GS Paper 1 practice questions for UPSC Mains 2026.

• Sulh-i-kul (peace with all), articulated by Abul Fazl, was the ideological core of Akbar's religious policy.
• Abolition of the pilgrimage tax (1563) and jizya (1564) established fiscal equality among subjects.
• The Ibadat Khana (1575), opened to all faiths by 1578, exposed Akbar to Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Jesuit thought.
• The Mahzar of 1579 made the emperor the final arbiter in religious disputes, curbing the orthodox ulema.
• Din-i-Ilahi (1582) was an eclectic ethical order, not a proselytising religion, and had very few disciples.
• Rajput alliances and an inclusive mansabdari nobility gave political expression to religious accommodation.
• The Maktab Khana's Persian translations of Sanskrit epics institutionalised cultural exchange.

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• The Chandellas of Bundelkhand built the Khajuraho complex c. 950–1050 CE; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.
• Vigor shows in deep-relief sandstone carving, taut modelling and dynamic tribhanga and atibhanga postures.
• Breadth of life: sura-sundaris in everyday acts, mithuna couples, musicians, farmers and processions — the whole social world on temple walls.
• Sacred and secular form a continuum, reflecting the tantric and kama traditions of the period.
• Architecture reinforces sculpture: Nagara shikharas with urushringas create upward vitality (Kandariya Mahadeva, c. 1030 CE).
• Religious inclusivity: Shaiva, Vaishnava and Jain temples share one sculptural idiom.

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• Sea-level rise of about 4.5 mm a year, and accelerating, threatens outright submergence of atoll nations lying one to five metres above the sea.
• Saltwater intrusion destroys thin freshwater lenses, rendering islands uninhabitable well before physical submergence.
• Coral bleaching and ocean acidification undermine fisheries and tourism — the economic base of most island states.
• Intensified cyclones and storm surges inflict repeated GDP-scale losses on small economies.
• Sovereignty dimension: shrinking baselines imperil EEZs and statehood, and climate-driven migration has already begun.
• Island states are converting vulnerability into leverage — AOSIS, the Loss and Damage Fund, and the 2024 ITLOS advisory opinion.

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• Define clearly: non-farm primary activities extract natural resources without crop cultivation — fishing, forestry, gathering, mining-quarrying and pastoralism.
• Coastal physiography — a wide continental shelf, deltas and wetlands — explains the concentration of marine and inland fishing.
• Himalayan alpine pastures sustain transhumant pastoralism; temperate conifer belts support forestry.
• Mineralised peninsular plateaus (Chota Nagpur, Odisha) concentrate coal, iron-ore and manganese mining and stone quarrying.
• The central Indian deciduous forest belt supports tribal gathering of minor forest produce.
• Arid and saline landscapes of the west link camel-sheep pastoralism and salt extraction to physiography.

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• Anchor with data: solar capacity crossed 100 GW in January 2025 en route to the 500 GW non-fossil target for 2030.
• Ecological gains: zero operational emissions, cleaner air and a minimal water footprint versus thermal power.
• Land synergies: desert parks like Bhadla, floating solar that cuts evaporation, and agrivoltaics.
• Economic gains: among the cheapest tariffs (₹2.5–3 per unit), reduced coal-oil import bills, stronger energy security.
• Distributed benefits: PM-KUSUM for farmers and PM Surya Ghar rooftop scheme for one crore households.
• Industrial dimension: PLI-backed module manufacturing and International Solar Alliance leadership.

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• Define precisely: long-wavelength waves from sudden displacement of the water column — fast and low in deep sea, amplified by shoaling near coasts.
• Chief cause: megathrust earthquakes at subduction zones; secondary causes include volcanic eruptions and submarine landslides.
• Geography of occurrence: Pacific Ring of Fire (about 80%), with the Sunda-Andaman trench and Makran coast the key Indian Ocean sources.
• Consequences span mass casualties, infrastructure destruction, salinization of soils and aquifers, and ecological damage.
• Tsunamis trigger cascading disasters — the Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011 is the classic case.
• Close with mitigation: INCOIS early warning (2007), coastal regulation zones and mangrove bio-shields.

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• The Mission's design — area-based development plus pan-city solutions across 100 cities via SPVs — frames both its gains and its limits.
• Pro-poor gains: water, sanitation and lighting in ABD zones; PMAY-U and DAY-NULM convergence; vending zones; NMT and e-buses.
• Integrated Command and Control Centres improved grievance redressal, safety and crisis response, notably during COVID-19.
• Justice critique: ABD enclaves covered small fractions of city area — investment islands amid underserved peripheries.
• Beautification-led evictions of vendors and slum dwellers ran counter to distributive justice.
• SPV governance sidelined elected urban local bodies (74th Amendment concern), and the digital divide limits access to smart services.

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• Open with Sardar Patel's 1947 'steel frame' address to probationers — the classic anchor for this theme.
• Professionalism means merit recruitment via UPSC (Articles 315–323), neutrality, anonymity, integrity and domain competence.
• Nationalistic consciousness means commitment to constitutional values and nation-building above partisan or parochial pulls.
• Historic proof: integration of princely states, conduct of free elections and the census.
• Contemporary proof: Aspirational Districts delivery, disaster evacuations, pandemic management.
• Mission Karmayogi (2020) institutionalises competence; LBSNAA's motto captures character.
• The fusion matters: competence without commitment is careerism; commitment without competence is inefficiency.

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• The poor depend directly on forests, commons and cheap energy, so conservation restrictions and green regulation curtail their livelihoods first.
• Coal phase-down threatens lakhs of direct and informal jobs in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, demanding just-transition planning.
• Regulatory instruments — brick-kiln closures, construction bans, sand-mining curbs — impose regressive costs on daily-wage workers.
• The conflict is partly false: environmental degradation itself hurts the poor most, through pollution, floods, droughts and resource collapse.
• Win-win instruments exist: FRA community forest rights, MGNREGA eco-restoration works, PM-KUSUM pumps and agroecology.
• Equity principle: those least responsible for degradation should not bear a disproportionate share of the mitigation burden.
• A balanced 'comment' answer rejects the growth-versus-environment binary and argues for inclusive green growth.

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• Anchor with data: STs are 8.6% of the population but an estimated 40%+ of those displaced by development projects (Xaxa Committee, 2014).
• Tribal homelands overlap India's mineral-forest-river wealth, making land acquisition the state's default mode of engagement with tribal regions.
• Rehabilitation has been cash-centred and incomplete; land-for-land resettlement remained rare.
• Key jurisprudence — Samatha (1997), Niyamgiri (2013) — and the LARR Act 2013 all revolve around dispossession, confirming the two axes.
• Development is broader than the two axes: PESA 1996 and FRA 2006 create a rights-and-self-governance axis.
• Human-development instruments: Eklavya schools, the sickle-cell elimination mission, PM-JANMAN for PVTGs, DA-JGUA (2024).
• An opinion question needs a stated verdict: the two axes dominated historically, but the paradigm must shift from relocation to consent and community rights.

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• Convergent margins dominate: The Pacific plate is being consumed along subduction zones on almost every side, from the Aleutians and Japan to the Andes
• Subduction generates deep quakes: Descending slabs produce Benioff zones with earthquakes down to about 700 km, the deepest recorded anywhere
• Wet magma builds explosive cones: Water carried down with the slab lowers the melting point of the mantle wedge, producing viscous andesitic magma and
• Ocean-floor rupture triggers tsunamis: Megathrust events such as Tohoku (2011) and Chile (1960) originate here
• It is a young, widening basin: The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a divergent boundary where new crust forms rather than being destroyed
• Passive continental margins: The American, African and European coasts are trailing edges welded to their plates, so no subduction occurs along them
• Shallow, low-magnitude seismicity: Quakes are confined to the ridge axis and transform faults and rarely exceed moderate magnitude

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• It is a collision boundary: The Indian plate is under-thrusting Eurasia at about 45-50 mm per year, and most of that convergence is absorbed along the
• Locked-and-release behaviour: Strain accumulates on the shallow, locked Main Himalayan Thrust and is released in great earthquakes, as at Bihar-Nepal
• Young, weak, fractured crust: Thick sedimentary piles and thrust sheets deform readily instead of resisting stress
• Ancient shield crust: The Archaean gneisses and granites of the Deccan shield are rigid, cold and mechanically strong
• Intra-plate position: It lies far from the active margin, so far less strain is transmitted into it
• Only reactivated old faults: Stress leaks into ancient rift zones, producing infrequent but shallow and destructive events such as Latur (1993), Koyna

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• Overbank deposition: When a river exceeds bankfull stage, water spreads sideways, loses velocity abruptly and drops its load
• Sorting builds the levee: The coarsest sand and silt settle first, right at the channel edge, raising a natural embankment; finer clay travels further and
• Lateral migration: Meander cut-and-fill reworks sediment across the valley floor, as in the Kosi and Gandak plains
• A built-in safety valve: The floodplain is the channel's overflow reservoir, storing water and shaving the flood peak
• Occupation of the storage space: Settlement, cropping and urban expansion remove the very area meant to hold surplus water
• Artificial embankments raise the bed: Confining the river forces deposition inside the channel, so the bed rises and the river eventually runs above the
• Loss of infiltration: Paving and drainage of wetlands cut absorption and speed up runoff

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• Two wave types behave differently: P-waves pass through solids and liquids; S-waves pass only through solids
• The S-wave shadow zone: S-waves vanish beyond about 103 degrees from an epicentre, proving the outer core is liquid
• The P-wave shadow zone: P-waves are absent between roughly 103 and 143 degrees because they refract sharply on entering the core, fixing the core-mantle
• Discontinuities map the layers: The Mohorovicic discontinuity separates crust from mantle, the Gutenberg discontinuity mantle from core, and the Lehmann
• Velocity gradients reveal state: The low-velocity asthenosphere indicates partial melting
• Density and moment of inertia: Bulk density of about 5.5 g/cc against surface rocks of 2.7 g/cc requires a very dense core
• Meteorites: Iron meteorites are thought to be fragments of the cores of shattered planetesimals, supporting an iron-nickel core

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• Natural drivers: High-intensity monsoon rainfall, steep Himalayan and Western Ghat slopes, and friable alluvial and black soils
• Deforestation and overgrazing: Removal of canopy and root binding exposes bare soil to raindrop impact
• Faulty cultivation: Ploughing up and down the slope, shifting cultivation in the Northeast, and monocropping without cover
• Wind erosion: Prevalent in Rajasthan and adjoining arid tracts
• Riverbank and coastal erosion: Aggravated by sand mining and by dams that trap sediment
• Falling productivity: Loss of the fertile A-horizon and of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium raises fertiliser dependence
• Ravine and gully formation: Over 3.7 million hectares of ravines in the Chambal, Yamuna and Mahi basins are effectively lost to farming

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• No single impact moment: Unlike an earthquake, damage accrues over decades, so it never triggers emergency response
• Measured and accelerating: ICIMOD assessments record substantially faster mass loss after 2010 than before
• Elevation-dependent warming: The high Himalaya warms faster than the global average, and black carbon deposition lowers albedo and speeds melting
• Hydrological reversal: Flows rise temporarily as ice melts, then decline permanently, threatening the Indus and Ganga basins in the lean season
• GLOF risk: Expanding moraine-dammed lakes threaten downstream valleys, as the Chamoli disaster of 2021 showed
• Agriculture and hydropower: Irrigation dependability and run-of-river generation both weaken
• Biodiversity and permafrost: Species shift upslope and thawing permafrost destabilises slopes and roads

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• Fewer rainy days, heavier spells: IMD records show a rising frequency of very heavy events and a declining number of moderate rainy days
• Clausius-Clapeyron effect: A warmer atmosphere holds roughly 7% more moisture per degree Celsius, loading storms rather than adding to the seasonal total
• Longer dry breaks: Intra-seasonal breaks in the monsoon have lengthened, so the same total produces both flood and moisture stress in one season
• Spatial redistribution: Drying over the central Indo-Gangetic belt alongside wetting over parts of the west coast and Northeast
• Warming seas: A rapidly warming Arabian Sea has increased cyclogenesis, including Tauktae in 2021
• Kerala floods, 2018 and 2019, driven by concentrated high-intensity spells
• Chennai floods, 2015 and 2023, where a few days delivered a large share of seasonal rain

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• High specific heat: Water needs roughly four to five times more heat than an equal mass of rock or soil for the same rise in temperature, so it warms and
• Transparency and depth of heating: Sunlight penetrates several metres into water but only a few centimetres into soil, spreading the same energy through a
• Mixing: Waves, currents and convection distribute heat vertically, whereas land conducts heat poorly and concentrates it at the surface
• Evaporative cooling: A large share of incoming radiation over the sea is used as latent heat rather than raising temperature
• Onshore winds and sea breezes: Air moving inland from the sea carries the ocean's moderated temperature with it
• Higher humidity and cloud: Coastal air suppresses daytime heating and reduces night-time radiative loss
• Ocean currents modify the effect: Warm currents such as the North Atlantic Drift keep north-west European ports ice-free far north of their latitude,

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• The tri-cellular model: Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells organise global wind belts
• Equatorial low and the ITCZ: Rising air produces the heavy convectional rainfall of the equatorial rainforest belt
• Subtropical highs: Descending, warming air near 20 to 30 degrees creates the great hot deserts, the Sahara, Arabian, Kalahari and Atacama
• Westerlies and frontal rain: Cyclonic disturbances give west coasts of mid-latitudes their winter maximum, as in Mediterranean and marine west-coast
• Seasonal migration: The shift of pressure belts with the overhead sun produces the wet-and-dry Savanna and Mediterranean regimes
• Warm currents warm and moisten adjacent coasts: The North Atlantic Drift keeps Norwegian ports ice-free; the Kuroshio warms Japan
• Cold currents cool and dry them: The Peru and Benguela currents stabilise the air and produce coastal fog deserts at Atacama and Namib

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• Rabi lifeline: Winter rain over Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan is critical for wheat, barley, mustard and gram, and reduces
• Snow accumulation: They build the Himalayan snowpack that feeds the Indus, Ganga and their tributaries through the lean season
• Groundwater and reservoir recharge: Winter precipitation supports storage before the pre-monsoon dry spell
• Air quality and temperature: Associated rain scavenges particulates over the Indo-Gangetic plain, and cold-wave and fog conditions follow their passage
• Jet stream instability: Arctic amplification is weakening the thermal gradient and making the westerly jet more meandering, so tracks and timing shift
• Fewer but more intense events: Rain arrives in concentrated bursts rather than gentle spells, causing hailstorms and lodging in standing crops
• Out-of-season occurrence: Late-season disturbances in March and April damage the ripening rabi crop

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