The Yash Bharti Samman is the highest civilian honour of which state?

The correct answer is A, Kuvempu. The Karnataka Ratna was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 1992 as the highest civilian honour of the state, and the first person to receive it was Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, the Kannada poet known by his pen name Kuvempu, who had also written the state song of Karnataka. Option B, Shivaram Karanth, was a Kannada novelist and a Jnanpith awardee, but he was not the first Karnataka Ratna. Option C, Girish Karnad, was a playwright and film maker honoured with the Jnanpith in 1998, again not the first recipient of this state honour. Option D, U. R. Ananthamurthy, was also a Jnanpith awardee from Karnataka. All four are major Kannada writers, which is exactly why the question is set this way; the memory hook is that the state began its highest honour with the poet of its own state song.

The correct answer is C, 1996. The Government of Maharashtra instituted the Maharashtra Bhushan in 1996 as the highest civilian award of the state, open to work in literature, art, sport, science, social service, medicine and public administration, and the first award went to the Marathi writer and humorist Purushottam Laxman Deshpande, remembered as Pu La Deshpande. Option A, 1986, and option B, 1991, are earlier years in which the award did not yet exist. Option D, 2001, is after the institution of the award and after its first conferment. A useful way to hold the date is to pair the state honours by decade: Karnataka Ratna came in 1992 and Maharashtra Bhushan four years later in 1996, while the Assam and Kerala sets are far newer, dating from 2021.

The correct answer is C, 2021. The Government of Assam created a three-step set of state honours in 2021: Assam Baibhav at the top for exceptional service to the state, Assam Saurav next, and Assam Gaurav for distinguished work in specific fields. The first Assam Baibhav was conferred on the industrialist Ratan Tata for the Tata group's work on cancer care in the state. Option A, 2016, and option B, 2019, come before the awards existed. Option D, 2022, is the year in which a later round of these honours was given, not the year of institution, and this is the distractor most students fall for. Note the internal order carefully, because a question very often asks which of the three stands highest; the answer is Assam Baibhav, with Gaurav at the bottom of the three.

The correct answer is C, Kerala Jyothi. Kerala instituted three civilian honours in 2021, modelled on the idea of a graded set: Kerala Jyothi at the top, Kerala Prabha next and Kerala Sree third. The first Kerala Jyothi went to the Malayalam writer and film maker M. T. Vasudevan Nair. Option A, Kerala Sree, is the third of the three, and option B, Kerala Prabha, is the second, so both are real awards but neither is the highest. Option D is wrong because the whole point of the scheme is that the three are graded, exactly as the Padma awards are graded into Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri. A simple memory rule is that light gets weaker down the list: Jyothi is a flame, Prabha is a glow and Sree is an honorific.

The correct answer is C, West Bengal. The Government of West Bengal instituted Banga Bibhushan and Banga Bhushan in 2011 to honour people from the state in fields such as literature, music, cinema, sport, science and social service, with Banga Bibhushan ranked above Banga Bhushan. The word Banga itself is the Bengali name of the region, which is the quickest clue in the question. Option A, Odisha, runs its own set of state honours and does not use these names. Option B, Bihar, and option D, Assam, are also wrong; Assam's honours are the Assam Baibhav, Assam Saurav and Assam Gaurav set of 2021, which is a common mix-up because Baibhav and Bibhushan sound alike. West Bengal's older literary honour is a separate award, the Rabindra Puraskar, instituted in 1950.