UPSC GK Questions 2026

In biomethanation, anaerobic bacteria break down organic matter inside a closed digester where no oxygen is present, and the gas they release is mainly methane, which is what makes biogas burn with a clean blue flame and gives it its fuel value.

Microplastics are plastic particles under five millimetres across, whether they were manufactured that small, as in cosmetic microbeads and synthetic textile fibres, or were formed when larger plastic articles weathered and broke up in sunlight and waves.

The yellow category covers human and animal anatomical waste, soiled waste such as dressings and cotton contaminated with blood, expired medicines and chemical waste, and this material is destroyed by incineration, plasma pyrolysis or deep burial; nothing from the yellow bin is recycled.

Biodegradable waste is waste that bacteria and fungi can break down into simpler substances within a short time, and kitchen waste such as vegetable peel is the classic example; it is exactly the wet fraction that Indian cities compost or send to a biogas digester.

Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar retold the story of King Yayati from the Mahabharata as a novel about desire and its cost, and for it he became the first writer in Marathi to receive the Jnanpith Award.

Ascribed to Tolkappiyar, it belongs to the Sangam age and lays down the rules of Tamil letters, words and poetic composition, including the division of poetry into akam, the inner world of love, and puram, the outer world of war and public life.

Written in the thirteenth century and also called the Bhavartha Dipika, the Dnyaneshwari explains the Gita verse by verse in Marathi poetry, and its importance lies in taking scripture out of Sanskrit and placing it before ordinary readers, which laid the foundation of the Varkari devotional tradition.

Devdas, the story of a young man ruined by his own indecision and by the rigidity of the society around him, is the most often filmed of all Indian novels, and its author also wrote Parineeta, Srikanta and Palli Samaj.

The collection, whose title means an offering of songs, was rendered into English by the poet himself, and the prize that followed in 1913 made Tagore the first Asian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He published Anandamath in 1882, and the song Vande Mataram that appears in it became the rallying cry of the freedom movement and was adopted as the national song of India; his other well-known works are Durgeshnandini, Kapalkundala and Devi Chaudhurani.

Tamil tradition holds that assemblies of poets, called Sangams, met under the patronage of the Pandya kings, and Madurai, the Pandya capital, is the seat remembered in the accounts that survive; the poems collected there form the oldest body of Tamil literature.

The Silappadikaram, whose name means the tale of the anklet, follows the merchant Kovalan, his wife Kannagi and the dancer Madhavi, and ends with Kannagi proving her husband's innocence before the Pandya king and bringing fire upon Madurai; she is worshipped afterwards as a goddess of chastity.

In the Sangam poems the word muvendar stands for the three crowned rulers of the Tamil country, the Chera, the Chola and the Pandya, each with a port and an inland centre of power, and the poems praise their gifts and their wars.

He composed one thousand three hundred and thirty couplets arranged in one hundred and thirty-three chapters and grouped in three parts, on virtue, wealth and love; because the work preaches conduct without attaching itself to any one religion, people of every faith in the Tamil country honour it, and it…

Article 243Q requires the Governor to constitute a Nagar Panchayat, by whatever name called, for a transitional area, that is an area moving from rural to urban character.

Article 243K vests the superintendence, direction and control of panchayat elections in a State Election Commission consisting of a State Election Commissioner appointed by the Governor.

Appointed in 1957 to examine the working of the Community Development Programme, it recommended democratic decentralisation through three tiers, namely the Gram Panchayat at the village level, the Panchayat Samiti at the block level and the Zila Parishad at the district level.

Article 243P defines a metropolitan area as an area having a population of ten lakh or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more municipalities or panchayats, which the Governor specifies by public notification.

Article 243F provides that a person who is less than twenty-five years of age shall not be disqualified on the ground of age if he has attained twenty-one years, which fixes twenty-one as the floor for membership of a panchayat.

It says that a Gram Sabha may exercise such powers and perform such functions at the village level as the legislature of a State may by law provide.