Match the pairs about 'Padma Shri' Award, 2023.
Person
a. Ramesh Patange
b. Dr. Mahendra Pal
c. Uma Shankar Pande
d. Parshuram Khune
Field
i. Science and Engineering
ii. Literature and Education
iii.

Question

Match the pairs about 'Padma Shri' Award, 2023.
Person
a. Ramesh Patange
b. Dr. Mahendra Pal
c. Uma Shankar Pande
d. Parshuram Khune
Field
i. Science and Engineering
ii. Literature and Education
iii. Art
iv. Social Work

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), which pairs a with ii, b with i, c with iv and d with iii. The two columns are printed side by side because the reader has to match them; the item standing opposite a name on the page is not that name's partner, and the pairing is only what the four options assert. Take the four Padma Shri awardees of 2023 in turn. Ramesh Patange, item a, was honoured in Literature and Education, item ii — he is a Marathi writer, editor and social activist from Maharashtra whose work concerns social harmony, caste reform and constitutional awareness. Mahendra Pal, item b, was honoured in Science and Engineering, item i — a veterinary scientist and academician from Gujarat, known for his research on the role of fungi in animal disease and described as the father of veterinary mycology in India. Uma Shankar Pande, item c, whose name is usually written Pandey, was honoured in Social Work, item iv — a social worker from Uttar Pradesh known for his work on groundwater and water conservation. Parshuram Khune, item d, was honoured in Art, item iii — a Zadipatti theatre artist from Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, popularly called the Dada Kondke of Vidarbha, who has played some eight hundred roles in more than five thousand performances and has used folk theatre for social causes including de-addiction, hygiene and the rehabilitation of young people in Naxal-affected areas. So the assignment is a-ii, b-i, c-iv and d-iii, which is option (4). As with any matching question, the structure does much of the work: because each field is used exactly once, a single confident pairing can settle everything. Here two pairings are individually decisive — only option (4) pairs b with i, and only option (4) pairs d with iii — so a candidate who knows either Mahendra Pal's field or Parshuram Khune's needs nothing else.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option pairs a with ii, b with iii, c with i and d with iv — that is, Ramesh Patange with Literature and Education, which is right, and then Mahendra Pal with Art, Uma Shankar Pande with Science and Engineering, and Parshuram Khune with Social Work. Three of the four are wrong. It is the most seductive of the three incorrect options precisely because it opens with the correct pair, and a candidate who verifies the first assignment and stops has been caught by exactly the trap the option was built for. The correction available at the lowest cost is Parshuram Khune, the Zadipatti theatre artist, who was honoured in Art and not in Social Work; his pairing is unique to option (4) among the four on offer, so testing it alone would have separated the two options that share the correct first pair.  (b) This option pairs a with iii, b with ii, c with iv and d with i — Ramesh Patange with Art, Mahendra Pal with Literature and Education, Uma Shankar Pande with Social Work, and Parshuram Khune with Science and Engineering. One pair is right, Uma Shankar Pande with Social Work, and the other three are wrong. The two most easily corrected are the first and the last, and they are corrected together: it is Parshuram Khune who belongs to Art, as a theatre artist of the Zadipatti tradition, and Ramesh Patange who belongs to Literature and Education, as a writer and editor. This option has in effect exchanged the two Maharashtra awardees with each other and then misassigned the scientist. The lesson is that two names from the same State are a natural pair for an examiner to swap, so where a matching list contains two awardees from one State it is worth checking that pair first.  (c) This option pairs a with i, b with iv, c with iii and d with ii — Ramesh Patange with Science and Engineering, Mahendra Pal with Social Work, Uma Shankar Pande with Art, and Parshuram Khune with Literature and Education. Every one of the four is wrong, which makes it the weakest option in the set and also the easiest to eliminate: a single correct pairing recalled from any part of the list will contradict it. The pairing of Mahendra Pal with Social Work is the one a candidate is most likely to catch, because his standing as a veterinary scientist and author of several hundred research papers places him unambiguously in Science and Engineering. Notice that this option, like the others, uses each field exactly once, so no structural check will remove it; only knowledge of one real pairing will.

Concept: The Padma awards are announced each year on the eve of Republic Day and conferred at Rashtrapati Bhavan, and they come in three grades — Padma Vibhushan for exceptional and distinguished service, Padma Bhushan for distinguished service of a high order, and Padma Shri for distinguished service. For 2023 the President approved a hundred and six Padma awards, comprising six Padma Vibhushan, nine Padma Bhushan and ninety-one Padma Shri. Each award is announced together with the field in which it is given, and the fields are a fixed and short list — Art, Social Work, Public Affairs, Science and Engineering, Trade and Industry, Medicine, Literature and Education, Sports, Civil Service and Others — which is what makes matching questions of this kind possible. In recent years the awards have been used deliberately to recognise unheralded work in small places, the so-called unsung heroes, and the four names in this question illustrate the pattern: a Marathi writer on social harmony, a veterinary mycologist, a water conservation worker from rural Uttar Pradesh and a folk theatre artist from Gadchiroli. Two of the four are from Maharashtra, which is why the Commission chose them.

State PCS 2023 Q100 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q100 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer