Awards & Honours Mixed Quiz: Set 9

The correct answer is A, Major Dhyan Chand. He was born on 29 August 1905, and India has observed National Sports Day on that date since 2012; the national sports awards are tied to the day and are conferred by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Dhyan Chand received the Padma Bhushan in 1956, and both the Khel Ratna and the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement now carry his name. Option B, Milkha Singh, the sprinter known as the Flying Sikh, was born in a different month and has no national day. Option C, Balbir Singh Sr., won Olympic hockey gold three times but does not give his name to the day. Option D, K. D. Jadhav, was India’s first individual Olympic medallist after independence, taking a wrestling bronze at Helsinki in 1952.

The correct answer is B, Tanvi Shah. She was the first Indian woman musician to win a Grammy, in 2010.

Tanvi Shah, a singer and lyricist from Chennai, wrote and sang the Spanish lines of the song 'Jai Ho' from the film Slumdog Millionaire. The song won the Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media at the 2010 ceremony, shared with A. R. Rahman and Gulzar. The same film had already brought Rahman two Academy Awards, and Rahman and Resul Pookutty are the other Indian names students should keep with it.

A is wrong: Neeti Mohan is a playback singer with no Grammy. C is wrong: Shweta Pandit is a playback singer who has not won one either. D is wrong: Shalmali Kholgade is also a playback singer without a Grammy.

Exam tip: Tanvi Shah - first Indian woman to win a Grammy, 2010, for the Spanish lyrics of 'Jai Ho'.

The correct answer is B, Siddhartha Mukherjee. He is a physician and researcher of Indian origin, and his book The Emperor of All Maladies is a history of cancer written for general readers. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 2011, and he later wrote The Gene and The Song of the Cell.

Option A, Amartya Sen, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and wrote The Argumentative Indian and Development as Freedom. Option C, Abhijit Banerjee, shared the Nobel in Economic Sciences in 2019 and wrote Poor Economics. Option D, Atul Gawande, is a surgeon of Indian origin and a well-known writer of books such as Being Mortal and The Checklist Manifesto, which makes him the strongest distractor in a medical question of this kind, but the Pulitzer of 2011 belongs to Mukherjee.

The correct answer is D, Vinesh Phogat. The wrestler Vinesh Phogat was nominated in 2019 for the Laureus World Sports Award in the Breakthrough of the Year category, the first Indian athlete to be shortlisted in that category. The nomination followed a remarkable 2018, in which she won gold at the Commonwealth Games at Gold Coast and then gold at the Asian Games in Jakarta, becoming the first Indian woman wrestler to win an Asian Games title. She had already received the Arjuna Award in 2016. The Laureus World Sports Awards, begun in 2000 by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, are often called the Oscars of sport. Option A is wrong because Anirban Chatterji is not a Laureus nominee. Option B is wrong because Pankaj Advani, a world champion in billiards and snooker, was not on the list. Option C is wrong because the sprinter Dutee Chand, known for her legal fight over hyperandrogenism rules, was not nominated that year. Exam tip: Vinesh Phogat - Laureus nomination 2019, Asian Games gold 2018, Arjuna Award 2016.

The correct answer is C, the Dhyan Chand Award. Instituted in 2002, it honours sportspersons for the whole of their contribution to their sport, including what they have done for it after their playing days ended, which sets it apart from the awards given for recent performance. Option A, the Arjuna Award of 1961, is given for consistently outstanding play over the four preceding years, not for a lifetime. Option B, the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar of 2009, goes to companies, sports control boards and voluntary organisations rather than to individuals. Option D, the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy of 1956–57, goes to a university. A candidate should read the words lifetime and individual together in such a question, because they point to the Dhyan Chand Award every time.

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 C, 1969. The prize was begun in 1969 with the firm Booker McConnell as its sponsor, which is where the name comes from, and it is given each year for a work of fiction written in English. It was called the Man Booker Prize from 2002 to 2019 and is now supported by Crankstart.

Option A, 1917, is the year of the first Pulitzer Prizes. Option B, 1957, is the year the Ramon Magsaysay Award was established, and mixing the founding years of these three awards is the standard trap. Option D, 1981, is the year Salman Rushdie won the Booker for Midnight's Children, so it belongs to the prize's history but is not its founding year. Keep the winner's year and the award's year separate in your notes.

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 D, the university with the best overall performance in inter-university tournaments. Instituted in 1956–57 and named after independent India’s first education minister, it is the oldest of the national sports honours and the only one given to a university, which makes it a favourite question. Option A, the best coach, is the Dronacharya Award of 1985. Option B is wrong because no national sports award is given to a state for the National Games, although states are ranked in the medal table. Option C describes the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar of 2009, which honours companies and voluntary bodies that support sport. Remember the recipient of each honour as a class — player, coach, organisation, university — and this group of questions is settled before the options are read.

The correct answer is C, 1952. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's national academy of music, dance and drama, was created by a government resolution of 31 May 1952 and formally inaugurated on 28 January 1953 by President Rajendra Prasad. It was the first of the three national academies; the Sahitya Akademi for literature and the Lalit Kala Akademi for fine arts followed in 1954. Its annual awards, the Akademi Puraskar, have been given to performing artists since 1952, which makes it the oldest national honour for the performing arts in India. The higher honour, the Akademi Ratna or Fellowship, was started in 1954. A is wrong because 1961 is the year the Arjuna Award for sports began. B is wrong because 1950 is when the Constitution came into force, not when the Akademi was formed. D is wrong because 1959 is the year the National School of Drama was set up, not the start of the awards. Exam tip: Sangeet Natak Akademi 1952 (awards from 1952); Sahitya Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi 1954.

The correct answer is B, a work of fiction written in English. The Booker Prize is a British literary award given each year to one novel. Until 2014 only writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible; since then any novel originally written in English and published in the United Kingdom may be considered, and the winner receives fifty thousand pounds.

Option A, journalism, belongs to the Pulitzer Prize, which is American. Option C, scientific research, belongs to the Nobel Prizes and, in India, to awards such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. Option D, public service in Asia, describes the Ramon Magsaysay Award. Note also that the International Booker Prize is a separate award, given for a book translated into English, with the money shared equally between author and translator.

The correct answer is B, Swarna Kamal. The Swarna Kamal, or Golden Lotus, is the medallion awarded for the highest honours of the National Film Awards, and the Best Feature Film is the chief among them. The award carries a certificate and a cash component along with the medallion.

Option A, Rajat Kamal, or Silver Lotus, is given for the other categories, such as Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and the best film in each language, so it is the correct medallion but for a different set of awards. Option C, Tamra Patra, a copper plate, was given to freedom fighters as a token of recognition and has nothing to do with cinema. Option D, Kirti Chakra, is a gallantry award of the armed forces, given for conspicuous courage away from the battlefield.

The correct answer is A, Karnam Malleswari. The weightlifter received the Khel Ratna in 1994–95, becoming the first woman to be honoured with it, and she went on to win the bronze at the Sydney Olympics of 2000, India’s first Olympic medal by a woman. Option B, P. T. Usha, is the sprinter who narrowly missed a medal at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984 and received the Arjuna Award and the Padma Shri, but not the Khel Ratna. Option C, Kunjarani Devi, another weightlifter of great record, received the Khel Ratna later, in 1995–96. Option D, Mary Kom, the boxer, received it in 2009. The order of these names is what the question tests, so hold Malleswari as the first, in the fourth year of the award.

The correct answer is C, Tanvi Shah. She sang the Spanish lines of Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire and also wrote them, and when the song won the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media in 2010 she became the first Indian woman to win a Grammy award. A. R. Rahman won two Grammy awards at the same ceremony for the music of the film.

Option A, Monali Thakur, is a playback singer who won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer, an Indian honour and not a Grammy. Option B, Neeti Mohan, is a singer who came to notice through a television talent show and has sung for many Hindi films, but she has not won a Grammy. Option D, Palak Muchhal, is a playback singer known as much for her charity work for children with heart ailments. None of the three has won this award.

The correct answer is C, Arundhati Roy. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things, set in Kerala, and no Indian woman had won it before her. She wrote her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, twenty years later.

Option A, Anita Desai, reached the Booker shortlist three times but never won the prize, which is exactly why she is placed here. Option B, Kiran Desai, is Anita Desai's daughter and did win, but in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss, nine years after Roy. Option D, Jhumpa Lahiri, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, an American award, and not the Booker. The sequence of Indian-origin Booker winners is Naipaul 1971, Rushdie 1981, Roy 1997, Kiran Desai 2006 and Adiga 2008.

The correct answer is B, Viswanathan Anand. The award was instituted in 1991–92 and the chess grandmaster received it in that very first year, which is the fact papers return to most often. Option D, Karnam Malleswari, the weightlifter, holds a related first: she was the first woman to receive the Khel Ratna, in 1994–95, and candidates who remember one first and not the other are caught here. Option A, Leander Paes, the tennis player, received the award in 1996–97, the year after his Olympic bronze at Atlanta. Option C, Sachin Tendulkar, received it in 1997–98. All four are genuine recipients, so the question is settled by the order of the years rather than by the fame of the names, and the order to hold is Anand, Malleswari, Paes, Tendulkar.

The correct answer is C, corporate entities, sports control boards and voluntary bodies that promote sport. Instituted in 2009, it recognises the organisations that build sport rather than the people who play it, under heads such as identifying and nurturing young talent, providing employment to sportspersons and developing sports infrastructure. Option A is wrong because individual performance is honoured by the Arjuna Award and the Khel Ratna. Option B is wrong because coaches, in both the Regular and the Lifetime categories, receive the Dronacharya Award of 1985. Option D is wrong because the honour for a university is the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy of 1956–57. The word Protsahan, meaning encouragement, is the clue, since the award is for those who encourage sport from outside the field of play.

The correct answer is B, Geetanjali Shree. Her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi was translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, and it won the International Booker Prize in 2022. It was the first book in any Indian language to win that prize, and the money was shared equally by the author and the translator, as the rules require.

Option A, Mridula Garg, is a well-known Hindi writer who received the Sahitya Akademi Award, but not this prize. Option C, Krishna Sobti, was a major Hindi novelist and a winner of the Jnanpith Award, and her stature makes her a plausible answer. Option D, Mannu Bhandari, wrote Aapka Bunty and other landmarks of Hindi fiction. All four are Hindi writers of standing, so the question rests on remembering the single name attached to 2022.

The correct answer is B, the President of India. The awards are conferred at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, and the recipient receives the medal or statuette, a certificate or scroll of honour and a cash prize from the President. Option C, the Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, heads the ministry that administers the schemes, invites the applications and announces the names, but does not confer the awards. Option A, the Prime Minister, has no role in conferring them, although the Government of the day announces changes such as the renaming of the Khel Ratna in 2021. Option D, the President of the Indian Olympic Association, heads the body that sends Indian teams to the Olympic and Asian Games and is not part of this process. Selection itself rests with a committee chaired by a retired judge.

The correct answer is B, Satyajit Ray. He received the award in 1967 in the category of journalism, literature and creative communication arts, for his films. His first film, Pather Panchali, had appeared in 1955, and he was later given the Bharat Ratna and an honorary Academy Award.

Option A, Bimal Roy, directed Do Bigha Zamin and Madhumati and won National Film Awards, but not the Magsaysay. Option C, Mrinal Sen, was a leading director of the same period, known for Bhuvan Shome and Akaler Sandhane, and is the closest distractor because he belongs to the same Bengali cinema. Option D, Ritwik Ghatak, directed Meghe Dhaka Tara and is honoured in film history but received no such award. Among Indian recipients of the Magsaysay, Ray is the one from cinema.