General Awareness Questions

i. The 'Swachh Survekshan 2017' survey results were recently announced by Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu. The total 434 cities of India were surveyed. Indore in Madhya Pradesh is India’s cleanest city while Gonda in Uttar Pradesh is the dirtiest.

ii. Gujarat has the maximum of 12 cities among the top 50 clean cities, closely followed by Madhya Pradesh with 11 and Andhra Pradesh with eight. Uttar Pradesh accounted for half of the bottom 50 cities in the cleanliness ranking.

Top 10 clean cities of India in 2017 are:

Indore (MP)
Bhopal (MP)
Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh)
Surat (Gujarat)
Mysuru (Karnataka)
Tiruchirapally (Tamil Nadu)
New Delhi Municipal Council (New Delhi)
Navi Mumbai (Mumbai)
Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh)
Vadodara (Gujarat).

Top 5 Dirtiest cities of India (with Rank) in 2017 are:

Gonda (UP)- 434,
Bhusawal (Maharashtra)- 433,
Bagaha (Bihar)- 432,
Hardoi (Uttarakhand)- 431,
Katihar (Bihar)- 430.

IBM has unveiled the world's smallest computer - a device no bigger than a grain of salt. Presented at the company's Think 2018 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, the unit measures just 1mm by 1mm but has the same processing power as the x86 chip that ran early Nineties IBM desktop computers.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has collaborated with the British Geological Survey (BGS) to turn Varanasi into a smart city. As part of the project, three dimensional geological modelling of the geology under Varanasi will be prepared to help improve the building of new transport and service infrastructure. The project includes application of geo-scientific methods like drilling, geological, geophysical, tectonics, hydrogeological and remote sensing. It would be the first major 3D subsurface urban study and planning of its kind in India, with the ultimate aim of developing methodologies and input of suburban geology for planning and hazard risk assessment. The purpose of the project is to develop the methodologies and approaches of urban geosciences and engineering of Varanasi as a pilot for other Indian cities.

Wherever on earth we hold a compass, the needle points towards the magnetic North Pole. A compass is a great tool for navigation.

Compass is widely used in aircrafts, ships, military services,...

India has acquired the top position among 30 developing countries on ease of doing business at the 2017 A.T. Kearney Global Retail Development Index (GRDI). The 2017 GRDI titled “The Age of Focus” ranked China at second place, followed by Malaysia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Vietnam. The 16th edition of GRDI ranked top 30 developing countries for retail investment worldwide and analyzed 25 macroeconomic and retail-specific variables to help retailers devise successful global strategies to identify emerging market investment opportunities.