Awards & Honours Mixed Quiz: Set 16

The correct answer is D, Information and Broadcasting. The National Film Awards are organised by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which handles films, broadcasting and the press. The awards were started in 1954 and are the highest film honours in the country; a jury set up by the ministry picks the winners, and the President of India presents them. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award for lifetime contribution to cinema is announced and given at the same ceremony, and the best feature film carries the Swarna Kamal. A is wrong because the Ministry of Culture looks after the Akademi awards, museums and heritage, while tourism is a separate ministry. B is wrong because the Home Ministry deals with internal security and the police, and handles gallantry awards. C is wrong because the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports gives the sports honours such as the Khel Ratna and the Arjuna Award. Exam tip: films and the Phalke Award go with Information and Broadcasting; sports awards with Youth Affairs and Sports.

The correct answer is C, 1960. The medal was instituted in that year in three classes, and in 1967 the classes were given the separate names Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and Vishisht Seva Medal. Option A is wrong because 1950 is the year in which the Param Vir Chakra, the Maha Vir Chakra and the Vir Chakra were instituted, on 26 January, with effect from 15 August 1947. Option B is wrong because 1952 is the year of the peacetime gallantry awards, then called the Ashoka Chakra Class I, Class II and Class III. Option D is wrong because 1980 is the year of the Yudh Seva medals, the wartime counterparts of the Vishisht Seva medals. Papers offer all four years together.

The correct answer is D, Padma Bhushan. The Indian civilian honours run in a fixed order of precedence: the Bharat Ratna first, then Padma Vibhushan, then Padma Bhushan and then Padma Shri. Counting from the top, Padma Bhushan is therefore the third highest, and it is given for distinguished service of a high order in any field. Option A, Padma Vibhushan, is the second highest, awarded for exceptional and distinguished service, and is the option most often chosen by candidates who forget to count the Bharat Ratna. Option B, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, is the highest honour in Indian cinema and is given by the government for lifetime contribution to film; it is outside the civilian order of precedence altogether. Option C, the Arjuna Award, belongs to sport and recognises consistently outstanding performance over several years, so it too is a field award rather than a general civilian honour.

The correct answer is C, the Prime Minister of India. The jury for the Gandhi Peace Prize is chaired by the Prime Minister, and its other members are the Chief Justice of India, the Leader of the single largest Opposition party in the Lok Sabha and two eminent persons. Option A is wrong: the President confers the Padma awards and the Bharat Ratna and does not head this jury. Option B is wrong because the Chief Justice of India is a member of the jury but not its chairman, and this is the distractor the paper setter is relying on. Option D is wrong because the Ministry of Culture administers the prize and handles its paperwork, but the Minister does not chair the jury. Learn the composition as a rule rather than as a list of names, since the office holders change while the offices remain fixed.

The correct answer is B, the Indian Express Group. The awards were instituted in 2006 in memory of Ramnath Goenka, the founder of the Indian Express newspapers, and are administered by the group through an independent jury that has usually been chaired by a former judge of the Supreme Court. Option A is wrong because the Times Group is associated with the Times of India and does not run these awards. Option C is wrong because the Hindu Group publishes The Hindu and Frontline but has no award of this name. Option D is wrong because the ABP Group is a Bengali and Hindi media house best known for Anandabazar Patrika and its television channels. Remember the pairing as founder to newspaper: Ramnath Goenka belongs to the Indian Express, and the group's own award therefore carries his name.

The correct answer is D, Smriti Mandhana. The India opener was named ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year for 2021 and received the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy in January 2022. She had scored 855 international runs across the three formats in that year, including India's first century in a day-night Test, made against Australia at Carrara. The trophy is named after Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the England captain who pushed for women's cricket at Lord's and for the first Women's World Cup in 1973. Option A is wrong because Mithali Raj, India's long-serving captain, has never won this particular trophy. Option B is wrong because Ellyse Perry of Australia won it in 2019, not for 2021. Option C is wrong because Lizelle Lee of South Africa took the ICC Women's ODI Cricketer of the Year award that season, which is a separate prize. Exam tip: the women's award is the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, the men's is the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy.

The correct answer is B, 1954. Both the Bharat Ratna and the Padma series were instituted on the second of January 1954, during the presidency of Dr Rajendra Prasad, and the first Bharat Ratna awards went that year to C. Rajagopalachari, C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan. Option A, 1950, is the year the Constitution came into force and is offered because candidates assume the honours began with the Republic; they came four years later. Option C, 1955, is a near miss that is deliberately placed here, because in January 1955 the Padma award, which had first been created as one decoration with three classes, was reorganised into the three separate awards of Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri. Option D, 1947, is the year of independence and predates the awards entirely. Read whether a question asks for the institution of the awards or for the renaming of the Padma classes.

The correct answer is B, G. Sankara Kurup. The Jnanpith Award was instituted by the Bharatiya Jnanpith in 1961 and given for the first time in 1965 to the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup for his collection Odakkuzhal. Option A is wrong because Sumitranandan Pant received the award in 1968 and was the first Hindi writer to do so, which makes him the commonest wrong answer here. Option C is wrong because Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay received it in 1966, in the second year, for Bengali. Option D is wrong because Umashankar Joshi received it in 1967 for Gujarati. The Jnanpith is the highest literary honour for an Indian writer and is given for work in a language listed in the Eighth Schedule, along with English. Note also that the Jnanpith is awarded by a private trust and not by the Government of India, which is a point papers like to test.

The correct answer is C, 2006. The Indian Express Group began the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2006, a little over a decade after the death of its founder, and the award now covers print, broadcast and digital reporting in a long list of categories, with a separate Journalist of the Year honour. Option A is wrong because 1996 is close to the year Ramnath Goenka died but no award was begun then. Option B is wrong because 2001 predates the award. Option D is wrong because by 2011 the awards had already run for several years. Examiners like founding years, so fix 2006 for the Ramnath Goenka Awards next to 1980 for the Chameli Devi Jain Award and 1917 for the first Pulitzer Prizes.

The correct answer is D, Afghanistan. The Amir Amanullah Khan Award is Afghanistan's highest civilian honour, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi received it in June 2016 at Herat, on the day he and President Ashraf Ghani opened the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier called the Salma Dam, which India built on the Hari Rud. The honour is named after Amir Amanullah Khan, the ruler who won Afghanistan full control of its foreign affairs from the British in 1919. Option A is wrong, although Saudi Arabia did honour the Prime Minister in April 2016; its top award is the Order of King Abdulaziz Al Saud, a different decoration with a different name. Options B and C are wrong because neither Uzbekistan nor Iran gives an award of this name, and neither conferred its highest civilian honour on him in that year. Exam tip: Amir Amanullah Khan Award means Afghanistan, 2016, Herat and the Afghan-India Friendship Dam.

The correct answer is B, France. The Legion of Honour was instituted by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 to reward civil and military merit, and it remains the highest decoration of France, awarded in five classes of which the Grand Cross is the highest. It is also the oldest of the major national honours that papers ask about, which is why the same fact is sometimes asked as which is the oldest civilian honour. Option A, Germany, confers the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, instituted in 1951 and popularly called the Bundesverdienstkreuz. Option C, Italy, has the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, also created in 1951 after the monarchy ended. Option D, Spain, has the Order of the Golden Fleece as its senior order and the Order of Charles the third as a leading civil order, so none of these three can be the answer.

The correct answer is A, Wildlife protection. The Amrita Devi Bishnoi National Award is given for outstanding courage and devotion in protecting wildlife. It was instituted by the Union environment ministry in 1994 and carries a cash prize with a citation. It is named after Amrita Devi Bishnoi, who in 1730 at Khejarli near Jodhpur clung to a khejri tree to stop the Maharaja's men from felling it; she and more than 360 other Bishnois died in that protest. The Bishnoi community, which follows the 29 rules laid down by Guru Jambheshwar, still guards the blackbuck, the chinkara and the khejri tree of the Thar desert, and the Khejarli sacrifice is remembered as an inspiration for the later Chipko movement. Option B is wrong because energy saving is rewarded by the National Energy Conservation Awards. Option C is wrong because broader environmental work is honoured by the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar. Option D is wrong because biodiversity effort is recognised by the India Biodiversity Awards. Exam tip: tie Amrita Devi to Khejarli 1730, the khejri tree and the blackbuck of Rajasthan.

The correct answer is C, Columbia University. The Hungarian-born American publisher Joseph Pulitzer left money in his will to Columbia University in New York, which set up a school of journalism and the prizes that carry his name; the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917 and are announced every year by the university on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Option A is wrong because Harvard, though also in the United States, has no role in the prize. Option B is wrong because Yale awards its own honours but not the Pulitzer. Option D is wrong because Princeton is unconnected with it. The trap in this question is that candidates remember New York but attach the prize to the wrong university, so store the pairing of Pulitzer with Columbia firmly.

The correct answer is C, Grammy. Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt won the Grammy Award in 1994 for the album A Meeting by the River, which he recorded with the American slide guitarist Ry Cooder in the world music category. Bhatt, a musician of the Jaipur gharana and a disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, is best known for building the Mohan Veena, a Hawaiian guitar rebuilt with about twenty strings so that it can carry the sliding notes and drone of Indian classical music. He was later honoured with the Padma Shri. A is wrong because Sangita Kalanidhi is the highest award of the Madras Music Academy, given for Carnatic music. B is wrong because the Oscar, or Academy Award, is given for films, not for a music album of this kind. D is wrong because the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award is a national honour for music, dance and drama given in India, and it is not the 1994 award named in the question. Exam tip: Vishwa Mohan Bhatt – Mohan Veena, Grammy 1994 for A Meeting by the River with Ry Cooder.

The correct answer is C, Pakistan. Nishan-e-Pakistan, which means the order of Pakistan, is the highest civilian decoration conferred by that country and is usually given to heads of state and to those who have rendered outstanding service to Pakistan; the word nishan denotes the highest class in its system of awards, above hilal, sitara and tamgha. Option A, Bangladesh, confers the Independence Award, known as the Swadhinata Puraskar, as its highest state honour. Option B, Afghanistan, has among its highest civilian honours the Amir Amanullah Khan Award, named after the ruler who won its independence in foreign affairs. Option D, Maldives, confers Nishan Izzuddeen, formally the Order of the Distinguished Rule of Izzuddeen; the shared word nishan is exactly why the Maldivian award is placed as a distractor in this question.

The correct answer is B, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO is the specialised agency of the United Nations for education, the sciences, culture, communication and information, with its headquarters at Paris. Its Constitution declares that since wars begin in the minds of men, the defences of peace must be built in the minds of men. Option A is wrong because economic and social matters are handled by the Economic and Social Council, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. Option C is wrong because the environment is the responsibility of the United Nations Environment Programme, which has its headquarters at Nairobi in Kenya. Option D is wrong because it is simply a rearranged form that does not match the agency's real name, and such near-miss expansions are the usual distractors.

The correct answer is C, 1917. Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and his will provided for the prizes, which Columbia University first gave out in 1917. Option A is wrong because 1901 is the year the Nobel Prizes were first awarded, a date candidates often transfer to the Pulitzer by mistake. Option B is wrong because 1911 is the year of Pulitzer's death, not of the first award. Option D is wrong because 1927 is far too late. A clean way to hold the sequence is Nobel 1901, Pulitzer 1917, Magsaysay 1957, Chameli Devi Jain 1980, Ramnath Goenka 2006. Questions in this area almost always test one of these founding years, and the Nobel and Pulitzer pair is the commonest trap of the set. Note also that the journalism categories are open mainly to work published by United States newspapers, magazines and news websites, which is why Indian winners appear through American organisations rather than through Indian ones.

The correct answer is D, the United States of America. The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, replacing an earlier Medal of Freedom of 1945, and it is awarded for especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural and other significant public or private endeavours. The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest honour conferred by the Congress itself, and the two are often confused. Option A, Canada, has the Order of Canada, created in 1967 in its centennial year. Option B, the United Kingdom, has the Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, as its senior order of chivalry, and the George Cross of 1940 as its highest civilian gallantry decoration. Option C, Australia, has the Order of Australia, established in 1975 to replace the British honours system there.

The correct answer is A, Gobind Behari Lal. A science correspondent who had gone from Punjab to the United States, Gobind Behari Lal shared the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1937 for his coverage of a scientific meeting, and he is remembered as the first Indian-born winner of the prize. Option B is wrong because the photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was part of a Reuters team honoured much later, in 2018, for pictures of the Rohingya crisis. Option C is wrong because Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, which is a literature award and later than 1937. Option D is wrong because Dar Yasin was one of the Associated Press photographers honoured in 2020 for images from Kashmir.

The correct answer is B, three. The rules of the Bharat Ratna provide that not more than three awards may be made in a particular year, and there is no obligation to make any award at all in a given year, which is why several years have passed with none. The award may also be conferred posthumously, a provision used for the first time for Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. Option A, two, is a plausible sounding but wrong figure and is the commonest distractor. Option C, five, is confused with the annual ceiling on some other decorations and has no basis in the Bharat Ratna rules. Option D is wrong because a ceiling does exist, and it exists precisely to keep the honour rare; the Padma awards, by contrast, are announced in larger numbers every year on the eve of Republic Day, and that difference in scale is what the question is really testing.