UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Queen Victoria instituted the Kaiser-i-Hind Medal in 1900 for distinguished public service in India, and unlike the orders of chivalry it was open to any person of any rank, Indian or European, man or woman, in gold, silver and bronze classes.

The Order of the Star of India was created in 1861, four years after the Revolt of 1857, to tie the princely rulers and senior officials of India to the British Crown, and its motto was Heaven's light our guide; it was given three classes in 1866, the Knight Grand…

Birsa Munda, the Munda leader who led the Ulgulan or Great Tumult against colonial land policy in the Chota Nagpur region at the close of the nineteenth century, was born on 15 November 1875, and since 2021 that date has been observed as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas in honour of tribal…

It was inserted by the 89th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2003, which split the earlier joint National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; the separate tribal commission began functioning in 2004.

The Sixth Schedule, read with Article 244(2), provides for Autonomous District Councils and Regional Councils in these four states, with power to make laws on land, forests, village administration, inheritance and social custom.

The Apatani live in the Ziro valley of the Lower Subansiri district and are famous for an intensive paddy-cum-fish cultivation system worked entirely by hand, without the plough or draught animals, which is why the Ziro valley has been proposed for World Heritage status.

Census 2011 recorded the largest tribal population of any state in Madhya Pradesh, where the Gond, Bhil, Baiga, Sahariya, Korku and Bharia together account for roughly a fifth of the state's people.

The Lepcha are regarded as the earliest inhabitants of Sikkim and the Bhutia are of Tibetan origin; together with the Limbu and the Tamang they make up the notified tribes of the state, and Bhutia and Lepcha communities also live in the Darjeeling hills of West Bengal.

The Jarawa live on the western coasts of South and Middle Andaman, and the Sentinelese on North Sentinel Island, which lies in the Andaman group; both are Negrito communities and both are Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, as are the Onge of Little Andaman and the Great Andamanese.

Under it the President may, by public notification and after consulting the Governor of the state concerned, specify the tribes or tribal communities that shall be deemed Scheduled Tribes for that state or Union Territory, and only Parliament may thereafter include or exclude a community, by law.

The Toda are a small pastoral community of the Nilgiri plateau in Tamil Nadu, known for their barrel-vaulted huts, their sacred buffalo herds and their dairy-centred religion; they are also classed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.

The Pradhan Mantri Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyan was announced in the Union Budget of 2024-25 and approved by the Union Cabinet in 2024 as a mission to saturate tribal-majority villages and aspirational blocks with basic facilities such as housing, roads, water, electricity, health and education, working through the convergence of…

These are communities within the Scheduled Tribes that are the least developed on four counts: a pre-agricultural level of technology, a stagnant or declining population, extremely low literacy and a subsistence economy.

The Tharu are the most widely distributed Scheduled Tribe of Uttar Pradesh, living along the Terai belt that runs below the Himalaya through Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich, Balrampur, Shrawasti, Siddharthnagar, Maharajganj and the neighbouring districts, so they appear in more districts of the state than any other notified tribe.

A good fuel should have a moderate ignition temperature, not a very low one.

Destructive distillation means heating coal strongly in the absence of air, so that it decomposes instead of burning. The solid left behind is coke, which is almost pure carbon and is used as a reducing agent in the extraction of iron and other metals and as a smokeless fuel.

When the oxygen supply is short, the carbon of the fuel is only partly oxidised and carbon monoxide is formed instead of carbon dioxide.

It is the lowest temperature to which a combustible substance must be heated before it begins to burn, and it is a fixed property of that substance; substances with a very low ignition temperature, such as petrol, alcohol and liquefied petroleum gas, are called inflammable substances and are stored with…

Carbon dioxide is about one and a half times as dense as air, so when released it forms a blanket over the burning material and separates it from atmospheric oxygen, removing one side of the fire triangle.

Petrol and kerosene are lighter than water and do not mix with it, so water poured on an oil fire sinks below the burning layer and carries it outwards, enlarging the fire instead of putting it out.