UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Indo-Greek kings who ruled the north-west of India from about the second century BCE were the first in Indian history to issue coins that carried the name and portrait of the ruler, with Greek legends on one side and Prakrit in the Kharoshthi script on the other.

The money came from the disposal of files, obsolete material and scrap during the month-long drive held from 2 to 31 October 2025.

The campaign is run in two clearly separated stages, and a question of this kind usually turns on telling them apart.

It runs the special campaign across the Government, lays down the parameters against which each office identifies its pending matters, issues the guidelines that offices follow, and takes the reporting of achievements on the campaign portal.

This is the feature that sets the platform apart from a conventional news agency, because a small newspaper can run a national or international story under its own masthead without attributing it to the broadcaster.

Free access has been stretched in steps rather than granted once and for all, which is exactly what makes this a favourite question.

PBSHABD is its free news feed, and the very name carries the parent body in it, since it expands to Prasar Bharati - Shared Audio-Visuals for Broadcast and Dissemination.

The support is deliberately paid month by month over the same six months that now make up the minimum placement period, so that the money helps a candidate stay in a new job and a new city rather than arriving as one lump sum.

The Ministry of Rural Development started the scheme on that date to give placement-linked skill training to youth of 15 to 35 years from poor rural households, and the scheme is marking its twelfth anniversary this year.

Under the earlier design of the scheme a placement counted only when the trained candidate held continuous employment for at least three months, so option A states the old rule and not the present one.

The Harappan script uses about four hundred picture-like signs, and it was written in the boustrophedon style, that is from right to left in the first line and then from left to right in the next, turning like an ox ploughing a field.

Dholavira stands on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch. Unlike the usual two-part Harappan town, it is divided into three: a citadel, a middle town and a lower town, all enclosed by stone walls.

The seal shows a figure seated in a yogic posture with horns on its head and animals around it, usually described as an elephant, a tiger, a rhinoceros and a buffalo, with deer below the seat.

Daimabad lies on the Pravara, a tributary of the Godavari, in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, and it marks the southern limit of the Harappan world.

The Harappan Civilisation is a Bronze Age culture, and no iron object has been recovered from any of its levels.

Mesopotamian texts list Meluha among the lands that sent ships carrying carnelian beads, ivory, timber and copper, and the goods named there match what Harappan sites produced.

A Harappan burnt brick was four units long, two units broad and one unit thick, and the same proportion turns up at sites hundreds of kilometres apart.

Kalibangan stands on the dry bed of the Ghaggar in the Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan. A field there, belonging to the pre-Harappan level, carries two sets of furrows crossing each other at right angles, showing that two crops were grown in the same plot at the same time.

He dug at Harappa on the bank of the Ravi in 1921, and the finds from that season identified a wholly unknown urban culture, which was named after the site.

Lothal lies on the Bhogava, a tributary of the Sabarmati in Gujarat, and its eastern side holds a large brick basin connected to the river by a channel.