State Exams GK Questions 2026

This Act is the specific law on air pollution. It empowers the Central and State Pollution Control Boards to lay down emission standards for industry and for vehicles, to declare air pollution control areas and to require consent before a polluting plant is set up or operated.

The National Air Quality Index has six bands: 0 to 50 is Good, 51 to 100 Satisfactory, 101 to 200 Moderate, 201 to 300 Poor, 301 to 400 Very Poor and 401 to 500 Severe.

The Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987 under the Vienna Convention, commits its parties to phasing out chlorofluorocarbons, halons and other chemicals that destroy stratospheric ozone, and it is regarded as the most successful environmental treaty for that reason.

Particulate matter is graded by the diameter of the particles measured in micrometres, so PM10 means particles of ten micrometres or less and PM2.5 means particles of 2.5 micrometres or less, which is about thirty times finer than a human hair.

Sulphur dioxide from industry and traffic around Agra is oxidised in the air and comes down as sulphuric acid, which attacks the calcium carbonate of marble.

Sulphur dioxide, released when coal and oil containing sulphur are burnt, is oxidised in the atmosphere to sulphur trioxide, which dissolves in water droplets to give sulphuric acid.

Carbon monoxide binds to the haemoglobin of the blood roughly two hundred times more readily than oxygen does, and the carboxyhaemoglobin so formed cannot carry oxygen.

Photochemical smog, also called Los Angeles smog, forms in warm, dry, sunny weather when oxides of nitrogen from vehicle exhaust and unburnt hydrocarbons react under ultraviolet light.

A secondary pollutant is never emitted from a source; it is manufactured in the atmosphere itself when primary pollutants react with one another or with sunlight.

He was the founder of Rashtrakuta power and overthrew the last important Chalukya of Badami, Kirtivarman II, about 753 CE.

The Nayanars were the Shaiva saints of the Tamil bhakti movement, traditionally counted as sixty-three, and they included Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavachakar.

The Pandyas ruled the extreme south of the peninsula from Madurai on the Vaigai, with the pearl-fishing port of Korkai on the coast.

He reached India in 630 CE, stayed for about fifteen years, and studied Yogachara philosophy at the Nalanda mahavihara under its head, the aged monk Shilabhadra.

He ruled in the early eighth century and marks the structural phase of Pallava architecture, when temples were built up of dressed stone instead of being cut from living rock.

He is also called Mamalla, the great wrestler, and the port city of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram takes its name from that title.

Harsha inherited Thanesar in modern Haryana from the Pushyabhuti family. When his sister Rajyashri's husband Grahavarman, the Maukhari king of Kannauj, was killed, Harsha united the two realms and moved his seat to Kannauj on the Ganga, which then became the symbol of paramountcy in northern India for the next…

The Aihole inscription was composed in Sanskrit by Ravikirti, the Jain court poet of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II of Badami.

Banabhatta was the court poet of Harsha in the seventh century CE. He wrote the Harshacharita, the biography of his patron and the first historical biography in Sanskrit, and the prose romance Kadambari, which was completed by his son Bhushanabhatta.

Harshavardhana was a dramatist as well as a king, and three Sanskrit plays are credited to him: Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda.

Shashanka was the king of Gauda, the region of Bengal with its centre at Karnasuvarna. He killed Harsha's elder brother Rajyavardhana, and it was to avenge that killing, and to recover his sister Rajyashri, that Harsha declared war and allied with Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa.