With reference to the “Kohima Peace Memorial and Eco-Park” which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. Its inauguration programme was held on 8th March, 2024 at Kohima.
2. It will be develop

Question

With reference to the “Kohima Peace Memorial and Eco-Park” which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. Its inauguration programme was held on 8th March, 2024 at Kohima.
2. It will be developed by South Korea.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Only 1. The whole item turns on statement 2, and statement 2 is false: the Kohima Peace Memorial and Eco-Park is a Japan–Nagaland project, not a South Korean one. It is built with Japanese support — Japanese Official Development Assistance channelled through JICA, alongside the Japan-assisted Nagaland Forest Management Project — and it was unveiled at Kohima with Japan's Ambassador to India, Suzuki Hiroshi, together with Nagaland's Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio. The reason it is Japan and could not sensibly be anyone else is the history under it. Kohima is where the Japanese Fifteenth Army's U-Go offensive into India was stopped in the summer of 1944; 2024 was the eightieth anniversary of that battle, and the memorial and eco-park were conceived as a monument to reconciliation between the Naga people and the country whose army fought there. Statement 1 gives the inauguration as 8 March 2024 at Kohima, and the commission has treated that as correct — which is what makes 'Only 1' the marked answer rather than 'Neither 1 nor 2'. Be aware, honestly, that the date is the soft part of this question: two Nagaland newspapers, EastMojo and the Morung Express, report the unveiling in May 2024, while the exam-compilation circuit carries 8 March 2024. We follow the commission on the date because marks were awarded on it, and we tell you plainly that it is disputed. Nothing about the answer depends on it: whichever month you accept, 'South Korea' is wrong, which kills (a) and (d), and the commission's reading of statement 1 then decides between (b) and (c) in favour of (c).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Requires statement 2 to be true, and it is not. The partner country is Japan, not South Korea. The project sits inside the Japan–Nagaland relationship built on the memory of the 1944 Battle of Kohima and is supported through Japanese development assistance; South Korea has no role in it.  (b) Correctly rejects South Korea but goes one step too far by also rejecting statement 1. The commission treats the inauguration date given in the question as accurate, and marks were awarded on that basis. If you had struck down the date as well you would have landed here — which is exactly why a candidate should not gamble against a date the paper itself supplies unless he is certain.  (d) Accepts the false half. Calling the memorial a South Korean project misses the point of the site: Kohima marks the furthest advance of the Japanese army into India in 1944, and the peace memorial is a Japanese-supported gesture of reconciliation on that battlefield.

Concept: Between April and June 1944 the Japanese Fifteenth Army, striking west from Burma in Operation U-Go, tried to take Imphal and Kohima and cut the supply line to the Allied front; units of Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army advanced with them. At Kohima the attack was held and then thrown back, and the twin battles of Imphal and Kohima are treated as the turning point of the Second World War in South-East Asia. Eight decades later that battlefield has become the ground of a friendship project: Japan funds development work in Nagaland through its Official Development Assistance and JICA, and the Kohima Peace Memorial and Eco-Park was raised as a monument to reconciliation in the anniversary year, 2024.

State PCS 2024 Q83 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q83 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer