UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The correct answer is C, Charles Metcalfe, who as acting Governor-General repealed the Licensing Regulations of 1823 through the Press Act of 1835 and freed Indian newspapers from the need for a licence, earning the title of liberator of the Indian press.

The correct answer is A, the Bengal Gazette, also known as Hicky's Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser, started by James Augustus Hicky in 1780; its attacks on the officials of the Company led to its seizure.

The correct answer is A, Lord Lytton, whose Vernacular Press Act of 1878 is remembered as the gagging act because it applied only to newspapers in Indian languages, allowed the government to demand a bond and forfeit printing presses, and gave no right of appeal to a court.

The correct answer is C, 1857, the year of the revolt, when the three presidency universities were founded on the model recommended by Wood's Despatch of 1854; they were examining rather than teaching universities at the start.

The correct answer is B, the Charter Act of 1813, which required the Company to set aside not less than one lakh rupees a year for the revival and improvement of literature, the encouragement of the learned natives of India and the introduction of useful knowledge.

Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote his Minute on 2 February 1835, and Lord William Bentinck's resolution of the following month accepted it, ending the long quarrel between the Orientalists and the Anglicists in favour of European learning taught in English.

The correct answer is B, Wood's Despatch of 1854, sent by Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, and called the Magna Carta of English education in India because it laid down a complete system: departments of public instruction in the provinces, universities in the presidency towns, a…

The correct answer is B, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who brought out Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali in 1821 and the Persian weekly Mirat-ul-Akhbar the next year, closing the latter in protest against the Licensing Regulations of 1823.

The correct answer is B, greenfield investment, the building of a new unit from the ground up, which adds fresh capacity and employment to the host economy.

The correct answer is B, the capital account, more precisely the capital and financial account, which records transactions that change a country's assets and liabilities abroad; investment flows, loans and banking capital all sit here.

Hot money is the name given to short-term portfolio capital that chases returns from one market to another and can be withdrawn within days, pushing up share prices and the rupee while it comes in and pulling both down when it goes.

An entity of such a country, or an investor who is a citizen of or situated in one, may invest only through the government route whatever the sector, and the rule also covers a transfer of ownership that results in such beneficial ownership.

Participatory notes are offshore derivative instruments issued by foreign portfolio investors registered with SEBI to clients abroad who want exposure to Indian shares without registering in India themselves; the underlying shares are held by the issuing investor.

The correct answer is C, 2014, when the SEBI Foreign Portfolio Investors Regulations came into force and the three older categories, namely foreign institutional investors, their sub-accounts and qualified foreign investors, were merged into one class registered in risk-based tiers.

The FDI policy lists a small set of prohibited activities: the lottery business, gambling and betting including casinos, chit funds, Nidhi companies, trading in transferable development rights, real estate business and the construction of farm houses, the manufacture of cigars, cheroots and cigarettes, and activities closed to private investment such…

Under the automatic route the foreign investor needs no prior permission from either the government or the Reserve Bank of India; the Indian company simply reports the inflow and the issue of shares to the Reserve Bank within the prescribed time.

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board was wound up and its work handed to the administrative ministries concerned, which now receive applications through the Foreign Investment Facilitation Portal.

The correct answer is C, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, a department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which was known as the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion until it was renamed in 2019.

The correct answer is B, the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, which came into force in 2000 and governs all dealings in foreign exchange, including inward and outward investment.

Foreign direct investment is made to acquire a lasting interest in an enterprise abroad, conventionally measured as ten per cent or more of the voting power, and with it comes a say in how the company is run; portfolio investment buys shares and bonds without any such control.