The Magsaysay Award is given in the name of Ramon Magsaysay. He was the President of which country?

The correct answer is A, MS Subbulakshmi. M S Subbulakshmi, the Carnatic vocalist from Madurai, received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1974 in the category of public service, the first Indian musician to be honoured by that award. She was also the first musician to be given the Bharat Ratna, in 1998, and she is remembered for singing at the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 and for the Suprabhatam and Bhaja Govindam recordings heard in homes every morning. The Magsaysay Award, named after a President of the Philippines, is often called Asia's Nobel Prize. B is wrong because Zakir Hussain, the tabla player, has not been given this award. C is wrong because Bhimsen Joshi received the Bharat Ratna in 2008 but not the Magsaysay. D is wrong because Bismillah Khan, the shehnai player, received the Bharat Ratna in 2001. Exam tip: Subbulakshmi, Magsaysay 1974, Bharat Ratna 1998, first musician for both.

The correct answer is B, 1999. Pandit Ravi Shankar received the Bharat Ratna in 1999, along with Amartya Sen and Gopinath Bordoloi. He was the sitar player who carried Hindustani classical music to concert halls abroad, worked with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and taught George Harrison of the Beatles, and he played at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. He had already been given the Padma Bhushan in 1967 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1981, so the Bharat Ratna was the last of the three. A is wrong because 1998 was the year of the awards to M S Subbulakshmi and C Subramaniam. C is wrong because no Bharat Ratna was conferred in 1996. D is wrong because the 1995 conferment does not include him. Exam tip: Ravi Shankar, sitar, Bharat Ratna 1999, in the same year as economist Amartya Sen.

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.

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 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.