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 is a secondary pollutant?
A primary pollutant is released directly from a source, while a secondary pollutant is formed in the atmosphere when primary pollutants react.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following statements about ozone is true?
Each of the other three statements is correct on its own, which is exactly why the combined option is the answer.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following was NOT one of the five Deccan sultanates that emerged from the break-up of the Bahmani kingdom?
Khandesh was ruled by the Faruqi dynasty, which set itself up in the Tapi valley in the late fourteenth century independently of the Bahmanis, and it was annexed by Akbar in 1601; it never formed part of the Bahmani kingdom and so did not emerge from its break-up.
Read the full explanation →Mahmud Gawan built his famous three-storeyed madrasa at which city?
Mahmud Gawan, the Persian-born wazir of Muhammad Shah III who held the title Malik-ut-Tujjar, built a madrasa at Bidar in 1472.
Read the full explanation →The Persian envoy Abdur Razzaq visited Vijayanagara during the reign of which ruler?
Abdur Razzaq was sent by Shah Rukh, the Timurid ruler of Herat, and reached Vijayanagara in 1443, when Deva Raya II of the Sangama dynasty was on the throne.
Read the full explanation →The Telugu work Amuktamalyada was written by which ruler?
Amuktamalyada is a Telugu poem on the life of the Tamil saint Andal that also sets out the duties of a king, and it was composed by Krishnadevaraya himself, which is why he is remembered as a poet-king with the title Andhra Bhoja.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the Battle of Talikota, also called Rakshasi-Tangadi, fought?
On 26 January 1565 the combined armies of the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar defeated the Vijayanagara forces led by Aliya Rama Raya at Talikota, a battle also named Rakshasi-Tangadi after two nearby villages.
Read the full explanation →Which Bahmani ruler shifted the capital from Gulbarga to Bidar?
In 1425 Ahmad Shah Wali moved the Bahmani capital from Gulbarga to Bidar, which he renamed Muhammadabad, and Bidar remained the seat of the kingdom until it broke up.
Read the full explanation →Who among the following Bahmani sultans was noted for cruelty and hence got the title as ‘Zalim’?
Humayun Shah Bahmani ruled from 1458 to 1461 and the chronicles of the Deccan record his punishments as so savage that he was nicknamed Zalim, the cruel or the tyrant.
Read the full explanation →The Vijayanagara empire was considered the golden period during whose rule?
Krishnadevaraya of the Tuluva dynasty ruled from 1509 to 1529 and his reign is treated as the golden age of Vijayanagara: the Raichur doab was won back, Odisha's Gajapati ruler was humbled, Telugu literature flourished under the eight court poets called the Ashtadiggajas, and the Vitthalaswamy and Hazara Rama temples…
Read the full explanation →Vijayanagara empire was founded in which of the following years?
Harihara I and Bukka Raya I, the sons of Sangama, founded the city and the empire of Vijayanagara in 1336 on the southern bank of the Tungabhadra, at the site now known as Hampi in Karnataka.
Read the full explanation →The Bahmani Sultanate was founded by which of the following leaders?
In 1347 the centurion nobles of Daulatabad, the Amiran-i-Sadah, rebelled against the Delhi Sultan and raised one of their own, Hasan Gangu, to the throne of the Deccan.
Read the full explanation →In which year did India face the severe balance of payments crisis that led to the reforms of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation?
By the middle of 1991 India's foreign exchange reserves had fallen to roughly a fortnight of imports, gold was pledged abroad to raise funds, the country borrowed from the International Monetary Fund and the rupee was devalued in two steps in July.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is recorded in the capital account of the balance of payments?
The capital account records transactions that change the ownership of assets and liabilities between residents and non-residents, and foreign direct investment, along with portfolio investment, external commercial borrowings and deposits of non-resident Indians, falls squarely in that group.
Read the full explanation →Which authority administers India’s Foreign Trade Policy and issues the importer-exporter code?
The DGFT works under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and under the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act of 1992 it frames and administers the Foreign Trade Policy, issues the importer-exporter code without which no one may trade across the border, and runs the export promotion schemes.
Read the full explanation →The World Trade Organization, established on 1 January 1995, replaced which body?
GATT was signed in 1947 as a provisional agreement on tariff reduction, and after the Uruguay Round it was replaced on 1 January 1995 by the World Trade Organization, a permanent body with headquarters at Geneva and a binding dispute settlement system.
Read the full explanation →In which year did India adopt full convertibility of the rupee on the current account?
In August 1994 India accepted the obligations of Article VIII of the International Monetary Fund and made the rupee fully convertible on the current account, so that foreign exchange for trade, travel, education and remittances could be obtained freely at the market rate.
Read the full explanation →The balance of trade of a country includes which of the following?
The balance of trade, also called the merchandise or visible balance, is the difference between the value of goods exported and goods imported; nothing else enters it.
Read the full explanation →What is an indicator of self-reliance?
Self-reliance, the goal set out in India's early plans, means building the capacity to produce at home what the country would otherwise have to buy abroad, so the true indicator is that imports of such goods are avoided.
Read the full explanation →What are the two main forms of protection used to shield domestic industries from foreign competition in an inward looking trade strategy?
An inward-looking trade strategy, better known as import substitution, was the policy India followed from the Second Five Year Plan until 1991, and it rested on two instruments.
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