MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 73 of 100

Correct — option (3), Elon Musk. Time named him its Person of the Year for 2021, announcing the choice on 13 December 2021. The magazine's editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, set out the citation in these words: for creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is Time's 2021 Person of the Year. Two strands of the year's news lay behind the choice. The first was Tesla, the electric-car manufacturer of which he is chief executive and product architect: its share price rose so far that he became the richest person in the world, and the company he leads gave the case for replacing the internal combustion engine a commercial rather than merely an environmental form. The second was SpaceX, of which he is chief executive and chief engineer, which through 2021 flew a series of missions including one that put a crew of private citizens into orbit without a professional astronaut aboard. It is worth understanding what the award is and is not, because candidates lose marks on it by treating it as an honour. Time has chosen a Person of the Year annually since 1927, when the franchise began under the title Man of the Year with Charles Lindbergh as the first choice; the title was changed to the gender-neutral Person of the Year in 1999. The magazine's stated test is influence — the person, group, idea or object that for better or for worse has done the most to shape the events of the year — and not merit, which is why the list has included figures the magazine plainly did not admire. The choices immediately around 2021 are worth carrying as a run, because an examiner setting this question in one year may set the neighbouring year next: 2018 went to the Guardians, a group of journalists; 2019 to Greta Thunberg; 2020 jointly to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris; 2021 to Elon Musk; and 2022 to the Spirit of Ukraine. Learning the run is more useful than learning the single year, both because it costs almost nothing extra and because two of the four options in this very question are answered by it. The answer to be marked is option (3).

• (1)Malala Yousafzai — Malala Yousafzai is not Time's Person of the Year for 2021. She is the Pakistani education campaigner who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for her advocacy of schooling for girls, survived, and went on to share the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 with Kailash Satyarthi, becoming the youngest Nobel laureate. She appears here because she is exactly the kind of figure a candidate expects a magazine to honour — young, admired, associated with a moral cause — and the option therefore tests whether the candidate understands what Time's Person of the Year measures. It measures influence on the year's events, for better or for worse, not moral standing, which is why the list includes people the magazine was openly hostile to. A candidate who reasons about this award by asking who deserved recognition will be led wrong more often than right. The general lesson for awards questions is to learn what each award is for before learning who received it: the Nobel Peace Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award and Time's Person of the Year are three quite different instruments, and only the last of them is not an honour at all.
• (2)Ratan Tata — Ratan Tata is one of India's best-known industrialists, having led Tata Sons as its chairman, but he was not Time's Person of the Year for 2021 and has not been chosen in any year. The option belongs to a familiar category of distractor in Indian examination papers: a well-regarded Indian name inserted into a question about an international award, on the calculation that a candidate who does not know the answer will prefer a name he recognises and is glad to see. The calculation works often enough to be worth the examiner's while, and the defence is to answer the question actually asked rather than to reward familiarity. It is also worth noting that Time runs several distinct franchises which candidates conflate — the Person of the Year, the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people, the Time 100 Next list and various best-of lists — and appearance on one of them is not selection as Person of the Year. Questions are set on the Person of the Year because it is a single name each year and therefore unambiguous.
• (4)Kamala Harris — Kamala Harris is the most carefully chosen of the three wrong options, because she has in fact been Time's Person of the Year — but for 2020, not 2021, and jointly rather than alone. The magazine named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris together for 2020, the year of the American presidential election in which they were elected President and Vice-President. This question asks about 2021, and the choice for that year was Elon Musk. The construction is a good example of how a well-made current affairs distractor works: it is not a wrong answer but a right answer to a neighbouring question, so that a candidate who has stored the association between the name and the award without storing the year will take it. The corrective is the one that applies across the whole of this section — a current affairs fact is a fact about a date, and the date belongs in the memory with the fact. Learning the Person of the Year as a run of consecutive years, rather than as a single entry, makes this particular distractor harmless.

Time's Person of the Year is an annual editorial selection made by the magazine since 1927, when it began under the title Man of the Year, the first choice being the aviator Charles Lindbergh; the title was made gender-neutral in 1999. The stated criterion is influence rather than merit — the person, group, idea or object judged to have done the most to shape the events of the year, for better or for worse — and this is the single most important thing to know about it, because the criterion explains selections that make no sense if the award is read as an honour. The franchise has also chosen groups and abstractions rather than individuals on many occasions, which is why the run for the years around this question includes the Guardians in 2018 and the Spirit of Ukraine in 2022 alongside named individuals in the intervening years. The 2021 choice, announced on 13 December 2021, was Elon Musk, chief executive and product architect of Tesla and chief executive and chief engineer of SpaceX, in a year in which the rise of Tesla's share price made him the richest person in the world and SpaceX flew a crew of private citizens into orbit. The citation given by the editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, praised him for creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, and for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations — a formulation that carries the ambivalence the criterion of influence permits. Awards questions in general repay being organised by award rather than by year, with a short note on what each award is for, who confers it and how often, and then a run of recent recipients.

Awards and honours are a fixed component of the current affairs section in MPSC papers, and Time's Person of the Year is set more often than most because it produces exactly one unambiguous answer each year. The Commission's construction here is instructive: three of the four options are internationally recognised names and one of them, Kamala Harris, genuinely was Person of the Year, only for a different year. That is the characteristic shape of a well-made current affairs distractor — not a fabrication but a displacement in time — and it means that a candidate who has learnt the answer for one year without its neighbours is at risk. The remedy is cheap. Learning five consecutive years of a single award takes a minute and covers every question the award can generate for half a decade, and in this question alone it disposes of two options rather than one. A second habit worth building is to learn what an award is before learning who won it. Person of the Year measures influence and is not an honour; the Nobel Peace Prize is conferred by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament; the Ramon Magsaysay Award is often described as Asia's Nobel; the Jnanpith is India's highest literary award; the Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian honour. A candidate who knows what each instrument is will not be tempted to reason from who deserved it, which is the commonest way these questions are failed.

• Time named Elon Musk its Person of the Year for 2021, announcing the choice on 13 December 2021; the citation by editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal cited his creating solutions to an existential crisis, his embodying the possibilities and perils of the age of tech titans, and his driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations.
• Musk is chief executive and product architect of Tesla and chief executive and chief engineer of SpaceX; during 2021 the rise in Tesla's share price made him the richest person in the world and SpaceX flew a crew of private citizens into orbit.
• The franchise began in 1927 as Man of the Year, with Charles Lindbergh as the first selection, and was renamed Person of the Year in 1999; the criterion is influence on the year's events, for better or for worse, and not merit.
• The choices around this year run as follows: 2018 the Guardians, a group of journalists; 2019 Greta Thunberg; 2020 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris jointly; 2021 Elon Musk; 2022 the Spirit of Ukraine.
• Kamala Harris was indeed a Person of the Year, but for 2020 and jointly with Joe Biden, which is why she is the most dangerous of the three wrong options in this question.

• Treating Time's Person of the Year as an honour and reasoning about who deserved it; the stated criterion is influence on the year's events, for better or for worse
• Choosing a name that was Person of the Year in a neighbouring year; Kamala Harris was chosen for 2020, jointly with Joe Biden, and this question asks about 2021
• Confusing selection as Person of the Year with appearance on the annual Time 100 list of influential people, which is a different franchise
• Preferring a familiar Indian name in a question about an international award, which is exactly the calculation such a distractor is built on

Awards appear in every MPSC current affairs section, and the shapes are stable: who received a named award in a named year; for what field or work it was given; which body confers it; and, less often, who was the first recipient or the youngest. Time's Person of the Year is a favourite because it yields one answer a year and admits of no argument, and because the magazine's habit of choosing groups and abstractions gives an examiner a second kind of question — whether the selection for a given year was an individual at all. The efficient preparation is a two-part note for each award: a fixed part giving the conferring body, the criterion and the periodicity, which changes almost never; and a rolling part giving the recipients of the last five years, which is updated once a year. Prepared that way the whole awards block costs an hour and covers a predictable three or four marks in every paper, and the fixed part answers the questions that a candidate revising only recent lists will miss.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Time's Person of the Year is selected on which stated criterion ?

  • (a)The individual judged to have made the greatest contribution to world peace
  • (b)The person, group, idea or object judged to have most influenced the events of the year, for better or for worse
  • (c)The most admired public figure as determined by a readers' poll
  • (d)The individual whose scientific work has had the widest application during the year

  Answer(b) The person, group, idea or object judged to have most influenced the events of the year, for better or for worse. The selection measures influence and not merit, which is why the list has included figures the magazine plainly did not admire, and why groups and abstractions such as the Guardians in 2018 and the Spirit of Ukraine in 2022 have been chosen alongside individuals. It is an editorial selection by the magazine and not a readers' poll, and it has been made annually since 1927, when the title was Man of the Year.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who were named Time's Person of the Year for 2020 ?

  • (a)Elon Musk
  • (b)Greta Thunberg
  • (c)Joe Biden and Kamala Harris jointly
  • (d)The Spirit of Ukraine

  Answer(c) Joe Biden and Kamala Harris jointly, in the year of the American presidential election that made them President and Vice-President. The neighbouring selections were Greta Thunberg for 2019, Elon Musk for 2021 — announced on 13 December 2021 — and the Spirit of Ukraine for 2022. Learning the award as a run of consecutive years rather than as a single entry is what protects against the commonest distractor in this topic, which is a correct name attached to the wrong year.