Static general knowledge is six of the seven lines of the General Studies Paper-I syllabus in the UPSC CSE notice: History of India and the Indian National Movement; Indian and World Geography; Indian Polity and Governance; Economic and Social Development; Environmental Ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change; and General Science. The Commission tests understanding rather than recall, through statements to be judged correct or incorrect, pairs to be matched and assertion-reason items, and it likes the edges of a topic: a lesser-known provision of the Constitution, a river's tributary, a species' conservation status, the mandate of a statutory body. This page holds GK24's topic-wise GK notes for UPSC, written as short facts and tables, in English and Hindi, with each note linked to the current affairs and previous-year questions on the same topic. Start with Polity and Modern History, which carry the most questions, then Geography, the Economy, Environment, Ancient and Medieval culture and Science. Read a note, solve its PYQs, take its quiz, and come back to it in your monthly revision. A candidate who knows these notes and reads the daily current affairs has covered the syllabus the notice prescribes for Paper-I.
Which of the following pairs of a country and its legislature is incorrect?
The Eduskunta is the parliament of Finland; the parliament of Sweden is the Riksdag, a single house body.
Read the full explanation →Jatiya Sangsad is the parliament of
The Jatiya Sangsad, or National Parliament, is the single house legislature of Bangladesh and sits in the Sangsad Bhaban at Dhaka.
Read the full explanation →Which country’s parliament is known as the mother of parliaments?
The phrase comes from the nineteenth century reformer John Bright, who said that England is the mother of parliaments, and it stuck to the Parliament at Westminster because so many countries, India among them, took their form of government from it; that form is called the Westminster model.
Read the full explanation →The Oireachtas is the national parliament of
The Oireachtas is the Parliament of Ireland and consists of the President with two houses, Dail Eireann, the lower and elected house, and Seanad Eireann, the upper house.
Read the full explanation →The feature of ‘Joint Sitting of two houses of Parliament’ in the Indian Constitution is borrowed from the constitution of ____________.
The joint sitting of the two houses, provided for in Article 108 and summoned by the President to resolve a deadlock on an ordinary Bill, was taken from the Australian Constitution, along with the concurrent list and the freedom of trade and commerce between the units.
Read the full explanation →The two houses of the Parliament of Malaysia are
The Malaysian Parliament has the Dewan Rakyat, the house of the people, as its elected lower house, and the Dewan Negara, the house of the nation, as its upper house, which represents the states and holds appointed members.
Read the full explanation →The State Duma is a house of the legislature of
The Russian legislature is the Federal Assembly, and it has two houses: the State Duma, the lower house, whose members are elected, and the Federation Council, the upper house, which represents the regions of the federation.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is the largest legislature in the world by number of members?
It is a single house body with close to three thousand members, chosen indirectly by the provincial congresses and the armed forces, and no other legislature comes near that size.
Read the full explanation →The oldest surviving parliament in the world, founded in the year 930, is the
The Althing was founded in 930 at Thingvellir, where free men gathered in the open to settle disputes and declare law, and it still functions as the legislature of Iceland, which makes it the oldest surviving parliament in the world.
Read the full explanation →The Diet is the name of the national legislature of
The Japanese legislature is the Diet, called Kokkai in Japanese, and it is bicameral: the House of Representatives is the lower house and the House of Councillors the upper.
Read the full explanation →The Knesset is the parliament of which country?
The Knesset is the single house legislature of Israel and has a fixed strength of 120 members elected by proportional representation; it sits at Jerusalem and its name comes from the assembly of the same size in ancient Jewish tradition.
Read the full explanation →The modern school of Gond painting in Madhya Pradesh, known as Jangarh Kalam, is named after
Jangarh Singh Shyam of Patangarh in Madhya Pradesh took the Gond wall and floor decoration on to paper and canvas, filling his animals, trees and deities with dots and dashes, and the manner he created is called Jangarh Kalam after him; a generation of Gond painters followed it.
Read the full explanation →In Pattachitra, the white colour of the traditional palette is obtained from
The Pattachitra palette is made at home from natural matter: white is ground from the conch shell, black from the soot of a lamp, red from hingula, yellow from haritala and blue from indigo, and the gum of the wood apple binds them to the cloth, which is finally given…
Read the full explanation →Sohrai and Khovar painting, made on mud walls at harvest and at marriages, belongs to
Sohrai is the harvest and cattle festival painting and Khovar the marriage painting of the Hazaribagh belt of Jharkhand, made by women who brush on coloured earths or scratch through a top layer of white clay to reveal the dark layer beneath, a technique called sgraffito; the tradition carries a…
Read the full explanation →In a Warli wedding painting, the square enclosure called the chauk holds the figure of
The chauk is the ritual square that the married women of the household paint for a wedding, and within it they place Palaghata, the goddess of fertility, so that the painting is itself a blessing on the marriage.
Read the full explanation →Kalamkari, with its two centres at Srikalahasti and Machilipatnam, is the traditional art of
Kalamkari means work of the pen, and its two centres lie in Andhra Pradesh: at Srikalahasti the design is drawn freehand with a bamboo pen and is temple-centred, while at Machilipatnam it is printed with carved wooden blocks for furnishing and dress.
Read the full explanation →Phad painting, carried from village to village by Bhopa singers who sing the epic it illustrates, belongs to
Phad is a long scroll painted on cloth in the Shahpura and Bhilwara area of Rajasthan, traditionally by the Joshi families, and it carries the epics of the folk deities Pabuji and Devnarayan; the Bhopa priest-singer unrolls it at night and sings the story before it.
Read the full explanation →Jivya Soma Mashe, a Padma Shri recipient, is associated with which painting tradition?
Jivya Soma Mashe of the Warli country in Maharashtra was the painter who began to paint every day rather than only at weddings and rituals, which is how Warli art moved from the wedding wall to paper, canvas and exhibitions abroad; he received the Padma Shri. Option A is wrong…
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is not a style of Madhubani painting?
Pichwai is not a Madhubani style at all; it is the painted cloth hung behind the image of Shrinathji at Nathdwara in Rajasthan, showing the seasons and the festivals of the deity.
Read the full explanation →Which village near Puri in Odisha is known as a crafts village for Pattachitra painters?
Raghurajpur, with the neighbouring Dandasahi, is the village of the Chitrakar families who paint Pattachitra, engrave palm leaf and make the painted masks and the Jagannath vesha panels; almost every house in it is a workshop.
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