Who was the first Indian recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award?

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 C, Gobind Behari Lal. He was the first person of Indian origin to win the Pulitzer Prize, sharing the award for reporting in 1937.

Gobind Behari Lal was born in Delhi in 1889 and went to the United States in 1912 as a student, where he also worked with the Ghadar movement in California. He became science editor of the Hearst newspaper group and shared the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting for his coverage of the science meetings held during Harvard University's tercentenary, explaining new research in language ordinary readers could follow.

A is wrong: Geeta Anand shared a Pulitzer much later, in 2003, for reporting in an American newspaper. B is wrong: Siddhartha Mukherjee won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2011 for his book on cancer, 'The Emperor of All Maladies'. D is wrong: Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for 'Interpreter of Maladies'.

Exam tip: Gobind Behari Lal - first Indian-origin Pulitzer winner, 1937, in the Reporting category.

The correct answer is A, a distinguished work of Indian fiction, translations included. The JCB Prize for Literature was instituted in 2018 for a work of fiction by an Indian writer, and a novel translated into English from an Indian language is eligible, with a separate sum going to the translator when a translated book wins. It quickly became one of the richest literary prizes in the country.

Option B is wrong because the prize is for fiction and not for poetry; poetry is covered by the Kabir Samman of Madhya Pradesh and by the Sahitya Akademi awards. Option C is wrong because non-fiction is outside its scope, although several Indian prizes and the Sahitya Akademi awards do cover it. Option D, writing for children, is the field of the Sahitya Akademi's Bal Sahitya Puraskar, instituted in 2010. Group the newer English language prizes by year to keep them apart: the Crossword Book Award from 1998, the DSC Prize from 2010 and the JCB Prize from 2018.

The correct answer is C, Interpreter of Maladies. The collection of nine short stories, most of them about Indians and Indian Americans living between two countries, was Jhumpa Lahiri's first book and won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, an unusual honour for a debut collection of stories.

Option A, The Namesake, is her first novel, published in 2003, and was made into a film, but it won no Pulitzer. Option B, Unaccustomed Earth, is her second collection of stories, published in 2008. Option D, The Lowland, is her novel of 2013, set partly in Kolkata during the Naxalite years, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize without winning. All four are her own books, so the question is only about which one carried the Pulitzer, and the answer is the earliest of them.

The correct answer is B, Rajasthan. The Bihari Puraskar was instituted in 1991 by the K. K. Birla Foundation and goes to a writer from Rajasthan for a work in Hindi or Rajasthani. It is named after Bihari, the seventeenth century poet of the Riti period and author of the Bihari Satsai, who was associated with the court of Amber.

Option A, Bihar, is the answer the name of the award pulls candidates towards, and it is wrong: the award is named after a poet called Bihari and has nothing to do with the state of Bihar. Option C, Uttar Pradesh, and option D, Madhya Pradesh, have literary honours of their own; Madhya Pradesh gives the Kabir Samman for poetry and the Maithili Sharan Gupt Samman. The foundation's other awards are wider in reach, the Saraswati Samman covering every Eighth Schedule language and the Vyas Samman covering Hindi across the country.