In which area of Madhya Pradesh is "Mansukha" folk drama prevalent?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Baghelkhand. Mansukha is a folk drama of the Bagheli-speaking east of Madhya Pradesh — the Baghelkhand region covering Rewa, Satna, Sidhi, Shahdol, Umaria and Anuppur.  Krishna and the gopis, it is staged at weddings and festivals, and in village usage the play is also called Mansukhlal. Madhya Pradesh's folk-theatre map assigns each form a home region, and Mansukha's home is Baghelkhand.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Eastern Nimar is the Nimadi-speaking Narmada-valley belt around Khandwa — a different cultural and linguistic zone from the Bagheli east. Mansukha does not belong to the Nimari repertoire.  (b) Malwa is the Malvi-speaking plateau around Ujjain and Indore, and its signature folk theatre is Maach — a distinct stage tradition with its own singers and akharas, which MPPSC has examined separately.  (d) The Khargone–Barwani side of the same Nimadi zone as option (a). Splitting one region into an 'eastern' and a 'western' half is itself the clue: a single-answer paper cannot make Nimar correct twice.

Concept: Madhya Pradesh's folk performing arts are organised by cultural-linguistic region rather than by state boundary: Malwa (Malvi), Nimar (Nimadi), Bundelkhand (Bundeli) and Baghelkhand (Bagheli), plus the tribal belts. Each region carries its own theatre form, its own stage conventions and its own name for the narrator or sutradhar. Mansukha sits in the Bagheli column — a devotional Ras-based play rather than a martial or satirical one — and this region-to-form mapping is the single most examined idea in the state's art-and-culture syllabus.

State PCS 2025 Q65 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q65 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer