UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The release says the first quarter of 2026-27 should be compared with the earlier first-quarter figure from the same series, and in doing so it names the current-price estimate for the quarter.

Double deflation is a production-side technique: gross output is deflated with one price index and intermediate consumption with another, and real Gross Value Added is what remains after subtracting the second from the first.

The backgrounder states that the updated series of annual and quarterly GDP estimates, released on 31 August 2026, takes 2022-23 as its base year.

Speaking about what lies ahead, the Minister noted that the RDI Fund is offering support at a later stage, at the TRL4 level, and that the Technology Development Board was the first to roll out its proposals under the fund.

The Minister said start-ups are not confined to Bengaluru or Hyderabad and that more than 50 per cent of them come from smaller towns, a figure he used while asking for prevailing myths about entrepreneurship to be dispelled.

The board was created so that technologies would not remain confined to laboratories but would be translated into products, solutions and enterprises that bring ease of living, provide livelihoods and add to the economy of the country.

The release refers throughout to the ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund, and it is the size of that corpus that makes the Minister's appeal for outreach necessary: thousands of applications are arriving, some from applicants who do not appear to understand what the fund is for.

In his video message the Minister said India has one of the longest stretches of coastal area in the world, spanning more than that distance and extending from the eastern to the western parts of the country, and he used the figure to explain why a week-long national drive is…

It is aimed at students and young people and is meant to build awareness of the environment; citizens can register for it and test their knowledge of the seas.

The campaign is spearheaded by that ministry, and the minister who launched it, Dr Jitendra Singh, holds Earth Sciences as Minister of State with Independent Charge.

The release says the campaign builds on its success over the last four years, which is the internal check an aspirant can apply: four earlier editions plus the one being launched makes this the fifth.

The correct answer is 11 October 2025, the day the Prime Minister formally launched the scheme.

The correct answer is 36 schemes of 11 ministries and departments, working along with state schemes and participation from the private sector.

The average score of the 100 districts across the six objectives of the scheme stood at 22.54 in April 2026 and reached 38.85 in July 2026.

The scheme was designed to speed up agricultural development in districts identified on three counts: low agricultural productivity, low cropping intensity and low disbursement of agricultural credit.

India Post Payments Bank has been established under the Department of Posts, which sits in that ministry, and the entire equity of the bank is owned by the Government of India.

The release gives this as the pan-India customer base as on 31 March 2026, and adds two shares worth remembering: 77 per cent of these customers are in rural areas and 49 per cent are women.

The release describes it as a launch for merchants, designed to simplify and strengthen the acceptance of everyday digital payments at their end.

The arithmetic is easy to hold if the launch date is remembered: India Post Payments Bank was launched on 1 September 2018, so the same date in 2026 completes nine years of working.

Among the institutional initiatives she led during her career, the release singles out the establishment of Indian Air Force Chairs of Excellence at these two places, created to carry forward academic work and strategic collaboration in the field of defence.