‘Gandhi Solar Park’ is located at
- (a)New York
- (b)Vladivostok
- (c)Thimphu
- (d)Houston
Correct — A, New York. The Gandhi Solar Park is at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated it on 25 September 2019 during the General Assembly session. It is a 50-kilowatt rooftop installation of 193 solar panels — one for each member state of the United Nations — funded by India as a gift to the organisation, and it was timed to the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The gesture was made alongside India's other climate messaging of that week at the UN Climate Action Summit. The other three options are places that appear in Indian diplomatic news of roughly the same period, which is what makes them plausible, but none of them hosts this installation.
- (b)Vladivostok — Vladivostok is in the news of that same month for a different reason — the Eastern Economic Forum of September 2019, which the Indian Prime Minister attended. No solar park named for Gandhi was set up there.
- (c)Thimphu — India funds several projects in Bhutan, including hydropower, and Thimphu is a familiar name in Indian development cooperation. The Gandhi Solar Park is not one of those projects.
- (d)Houston — Houston hosted a large Indian diaspora event in September 2019, which is why it belongs in this set of distractors, but the solar installation was at the United Nations in New York.
India has used symbolic energy projects as an instrument of climate diplomacy for a decade — the International Solar Alliance launched with France in 2015, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure launched in 2019, and gifts of solar capacity to partner countries and institutions. The Gandhi Solar Park belongs to that pattern: a small installation whose value is in what it signals rather than in what it generates.
The item is best solved by matching the gesture to the occasion. September 2019 was a crowded month in Indian diplomacy — Vladivostok, Houston and New York all feature — and the question is asking which of them received a permanent installation named for Gandhi. The answer follows from the design: 193 panels, one for each United Nations member state, only makes sense at the organisation's own headquarters. The number itself is a useful check, and so is the timing against Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary. Keep the scale honest — 50 kilowatts is a rooftop array, not a power station, and it was never meant to be one.
- The Gandhi Solar Park is a 50-kilowatt installation of 193 solar panels at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
- It was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 25 September 2019.
- The 193 panels correspond to the 193 member states of the United Nations.
- The gift was funded by India and timed to the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
- The same week saw the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, at which India announced expanded renewable energy targets.
- Choosing Houston or Vladivostok because both feature in Indian diplomacy of the same month.
- Overstating the project's scale; 50 kilowatts is a symbolic rooftop array.
- Confusing the Gandhi Solar Park with the International Solar Alliance, which is a treaty-based organisation headquartered in India.
As a place identification for a named project, or through the September 2019 cluster of Indian diplomatic events.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The 193 solar panels of the Gandhi Solar Park were chosen to represent
- (a)the years since Gandhi's birth
- (b)the member states of the United Nations
- (c)the countries of the International Solar Alliance
- (d)the districts of Gujarat
Answer(b) the member states of the United Nations — one panel for each, which is why the installation sits at UN Headquarters.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The International Solar Alliance has its headquarters in
- (a)Paris
- (b)Gurugram, India
- (c)Nairobi
- (d)Abu Dhabi
Answer(b) Gurugram, India — the Alliance was launched jointly by India and France in 2015 and its secretariat is in Haryana.