Who among the following is the world renowned exponent of the bamboo flute?

Correct — B. The bamboo flute of Hindustani classical music is the bansuri, and its best-known exponent is Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia.

He plays the transverse bamboo flute and was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2000. Outside the concert circuit he is half of Shiv-Hari, the composing pair he formed with the santoor player Shivkumar Sharma.

The other three names in the set belong to a different instrument or to voice → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  MS Subbulakshmi — MS Subbulakshmi was a Carnatic vocalist, not an instrumentalist at all — and the first musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, in 1998.
• (c)
  Ravi Shankar — Pandit Ravi Shankar played the sitar, a plucked string instrument, and is the name most likely to be picked on fame alone. He received the Bharat Ratna in 1999.
• (d)
  Bismillah Khan — Ustad Bismillah Khan played the shehnai, a double-reed wind instrument — a wind player, but not a flautist. He received the Bharat Ratna in 2001.

SSC's music questions are, at bottom, an instrument-to-artist index, and it is worth memorising as one.

Bansuri — Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pannalal Ghosh.
Sitar — Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan.
Shehnai — Bismillah Khan.
Santoor — Shivkumar Sharma.

Tabla — Zakir Hussain, Alla Rakha.
Carnatic vocal — MS Subbulakshmi.

Dropping a vocalist into a list of instrumentalists is how an option set is made to look uniform when it is not.

Key facts

• The bansuri is the transverse bamboo flute of Hindustani classical music.
• Hariprasad Chaurasia, the bansuri player, received the Padma Vibhushan in 2000.
• MS Subbulakshmi was a Carnatic vocalist and the first musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, in 1998.
• Ravi Shankar (sitar) and Bismillah Khan (shehnai) received the Bharat Ratna in 1999 and 2001.

Common traps

• Choosing Ravi Shankar because he is the most internationally famous name here, though he played the sitar.
• Reading Bismillah Khan's shehnai as a flute because both are wind instruments.

No directly related past PYQ was found.