UPSC GK Questions 2026

In a free market, prices are set by buyers and sellers, not by the government. The price mechanism is how a market economy answers the basic questions of what to produce, how much and for whom.

The English physician showed in 1796 that deliberate inoculation could protect a person against smallpox. Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught the mild disease cowpox did not get smallpox.

The ryotwari system was meant to do the opposite: it bypassed the zamindars and dealt with the peasant directly. The ryotwari settlement was worked out by Alexander Read and Thomas Munro and introduced in the Madras Presidency in 1820, and later extended to the Bombay Presidency.

This statement is wrong, because the Gauhati High Court has permanent benches outside Guwahati. The Gauhati High Court at Guwahati is the common High Court for Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

In Köppen's scheme it stands for a hot desert climate with its little rain in summer, which fits western Rajasthan.

The Alvars were devotees of Vishnu, not of the goddess Shakti, so this pair is wrong. The Bhakti movement began in Tamil Nadu between the sixth and ninth centuries with two groups of poet-saints.

Mission Shakti was India's first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test. On 27 March 2019 DRDO fired a ground-launched interceptor from Dr. A.P.J.

By Archimedes' principle, the buoyant force equals the weight of the water displaced by the sphere. A fully immersed body displaces its own volume of water, here 2 × 10⁻⁴ m³.

Statement 4 is wrong because adhiyars and bargadars were both sharecroppers who worked the land of the jotedars. After the Permanent Settlement of 1793 by Lord Cornwallis, the Company tried to tame the zamindars: their troops were disbanded, their customs duties abolished and their courts placed under Company collectors.

The Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh in 712 AD on behalf of the Umayyad governor of Iraq, defeated and killed Raja Dahir at Raor and annexed Sindh and Multan.

Kala Amb, on the edge of Panipat town, is the site where the Marathas and the Afghans fought on 14 January 1761.

Babur had the Kabuli Bagh mosque and garden laid out at Panipat after the first battle of Panipat in 1526, and the building is named after his wife Kabuli Begum.

Abdali, also known as Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of the Afghan kingdom at Kandahar, defeated the Marathas at Panipat on 14 January 1761 with the help of the Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daula and Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh.

The Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao sent his cousin Sadashivrao Bhau north in command, with the Peshwa's son Vishwasrao as the nominal head of the expedition.

Hemu, also called Hem Chandra, rose from a trader and officer of the Sur house to be its chief general, defeated the Mughal governor at Delhi in 1556 and had himself crowned there with the old Indian imperial title Vikramaditya.

Akbar was only about thirteen when Humayun died, and the campaign against Hemu was conducted by his guardian and regent Bairam Khan, who insisted on marching to Panipat rather than retreating to Kabul.

On 21 April 1526 Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last sultan of the Lodi dynasty, using field guns handled by Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa Rumi behind a line of carts and the tulughma method of flanking attack.

Ghori returned to Tarain a year after his defeat with a larger force of mounted archers, drew the heavy Rajput cavalry out of formation with a feigned retreat and destroyed it.

Prithviraj Chauhan III, the Chahamana ruler of Ajmer and Delhi, met Muhammad Ghori at Tarain, the modern Taraori in Karnal district of Haryana, in 1191.

Canning read the Queen's Proclamation at a durbar at Allahabad on 1 November 1858.