Basic GK Quiz 2

Hint

Survey of India is under the Ministry of Science & Technology, headquartered at Dehradun. It is India’s central engineering agency in charge of mapping and surveying. Set up in 1767 to help consolidate the territories of the British East India Company.

Hint

The first governor-general in India (of Bengal) was Warren Hastings, the first official governor-general of British India was Lord William Bentinck, and the first governor-general of independent India was Lord Mountbatten. Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, popularly known as Rajaji, was independent India’s first Indian Governor-General. He was also the last one.

Hint

The Indian National Congress was founded at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay On 28 December 1885. A.O. Hume assumed office as the General Secretary, and Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee was elected president.

Hint

Raja Rammohan Roy was an Indian reformer who was the founder of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, the precursor of the Brahmo Samaj, a social-religious reform movement in the Indian subcontinent. He was given the title of Raja by Akbar II, the Mughal emperor. He was known for his efforts to abolish Sati Pratha.

Hint

With a staggering height of 260 meters, Tehri Dam is the highest dam in India. It is a multi-purpose rock and earth-fill embankment dam on the Bhagirathi River near Tehri in Uttarakhand. The Hirakud Dam (in Orissa) is the longest dam in India with a total length of 25.79 km.

Hint

Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Ltd., a unit of Steel Authority of India Limited, is a plant involved in the production of alloy steels and pig iron. It is located in Bhadravathi, Karnataka. It was started as the Mysore Iron Works on 18 January 1923 by Sir M Visvesvaraya.

Hint

Kaziranga National Park is a protected area in Assam. Spread across the floodplains of the Brahmaputra River, its forests, wetlands and grasslands are home to tigers, elephants and the world’s largest population of Indian one-horned rhinoceroses.

Hint

Pokhran is located in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan. It is a remote location in the Thar Desert region and served as the test site for India’s first underground nuclear weapon (Pokhran-I, 1974), ballistic missiles. The Pokhran-II tests were conducted by India at Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range in May 1998.

Hint

ISRO was founded on August 15, 1969. It is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India. Dr. Vikram A Sarabhai is considered the founding father of space programmes in India.

Hint

Ladakh Lok Sabha constituency is the only parliamentary constituency of the union territory of Ladakh, India. It is the largest constituency in terms of area, with a total area of 173,266 square kilometres, including regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Aksai Chin, but currently, only 59,000 square kilometres are under the control of the Indian administration. The number of electors (voters) in the constituency was 159,000 in 2019. As of 2019, Malkajgiri (Telangana) is the largest Lok Sabha constituency in terms of electors with 3,150,303.

Hint

Gen. K.M. Cariappa was the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army. He led Indian forces on the Western Front during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army in 1949.

Hint

Pir Panjal Railway Tunnel, Jammu and is the longest (railway) tunnel in India, measuring 11.215 km. Pir Pranjal runs through the heart of the Himalayas at an altitude of 11215 metres. Atal Tunnel, Himachal Pradesh, formerly known as the Rohtang Tunnel, is the longest highway tunnel in the world measuring 9.02 km. It is located in the Himalayas at an altitude of 3000 metres.

Hint

The most literate union territory in India is Lakshadweep (91.85%). According to Census 2011, Kerala has the highest total literacy rate and female literacy rate whereas Lakshadweep had the highest male literacy rate.

Hint

Chandni Chowk (Delhi) is the smallest Parliamentary Constituency in India in terms of area (Total area: 10 sq km). Lakshadweep is the smallest Parliamentary Constituency in terms of electors (Number of Electors: 49,922).

Hint

The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) is the oldest trade union federation in India. It is associated with the Communist Party of India.

Hint

Arya Samaj is a monotheistic Indian Hindu reform movement that promotes values and practices based on the belief in the infallible authority of the Vedas. The samaj was founded by Dayanand Saraswati on 10 April 1875.

Hint

Annie Besant was the first woman to have presided Congress session held at Calcutta in 1917 and was elected as its first woman president. Sarojini Naidu was the first Indian woman president of the Indian National Congress.

Hint

The Chipko movement was a forest conservation movement in India. It began in 1973 in Uttarakhand (at the foothills of the Himalayas) and went on to become a rallying point for many future environmental movements all over the world. Sunderlal Bahuguna (1927 – 2021) was an Indian environmentalist and Chipko movement leader.

Hint

The Aryabhata spacecraft, named after the famous Indian astronomer, was India’s first satellite; it was completely designed and fabricated in India and launched by a Soviet ‘Kosmos-3M’ rocket from Kapustin Yar (Soviet Union) on April 19, 1975.

Hint

Lotus (Nelumbo Nucifera Gaertn) is the National Flower of India. The lotus was chosen as the national flower because it enjoyed a significant presence in ancient traditions, scriptures and mythology.

Hint

The Magellan spacecraft was a 1,035-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA of the United States, on May 4, 1989, to map the surface of Venus by using synthetic-aperture radar and to measure the planetary gravitational field.

Hint

Pondicherry University is a collegiate public central university located in Kalapet, Pondicherry, Union Territory of Puducherry, India.

Hint

Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps.

Hint

APJ Abdul Kalam was considered the father of the country’s missile programme and served as the president for five years from 2002.

Hint

The National Academy of Agricultural Research Management is a national-level Natural Resource Service training institute located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

Hint

Tanzania is located east of Africa’s Great Lakes north of Mozambique and south of Kenya, it has a coastline at the Indian Ocean in the east. Tanzania has two capitals, Dar-es-Salaam (executive) and Dodoma (legislative).

Hint

Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Udaan Academy is a pilot training institute located at Fursatganj Airfield, in Amethi district of Uttar Pradesh. It was the first such institute in India (established in 1985). It is an autonomous institution and comes under the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

Hint

A planimeter is a measuring instrument used to determine the area of an arbitrary two-dimensional shape. This Eidograph is a mechanical plotting instrument used to redraw maps at a smaller or larger scale. A pantograph is an instrument for duplicating a motion or copying a geometric shape to a reduced or enlarged scale. An opisometer is an instrument for measuring the lengths of arbitrary curved lines.

Hint

The emblem is the graphic representation of the Lion Capital that originally graced the top of the Ashok Stambh or Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath. It has the national motto, Satyamev Jayate (truth alone triumphs), written below it. This is a quote from Mundaka Upanishad, the concluding part of the sacred Hindu Vedas.

Hint

Japanese woman Junko Tabei was the first woman in the world to climb the world’s highest peak of Mount Everest. She also became the first woman in the world to do an expedition of all “Seven Summits” — the tallest peak on each continent across the globe. Edmund Hillary (New Zealand) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal) were the first in the world to scale Mount Everest.

Hint

Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon on 21 July 1969, nineteen minutes after Neil Armstrong first touched the surface. Armstrong and Aldrin became the first and second people, respectively, to walk on the Moon.

Hint

The Gir forest in Gujarat is famous for lions all over the world. Asiatic Lions are found here in large numbers.

Hint

White coal is a form of fuel produced by drying chopped wood over a fire. It differs from charcoal which is carbonised wood. It was used in England to melt lead ore from the mid-sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. Over the course of the early twentieth century, the term white coal was used for Hydroelectricity, particularly in Europe, because of its capability to produce more energy than any other source except coal.

Hint

Badruddin Tyabji served as the third President of the Indian National Congress. He was one of the founding members and first Muslim president of Indian National Congress.

Hint

Chakravarti Rajagopalachari was independent India’s first Indian Governor-General. He was also the last one. The first governor-general in India (of Bengal) was Warren Hastings, the first official governor-general of British India was Lord William Bentinck, and the first governor-general of independent India was Lord Mountbatten.

Hint

The correct match is as follows:

Hint

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system. If HIV is not treated, it can lead to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome).

Hint

Apiculture is the scientific rearing of honey bees for the commercial production of honey and other bee products like wax, pollen, bee venom and royal jelly. It is also called Bee Keeping.

Hint

The sex Ratio is females per thousand males. Kerala is the State with Highest Sex Ratio (1,058). The state with Lowest Sex Ratio is Haryana (861). UT with Highest Sex Ratio is Pondicherry (1001). UT with Lowest Sex Ratio is Daman and Diu (710).

Hint

Amartya Sen is an Indian economist, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. He is the first Asian to become the Head of the Trinty College of Cambridge University. In 1998, Sen received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in welfare economics and for his research advancing the understanding of social-choice theory, poverty, and the measurement of welfare.

Hint

Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979), the great Gandhian socialist leader, raised his famous slogan, Sampoorn Kranti (Total Revolution), in a speech at a huge rally in Patna on June 5, 1974. Jaya Prakash once stated that Total Revolution is a combination of seven revolu­tions, viz., political, social, economic, cultural, ideological or intellectual, educational and spiritual.

Hint

Then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had called for a mid-term election to the Lok Sabha in March 1971 a full one year ahead of schedule.

Hint

The National Diet is Japan’s bicameral legislature. Japan’s constitution states that the National Diet, its law-making institution, shall consist of two Houses, namely the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. Both houses are directly elected under a parallel voting system.

Hint

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was nationalised with effect from 1st January 1949 on the basis of the Reserve Bank of India (Transfer to Public Ownership) Act, 1948. RBI was set up on the basis of the recommendations of the Hilton Young Commission. The RBI Act 1934 provides the statutory basis of the functioning of the Bank, which commenced operations on 1 April 1935.

Hint

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is the third generation launch vehicle of India. It is the first Indian launch vehicle to be equipped with liquid stages.

Hint

The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) was established in 1963 as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to contribute in the skill building for the external trade sector of India. It is located in New Delhi.

Hint

The full name of the National Institute of Agricultural Marketing (NIAM) is is a research and higher education institute operating under the Ministry of Agriculture, located at Jaipur.

Hint

The Thai Baht (THB) is the official currency of the Kingdom of Thailand.

Hint

1. Governor-General of Fort William or Governor-General of Bengal (1773–1833): Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of Fort William or Governor-General of Bengal.
2. Governors-General of India (1833–1858): Lord William Bentinck (1833) was the 1st Governor-General of British India.
3. Governors-General and Viceroys of India (1858–1947): In the year 1856 the Viceroy of India was announced. Lord Canning was the First Viceroy and Governor-General (1858-1862) of British India.

Hint

The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) is the premier taxonomic research organization in India. It was established on 1 July 1916 to promote the survey, exploration and research of the fauna in the country. The headquarters of ZSI is located in Kolkata.