The person who has been President of India, Ambassador to USA, China, Turkey and Thailand alongwith vice chancellor to Jawahar Lal University. He is

Question

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Correct — A, K. R. Narayan. The paper spells it 'K. R. Narayan' and means Kocheril Raman Narayanan (1920–2005), and he is the only Indian President whose career answers every clause of the stem, in order. Thailand: Ambassador from 1967 to 1969. Turkey: Ambassador from 5 March 1973 to 1975. China: Ambassador from 7 July 1976 to 11 November 1978, the first Indian envoy sent to Beijing after the freeze that followed the 1962 war. The United States: Ambassador from 1980 to 1984, under Indira Gandhi. Between the China and the United States postings he was Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University — the 'Jawahar Lal University' of the stem — from 3 January 1979 to 14 October 1980, and he later said that spell shaped the rest of his public life. Every element of the question is in that sequence, and no other President comes close to it. The rest of the career runs on from there: after the Washington posting he entered electoral politics at Indira Gandhi's request, won the Ottapalam seat in Kerala and sat in the Lok Sabha from 31 December 1984 to 26 July 1992, held ministerial office, became Vice-President of India in 1992 and President in 1997, serving until 2002. He was the first Dalit to hold the office. He had come to the foreign service through an unusual door — a scholarship-funded degree at the London School of Economics under Harold Laski, who gave him a letter of introduction to Nehru, and Nehru who later described him as the best diplomat in the country. What makes this question answerable rather than a memory lottery is the combination it names: a professional diplomat with four ambassadorships and a university vice-chancellorship who then reached the presidency. Presidents drawn from the political class do not have that record, and the one President who was both an ambassador and a vice-chancellor was neither posted to those four capitals nor at that university.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) R. Venkataraman, the eighth President (1987–1992), came up through law, trade unionism and politics — a member of the Constituent Assembly, Union Finance and Defence Minister, then Vice-President from 1984. He was never an ambassador and never a vice-chancellor. UPSC has attached him to his memoir 'My Presidential Years', which is what he is usually asked about.  (c) The ninth President (1992–1997) was a Congress politician of long standing — Chief Minister of the old Bhopal state, Union Communications Minister, Governor of Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Maharashtra, and Vice-President from 1987. His career is entirely domestic; there is no diplomatic posting in it, and the governorships are the closest thing to the ambassadorships the stem lists.  (d) The strongest distractor, because two of the stem's clauses genuinely fit him. S. Radhakrishnan was Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1952, and he was a vice-chancellor twice over — Andhra University from 1931 to 1936 and Banaras Hindu University from 1939 to 1948. But that is one embassy, not four, none of them the capitals named here, and both universities are the wrong ones. Jawaharlal Nehru University was established only on 22 April 1969, by which time Radhakrishnan's presidency had already ended.

Concept: Indian Presidents have been drawn from three broad backgrounds, and knowing which is which answers most questions of this type without any biography at all. The largest group is political: Rajendra Prasad, V. V. Giri, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Giani Zail Singh, R. Venkataraman, Shankar Dayal Sharma, Pratibha Patil, Pranab Mukherjee, Ram Nath Kovind and Droupadi Murmu all came through party politics, legislatures or governorships. A smaller group is academic or professional: S. Radhakrishnan the philosopher, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam the aerospace scientist. K. R. Narayanan belongs to a category of one — a career diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service who rose to the presidency, having served in Rangoon, Tokyo, London and Hanoi before his four ambassadorships and having taught at the Delhi School of Economics along the way. He is also the only President who had been a university vice-chancellor immediately before entering electoral politics.

State PCS 2025 Q137 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q137 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer