UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Black soil, called regur, formed from the lava of the Deccan trap and is so closely tied to this one crop that it is popularly called black cotton soil.

Fertility needs mineral nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from the weathered rock, and organic matter, that is humus from decayed plants and animals, which holds water, feeds soil organisms and releases nutrients slowly.

Weathering is the natural breaking down of rock by temperature, water, wind and living things, and it is the process that makes soil in the first place; it is not a technique that a farmer applies to save soil, so it cannot be a conservation method.

In sheet erosion water spreads over a wide slope and carries away a thin, even film of topsoil, so nothing obvious is left behind to see, and the loss is noticed only years later as falling yields.

What it is rich in is calcium carbonate, magnesium, potash and lime, and remembering that short list is the safest way to answer any statement question on this soil.

A delta is built out of silt that a river carries down and drops where it meets the sea, so deltaic land is alluvial by definition, and the eastern coastal deltas of the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri are among the most fertile rice tracts of the country.

It grew out of a department for non-conventional energy sources created in 1982, became a full ministry in 1992 and took its present name in 2006, and India is among the very few countries in the world to have a separate ministry devoted to this sector.

Projects of this size and below fall under the small hydro programme of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, while larger schemes are handled as conventional hydro power by the Ministry of Power.

The plan set out eight missions covering solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, sustainable habitat, water, the Himalayan ecosystem, a green India, sustainable agriculture and strategic knowledge for climate change, and every later programme in this field refers back to it.

Both are long, narrowing inlets on the coast of Gujarat, and such a shape funnels the incoming tide so that the difference between high and low water is large, which is exactly what a tidal power scheme needs; the Sundarbans coast is the other site usually named.

The Puga valley in eastern Ladakh carries hot springs and sulphur deposits and is the best studied geothermal field in the country, the heat coming from the young mountain building of the Himalaya.

Muppandal lies in the far south of the state near Kanyakumari, where the wind pushed through a break in the Western Ghats blows strongly and steadily for much of the year, and Tamil Nadu has long been among the leading wind states of the country.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel formed over millions of years from buried organic matter; the stock is fixed, so every unit burnt is gone, and it releases carbon dioxide when burnt, although less than coal for the same heat.

The mission was launched in January 2010 as one of the eight national missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, and its aim was to make solar power competitive by building capacity in stages and by supporting domestic manufacturing.

The alliance has its secretariat on the campus of the National Institute of Solar Energy at Gwal Pahari in Gurugram, and because it rests on a framework agreement among its members it is the first treaty-based international organisation to be headquartered in India.

A geothermal plant takes steam or hot water from a natural underground reservoir, whose temperature is set by the rock and rarely approaches what a furnace can produce, so both the temperature and the pressure at the turbine are well below those of a coal-fired steam plant, and the thermal…

Anthracite is the oldest and hardest grade of coal, with the highest proportion of carbon, so it gives the most heat for its weight and burns with a clean, almost smokeless flame.

The Governor appoints as Advocate General a person qualified to be appointed a judge of a High Court; the Advocate General advises the State Government on legal matters, holds office during the pleasure of the Governor, and receives such remuneration as the Governor determines.

It allows the Governor to promulgate an Ordinance when the State legislature, or either House where there are two, is not in session and he is satisfied that circumstances exist which make immediate action necessary.

The proviso to Article 164(1) requires these States to have a Minister in charge of tribal welfare, who may also be in charge of the welfare of the Scheduled Castes and backward classes or any other work.