Who was the first Indian to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award?

The correct answer is C, the Philippines. Ramon Magsaysay was President of the Philippines and died in an aircraft crash in March 1957. The award was created in his memory later that year, and it is given at Manila, the Philippine capital, on 31 August, his birth anniversary.

Option A, Indonesia, is wrong; no pan-Asian award of this standing is named after an Indonesian head of state. Option B, Malaysia, is wrong for the same reason, although the country's closeness to the Philippines makes it a natural distractor. Option D, Thailand, is wrong as well. A candidate can reason this out from the award's own description: it honours greatness of spirit in service to the peoples of Asia, and the Foundation that gives it sits in Manila, so the country in the answer must be the Philippines.

The correct answer is C, 1957. The trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York set up the award in 1957, the year in which President Ramon Magsaysay died, and the first awards were given in 1958. Vinoba Bhave, honoured in that first year, was the first Indian to receive it.

Option A, 1947, is the year of Indian independence and has no bearing on this award. Option B, 1952, precedes Magsaysay's death and so cannot be the founding year. Option D, 1962, is the year in which Mother Teresa received the award for peace and international understanding, which is why it is placed among the options. Fix the sequence in mind: the award was founded in 1957 and first conferred in 1958, on Vinoba Bhave among others.

The correct answer is A, Asia's Nobel Prize. The description is used because the award honours a lifetime of selfless service in Asia, in fields such as government service, public service and community leadership, in the manner in which the Nobel Prizes honour service to humanity. It is the phrase newspapers and question papers both use.

Option B is wrong because the Booker Prize is a British award for a work of fiction, which is a narrow literary field and not public service. Option C is not a phrase in use for any award. Option D is wrong because the Pulitzer Prize is American and belongs to journalism, letters, drama and music; a comparison with it would not describe an award for social work in Asia. When a question asks which award is called Asia's Nobel Prize, the answer is always the Magsaysay.

The correct answer is B, Columbia University. Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper publisher who owned the New York World, left money in his will both for a school of journalism and for the prizes, and Columbia University in New York administers the awards on the advice of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Option A, Harvard University, and Option C, Yale University, are older American universities with no role in these prizes, and they are offered simply because they are the best-known American names. Option D, the Library of Congress, awards the Gershwin Prize in music and appoints the Poet Laureate of the United States, but it does not run the Pulitzers. Remember the founder and the seat together: Joseph Pulitzer's will, Columbia University, New York, first awarded in 1917.

The correct answer is B, 1917. Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and provided for the prizes in his will; the first awards were made in 1917 by Columbia University. The prizes cover journalism in American news organisations along with books, drama and music, and the Public Service award in journalism is a gold medal.

Option A, 1901, is the year the Nobel Prizes were first awarded, and papers plant it here to see whether the two are being confused. Option C, 1929, is the year of the Great Depression's onset and has nothing to do with the prize. Option D, 1945, marks the end of the Second World War. The three founding years worth keeping in one line are 1901 for the Nobel, 1917 for the Pulitzer and 1969 for the Booker.