UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Rampura Agucha lies in Bhilwara district and is the largest lead and zinc mine of the country, worked for many years as a very large open pit and now mined underground; silver comes out of the same ore as a by product.

After years of protest against the reservation of hill forests, the colonial government allowed Kumaon villages to manage part of the civil forest themselves through elected Van Panchayats under rules framed in 1931.

At Arabari in the Midnapore district, a forest officer stopped treating villagers as encroachers and offered them a share of the sal harvest in return for protecting the degraded forest.

Nallur, near Devanahalli on the outskirts of Bengaluru, is an old stand of tamarind trees, some of them several centuries old, and Karnataka declared it the first Biodiversity Heritage Site of the country under section 37 of the Biological Diversity Act.

It builds a three tier system: the National Biodiversity Authority at the centre, State Biodiversity Boards, and a Biodiversity Management Committee in every local body, which keeps a People Biodiversity Register of the plants, animals and traditional uses of its area.

Until then the Act of 1972 knew only national parks and sanctuaries, both of which need state ownership and control.

Jambheshwar, known affectionately as Jambhoji, founded the Bishnoi sect in 1485 in the Bikaner desert. He laid down twenty nine rules of conduct, and the name Bishnoi comes from bis, twenty, and noi, nine.

Khejri, the Prosopis cineraria of the Thar, is the tree the Bishnois hold sacred, and it is the state tree of Rajasthan.

Mawphlang lies in the Khasi hills south of Shillong and is the best known sacred grove of India.

An Oran is a patch of desert vegetation in western Rajasthan dedicated to a folk deity, made up of khejri, kair, jaal and rohida trees and the grass between them.

In Kerala a sacred grove is called a Kavu, and a grove kept for the serpent deities, which almost every old family compound of the state once had, is called a Sarpa Kavu.

Coarsely ground rice flour is pinched between finger and thumb and released in a thin stream, which makes it the easiest material to draw with, but the tradition gives a second reason: ants, insects, sparrows and squirrels eat the flour through the day, so the morning drawing is treated as…

Chowk purana, also written chowkpurna, means the filling in of the chowk, the square of the courtyard.

Muggu is the Telugu cousin of the Tamil kolam, drawn in rice flour or white powder before the door, often around a grid of dots.

Jhoti and chita are drawn with a thin white paste of ground rice, applied with a piece of cloth or with the fingertips, on the floor and the walls around the door.

Aripan, also written aripana, is drawn with a paste of ground rice on the floor of the courtyard, the place of worship and the marriage pavilion.

A pookalam is laid in concentric rings of petals, leaves and whole flowers, and a fresh one is made on each of the ten days of the festival, growing larger as the days pass, with competitions for the best design in schools, offices and neighbourhoods.

In aipan the surface is first washed with geru, the local red ochre, and the pattern is then drawn on it with a white paste of ground rice using the fingers.

Alpana, or alpona, is applied wet: rice is soaked, ground into a white paste and painted on the floor with a cloth wick or with the fingers, which lets the artist draw flowing creepers, paddy sheaves, lotuses, owls and footprints.

Mandana reverses the usual method: the floor or the lower wall is first washed with geru, the red ochre of the region, and the design is then laid over it in white chalk or lime, so the figure is light on a red field.