

The institute works on dryland farming, sand dune stabilisation, agroforestry and the management of grazing land in the arid west of the country, and it comes under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

The institute is the country's main centre for research and training in dairy science, covering animal breeding, milk production and dairy technology, and it works under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research; Karnal also holds the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute.

The institute began in 1905 at Pusa in Bihar, and after the Bihar earthquake of 1934 damaged its buildings it was shifted to Delhi, where the campus is still called Pusa; it is the country's leading agricultural research and teaching institute and was central to the Green Revolution.

The centre was set up in 1971 and is the country's main laboratory for the second stage of the nuclear programme, in which plutonium from spent fuel is used in fast breeder reactors; the Fast Breeder Test Reactor and the prototype fast breeder project are both at Kalpakkam.

The spaceport lies on an island on the Bay of Bengal coast, chosen because launches to the east pass over the sea and because its nearness to the equator helps eastward launches; it is named after Satish Dhawan, a former chairman of ISRO.

The centre began in 1954 as the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay and was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in memory of Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the architect of India's atomic programme; the research reactors Apsara, Cirus and Dhruva are all on this campus.

Under this Act the central or a state government may appoint a commission to inquire into any definite matter of public importance, and must do so if Parliament or the state legislature passes a resolution to that effect.

It is created by Article 280 of the Constitution, which requires the President to constitute it every fifth year or earlier to recommend the distribution of the net proceeds of taxes between the Union and the states, the principles governing grants-in-aid and other matters referred to it.

The Committee on Prevention of Corruption, appointed in 1962 under K. Santhanam, reported in 1964 and recommended a central body to oversee vigilance work in the government.

The National Commission on Farmers was set up in 2004 and from its second term was chaired by the agricultural scientist Professor M. S. Swaminathan, the geneticist associated with the Green Revolution in India.

The Committee on the Financial System of 1991 and the Committee on Banking Sector Reforms of 1998, both chaired by M. Narasimham, a former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, set the agenda for liberalising Indian banking.

After the death of Potti Sriramulu and the creation of Andhra State in 1953, the government appointed the States Reorganisation Commission under Justice Saiyid Fazl Ali, with the historian K. M. Panikkar and the educationist Hriday Nath Kunzru as its other two members.

The Education Commission of 1964 to 1966, chaired by the physicist Dr Daulat Singh Kothari, was the first body to study education at every stage from the primary school to the university.