MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 100 of 100

Correct — option (1), all four pairs. Before the content, understand the shape of this question, because it is unlike any other matching item in this paper. It prints no second column: there is no list of (i) to (iv) to be matched against a list of (a) to (d). Instead each labelled row is ITSELF a complete proposed pair — a bank on the left of a dash and a slogan on the right, all on one line — and the task is to judge which of the four printed pairings are correct. The four answer choices then name subsets of those rows. So the work is four independent true-or-false judgments, not a matching exercise, and a candidate who looks for a missing column will waste time on a question that has none. Now the content. All four printed pairs are right, which is why the choice naming every row is the answer. Row (a) gives Punjab National Bank the line 'The Name you can Bank Upon', its long-used advertising slogan; the bank was founded in 1894 at Lahore, opened for business in 1895 as an Indian bank raised on Indian capital with Lala Lajpat Rai among the men associated with its founding, and was nationalised in 1969. Row (b) gives Union Bank of India 'Good People to Bank with', its long-used line; that bank was established on 11 November 1919 in Bombay by Seth Sitaram Poddar, its corporate office was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi, it was nationalised in 1969 with 240 branches, and Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank were merged into it with effect from 1 April 2020. Row (c) gives HSBC 'World's Local Bank'; the group's global advertising line was 'the world's local bank', and on 11 May 2013 its chief executive Stuart Gulliver announced that HSBC would no longer seek to be it as part of a change of strategy — the paper drops the definite article and capitalises differently, but the pairing is the right one. Row (d) gives Bank of Maharashtra 'One Family One Bank', its long-used line; the bank was established on 16 September 1935 at Poona under the direction of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce to serve small businesses and traders, was among the fourteen banks nationalised in July 1969, and is headquartered at Lokmangal in Shivajinagar, Pune. With every row correct, the only possible choice is option (1).

• (2)(a), (c), (d) — This choice drops row (b), the pairing of Union Bank of India with 'Good People to Bank with', and that pairing is correct, so the choice is incomplete. The row is the one a candidate is most likely to doubt, because the slogan reads like a general statement about a bank's customers rather than like a brand line, and because Union Bank is less prominent in advertising than the others. Note the structure the elimination follows here. Row (a) is printed in every one of the four choices, so judging it correct tells a candidate nothing and takes him no closer to an answer; the rows that actually discriminate are (b), (c) and (d). Establishing that row (b) is right immediately reduces the field to the two choices that contain it, which are option (1) and option (4).
• (3)(a), (d) — This choice keeps only the two Indian public sector banks whose lines a candidate is most likely to have seen on a branch hoarding — Punjab National Bank and Bank of Maharashtra — and drops both Union Bank of India and HSBC. Both of the dropped rows are correct, so the choice fails twice. It is the option a candidate reaches when he decides to select only the pairings he is personally sure of, which is a rational-looking procedure that produces a wrong answer whenever the paper's key includes rows he merely failed to recognise. In a question of this construction the task is to find rows that are WRONG, not rows that are familiar; recognition and correctness are different tests, and only the second is being marked.
• (4)(a), (b) — This choice keeps the first two rows and drops the last two, which means dropping the HSBC pairing and the Bank of Maharashtra pairing, both of which are correct. HSBC is the row most likely to be discarded by a candidate preparing only Indian banking, since it is the one foreign bank in the set; but 'the world's local bank' was the group's global advertising line for years, and the announcement that it would be abandoned, made by its chief executive on 11 May 2013, is itself a well-reported fact. The lesson is that a bank-and-slogan question is not confined to Indian public sector banks, and the more general lesson is that a candidate who drops a row because he does not recognise it is guessing rather than answering.

Two things are being tested here, and only one of them is banking. The first is a format. MPSC's usual matching question prints two columns and asks the candidate to pair them; this question prints one column of complete pairs and asks the candidate to certify them. The two look alike on the page and require entirely different work, and the second kind is more forgiving, because each row can be judged on its own and a single row known to be wrong eliminates every choice containing it. It also has a structural feature worth exploiting: any row printed in all four choices is uninformative, and only the rows that vary between choices can decide the answer. The second thing being tested is banking general knowledge, which appears in MPSC papers as a small but steady presence — taglines, headquarters, years of establishment, founders, nationalisation, mergers and the identity of the regulator. The banks named here carry a useful spread of that material: Punjab National Bank, founded at Lahore in 1894 and opened in 1895 as an Indian bank on Indian capital; Union Bank of India, founded in Bombay in 1919, its corporate office inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi, and enlarged in 2020 by the merger of Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank into it; Bank of Maharashtra, founded at Poona in 1935 under the direction of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce and headquartered in Pune; and HSBC, whose full original name is The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and which was established in Hong Kong in 1865. Fourteen Indian banks were nationalised in July 1969 and six more in 1980, and three of the four banks in this question belong to that first group.

This is the last question of the paper, and it is a good one to have arrived at with time in hand, because it can be answered by elimination if the rows are read carefully and because it needs no computation. Banking questions of this kind reward a specific and rather unglamorous kind of preparation — a table of banks with headquarters, year of establishment, founder, tagline and the mergers of recent years. Maharashtra candidates have an additional reason to keep it, because Bank of Maharashtra is a Pune institution founded under the auspices of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, and because the State's cooperative and commercial banking history is examined in its own right. The format lesson matters more than the content lesson, though. When a matching question prints only one column, do not look for the other; read each row as a proposition, mark it true or false, and then find the choice that matches your marks exactly. And when one row appears in every choice, skip it — it cannot discriminate, and the time spent verifying it is time taken from the rows that can.

• This question prints no (i) to (iv) column. Each labelled row from (a) to (d) is itself a proposed bank-and-slogan pair on a single line, and the task is to judge which of those printed pairs are correct; the four answer choices then name subsets of the rows.
• All four printed pairs are correct — Punjab National Bank with 'The Name you can Bank Upon', Union Bank of India with 'Good People to Bank with', HSBC with 'World's Local Bank', and Bank of Maharashtra with 'One Family One Bank'.
• HSBC's global advertising line was 'the world's local bank'; on 11 May 2013 its chief executive Stuart Gulliver announced that the group would no longer seek to be it, as part of a change of strategy. HSBC stands for The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and was established in Hong Kong in 1865.
• Bank of Maharashtra was established on 16 September 1935 at Poona under the direction of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce to assist small businesses and traders, was among the fourteen banks nationalised in July 1969, and is headquartered at Lokmangal, Shivajinagar, Pune.
• Union Bank of India was established on 11 November 1919 in Bombay by Seth Sitaram Poddar, its corporate office was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi, it had 240 branches when it was nationalised in 1969, and Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank were merged into it with effect from 1 April 2020. Punjab National Bank was founded at Lahore in 1894 and began business in 1895 as an Indian bank raised on Indian capital, with Lala Lajpat Rai among those associated with its founding.

• Looking for a second column that this question does not print. Each row is already a complete pair, and the work is four true-or-false judgments rather than a matching exercise
• Verifying the row that appears in every choice. Row (a) is printed in all four options here and therefore cannot discriminate between them
• Selecting only the pairs you recognise. Recognition is not correctness, and a choice that drops a correct row is as wrong as one that keeps an incorrect row
• Assuming a banking question is confined to Indian public sector banks. One row here belongs to a foreign bank, and dropping it for that reason loses the mark

Matching questions are a fixed feature of MPSC papers — thirteen of them appear in this paper alone — and the great majority print two columns to be paired. This one does not, and the variant is worth recognising on sight because it changes the method completely. In the two-column form the candidate builds one mapping and checks it against the choices; in this form he makes independent judgments row by row and uses each to eliminate. Both forms reward the same tactical habit: find the row you are most certain about, use it to strike out every choice inconsistent with it, and then work on what remains rather than on the whole set. On content, banking appears in MPSC's general knowledge and economy sections through headquarters, founders, foundation years, taglines, nationalisation and mergers, and Maharashtra's own institutions are always the likeliest subjects. The other recurring shape is the bank-and-headquarters pair, which is prepared from the same table as this question.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following pairs of bank and place of establishment is correctly matched ?

  • (a)Bank of Maharashtra — Mumbai
  • (b)Union Bank of India — Kolkata
  • (c)Bank of Maharashtra — Poona
  • (d)Punjab National Bank — Delhi

  Answer(c) Bank of Maharashtra — Poona. It was established there on 16 September 1935 under the direction of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce to assist small businesses and traders, and it remains headquartered in Pune. Union Bank of India was established in Bombay on 11 November 1919 by Seth Sitaram Poddar, with its corporate office inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi; and Punjab National Bank was founded at Lahore in 1894, beginning business in 1895 as an Indian bank raised on Indian capital.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank were merged with effect from 1 April 2020 into which of the following banks ?

  • (a)Punjab National Bank
  • (b)Union Bank of India
  • (c)Bank of Maharashtra
  • (d)Canara Bank

  Answer(b) Union Bank of India. The merger took effect on 1 April 2020 and made Union Bank one of the largest public sector banks in the country, with around 9,300 branches. The consolidation of public sector banks in that round involved several such amalgamations, so the pairing of the merging banks with the anchor bank is worth learning as a list; Union Bank itself dates from 11 November 1919 and was nationalised in 1969, when it had 240 branches.