UPPSC PYQ 1 (2020) — Geography
Which of the following ocean currents is associated with Indian Ocean?
- Florida current
- Canary current
- Agulhas current
- Kurile current
Answer: C. Agulhas current
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HCL Technologies announced on July 24, 2026 that it will invest ₹14,257 crore to set up its first AI-optimised data centre and a global delivery centre in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, with financial assistance from the state government. The facility will be located at the upcoming Odisha Sovereign AI Park and is expected to create around 5,000 jobs, with operations targeted to begin by 2028.
The investment strengthens India's push for sovereign AI compute capacity, leveraging HCLTech's full-stack AI capabilities alongside indigenous foundation models from Sarvam AI to deliver sector-specific applications. For aspirants preparing for UPSC, UPPSC, MPSC, and other state PSC exams, this topic is directly relevant for GS Paper 3 (Indian Economy — infrastructure, IT and AI ecosystem) and frequently appears as a current-affairs question on India's AI infrastructure investments and state-level industrial promotion.
India's push for domestic AI compute capacity has intensified since the launch of the IndiaAI Mission, which allocated significant public funding toward AI compute infrastructure, multilingual foundation models, and applications in healthcare, agriculture, and governance. Concerns about reliance on foreign hyperscalers for compute-intensive AI workloads — and the associated data-sovereignty and latency issues — have driven both public investment and private-sector data-centre announcements across the country over the past two years.
Odisha, traditionally seen as an industrial and mineral-resources state rather than an IT hub, has been actively courting technology investment through incentive packages and dedicated infrastructure such as the proposed Sovereign AI Park, positioning Bhubaneswar as an emerging node in India's AI ecosystem alongside established centres like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune. HCLTech's announcement follows a broader pattern of Indian IT majors and global technology firms committing large capital outlays to AI data-centre capacity within India, driven partly by state-level incentives and partly by anticipated demand growth for enterprise AI services.
Investment details
Location and timeline
Technology and partnerships
Market and strategic context
Political and Constitutional Dimensions Industrial promotion and land allotment for such projects are primarily state subjects (Entry 24 of the State List covers industries, subject to Union control over industries declared expedient in the public interest under Entry 52 of the Union List), which is why Odisha's state government is the party extending financial assistance and dedicated park infrastructure, while national digital and AI policy is shaped at the Union level through initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission.
Economic and Financial Dimensions A ₹14,257 crore investment of this scale is a significant signal of confidence in Odisha as an emerging technology investment destination, diversifying the state's traditionally resource- and manufacturing-heavy industrial base. The creation of roughly 5,000 jobs, combined with anticipated ancillary economic activity — construction, power infrastructure, housing, and services around the AI Park — could meaningfully shift the state's economic profile if the facility scales as planned by 2028.
Social Dimensions Large-scale technology investments of this kind can accelerate local skill development and reverse-migration of technical talent to tier-2 cities like Bhubaneswar, though realising these benefits typically requires complementary investment in local technical education and housing infrastructure to absorb the projected workforce.
Governance and Administrative Dimensions State-level financial assistance packages for large private investments raise recurring governance questions about transparency in incentive structuring, land allocation processes for the Sovereign AI Park, and the need for robust monitoring to ensure committed investment and job-creation targets are actually met by the 2028 timeline, a pattern seen across other state-level industrial mega-project incentive deals in India.
International Perspective The investment reflects a broader global trend of AI infrastructure build-out competing for capital, land, and power resources, with countries and states racing to attract data-centre investment as a marker of AI-readiness; India's sovereign AI compute push, including this Odisha facility, is partly a response to concerns about dependence on foreign hyperscale cloud providers for critical AI workloads used in government, healthcare, and enterprise applications.
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Which of the following ocean currents is associated with Indian Ocean?
Answer: C. Agulhas current
Without green house effect, the average temperature of earth surface would be
Answer: B. –18°C
1. In Ease of Doing Business Report 2020, India's rank is 63. 2. India ranking for Ease of Doing Business in the year 2019 was 77.
With reference to the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report, which of the following statement(s) is/are correct?
Answer: B. 2 only
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Geography · 2020Which of the following ocean currents is associated with Indian Ocean?
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