Which one of the following books is NOT written by Pushpesh Pant, a noted author of Uttarakhand?
- (a)From the King’s Table to Street Food
- (b)Victory Mantra: The Leader’s Path to Success
- (c)Himalaya Ke Barf
- (d)Lazzatnama
Correct — C, Himalaya Ke Barf.
The other three titles all trace back to Pushpesh Pant with a publisher and a year attached, which leaves Himalaya Ke Barf as the one the Commission's key marks as not his.
Pant, born 1946, retired as a professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University and turned to writing on Indian food. He received the Padma Shri in 2016.
Carry this away: his list crosses subjects and languages, so a title cannot be ruled in or out by how it sounds.
- (a)From the King’s Table to Street Food — This one is his, so it cannot be the answer. Speaking Tiger Books published it in 2024, subtitled A Food History of Delhi, following the city's eating from royal kitchens out to the pavement.
Pick it for a question asking which Pant book is a food history of Delhi.
- (b)Victory Mantra: The Leader’s Path to Success — Also his. Rupa published Victory Mantra in 2014 — a short book arguing that leadership traits can be acquired rather than inherited, built around that year's general-election result.
It is the one to name for a question about Pant's writing away from food, on politics and leadership.
- (d)Lazzatnama — His as well. Rupa brought out Lazzatnama: Recipes of India in 2024. The Persian-styled title sits with his food writing, not against it.
Choose it for a question asking which Pant title is a collection of Indian recipes.
This is an author-attribution item in its negative form. Four titles are placed together, three belong to one writer, and the mark goes to whoever can name the fourth.
The work is recognition, not judgement. Language, subject and period are weak signals, because one writer's list can cross all three.
Pushpesh Pant is a retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor of international relations who became one of India's best-known writers on food.
That double career is what makes his shelf hard to guess at: recipe collections and a food history sit beside a book on leadership. The stem itself places him with Uttarakhand.
- Pushpesh Pant, born 1946, retired as a professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
- The Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri in 2016.
- India: The Cookbook (2011) was named by The New York Times as one of the best cookbooks of the year.
- From the King's Table to Street Food: A Food History of Delhi was published by Speaking Tiger Books in 2024, ISBN 9789354478086.
- Rupa published Victory Mantra in 2014, ISBN 9788129135612, a 72-page book on leadership strategy.
- Rupa published Lazzatnama: Recipes of India in 2024, ISBN 9789361568152.
- Rajkamal Prakashan lists a Hindi memoir, Nainital, under his name, and lists him as translator of Namita Gokhale's Raag Pahadi.
Three of the four options carry a publisher and a year against Pushpesh Pant's name; option (c) is the one UKPSC's key sets apart.
- Rejecting a title only because it is in Hindi — Pant's list includes Hindi titles as well as English ones.
- Accepting a title only because it sounds Himalayan and the writer is placed in Uttarakhand; subject fit is not authorship.
- Reading the stem as 'which IS written by' and marking the first familiar title, when the item asks for the one that is not.
- Assuming a food writer writes only about food, and so discarding the 2014 leadership title as somebody else's.
- Answering off one recognised title: the negative form needs you to place three of the four.
The same idea appears in three shapes.
The negative one used here, where three titles belong to a writer and one does not; the positive one, where two books are named and you supply the author; and the matching form, where a list of books is set against a list of authors.
All three reward the same preparation — holding two or three titles per writer rather than one, since a single recognised title settles the positive form but not this one.
MPPSC_2025_PRE_PaperI_Q492025The same device exactly — four titles, name the one the stated author did not write. What differs is the shelf: Rajasekhara is a Sanskrit poet-dramatist of the early medieval period, so the attribution is a settled classical canon, while Pant is a living writer whose list keeps growing.
MPPSC_2017_PRE_PaperI_Q52017Also the negative attribution form, on Kalidasa. It can be answered from a canon learned once; the UKPSC item cannot, because it turns on books published in 2014 and 2024 that have to be tracked as they appear.
UPPSC_2025_PRE_GSI_Q482025Same negative question on Kalidas, but delivered as three numbered titles with a code to select. You must decide each of the three separately rather than pick one option out of four, so a single gap in recall is harder to hide.
UPSC_2024_GS1_Q862024The positive direction of the same skill: two recent titles are given and the author is asked for. One recognised book can settle that item, whereas the UKPSC stem needs you to place three of its four titles before the fourth stands out.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'From the King's Table to Street Food: A Food History of Delhi' (Speaking Tiger, 2024) was written by:
- (a)Pushpesh Pant
- (b)Namita Gokhale
- (c)Ruskin Bond
- (d)Shekhar Pathak
Answera — Pushpesh Pant wrote this 2024 food history of Delhi, published by Speaking Tiger Books.Namita Gokhale is a novelist and festival director, Ruskin Bond writes fiction and essays largely set in the hills, and Shekhar Pathak is a historian of Uttarakhand and its movements. None of the three is credited with this book.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Pushpesh Pant, the author of Lazzatnama and of a food history of Delhi, retired as a professor of which subject at Jawaharlal Nehru University?
- (a)Hindi literature
- (b)International relations
- (c)Geology
- (d)Economics
Answerb — Pant taught and retired as a professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University before his food writing made him better known.Hindi literature is the pull of the surname, since Sumitranandan Pant was a Hindi poet, but it is a different person. Geology and economics have no link to his teaching post.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of these Pushpesh Pant books did Rupa publish in 2014, built around that year's general-election result?
- (a)India: The Cookbook
- (b)Victory Mantra
- (c)Lazzatnama
- (d)From the King's Table to Street Food
Answerb — Victory Mantra is the 2014 Rupa title, a short book on leadership strategy written after that year's general election.India: The Cookbook came earlier, in 2011, from Phaidon. Lazzatnama: Recipes of India is a Rupa book of 2024. From the King's Table to Street Food came from Speaking Tiger, also in 2024.