In India which of the following city has been declared as the first “City of Literature” by UNESCO ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Kozhikode in Kerala. On World Cities Day in 2023 UNESCO admitted 55 new cities to its Creative Cities Network, and Kozhikode entered as a City of Literature — the first Indian city ever designated in that field. Gwalior joined in the same round as a City of Music. The Creative Cities Network is a UNESCO programme launched in 2004 for cities that treat culture and creativity as drivers of sustainable urban development, and a city applies in exactly one of its creative fields: crafts and folk arts, design, film, gastronomy, literature, media arts or music. A City of Literature is assessed on things a city can actually show — the writers it has produced, its libraries, publishing houses and bookshops, its literary festivals and its translation activity — which is why Kozhikode's case rested on Malayalam letters, its publishing trade and its long-running literary culture. India's other members of the network make the picture clearer: Jaipur for crafts and folk arts in 2015, Varanasi for music in 2015, Chennai for music in 2017, Mumbai for film in 2019, Hyderabad for gastronomy in 2019, Srinagar for crafts and folk arts in 2021, then Gwalior and Kozhikode in 2023. Note the shape of the question: it asks for the first Indian City of Literature, not the first city in the world, which is Edinburgh, designated when the programme began.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The most tempting option, because Kolkata is the city Indians most associate with books — the College Street book market, the Kolkata Book Fair and a two-century publishing tradition. But the designation is a formal UNESCO admission to a network, not a reputation, and Kolkata is not a member of the Creative Cities Network in any field.  (b) Nashik has no UNESCO Creative City designation. It appears in general-knowledge lists for other reasons — the Kumbh Mela, its wine industry, its ancient rock-cut caves — and the option works only on a candidate who recognises the city name without knowing what the network is.  (d) Jabalpur holds no such designation either. The Madhya Pradesh entry in the 2023 round was Gwalior, and it came in as a City of Music, not of literature — so a candidate who half-remembers 'a Madhya Pradesh city joined UNESCO's network in 2023' lands on the wrong city and the wrong field at once.

Concept: UNESCO runs several distinct designation programmes and questions constantly mix them up. The World Heritage List, under the 1972 Convention, inscribes properties of outstanding universal value — sites, not cities as such. The Man and the Biosphere programme designates biosphere reserves. The Memory of the World Register lists documentary heritage, which is how the Rig Veda manuscripts entered a UNESCO list in 2007. The Global Geoparks programme recognises areas of geological significance. The Creative Cities Network, launched in 2004, is different from all of these: it is a network of member cities, each admitted in one of seven creative fields, committed to cooperating with each other and to reporting on their activity every four years. Membership is applied for by the city, evaluated against criteria specific to the chosen field, and announced in batches — the 2023 batch of 55 cities, announced on World Cities Day, is the one that brought in Kozhikode and Gwalior. Nearly 300 cities from about 90 countries belong to the network.

State PCS 2025 Q116 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q116 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer