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.
Who was the first Indian to win an Oscar?
She won the Academy Award for costume design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, sharing it with John Mollo, and was the first Indian to win an Oscar in any category.
Read the full explanation →'Dada Saheb Phalke Award' is given for contribution in which field?
The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969 for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema and is named after Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who made the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913 and is called the father of Indian cinema; the first recipient was the actress Devika Rani.
Read the full explanation →'Ankiya Nats' are one-act plays distinct to the culture of ______.
Ankiya Nat is the one-act devotional play written by Srimanta Sankardeva, the saint of the Vaishnava movement in Assam, and its performance is called a Bhaona, staged in the prayer hall of a satra or naamghar with a narrator, songs and masks.
Read the full explanation →Project Elephant, launched by the Government of India for the protection of elephants and their corridors, was started in which year?
Project Elephant was launched in 1992 to protect elephants, their habitat and the corridors along which herds move between forests, and it also deals with human elephant conflict and the welfare of captive elephants.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following has been declared the National Aquatic Animal of India?
This nearly blind freshwater dolphin of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna systems finds its prey by echolocation and was declared the National Aquatic Animal of India in 2009, a step meant to draw attention to the pollution and damming of its rivers.
Read the full explanation →The hangul or Kashmir stag is protected mainly in which national park?
The hangul, also called the Kashmir stag, is the only surviving Asiatic subspecies of the red deer in India and its last viable population lives in Dachigam, a park in the hills above Srinagar whose name means ten villages.
Read the full explanation →Consider the following pairs: (a) Himalayan Region and wild goat and snow leopards, (b) Andaman and Nicobar Islands and mahogany and rosewood trees, (c) Gir forest and Asiatic lions. Which of the pairs given above is or are correctly matched?
The Himalayan region is home to wild goats such as the ibex and the tahr and to the snow leopard, which hunts them above the tree line, so pair (a) is right.
Read the full explanation →The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, came into force in which year?
CITES was drafted and signed at Washington in 1973, but a treaty begins to bind its members only after enough countries ratify it, and that stage was reached in 1975.
Read the full explanation →Silent valley national park is located in
Silent Valley National Park lies in the Palakkad district of Kerala, in the Nilgiri hills of the Western Ghats, and protects one of the last stretches of undisturbed tropical evergreen forest in the country.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the cheetah officially declared extinct in India?
The Asiatic cheetah once hunted across the open grassland and scrub of central and peninsular India, was trained by rulers for coursing blackbuck, and was wiped out by shooting and by the ploughing of its grassland.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is declared as a Wild Ass Sanctuary?
The Wild Ass Sanctuary lies in the Little Rann of Kachchh in Gujarat and is the last home of the Indian wild ass, locally called the khur, a Schedule I animal that grazes on the raised patches of grass known as bets in the salt desert.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following IUCN Red List categories indicates a lower level of extinction risk than Endangered?
The Red List arranges risk in a ladder, and the three threatened grades in falling order of severity are Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable.
Read the full explanation →The greater one-horned rhino is listed under the Schedule ______ of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
The greater one-horned rhinoceros, the animal of Kaziranga and Manas in Assam, is placed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the schedule that carries the highest protection and the strictest punishment for hunting or trade.
Read the full explanation →The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which publishes the Red List of Threatened Species, has its headquarters in which country?
The International Union for Conservation of Nature was founded in 1948 and works from Gland, a town in Switzerland near Geneva, where several environmental bodies have their offices.
Read the full explanation →After Wildlife Protection Act in 1972, the name of India's first wildlife conservation project was
Project Tiger was launched in 1973, the year after the Wildlife (Protection) Act came into force, and it was the first species recovery project of its kind in India.
Read the full explanation →The first conference of the Progressive Writers' Association was held in 1936 at Lucknow under the presidency of which writer?
The Progressive Writers' Association held its first conference at Lucknow in 1936 and Premchand, who had begun his career writing in Urdu under the name Nawab Rai before turning to Hindi, presided over it and delivered its opening address.
Read the full explanation →The poem Tarana-e-Hindi, popularly known by its opening line Sare Jahan se Achha, was written by whom?
He wrote the poem in Urdu early in the twentieth century as a song in praise of the land, and it was later set to music and became one of the best loved patriotic songs of the country.
Read the full explanation →Who is regarded as the first poet to have left a complete collection of verse in the Dakhani form of Urdu?
The ruler of Golconda who founded the city of Hyderabad wrote verse in Dakhani, the southern form of the language, and the collection that survives under his name is counted as the first complete diwan in it, which is why the earliest chapter of Urdu literature belongs to the Deccan…
Read the full explanation →Under Akbar, the Mahabharata was translated into Persian under which name?
Akbar set up a translation department in which Sanskrit works were rendered into Persian, and the Mahabharata was translated there as the Razmnama, a name that means the book of war.
Read the full explanation →The Tarikh-i-Firozshahi and the Fatwa-i-Jahandari were written by which historian of the Delhi Sultanate?
Barani lived at the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and wrote in the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq.
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