UPSC GK Questions 2026

The building is named after Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who founded the Council on 9 April 1950 and was its first President, and it houses the body that runs India's cultural centres abroad, the scholarship schemes for foreign students and the chairs of Indian studies in foreign universities.

The Centre for Cultural Resources and Training was set up in New Delhi in 1979 to bring culture into school education, and it trains teachers and teacher educators, prepares teaching material on the arts, and gives scholarships to young children with talent in the arts.

The Zonal Cultural Centres were created from 1985 onwards to work with folk and tribal arts across cultural rather than political boundaries, and there are seven of them: the North Zone Centre at Patiala, the North Central Zone Centre at Prayagraj, the West Zone Centre at Udaipur, the South Zone…

The Indian Museum at Kolkata was founded in 1814, grew out of the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and is both the oldest and the largest museum in the country, with sections on art, archaeology, anthropology, geology, zoology and botany.

The Archaeological Survey of India was created in 1861 and Cunningham, an army engineer turned archaeologist who had surveyed Buddhist sites following the accounts of Chinese travellers, became its first Director-General; he is often called the father of Indian archaeology.

The Lalit Kala Akademi was founded on 5 August 1954 as the national academy of art, in the same year as the Sahitya Akademi, which was inaugurated on 12 March 1954.

The Akademi created the National School of Drama in New Delhi in 1959 as one of its own training units, and the school became an independent autonomous body in 1975; it trains students in acting, direction, stage design and allied crafts, and it runs a repertory company.

The three national academies share the building on Ferozeshah Road in New Delhi named after Rabindranath Tagore, which is why a single question can cover all three at once.

The Council was founded on 9 April 1950 by Azad, independent India's first Education Minister, who also became its first President; its headquarters in New Delhi is named Azad Bhavan after him.

Founded on 12 March 1954 with Jawaharlal Nehru as its first President, it is the national academy of letters, recognises twenty-four languages, the twenty-two of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution together with English and Rajasthani, and gives the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Bhasha Samman and translation prizes.

At the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties, held at Glasgow in 2021, the Prime Minister announced five pledges that came to be called Panchamrit, the last of which was net zero emissions by 2070, together with targets on non-fossil energy capacity, the share of renewable energy, the cut in projected…

The updated first Nationally Determined Contribution submitted in August 2022 raised the promise on emissions intensity, the greenhouse gas emitted per unit of gross domestic product, to a 45 per cent reduction by 2030 against the 2005 level.

That body is the implementing arm of the Namami Gange programme for cleaning the river Ganga, created under the river conservation effort and not under the climate plan; its concern is pollution in one river basin rather than greenhouse gases.

The Green India Mission is written around two halves of 5 million hectares each: new forest and tree cover on 5 million hectares of land that does not carry forest, and an improvement in the quality of the forest already standing on another 5 million hectares, so the mission's total…

That ministry is the nodal ministry for climate change in the Government of India, coordinates the plan and its reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and itself runs the National Mission for a Green India.

One of the five goals of the National Water Mission is a 20 per cent improvement in water use efficiency, alongside comprehensive water data, attention to areas most vulnerable to shortage, more recycling and better basin-level planning; the mission is handled by the Ministry of Jal Shakti.

PAT is the best known of that mission's four initiatives: large energy-using factories in notified sectors are set a target to reduce their specific energy consumption, and a unit that saves more than its target earns tradable energy saving certificates, which a unit that falls short must buy.

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was launched in January 2010 under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, with an initial target of 20,000 MW of grid-connected solar power by 2022; the target was raised to 100 GW in 2015.

The plan of 2008 works through eight National Missions: Solar, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, Green India, Sustainable Agriculture, and Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change.

The National Action Plan on Climate Change was released on 30 June 2008 by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, and it set out the eight National Missions through which India would act on climate change at home.