UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

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.

The Great Bath stands in the citadel of Mohenjo-daro in Sindh. It is a brick tank about twelve metres long and seven metres wide, with flights of steps at two ends, small rooms around it and a layer of natural tar below the floor to stop water from seeping away.

Per capita income is the average income of a person in a year, found by dividing national income by the entire population, including children and those who do not work.

The National Statistical Office, formed by merging the Central Statistical Office with the National Sample Survey Office, prepares the national accounts under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

Exports are goods produced at home and sold abroad, so they belong in domestic production. Imports are produced abroad but are already included in the spending of households, firms and government, so they must be taken out to leave only what the country itself produced.

The deflator compares what the year's output costs at this year's prices with what the same output would cost at base year prices, so nominal GDP goes on top and real GDP below, and the ratio is expressed as a percentage.

When output of every year is valued at the same fixed set of prices, any change in the total must come from a change in the quantity produced.

A market price contains the indirect taxes the buyer pays, which never reach the producer, so they must be taken out.

The committee was appointed in 1949 to prepare official estimates of national income after independence, and it submitted its final report in 1954.

He made the earliest estimate of India's national income in the nineteenth century and used it to argue that British rule was draining wealth out of the country, putting the average income at about twenty rupees a person a year.

Machines, buildings and vehicles wear out as they are used, and the value of that wear and tear must be set aside if the country is to keep its capital intact.

Net factor income from abroad is the income residents earn outside the country minus the income foreigners earn inside it.

GDP measures production inside the borders of a country in one accounting year, whoever the producer may be. A foreign firm making cars in India adds to India's GDP, because the test is the place of production and not the nationality of the producer.

DDT and mercury compounds are not broken down in the body and are not excreted, so they build up in the tissues of every organism that takes them in and are passed on to whatever eats it.

Gross primary productivity is the total amount of energy that producers fix by photosynthesis. Plants use a part of it for their own respiration, and what remains stored in plant bodies is the net primary productivity.

In a pond the producers are phytoplankton, tiny floating plants whose total weight at any one moment is small. They multiply very rapidly, however, so over time they can feed a far greater mass of zooplankton and fish.

Bears, crows, pigs and human beings eat both plant and animal food, which allows them to occupy more than one trophic level at the same time and makes them a good example of why food webs, rather than single food chains, describe nature better.