UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Devdas, the story of a young man ruined by his own indecision and by the rigidity of the society around him, is the most often filmed of all Indian novels, and its author also wrote Parineeta, Srikanta and Palli Samaj.

The collection, whose title means an offering of songs, was rendered into English by the poet himself, and the prize that followed in 1913 made Tagore the first Asian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He published Anandamath in 1882, and the song Vande Mataram that appears in it became the rallying cry of the freedom movement and was adopted as the national song of India; his other well-known works are Durgeshnandini, Kapalkundala and Devi Chaudhurani.

Tamil tradition holds that assemblies of poets, called Sangams, met under the patronage of the Pandya kings, and Madurai, the Pandya capital, is the seat remembered in the accounts that survive; the poems collected there form the oldest body of Tamil literature.

The Silappadikaram, whose name means the tale of the anklet, follows the merchant Kovalan, his wife Kannagi and the dancer Madhavi, and ends with Kannagi proving her husband's innocence before the Pandya king and bringing fire upon Madurai; she is worshipped afterwards as a goddess of chastity.

In the Sangam poems the word muvendar stands for the three crowned rulers of the Tamil country, the Chera, the Chola and the Pandya, each with a port and an inland centre of power, and the poems praise their gifts and their wars.

He composed one thousand three hundred and thirty couplets arranged in one hundred and thirty-three chapters and grouped in three parts, on virtue, wealth and love; because the work preaches conduct without attaching itself to any one religion, people of every faith in the Tamil country honour it, and it…

Article 243Q requires the Governor to constitute a Nagar Panchayat, by whatever name called, for a transitional area, that is an area moving from rural to urban character.

Article 243K vests the superintendence, direction and control of panchayat elections in a State Election Commission consisting of a State Election Commissioner appointed by the Governor.

Appointed in 1957 to examine the working of the Community Development Programme, it recommended democratic decentralisation through three tiers, namely the Gram Panchayat at the village level, the Panchayat Samiti at the block level and the Zila Parishad at the district level.

Article 243P defines a metropolitan area as an area having a population of ten lakh or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more municipalities or panchayats, which the Governor specifies by public notification.

Article 243F provides that a person who is less than twenty-five years of age shall not be disqualified on the ground of age if he has attained twenty-one years, which fixes twenty-one as the floor for membership of a panchayat.

It says that a Gram Sabha may exercise such powers and perform such functions at the village level as the legislature of a State may by law provide.

The Eleventh Schedule was added by the 73rd Amendment Act of 1992 and lists twenty-nine subjects, from agriculture and minor irrigation to poverty alleviation and public distribution, which a State legislature may devolve on the panchayats under Article 243G. The Schedule itself does not transfer power; it only marks the…

The 74th Amendment Act of 1992 created Part IXA for urban local bodies, of which the municipal corporation is the largest form under Article 243Q. It also made regular elections compulsory by fixing a five-year term under Article 243U and by placing the conduct of municipal elections with the State…

Part IXA of the Constitution, inserted by the 74th Amendment Act of 1992, is titled The Municipalities and covers every kind of urban local body.

The East India Company set up the first municipal corporation in India at Madras in 1688, with a mayor and aldermen, mainly to raise local taxes for the maintenance of the town.

The three tiers created by Article 243B are the village level, the intermediate level and the district level, known in most States as the Gram Panchayat, the Panchayat Samiti and the Zila Parishad.

Both were passed in 1992 and together they gave constitutional status to local government.

Signed in 1765 after the Battle of Buxar, it was concluded by Robert Clive with the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II and with Shuja-ud-Daulah of Awadh.