UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 140 of 150

Correct — A, A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4. Taking the four awards of 2024 in the order listed. (A) The Aryabhatta Award, conferred by the Astronautical Society of India for lifetime contribution to the country's space effort, went to Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri, the founder and chairman of Ananth Technologies, one of the private firms that builds satellite and launch-vehicle hardware for ISRO — so A goes with 3. (B) The World Literary Prize, 2024 went to Mamta G. Sagar, the Kannada poet, playwright and translator, awarded by the World Organization of Writers in April 2024 — so B goes with 2. (C) The Lata Deenanath Mangeshkar Award, given at the Mangeshkar family's annual memorial ceremony in Mumbai, was received by Amitabh Bachchan at the ceremony on 24 April 2024 — so C goes with 1. (D) The Goldman Environmental Prize, 2024 for Asia went to Alok Shukla of Chhattisgarh, for the community campaign through the Save Hasdeo Aranya Sangharsh Samiti that stopped twenty-one proposed coal blocks in the Hasdeo Aranya forests — so D goes with 4. That gives A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4, option (a). The practical route in the exam hall is to fix the two you cannot get wrong: an award named after Aryabhata, the astronomer, must go to the space engineer, and the environmental prize must go to the forest campaigner. Those two alone leave (a) and (d) standing, and (d) collapses because Mamta G. Sagar, a poet, cannot be the recipient of an astronautics award.

• (b)A-3, B-2, C-4, D-1 — Correct on the first two, then swaps the last pair — it makes Alok Shukla the recipient of the Lata Deenanath Mangeshkar Award and Amitabh Bachchan the winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Alok Shukla is an environmental campaigner from Chhattisgarh, honoured for the Hasdeo Aranya coal-block campaign, and the Goldman Prize is given exclusively to grassroots environmental activists — a film actor is not eligible for it, and Bachchan received the Mangeshkar award in April 2024.
• (c)A-4, B-2, C-1, D-3 — Swaps the two ends, giving the Aryabhatta Award to Alok Shukla and the Goldman Environmental Prize to Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri. The Aryabhatta Award is the Astronautical Society of India's honour for a lifetime in space science and technology, which fits the head of a space-hardware company and not a forest-rights campaigner; the Goldman Prize is the reverse. The middle two pairs are right, so this is the option that punishes a candidate who knows the names but not the fields.
• (d)A-2, B-3, C-1, D-4 — Gets the last two pairs right but interchanges the first two, putting the Kannada poet Mamta G. Sagar in the Aryabhatta Award and the aerospace industrialist Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri in the World Literary Prize. This is the closest decoy in the set and the reason to sort by field before matching names: a literary prize goes to a writer, an astronautics award to a space engineer.

Awards questions in a state prelims paper are a test of one year's news, and the examiner is looking for the pairing of award to recipient, plus the field the award belongs to. This item is anchored to the exam held on 22 December 2024, so 'Aryabhatta Award, 2024' and the rest all mean the 2024 conferments. The four here span four different domains — space technology, literature, music and cinema, and environmental activism — which is itself the clue that lets you solve the question without knowing all four names.

Sort by domain, then match. Two of the four names carry their field on their face once you know who they are: Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri built Ananth Technologies, a Hyderabad-based space-hardware company, so he belongs with an award named after the astronomer Aryabhata; Alok Shukla led the Hasdeo Aranya campaign in Chhattisgarh, so he belongs with the world's best-known grassroots environmental prize. Those two pairings by themselves eliminate three of the four options. The trap the setter has laid is in options (c) and (d), each of which keeps two correct pairs and swaps the other two — so a candidate who matches only the one name he recognises will still pick wrongly. Match at least two pairs before committing. On the Goldman Prize itself, note what it rewards: it is given every year to grassroots environmental activists, one from each of six inhabited continental regions, and Alok Shukla won the Asia award — India has produced several past winners, including Medha Patkar in 1992 and, in 2004, Champa Devi Shukla and Rashida Bee of Bhopal.

• Aryabhatta Award, 2024 — conferred by the Astronautical Society of India on Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri, founder and chairman of Ananth Technologies, a private Indian aerospace company that supplies systems for ISRO's satellites and launch vehicles.
• World Literary Prize, 2024 — awarded by the World Organization of Writers in April 2024 to Mamta G. Sagar, a Kannada poet, playwright and translator.
• Lata Deenanath Mangeshkar Award — instituted by the Mangeshkar family in memory of Lata Mangeshkar's father, Master Deenanath Mangeshkar, and presented at the family's annual ceremony in Mumbai. Amitabh Bachchan received it at the ceremony of 24 April 2024. Different trackers number the editions differently, so learn the recipient and the year rather than the edition number.
• Goldman Environmental Prize, 2024 (Asia) — Alok Shukla of Chhattisgarh, for the campaign of the Save Hasdeo Aranya Sangharsh Samiti that led to the cancellation of twenty-one proposed coal blocks in the Hasdeo Aranya forests, protecting roughly 445,000 acres of biodiversity-rich forest on which about 15,000 Adivasis depend. Chhattisgarh cancelled the twenty-one blocks by July 2022.

• Guessing an award by the fame of the name. Amitabh Bachchan is the best-known person on this list, which is exactly why two of the four options attach him to the wrong award.
• Confusing the Aryabhatta Award of the Astronautical Society of India with the Aryabhata satellite of 1975 or with government science awards such as the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar.
• Anchoring a 'current' award question to the wrong year. This paper was set for the examination of 22 December 2024, so every entry means the 2024 conferment; the Goldman Prize in particular has a fresh set of six winners every year.

UPPSC asks awards either as a four-by-four match of award against recipient, as here, or as a one-line identification of a single recent winner; UPSC has used both the match-list form and the 'which of the following pairs are correctly matched' form on the same material.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Goldman Environmental Prize, 2024 was awarded to Alok Shukla for a campaign to protect which forest, and in which State?

  • (a)Aravalli forests, Haryana
  • (b)Hasdeo Aranya forests, Chhattisgarh
  • (c)Niyamgiri hills, Odisha
  • (d)Dehing Patkai forests, Assam

  Answer(b) The Hasdeo Aranya forests of Chhattisgarh. The campaign of the Save Hasdeo Aranya Sangharsh Samiti led to the cancellation of twenty-one proposed coal blocks, protecting roughly 445,000 acres of forest. Niyamgiri is associated with the earlier Dongria Kondh bauxite struggle in Odisha.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Aryabhatta Award is conferred by which of the following bodies?

  • (a)Indian National Science Academy
  • (b)Department of Science and Technology, Government of India
  • (c)Astronautical Society of India
  • (d)Indian Space Research Organisation

  Answer(c) The Astronautical Society of India, which gives it for lifetime contribution to astronautics and the Indian space programme. In 2024 it went to Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri of Ananth Technologies.