MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 86 of 100

Correct — option (3), Mizoram. The 10th International Tourism Mart was held from 17 to 19 November 2022 at Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, at the R. Dengthuama Indoor Stadium in Mualpui. It was inaugurated by the Union Minister of Tourism, Shri G. Kishan Reddy, with the Chief Minister of Mizoram, Shri Zoramthanga, and the State's Tourism Minister present, and it was the first time Mizoram had hosted the event. The single fact that decides this question, and that a candidate can use even without remembering the year's host, is what the International Tourism Mart is: an annual event organised by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, specifically for the North East Region, to bring the tourism potential of the eight North Eastern States before domestic and international buyers, the travel trade and the media. It is held in a North Eastern State each year and moves among them, which immediately removes two of the four options from consideration. The 2022 edition carried a particular theme, the 'Priorities of G20 for Tourism Track', because India was to assume the G20 Presidency from 1 December 2022 and the tourism track was one of the working areas under it. Its programme was the standard mart format — presentations by the eight North Eastern States on their tourism products, business-to-business meetings in which buyers met sellers from the region one to one, an exhibition of handicrafts and handlooms, cultural evenings and organised sightseeing for visiting delegates — the object throughout being to convert the region's scenic, cultural and adventure resources into actual bookings rather than merely to publicise them. Option (3) is therefore the answer.

• (1)Maharashtra — Maharashtra is not in the North East Region, and the International Tourism Mart is by design a North East event, so the State could not have hosted it. The option is included because a Maharashtra candidate reading a current affairs question will look first for the answer nearest home, and because Maharashtra genuinely is a major tourism State — with the Ajanta and Ellora caves, the Elephanta caves, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and the Western Ghats among its World Heritage properties, and Mumbai as one of the country's principal international gateways. None of that makes it eligible for this particular event. The useful discipline here is to read the name of an event for the scope it declares: a mart organised for the North East Region can only be held in the North East, and once that is seen the question reduces to a choice between the two North Eastern options.
• (2)Uttar Pradesh — Uttar Pradesh, like Maharashtra, lies outside the North East Region and so falls outside the scope of this event. It too is a heavyweight tourism State — the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Varanasi, Sarnath and the Buddhist circuit make it one of the most visited States in the country by foreign tourists — which is exactly what makes it a serviceable distractor in a tourism question. Candidates who have not registered that the International Tourism Mart is a regional event will reason from the size of a State's tourism sector and choose one of the two large States on offer. The reasoning is sound and the premise is wrong. Note that a State's importance to Indian tourism tells you nothing about whether it hosted an event constituted for a different region altogether.
• (4)Assam — Assam is the serious distractor in this set, because unlike the first two options it is genuinely eligible. It is the largest State of the North East, its capital Guwahati is the region's principal air and rail gateway and its usual venue for large events, and it has the tourism assets — Kaziranga and Manas among them — that a candidate associates with North Eastern tourism. A candidate who correctly narrows the question to the North East and then guesses will very often land here. The mart, however, moves among the North Eastern States from year to year rather than settling in one, and the 2022 edition went to Aizawl, which had not hosted it before. This is the characteristic shape of a current affairs question: the general knowledge takes you to the right region, and only the specific fact of the year takes you to the right State.

The International Tourism Mart is one of the Ministry of Tourism's instruments for developing the North East as a tourism destination, and its logic is worth understanding rather than memorising. A mart is not a festival or a publicity campaign; it is a trade event that puts sellers and buyers in the same room. Tour operators, hoteliers and State tourism boards from the eight North Eastern States meet buyers — tour operators and travel agents from other parts of India and from abroad — in scheduled business-to-business meetings, so that the region's products enter the itineraries that the trade actually sells. Around that core sit State presentations, an exhibition of handicrafts and handlooms, cultural performances and familiarisation tours of nearby attractions, which let buyers see what they are being asked to sell. The event is held in a different North Eastern State each year, which spreads both the hosting experience and the visitor attention across the region. The underlying policy problem is that the North East has considerable scenic, cultural, adventure and wildlife resources but has historically drawn a very small share of India's tourist traffic, constrained by connectivity, accommodation and awareness; the mart addresses the last of these directly and, by drawing attention to the first two, indirectly.

The current affairs block of an MPSC paper leans heavily on national events of the preceding year, and events with an ordinal number in their name — the tenth mart, the fifth summit, the twenty-fifth conference — are especially attractive to examiners because each edition supplies a fresh question with a fresh answer while the name stays constant. The candidate who prepares such events as a name alone will find that the name is exactly what every option has in common. What must be carried instead is the tuple: edition number, host city and State, month and year, the organising ministry, and the theme if the event announced one. This question rewards a second habit as well, which is reading the event's own name for its scope. 'International Tourism Mart' sounds national or global, but the mart is constituted for the North East Region, and once that is known two of the four options can be struck out without recalling anything about 2022. A great many current affairs questions can be halved this way, by asking what the event is for before asking where it was held. Note also that the English column here prints the ordinal with a superscript, '10th', while the Marathi column prints it as '10 वा'; the difference is typographic and carries nothing.

• The 10th International Tourism Mart was held from 17 to 19 November 2022 at Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, and it was the first time Mizoram hosted the event.
• The International Tourism Mart is organised annually by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, for the North East Region, and is held in a different North Eastern State each year.
• The 2022 edition was inaugurated by the Union Minister of Tourism, Shri G. Kishan Reddy, in the presence of the Chief Minister of Mizoram, Shri Zoramthanga.
• Its theme was the 'Priorities of G20 for Tourism Track', chosen because India was to assume the G20 Presidency from 1 December 2022, with tourism as one of the working tracks under it.
• The mart's programme consists of presentations by the eight North Eastern States, business-to-business meetings between buyers and sellers, an exhibition of handicrafts and handlooms, cultural evenings and sightseeing for visiting delegates.

• Choosing a large tourism State because the question is about tourism, when the event named is constituted for one region only
• Assuming that an event called 'international' must be national or global in its scope, when the International Tourism Mart is a North East regional event with international buyers
• Remembering the event but not the edition, which is fatal in a question that names the tenth mart specifically and could have named any other
• Defaulting to Assam or Guwahati for any North East event, when the mart deliberately rotates among the North Eastern States

MPSC's current affairs section takes recurring national events and asks for the host city or State, the edition number, the theme or the person who inaugurated it, and one event can therefore yield four different questions in four different years. Tourism events, sports championships, conferences of ministers and summits of groupings all behave the same way. The efficient preparation is a one-line entry per event carrying the edition, the host, the month, the ministry and the theme, built through the year rather than assembled at the end. Expect the wrong options in such a question to be a mixture of ineligible answers, which can be eliminated by knowing what the event is, and eligible ones, which cannot — here two States outside the North East and one within it. When only the eligible options remain, the question has stopped being answerable by reasoning and is testing whether the specific fact was learnt.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The International Tourism Mart organised by the Ministry of Tourism is held for which region of the country ?

  • (a)The North East Region
  • (b)The Western Ghats States
  • (c)The Himalayan States of the north
  • (d)The coastal States of the peninsula

  Answer(a) The North East Region — the mart exists to bring the tourism products of the eight North Eastern States before buyers from the rest of India and abroad, through State presentations, business-to-business meetings and an exhibition of the region's handicrafts and handlooms. It moves to a different North Eastern State each year, which is why the host changes with every edition while the name stays the same.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 10th International Tourism Mart of November 2022 carried which theme ?

  • (a)Priorities of G20 for Tourism Track
  • (b)Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav and Indian Heritage
  • (c)Sustainable Tourism for Inclusive Growth
  • (d)Incredible India at Seventy Five

  Answer(a) Priorities of G20 for Tourism Track — the theme was chosen because India was to take over the G20 Presidency from 1 December 2022, days after the mart, and tourism was one of the tracks of work under that presidency. Linking a domestic trade event to the presidency was a deliberate way of placing the North East's tourism products within the year's larger diplomatic programme.