MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 88 of 100

Correct — option (4), Mann Kaur. The centenarian sprinter from Chandigarh is usually recorded as Man Kaur, and she is the person the epithet in this stem belongs to; the reference works give her nickname as 'the Miracle from Chandigarh', and the fuller form used in press coverage, the one the Commission has printed, adds the word that everybody who wrote about her used — she competed alongside her own son, who was himself in his late seventies, and the pair were reported as mother and son at every meeting they entered. Her life supplies the reason for the name. Born on 1 March 1916, she took up athletics only at the age of ninety-three, at the urging of her son Gurdev Singh, and went on to hold world records in the age categories above a hundred. She was the fastest centenarian at the American Masters Games in 2016; at the World Masters Games in Auckland in 2017, aged a hundred and one, she completed the hundred metres in seventy-four seconds; in 2019 she took four gold medals at a meeting in Poland and won gold in the two hundred metres and the shot put at the Asian Masters championship in Malaysia. The Government of India recognised her with the Nari Shakti Puraskar, conferred by the President in 2020, and she died on 31 July 2021 at the age of a hundred and five — six months before this paper was written, which is why she appears in its current-affairs block. Two details of the printing are worth noting and neither changes the answer. The English option prints 'Mann Kaur' with a doubled consonant where reference works print 'Man Kaur', and the Marathi column prints her name as मन कौर. The Marathi column also prints option (1) as निरजा भानोत rather than नीरजा, and the Marathi stem ends with the non-standard verb form ओळखले जाई. All are reproduced as the paper printed them.

• (1)Neerja Bhanot — This is by far the strongest distractor, because Neerja Bhanot really was from Chandigarh — she was born there in 1963 — and she is much the more famous of the two women. She was the head purser on Pan Am Flight 73 when it was hijacked at Karachi on 5 September 1986, and she was killed shielding passengers during the attack, two days short of her twenty-third birthday; she was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra, India's highest decoration for gallantry other than in the face of the enemy, and a widely seen film was made about her. A candidate who reads only the words 'from Chandigarh' and reaches for the most celebrated woman associated with the city will take this option and lose the mark. The discriminating word in the stem is 'Miracle', and it belongs to the centenarian athlete, not to the flight purser. Note that the Marathi column prints her name as निरजा भानोत rather than नीरजा — a printing slip, reproduced as it stands.
• (2)Rani Sada Kaur — Sada Kaur belongs to a different century altogether. Born about 1762 and dying in 1832, she was chief of the Kanhaiya misl from 1789 and the mother-in-law of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, whose marriage to her daughter in 1786 tied the two houses together; she acted as his guide and regent after his father's death in 1792, and on 7 July 1799 the two of them attacked Lahore with twenty-five thousand troops, the campaign that put him on the road to the Sikh empire. Their alliance ended badly, and in 1821 Ranjit Singh imprisoned her and confiscated her possessions. She is a significant figure of Punjab's political history and has no connection with Chandigarh, a city that did not exist until it was built as a new capital after the partition of 1947. The option is here to reward a candidate who can separate a historical figure from a contemporary one.
• (3)Sophia Duleep Singh — Princess Sophia Alexandrovna Duleep Singh, who lived from 8 August 1876 to 22 August 1948, was a British suffragette. She was a daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last ruler of the Sikh empire, who had been deposed as a child and taken to England, and Queen Victoria was her godmother; she campaigned for votes for women, taking a leading part in the Women's Tax Resistance League and taking part in the Women's Social and Political Union. Her life was lived in Britain, and her fame rests on the suffrage movement rather than on anything Indian and contemporary. Like the other two wrong options she is a real and notable woman with a Punjab connection, which is the pattern of this option set: four genuine figures, one of whom answers the specific epithet in the stem.

Masters athletics is competitive sport organised by age band, normally for athletes over thirty-five, with records kept separately for each five-year category. It is the framework that makes a phrase like 'world record holder aged a hundred' meaningful — the record is held within the age group, not against the open field — and it is why an athlete who begins in her nineties can accumulate international medals within a few years. Man Kaur's career is the best-known Indian example. She began at ninety-three, competed at the American Masters Games, the World Masters Games and the Asian Masters championship, and became the standard illustration in India of late-life fitness, appearing in public campaigns on the subject. The Nari Shakti Puraskar she received in 2020 is the Government of India's highest civilian honour for women, conferred by the President, normally around International Women's Day on 8 March, on individuals and institutions for exceptional work towards the empowerment of women. Knowing what that award is worth doing for its own sake, because it recurs in current-affairs papers and its recipients each year are a small and checkable list.

This is a pure recall item and it belongs to a family that MPSC uses constantly — a person is described by a title, a nickname or an epithet, and the candidate must name them. The construction is efficient for the Commission because it can be answered in a second by someone who read the news and not at all by someone who did not, and because the epithet form allows a well-chosen distractor to share every attribute except the one that matters. Here all four names are real women with a Punjab connection and one of them is from Chandigarh, which is the very city in the stem, so a candidate matching on place instead of on the epithet is actively steered into the wrong answer. That is worth generalising: in an epithet question, identify which word in the stem is doing the discriminating work — here 'Miracle', not 'Chandigarh' — before looking at the options. The item also illustrates the timing of MPSC's current affairs. Man Kaur died on 31 July 2021 and this paper was written on 23 January 2022, so the news was roughly six months old; obituaries of well-known Indians in the year before the paper are a reliable source of questions and deserve a place in any candidate's notes.

• Man Kaur, whose name this paper prints as Mann Kaur, was an Indian masters athlete from Chandigarh who lived from 1 March 1916 to 31 July 2021, dying at the age of a hundred and five, six months before this paper was written.
• She took up athletics at the age of ninety-three at the urging of her son Gurdev Singh, who competed alongside her, and set world records in the age categories above a hundred; reference works record her nickname as 'the Miracle from Chandigarh'.
• She was the fastest centenarian at the American Masters Games in 2016 and ran the hundred metres in seventy-four seconds at the World Masters Games in Auckland in 2017, at the age of a hundred and one.
• In 2019 she won four gold medals at a meeting in Poland and took gold in the two hundred metres and the shot put at the Asian Masters championship in Malaysia; the President of India conferred the Nari Shakti Puraskar on her in 2020.
• Every other name in the option set is a real figure with a Punjab connection — Neerja Bhanot, born in Chandigarh in 1963, killed on Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi on 5 September 1986 and posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra; Sada Kaur, chief of the Kanhaiya misl and mother-in-law of Maharaja Ranjit Singh; and Sophia Duleep Singh, the British suffragette daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh.

• Matching on the place named in the stem instead of on the epithet. Neerja Bhanot was also from Chandigarh, which makes 'from Chandigarh' the least useful words in the question
• Assuming the most famous name in an option set is the answer. Fame is what makes a distractor effective, and here the best-known woman in the list is not the one described
• Reading a printing variant as a different person. The paper prints 'Mann Kaur' where reference works print 'Man Kaur', and the Marathi column prints निरजा भानोत for नीरजा
• Skipping obituaries when reading the year's news. Deaths of notable Indians in the twelve to eighteen months before a paper are among the most reliably examined current-affairs items

The epithet question is one of the Commission's staples: a nickname, a sobriquet or an honorific is given and a person must be named. It appears across the paper's history sections as well as its current affairs — the Frontier Gandhi, the Grand Old Man of India, the Lokhitawadi, the Iron Man — and the modern version simply applies the same template to a person in the news. Two related forms follow from it. The first reverses the question and gives the person, asking for the achievement, the award or the year. The second replaces the epithet with a first — first woman to do something, oldest person to do something, youngest recipient of something — which is the same recall problem in a different dress. All three are best prepared by keeping a running list of people who appeared in the year's news with one line each: who they are, what they did, when, and what they are called. That list is short, and it answers a disproportionate share of this section.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Nari Shakti Puraskar, conferred on the centenarian athlete Man Kaur in 2020, is awarded by which of the following ?

  • (a)The Prime Minister, on Independence Day
  • (b)The President of India, for exceptional work towards the empowerment of women
  • (c)The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, for sporting achievement
  • (d)The National Commission for Women, for legal aid to women

  Answer(b) The President of India, for exceptional work towards the empowerment of women. It is the Government of India's highest civilian honour for women, given to individuals and to institutions and normally conferred around International Women's Day. It is not a sporting award, which is why the same year's list contains people from many fields; India's sporting honours are separate and include the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, the Arjuna Award and the Dronacharya Award.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Neerja Bhanot, who was killed during the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi in 1986, was posthumously awarded which decoration ?

  • (a)The Param Vir Chakra
  • (b)The Kirti Chakra
  • (c)The Ashok Chakra
  • (d)The Shaurya Chakra

  Answer(c) The Ashok Chakra. It is India's highest decoration for gallantry other than in the face of the enemy, and it is the peacetime counterpart of the Param Vir Chakra, which is awarded only for valour in the presence of the enemy. The Kirti Chakra and the Shaurya Chakra follow the Ashok Chakra in the same peacetime series. Bhanot was the head purser on the aircraft and was killed on 5 September 1986 while shielding passengers, two days before her twenty-third birthday.