At which protected area did India set in motion the release of captive-bred Great Indian Bustards into the wild?

The correct answer is Rajasthan. The bird is the State bird of Rajasthan, and the Chief Minister called the day of its rewilding a day of pride for the whole State, noting that the species is part of the cultural heritage of the Thar and has been brought back from the brink of extinction. The breeding centres at Sam and Ramdevra, the new Rewilding Aviary and the release site at Desert National Park are all in Rajasthan, and the State government sanctioned the aviary's budget and funds the conservation programme. Gujarat in option A is wrong as a State-bird answer, although the species does occur there and a jumpstart effort has begun at the Naliya facility in Kutch, where two chicks were hatched in wild nests. Madhya Pradesh in option B and Haryana in option D have no part in the programme described in the release.

The correct answer is the Wildlife Institute of India. The recovery programme is a joint effort of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India, with technical collaboration from the International Fund for Houbara Conservation and funding support from National CAMPA. Scientists of the institute advised on the design of the Rewilding Aviary at Ramdevra and their long-term telemetry studies established which grasslands inside Desert National Park serve as prime breeding habitat. The Zoological Survey of India in option B and the Botanical Survey of India in option C are survey organisations for animal and plant taxonomy and are not named as partners here. The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education in option D works on forestry research and likewise has no stated role in this programme.

The correct answer is Andhra Pradesh. Kakinada lies in the East Godavari district of that state and has become a leading example of technology enabled sanitation. The city generates about 144 tons of waste daily, which the municipal corporation handles across 50 wards further divided into 382 micro pockets, each covering between 250 and 350 households. More than 973 sanitation workers serve about 112,993 households through 40,661 designated collection points. Radio frequency identification tags fitted at the gates of waste generators are scanned at the time of pick up and the data flows into an online waste management system, while 108 hopper vehicles carry GPS devices and workers mark attendance through facial recognition. Options A, B and C name neighbouring states, but the city in question is in Andhra Pradesh.

The correct answer is Ghaziabad. The municipal corporation of this city in Uttar Pradesh has registered for an international carbon credit project verified by the United Nations and has been accredited under the Verified Carbon Standard, which is supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Following Indore in Madhya Pradesh, it is set to become the first urban local body in its own state and the second in the country to convert waste into a new source of value. Options A, C and D name other large cities of the same state, but none of them is the body described as taking this step. Candidates should hold two names together for this fact, Indore as the first and Ghaziabad as the second, along with the standard under which the accreditation was granted.

The correct answer is Goa. The facility at Saligao is operated by the Goa Waste Management Corporation and stands on land that was once used as a garbage dump. It is spread over an area of 113,000 square metres and manages 250 metric tons of wet and dry waste each day, recovering recyclables from 100 metric tons of dry waste and sending the remainder to cement factories for co-processing. Organic matter is separated and converted into biogas, which in turn generates electricity for the neighbourhood, and the plant produces 7 to 8 tons of compost a day for use by local panchayats in gardening and reforestation. Options A, B and D name other states along or near the western coast, but the facility described here belongs to Goa and treats close to a third of the waste generated in that state.