UPSC GK Questions 2026

Onam falls in the Malayalam month of Chingam, is kept over ten days with the chief day called Thiruvonam, and marks the harvest along with the remembered visit of the king Mahabali, with flower carpets, the sadya meal, boat races and the Pulikali dance.

Silent Valley lies in the Palakkad district on the Kunthipuzha river, a tributary of the Bharathappuzha, and the dam proposed on that river was given up after one of the best known conservation campaigns in India, after which the valley was made a national park.

Anamudi, about 2,695 metres high, stands in Eravikulam National Park in the Idukki district of Kerala, and the same park holds the largest surviving population of the Nilgiri tahr, the mountain goat of the Western Ghats.

Vembanad is the greatest of the Kerala backwaters, a brackish lagoon that runs behind the coast for a long stretch and is crossed at Alappuzha, the town called the Venice of the East, where the Nehru Trophy Boat Race is rowed on its Punnamada part.

The Periyar rises in the Western Ghats and flows west to the Arabian Sea, and it carries both the Idukki arch dam and the Mullaperiyar dam, the second of which is worked by Tamil Nadu under an old lease.

He became the first Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957, after the first assembly election held in the new state, and his ministry is remembered for its land reform and education bills.

Kerala came into being on that day under the States Reorganisation Act, which joined Travancore and Cochin with the Malabar district of the Madras State and the Kasaragod taluk of South Canara, so that the Malayalam speaking areas formed one state.

Both institutions were planned at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 in the United States and both work from Washington DC, which is why they are called the Bretton Woods twins; the IMF looks after exchange stability and balance of payments while the World Bank lends for development.

The Contingent Reserve Arrangement was agreed at the Fortaleza summit of 2014 as a pool of 100 billion dollars on which a member facing short term pressure on its balance of payments may draw, so that it works for the BRICS group somewhat as the International Monetary Fund does for…

The first presidency of the New Development Bank went to India, and K. V. Kamath, formerly of ICICI Bank, took charge when the bank began work in 2015, the presidency afterwards rotating among the member countries.

The sixth BRICS summit was held at Fortaleza in July 2014, and the agreement establishing the New Development Bank was signed there, along with the treaty for the Contingent Reserve Arrangement.

The New Development Bank works from Shanghai in China, a decision taken when the bank was being set up, in return for which the first regional centre was given to another member.

The bank opened for business in January 2016 at Beijing, after its articles of agreement had been signed and ratified by the founding members.

The AIIB was proposed by China in 2013 and began operations in January 2016 with its headquarters at Beijing, and China holds the largest share in its capital.

The ADB was established in 1966 to lend for development in Asia and the Pacific, and India was one of its founding members, which is a fact papers like to pair with the year.

The Asian Development Bank was established in 1966 and has worked from Manila since then, with field offices in its member countries including India.

The committee was created in 1974 by the central bank governors of the Group of Ten countries, sits at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, and drafts the standards that national regulators then adopt for their own banks.

The BIS was founded in 1930, which makes it the oldest international financial institution in the world, older than the Bretton Woods institutions by fourteen years.

The Bank for International Settlements was set up in 1930 at Basel in Switzerland and still works from there, which is why the capital standards drafted under its roof are called the Basel norms.

The Paithani takes its name from Paithan on the Godavari, and it is also woven at Yeola in the Nashik district.