CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 64 of 120

Correct — B, Indonesia. Garuda Shakti is the bilateral special forces exercise between India and Indonesia — the Indian Army's Para Special Forces training alongside Kopassus, the Indonesian Army's special forces command. Records of the series place a joint exercise of that name at Cipatat near Bandung in West Java in February 2018, and the pairing is confirmed in the official key of an NDA paper of the same period, which matches Garuda Shakti to India and Indonesia. The name itself is the strongest clue in the room. Garuda is the mount of Vishnu in Hindu myth and it is also Indonesia's national emblem and the name of its flag carrier, so a shared Sanskrit-derived name pointing to a Southeast Asian partner country points to Indonesia and not to Japan, Bhutan or Myanmar.

• (a)Japan — India's army exercise with Japan is Dharma Guardian, and the air force one is Veer Guardian. Japan also joins the Malabar naval exercise. It has no part in Garuda Shakti.
• (c)Bhutan — India's military relationship with Bhutan runs through training and assistance rather than through a named bilateral special forces exercise of this kind.
• (d)Myanmar — India and Myanmar cooperate along the shared border, including coordinated patrols, but Garuda Shakti is not the name of that engagement.

India runs a large set of named bilateral exercises, and most of them are memorised most easily by pairing the name with the partner rather than with the service. Garuda Shakti is the army special forces exercise with Indonesia; the two countries also hold Samudra Shakti at sea, which the navies have been running since November 2018 in the Java Sea and the Andaman Sea, and the older coordinated patrol along the Andaman Sea boundary. The Indian side in Garuda Shakti comes from the Para Special Forces and the Indonesian from Kopassus.

Exercise-name questions are decided in the first two seconds if you have built the right index in your head. Group the names by partner: Indonesia takes Garuda Shakti and Samudra Shakti, Japan takes Dharma Guardian and Veer Guardian, Mongolia takes Nomadic Elephant, Sri Lanka takes Mitra Shakti. One caution about the phrasing of this stem — the word 'Garuda' on its own belongs to a different exercise, the India-France air force exercise Garuda, so it is the full name Garuda Shakti that has to be matched. An honest limit on this card: the venue and exact dates of the eighth edition could not be confirmed from a primary source in preparing it, so no such detail is asserted here; the country pairing, which is what the question asks, is confirmed. The series has continued since 2023.

• Garuda Shakti is the India-Indonesia bilateral special forces exercise, between India's Para Special Forces and Indonesia's Kopassus.
• A joint exercise of that name was held at Cipatat, near Bandung in West Java, in February 2018.
• India and Indonesia have also held the Samudra Shakti naval exercise since November 2018, in the Java Sea and the Andaman Sea.
• Dharma Guardian is the India-Japan army exercise, Nomadic Elephant the India-Mongolia one, Mitra Shakti the India-Sri Lanka one.
• Garuda, without Shakti, is the India-France air force exercise — a name worth keeping apart from this one.

• Answering Japan because several India-Japan exercises carry Sanskrit-derived names too.
• Confusing Garuda Shakti with Garuda, the air force exercise with France.
• Assuming an edition number in the stem carries information about the partner. It does not.

As an exercise-to-country question, as a match of several exercises to their partner countries, or as a statement item on a recent edition.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Exercise Samudra Shakti is conducted between the navies of India and

  • (a)Indonesia
  • (b)Japan
  • (c)Oman
  • (d)Vietnam

  Answer(a) Indonesia — the two navies have held it since November 2018, in the Java Sea and the Andaman Sea.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Exercise Nomadic Elephant is held between India and

  • (a)Sri Lanka
  • (b)Mongolia
  • (c)Thailand
  • (d)Kazakhstan

  Answer(b) Mongolia — Mitra Shakti is the Sri Lanka exercise and Dharma Guardian the Japanese one.