UPSC GK Questions 2026

The atmosphere is heated mainly from below, by the long-wave heat the Earth's surface gives off, not directly by sunlight.

Statements 1, 3 and 4 describe Shankardeva correctly; statement 2 is wrong because Gaudiya Vaishnavism was founded by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu of Bengal.

The Taklamakan lies in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang in north-western China, in the heart of Central Asia. The Taklamakan is a cold, sandy desert ringed by high mountains: the Kunlun to the south, the Tian Shan to the north and the Pamirs to the west.

This is the incorrect statement: the world has 36 recognised biodiversity hotspots, far fewer than 100. The hotspot idea came from the British ecologist Norman Myers, who in 1988 named ten tropical forest regions that were very rich in species and under heavy threat.

Statements 2 and 3 are correct; statement 1 is wrong because the earliest inscriptions are in Prakrit, not Sanskrit.

The standard account of Mughal-era agriculture records that maize came into India via Africa and Spain, and by the seventeenth century it was listed among the major crops of western India.

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment works through this corporation to run BHARAT TULIP, and it is NBCFDC that facilitates market linkages for artisans on digital platforms and e-commerce channels, along with promotion, quality assurance, skill development and support for logistics and delivery.

It implements the programme through the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation, which handles the market linkage work on digital platforms and e-commerce channels.

That is what the abbreviation stands for in BHARAT TULIP, the programme the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment runs through the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation to broaden the market reach of traditional artisans.

As Director of NIPER Raebareli she said the proposed Centre of Excellence would serve as a dedicated platform for structured training and certification in clinical research, and that bringing academic and industry expertise together would produce a model capable of being repeated in other regions and therapeutic areas.

It is described as the central government's flagship initiative for building a stronger biopharma ecosystem, and among its goals is the creation of a thousand clinical trial sites across the country; the partnership between NIPER Raebareli and AstraZeneca India directly serves that objective.

The partnership begins by adopting 25 clinical trial sites in emerging research geographies, assessing what each can do, and then giving the staff targeted training and mentoring while tightening documentation and the processes around ethics, safety and trial feasibility.

Promoting alternative development, including the growing of alternative crops in place of illicit ones, is a mandate the bureau carries under this policy, which is why the public dialogue at Malana village formed part of the operation rather than being an extra.

The Central Bureau of Narcotics is the country's apex drug law enforcement and regulatory agency and it sits under the Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance, a placement that surprises candidates and therefore makes a good question.

The Central Bureau of Narcotics carried out its destruction drive in Kullu district, clearing 5,165 acres, or 2,070 hectares, of illicit cannabis cultivation over one month.

Four persons were arrested under its provisions, namely two proprietors or partners of importing firms, a customs broker's G-card holder, and the owner of a Dubai-based supplier who had also floated an importing firm in his father's name.

The salt was shipped through Colombo Port in Sri Lanka and then sent on to India, a third-country route meant to break the visible link with Pakistan.

DRI ran Operation Deep Manifest and detected 295 containers carrying 7,311 metric tonnes of Pakistan-origin industrial or Himalayan rock salt, worth roughly Rs 30 crore, that had been brought into the country in breach of the import ban.

The bonus was approved on the strength of the railways' performance in 2025-26, and the government cited a record freight loading of 1,670 million tonnes for that year together with a passenger count of nearly 7.41 billion.

That is the amount the Union Cabinet approved for paying a bonus of 78 days' wages to railway employees, and it is spread across 11,40,770 employees.