Which of the following statements about Quad is/are correct? 1. It is a group of four countries, namely, India, Australia, USA and France. 2. Maritime cooperation is an important binding force among members of the Quad. 3. The Quad members formed a working group on COVID-19 vaccines. Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Correct — C, 2 and 3 only. The Quad is Australia, India, Japan and the United States. Statement 1 swaps Japan for France, and France has never been a member — it has run naval exercises with Quad countries and has its own Indo-Pacific strategy, but the grouping has always been these four. Statement 2 is sound: the four came together in the first place to coordinate relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, their flagship activity is the Malabar naval exercise, and maritime domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific is the thread that holds the agenda together. Statement 3 is also correct — the first Quad leaders' summit, held virtually in March 2021, launched a senior-level vaccine experts group and the Quad Vaccine Partnership, an arrangement to expand manufacturing capacity in India and deliver doses across the Indo-Pacific.

• (a)1 only — Selects the single statement that is false. Japan, not France, is the fourth member.
• (b)1 and 2 only — Gets the maritime point right but keeps France in the membership and drops the vaccine working group, which the leaders announced at their first summit.
• (d)1, 2 and 3 — Right about maritime cooperation and the vaccine group, wrong to let the membership list stand. Any statement naming France among the four fails at once.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue links Australia, India, Japan and the United States. Its origin lies in the Tsunami Core Group of 2004-05, it was proposed as a standing dialogue by Shinzo Abe in 2007, lapsed when Australia stepped back, and was revived at official level in 2017. It rose to foreign-minister level in 2019 and to leaders' level in 2021. The Quad has no treaty, no secretariat and no mutual-defence clause; it works through working groups on vaccines, climate, critical and emerging technology, infrastructure and maritime security.

Membership questions on the Quad are usually decided by one substitution, and France is the favourite stand-in because it holds Indian Ocean and Pacific territories and takes part in the Varuna exercises with India. Keep the four fixed and read the rest calmly. On the vaccine line, the tell is that a COVID-era grouping of exactly these four economies was under heavy pressure in early 2021 to answer vaccine diplomacy in the region, and that is what the first leaders' summit did. As of the 2023 exam the vaccine partnership had wound down as the pandemic emergency ended, and the working groups on critical technology, infrastructure and maritime domain awareness now carry most of the agenda.

• The Quad's four members are Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
• The grouping traces back to the Tsunami Core Group of 2004-05 and was formally proposed in 2007, revived in 2017, raised to foreign ministers in 2019 and to leaders in 2021.
• The first Quad leaders' summit, virtual, in March 2021, launched the Quad Vaccine Partnership and a senior-level vaccine experts group.
• Malabar, the naval exercise at the centre of Quad maritime cooperation, brought all four navies together in 2020 when Australia rejoined.
• The Quad has no treaty, no permanent secretariat and no collective-defence obligation.
• Do not confuse it with I2U2, the India-Israel-UAE-USA grouping sometimes called the West Asian Quad.

• Reading France, or sometimes the United Kingdom or Indonesia, into the membership because of an Indo-Pacific link.
• Treating the Quad as a military alliance with a mutual-defence commitment, which it does not have.
• Mixing up the Indo-Pacific Quad with I2U2, the grouping of India, Israel, the UAE and the United States.

Asked as a statement-verification item where the membership line carries a single substituted country and the other statements are true, so the whole question is decided by whether you can name all four members.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The naval exercise most closely associated with the Quad grouping is

  • (a)Varuna
  • (b)Malabar
  • (c)Indra
  • (d)Konkan

  Answer(b) Malabar — India and the United States began it, Japan became a permanent participant in 2015 and Australia rejoined in 2020, bringing all four Quad navies together.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following countries is a member of I2U2 but not of the Quad?

  • (a)Japan
  • (b)Australia
  • (c)Israel
  • (d)India

  Answer(c) Israel — I2U2 is India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States; the Quad is India, Australia, Japan and the United States.