UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Organised futures trading in India began with cotton at Bombay in 1875, and the association formed in that year is treated as the first organised futures market of the country; oilseeds, jute and bullion followed in the decades after.

NCDEX, which began operations in 2003, is the exchange on which farm contracts such as guar seed, chana, castor seed, soybean, mustard, cotton and jeera are traded, and it is the reference point for agricultural futures prices in India.

The Forward Markets Commission was set up in 1953 under that Act, with its office at Mumbai, and it regulated commodity futures trading until its merger with SEBI in 2015, after which the Act itself was repealed.

The Forward Markets Commission was merged with SEBI on 28 September 2015, the Forward Contracts (Regulation) Act of 1952 was repealed by the Finance Act of 2015, and commodity derivatives were brought within the definition of securities under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956, so SEBI now regulates them.

A future is a standardised contract in which the exchange fixes the quantity, quality, delivery date and delivery centre, both parties deposit margin, positions are marked to market daily and a clearing corporation becomes the counterparty to both sides, so the risk of default is removed.

A call is the right to call the asset away from the seller, that is to buy it, and a buyer purchases a call when he expects the price of the underlying to rise above the strike price.

An option gives its buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the underlying asset at the strike price on or before a stated date, and for this right the buyer pays a premium to the seller, who is called the writer.

A derivative has no independent value of its own; it is a contract whose worth is drawn from the price of something else, which may be a commodity such as gold or crude oil, a share, a stock index, a currency or an interest rate.

The Sirhind Canal is taken from the Sutlej at Ropar, now Rupnagar, and is one of the oldest canal systems of Punjab, irrigating a large tract of the Malwa region and parts of Haryana.

The Agra Canal leaves the right bank of the Yamuna at the Okhla barrage to the south of Delhi and carries water to the districts of Agra and Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, with branches reaching parts of Haryana and Rajasthan.

The scheme was launched in 2015 to bring the scattered irrigation programmes under one roof, and its components include Har Khet Ko Pani, which aims to extend assured irrigation to every field, Per Drop More Crop, which promotes drip and sprinkler systems, the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme for incomplete major…

In drip irrigation water is carried through pipes and released slowly, drop by drop, at the root zone of each plant through emitters, so losses to evaporation, runoff and deep percolation are the lowest of all methods and fertiliser can be delivered with the water.

Tank irrigation is characteristic of the peninsula, especially Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, for three reasons: the hard crystalline rock of the plateau makes the digging of wells difficult and holds little groundwater, the rivers of the peninsula are seasonal and cannot feed perennial canals, and the uneven…

Groundwater drawn through wells and tube wells irrigates the largest part of the net irrigated area of India, and its share has risen steadily since the Green Revolution because a tube well gives water on demand, close to the field and without waiting for a canal turn.

The Buckingham Canal is a salt water navigation canal dug in the nineteenth century along the eastern coast, linking the lagoons and backwaters between Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh and Chennai in Tamil Nadu, and it was used to carry goods and to relieve famine by moving grain.

The Grand Anicut, known in Tamil as Kallanai, was thrown across the Cauvery by the Chola king Karikala in about the second century to spread the river's water over the delta, and it still serves the canals of the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu.

The Upper Ganga Canal was opened in 1854 and is taken from the Ganga at Haridwar, from where it runs down the Ganga–Yamuna Doab and irrigates the districts of western Uttar Pradesh; the engineer associated with its construction is Proby Cautley.

The Harike barrage stands in Punjab at the point where the Beas joins the Sutlej, and the Indira Gandhi Canal begins there as the Rajasthan Feeder before continuing as the main canal into Rajasthan.

Begun in 1958 as the Rajasthan Canal and renamed in 1984, it is the longest canal in India; its feeder and main canal together run for about six hundred and fifty kilometres and carry water from the Punjab rivers into the Thar desert of western Rajasthan.

The EPA names the burning of fossil fuels by power plants and other industrial facilities as the largest source of sulphur dioxide.