UPSC GK Questions 2026

Foreign direct investment is made to acquire a lasting interest in an enterprise abroad, conventionally measured as ten per cent or more of the voting power, and with it comes a say in how the company is run; portfolio investment buys shares and bonds without any such control.

The Sweet Revolution is the term used for the drive to raise honey production and beekeeping in India, supported by the National Beekeeping and Honey Mission.

The correct answer is B, Jharkhand, the leading lac producing state of India, which also explains why the country's lac research institute stands at Namkum near Ranchi.

The silkworm's silk gland secretes a protein called fibroin, and over it a second protein, sericin, which acts as a gum and hardens the cocoon; boiling the cocoon softens the sericin so the filament can be reeled, and removing it afterwards is called degumming, which gives silk its lustre and…

The Central Silk Board was constituted under the Central Silk Board Act, 1948 and works under the Ministry of Textiles with its headquarters in Bengaluru, from where it runs the country's sericulture research and seed organisation.

The correct answer is D, castor, which is the host of the eri silkworm and has nothing to do with lac culture.

The correct answer is A, Kerria lacca, earlier named Laccifer lacca, a tiny scale insect whose female settles on the twigs of a host tree, sucks its sap and secretes the resin we call lac.

The correct answer is A, Karl von Frisch, who decoded the dance language of bees: a round dance for a source near the hive and a waggle or tail-wagging dance for a distant one, in which the angle of the straight run shows the direction of the food relative to…

The queen can lay both fertilised and unfertilised eggs; the unfertilised ones develop into haploid males called drones, a form of parthenogenesis, while fertilised eggs give rise to diploid females.

The correct answer is C, Apis dorsata, the rock bee, the largest of the Indian honey bees, which builds a single huge comb on cliffs and tall buildings and yields the most honey per colony, yet is fierce and cannot be kept in hives.

The eri silkworm, Samia ricini, feeds on castor leaves, and its silk is called ahimsa silk because the moth is allowed to emerge before the cocoon is used, leaving a broken fibre that is spun like cotton instead of being reeled.

Muga silk comes from Antheraea assamensis, reared on Som and Soalu trees of the Brahmaputra valley, and Assam's muga carries a Geographical Indication tag.

The correct answer is B, Bombyx mori, the mulberry silkworm, the only fully domesticated insect of the silk group and the source of most of the world's raw silk.

The clusters programme of the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser was conceived in 2020 after that council recommended it, and it brings academia, research institutions, industry, startups and government together to tackle regional challenges through science, technology and innovation.

Representatives of all eight Science and Technology Clusters joined the deliberations, and each of them made a presentation on its work over the two days.

Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, who holds that post, chaired the meet on 9 and 10 October 2026 at Panjab University in Chandigarh, and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser runs the whole clusters programme.

The conclave is convened jointly by the Institute of Economic Growth, usually shortened to IEG, and the Union Ministry of Finance, and has run every year since it began in 2022.

Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan inaugurated the conclave on 3 October 2026 and gave the inaugural address, in which he said that economic resilience cannot be separated from social resilience and that inclusion is a foundation of resilience in a fast-changing world.

This was the theme chosen for the fifth edition of the Kautilya Economic Conclave, held across three days from 3 to 5 October 2026 in New Delhi by the Institute of Economic Growth together with the Union Ministry of Finance.

The meeting gave them an account of the state's heritage, its traditions and their cultural significance, and was presented as deepening their understanding of India's diversity.