Awards Books & Films — PPSC previous year questions

'Andher Nagari Chaupat Raja' (1881) is a satirical Hindi play by Bhartendu Harishchandra, the father of modern Hindi literature. Its title is now a proverb for a lawless kingdom with a foolish ruler. Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the Gujarati novel 'Saraswatichandra', Premchand the novel 'Godan', and Fakir Mohan Senapati the Odia novel 'Chha Mana Atha Guntha'.

Each author goes with his or her own Booker-winning novel. Arundhati Roy wrote The God of Small Things (1997). Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children (1981). Yann Martel wrote Life of Pi (2002). Kiran Desai wrote The Inheritance of Loss (2006). The matching is 1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D. All four novels won the Booker Prize. That is why they are often asked together.

Kailash Satyarthi shared the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Malala Yousafzai. Har Gobind Khorana won the 1968 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine for cracking the genetic code. Rudyard Kipling won the 1907 Literature prize. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Physics prize for his work on stellar structure.

Lala Jagat Narain founded the Punjab Kesari group of newspapers in 1965. Bal Gangadhar Tilak started the English weekly Maratha in 1881, along with the Marathi Kesari. Anandamath (1882) is Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's novel and contains Vande Mataram. Gora (1910) is Rabindranath Tagore's novel. So A-2, B-1, C-4, D-3.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote 'Democracy in America'. 'Two Concepts of Liberty' is Isaiah Berlin's inaugural lecture of 1958. 'The Rise of the Meritocracy' is Michael Young's 1958 satire, which coined the word meritocracy. 'Anti-Dühring' is Frederick Engels' polemic of 1878. That gives A-II, B-III, C-IV, D-I.

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011) was written by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT. The two, along with Michael Kremer, later shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their experimental (randomised controlled trial) approach to alleviating global poverty.

M.C. Mehta is the Supreme Court public-interest lawyer behind landmark environmental cases: Ganga pollution, the Taj Trapezium (the pollution-control zone around the Taj Mahal), Delhi vehicular pollution and the Oleum gas leak. He received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1996, the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1997 and the Padma Shri in 2016. M.C. Setalvad was India's first Attorney-General. M.C. Chagla was a jurist and minister. Kailash Satyarthi is the 2014 Nobel Peace laureate for child-rights work.

The Sahitya Akademi Award is given in 24 languages — the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule plus English and Rajasthani — so (c) is correct. The first Jnanpith Award (1965) went to G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam) for Odakkuzhal; Amrita Pritam won it in 1981 for Kagaz te Canvas. The first Sahitya Akademi Award in Punjabi (1955) went to Bhai Vir Singh for Mere Sainyan Jio; Nanak Singh won it in 1962 for Ik Miyan Do Talwaran. The Jnanpith is given in the 22 scheduled languages and English (added in 2013), not Haryanvi.

'Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific' (2012) was written by C. Raja Mohan, a well-known Indian strategic-affairs writer. It looks at the naval competition between India and China in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India's highest film honour, instituted in 1969 for outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema. It carries a Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus), a shawl and a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh. Asha Parekh received the award for 2020 at the 68th National Film Awards on 30 September 2022. Statement 1 (1979) and statement 3 (Rs 20 lakh) are wrong, so only statements 2 and 4 are correct.