Operation Brahma was launched by India in March 2025 to provide humanitarian aid to which of the following countries ?
1. Bangladesh
2. Myanmar
3. Sri Lanka
4. Malaysia
Select the correct answer from

Question

Operation Brahma was launched by India in March 2025 to provide humanitarian aid to which of the following countries ?
1. Bangladesh
2. Myanmar
3. Sri Lanka
4. Malaysia
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Only 2 — Myanmar.

On 28 March 2025 an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 struck central Myanmar on the Sagaing Fault, near Mandalay, and was followed by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock; early counts put the dead above 1,600 and the eventual toll ran far higher. India launched Operation Brahma on 28-29 March, within roughly a day of the rupture, naming it after the creator-god to signal rebuilding. The response ran on three tracks. By air, about 15 tonnes of relief material went in on C-130J and C-17 aircraft, together with an 80-member National Disaster Response Force search-and-rescue team and an Indian Army field hospital established at Mandalay. By sea, five naval ships — INS Satpura, INS Savitri, INS Karmuk, LCU 52 and INS Gharial — carried the bulk of the relief stores. By mid-April the field hospital had treated some 2,500 patients and India had delivered roughly 656 tonnes of aid in all.

None of the other three countries on the list suffered the March 2025 earthquake or received this mission, so 'Only 2' is the answer. Note the exam-date anchor: this paper was set on 12 October 2025, about six months after the operation, so it is squarely within that year's current affairs.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Neither Bangladesh nor Sri Lanka was the recipient. The trigger for Operation Brahma was a specific geological event — the magnitude 7.7 rupture on the Sagaing Fault in central Myanmar on 28 March 2025 — and neither country lies on that fault or suffered that earthquake. Both are plausible-looking only because both are neighbours India has assisted at other times and for other reasons.  (c) Myanmar is right; Malaysia is the added error. Malaysia lies well outside the rupture zone and received no such mission. The honest complication worth knowing is that the same earthquake was felt across the region and brought down an under-construction high-rise in Bangkok — but that is Thailand, which is not on this list, and India's named relief operation was directed to Myanmar.  (d) Bangladesh alone, and it also drops the one country that is correct. Bangladesh experienced no disaster of this kind in March 2025; the earthquake and the Indian relief mission that followed were both in Myanmar.

Concept: India presents itself as the first responder in its neighbourhood and across the wider Indian Ocean region, and it gives each humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission a name. The pattern is consistent enough to be worth learning as a pattern: within a day or two of a disaster, relief material and a National Disaster Response Force search-and-rescue team move by air; a military field hospital follows; and where the coast permits, naval ships bring bulk stores. The names are chosen for meaning rather than geography — Brahma, the creator, for a mission about rebuilding Myanmar after the March 2025 earthquake; Karuna, compassion, for the relief India sent to the same country after Cyclone Mocha in May 2023; Maitri, friendship, for Nepal after the 2015 earthquake; Dost, friend, for Turkiye and Syria after the earthquakes of February 2023.

State PCS 2025 Q125 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q125 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer