UPPSC 2025 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 125 of 150

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.

• (b)Only 1 and 3 — 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)Only 2 and 4 — 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)Only 1 — 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.

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.

Questions on named operations are answered by holding three things together: the name, the country and the trigger. The trigger is usually the decisive one, because names give no geographical clue. Here the trigger was a magnitude 7.7 earthquake on the Sagaing Fault, and only one country on the list sits on that fault. Working from the disaster rather than from the name also protects you against the commonest error in this area, which is answering from whichever neighbour has been most in the news. There is one genuine subtlety: the March 2025 earthquake was felt well beyond Myanmar and caused a widely reported building collapse in Bangkok, so a candidate who half-remembers the news may reach for a second country — but the second country in that memory is Thailand, and Thailand is not among the four offered.

• A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck central Myanmar on the Sagaing Fault near Mandalay on 28 March 2025, followed by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock; early counts put the dead above 1,600 and the final toll ran far higher
• India launched Operation Brahma on 28-29 March 2025, within about a day of the earthquake, and named it after the creator-god to signal rebuilding
• The mission sent roughly 15 tonnes of relief by C-130J and C-17 aircraft, an 80-member NDRF search-and-rescue team, an Indian Army field hospital at Mandalay, and five naval ships — INS Satpura, INS Savitri, INS Karmuk, LCU 52 and INS Gharial — carrying the bulk of the relief stores
• By mid-April the Indian field hospital had treated about 2,500 patients and India had delivered roughly 656 tonnes of aid
• Operation Brahma is distinct from Operation Karuna, India's relief mission to Myanmar after Cyclone Mocha in May 2023 — the same country, a different disaster and a different operation name

• Answering from whichever neighbour has been most in the news rather than from the disaster. The trigger for Operation Brahma was the 28 March 2025 earthquake, and only Myanmar suffered it
• Mixing up India's two named Myanmar missions — Karuna followed Cyclone Mocha in May 2023, Brahma followed the earthquake in March 2025
• Expecting the operation's name to indicate the destination. These names are Sanskrit or Hindi words describing the intent of the mission, not the country it is sent to

UPPSC sets current affairs of this kind as a 'which of the following countries' list with a code, exactly as here, and usually within a year of the event, so an operation from March is fair game for an October paper. UPSC prefers to ask from the operation's side — a single-answer question on what a named operation was for, as with Operation Sukoon in 2007 and Operation Sadbhavana in 2024 — which tests the same three-way pairing of name, country and trigger from the opposite direction.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India's Operation Karuna, launched in May 2023, provided humanitarian assistance to which country, and following which event?

  • (a)Nepal — following an earthquake
  • (b)Myanmar — following Cyclone Mocha
  • (c)Sri Lanka — following its economic crisis
  • (d)Turkiye — following an earthquake

  Answer(b) Myanmar — following Cyclone Mocha — India sent Operation Karuna to Myanmar in May 2023; the February 2023 Turkiye and Syria earthquake mission was Operation Dost.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following pairs: 1. Operation Maitri — Nepal earthquake, 2015 2. Operation Dost — Turkiye and Syria earthquakes, 2023 3. Operation Sukoon — evacuation of Indian nationals from Lebanon, 2006 Which of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

  • (a)1 and 2 only
  • (b)2 and 3 only
  • (c)1 and 3 only
  • (d)1, 2 and 3

  Answer(d) 1, 2 and 3 — all three are correctly matched; each name describes the intent of the mission rather than its destination.