Which city hosted the 26th SCO Summit attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi?

The correct answer is Security, Connectivity and Opportunity. In his statement at Bishkek the Prime Minister recalled that at the previous summit he had set out three main pillars of India's thinking on the grouping, and that their initials spell the organisation's own short name: S for Security, C for Connectivity and O for Opportunity. He then asked that the three be carried beyond vision into concrete outcomes. Under security he sought the dismantling of the funding, recruitment, radicalisation and safe havens behind terror, with no double standards. Under connectivity he backed projects that join markets and widen trade while respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations. Under opportunity he said the test is how many openings young people, entrepreneurs and farmers gain. The other three options use words that sound plausible but appear nowhere as the formula in the release.

The correct answer is the SCO Civilisational Dialogue Forum. The Prime Minister said India would be glad to host the first edition of this forum later this year, and described it as an Indian flagship proposal meant to build civilisational exchanges among member states. He had proposed it at the previous summit, and the declaration adopted at Bishkek carries it. The other three options are all Indian initiatives inside the grouping and that is what makes them plausible distractors: the Start-up Forum, the Young Scientists Forum and the Young Authors Conclave are each named in the release as steps India has taken or supported. But the release says only about the Civilisational Dialogue Forum that its first session will be held in India this year, so options A, B and D are wrong for this particular question.

The correct answer is that the summit adopted the Bishkek Declaration along with four MoUs. Besides the declaration and the four memoranda, the meeting also adopted more than twenty decisions and statements in fields such as climate, nuclear safety, energy conservation and the fight against drug addiction. Option A is wrong on the count: the release describes this as the 25th anniversary of the grouping, which is why the leaders spoke of a roadmap for the next twenty-five years. Option C is wrong because Kyrgyzstan held the chairmanship, and the Prime Minister praised the focus on youth engagement under that chairmanship; Afghanistan appears in the release only as a country whose peace and stability matter for Eurasian security. Option D reverses the fact: accepting English as an official language in the SCO Charter was one of the proposals India led that the declaration carries.

The correct answer is nearly USD 1.2 trillion. Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal told the opening session that trade among the BRICS countries had risen from USD 84 billion in 2003 to nearly that level by 2024, and he used the figure to argue that the grouping is a significant and fast growing market. Option A is wrong because that is the earlier figure, the base for the comparison rather than the latest number; mixing up the two ends of a growth statement is the commonest trap in such questions. Option B is wrong because no such figure is given anywhere in the release. Option D is wrong for the same reason, and it also overstates the growth described. Remember the pair as a single fact with its two years attached, and remember alongside it that the grouping accounts for nearly one fourth of global trade.

The correct answer is Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. The Prime Minister named this theme while addressing the BRICS Business Forum in New Delhi, and said India had made the same mantra the base of its economic and trade policy over the past twelve years. The External Affairs Minister repeated the four words of the theme, resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability, while describing how India's Chairship has tried to carry the grouping's evolution forward. Option A is wrong because that line is the English rendering of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and was not given as the BRICS theme in this release. Option C is wrong because no such wording appears in the account of the Forum, although multilateral trade with the WTO at its core was indeed mentioned by the Commerce Secretary. Option D is wrong for the same reason, as it names no element of the announced theme. A paper setter will usually test the exact four-part wording, so it is worth memorising in order.