Which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. C. Rajagopalachari was the first recipient of the Bharat Ratna. 2. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya initiated the concept of 'Integral Humanism'. Select the answer using the code given below :

The correct answer is D, The Underground Railroad. Colson Whitehead's novel won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Underground Railroad follows Cora, a young woman who escapes a cotton plantation in Georgia. Whitehead imagines the real network of secret routes and safe houses that helped enslaved people flee as an actual railway running underground. The book also won the US National Book Award in 2016. Whitehead won the Pulitzer for Fiction again in 2020 for The Nickel Boys, becoming one of very few writers to win it twice. The Pulitzer Prizes are given by Columbia University in New York and began in 1917.

Option A is wrong because The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt won the prize in 2014. Option B is wrong because All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr won in 2015. Option C is wrong because The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won in 2016, the year before.

Exam tip: Pulitzer Fiction 2014 Goldfinch, 2015 All the Light, 2016 Sympathizer, 2017 Underground Railroad.

The correct answer is A, Disaster Reduction. The United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction honours people and institutions that work to reduce the risk of disasters.

The award was set up in 1986 with a gift from Ryoichi Sasakawa, founder of the Japanese philanthropic body now known as the Nippon Foundation. It is managed by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and is presented in alternate years at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. India's Pradeep Kumar Mishra, then Additional Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, received it in 2019 for his work on disaster management, which is why it appeared in exams that year.

B is wrong: UN peacekeepers are honoured by the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal, not the Sasakawa Award.

C is wrong: health work is recognised by a separate WHO prize; the UN Sasakawa Award is for disaster risk reduction.

D is wrong: the award is not given for poverty alleviation.

Exam tip: UN Sasakawa Award = disaster risk reduction, run by UNDRR; P. K. Mishra won it in 2019.

The correct answer is A, Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss Earth and Miss International. These four are the oldest and most widely covered international pageants: Miss World from 1951 in Britain, Miss Universe from 1952 in the United States, Miss International from 1960 and held mainly in Japan, and Miss Earth from 2001 in the Philippines. Option B is wrong because Femina Miss India is India's national pageant, which selects the representative, and cannot be an international contest. Option C is wrong for the same reason and also because Miss Supranational, although a well known pageant, is not counted in the Big Four. Option D leaves out Miss Universe, the second oldest of the four, and puts Miss Asia Pacific in its place, which is a regional contest. Learning the four founding years in order fixes the set.

The correct answer is B, Priyanka Chopra won Miss World and Lara Dutta won Miss Universe. The year 2000 was the second time India held both crowns, with Priyanka Chopra crowned Miss World at London and Lara Dutta crowned Miss Universe at Nicosia in Cyprus; Dia Mirza also won Miss Asia Pacific the same year. Option A reverses the two names and is the exact trap the question is built on, so read the titles before the names. Option C is wrong because no contestant has won both titles, which are held in different countries by different organisations in the same year. Option D is wrong on the first half: Yukta Mookhey won Miss World in 1999, the year before, though the Lara Dutta half of the statement is correct. A half correct option is the most dangerous kind in a matching question.

The correct answer is B, Bangalore. The Miss World contest of 1996 was held at Bangalore, the first time the pageant came to India, and it is remembered as much for the protests and the court proceedings around it as for the contest itself; it became a standard example in debates on the commercialisation of beauty. Option A, Mumbai, hosted the pageant much later, in 2024, so it is the second Indian host city and the trap for candidates who remember only the more recent event. Option C, New Delhi, has hosted the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games but not Miss World. Option D, Hyderabad, hosted the only Afro-Asian Games in 2003 and many other international events, but not this pageant. Keep the pair in mind as Bangalore 1996 first and Mumbai 2024 second.