Lucent Static GK: Awards and Honours

Indian civilian awards (recall)

• The Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of India, for exceptional service in any field; it was instituted in 1954. The first recipients (1954) included C. Rajagopalachari, Dr S. Radhakrishnan and C.V. Raman.
• The Padma awards, in descending order: Padma Vibhushan (for exceptional and distinguished service), Padma Bhushan (for distinguished service of a high order) and Padma Shri (for distinguished service). They were instituted in 1954 and are announced on Republic Day.
• These are not titles and cannot be used as prefixes or suffixes to a name (Article 18 of the Constitution abolishes titles).

Indian gallantry awards (recall, security-relevant)

India's gallantry awards are in two streams, by order of precedence.

• Wartime gallantry awards (for valour in the face of the enemy), in descending order:
  1. Param Vir Chakra (PVC): the highest military decoration for the most conspicuous bravery in the presence of the enemy; instituted in 1950; the first awardee was Major Somnath Sharma (Kashmir, 1947 to 1948). Many awards have been posthumous.
  2. Maha Vir Chakra (MVC): the second-highest.
  3. Vir Chakra (VrC): the third.
• Peacetime gallantry awards (for bravery away from the battlefield), in descending order:
  1. Ashoka Chakra: the highest peacetime gallantry award, the peacetime equivalent of the Param Vir Chakra.
  2. Kirti Chakra.
  3. Shaurya Chakra.
• Personnel of the central armed police forces are regular recipients of the peacetime awards (and wartime awards where applicable) for action against terrorists, insurgents and in counter-naxal operations. The President's Police Medal for Gallantry and Police Medal for Gallantry also recognise such service.

Distinguished-service and other awards (recall)

• Military distinguished-service decorations include the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and Vishisht Seva Medal, and the Sena, Nao Sena and Vayu Sena Medals for the army, navy and air force.
• Other national awards include the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna and Arjuna awards in sport (see sports), the Jnanpith Award (the highest literary honour, for Indian-language literature), the Sahitya Akademi Award (literature), the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (the highest in Indian cinema) and the Gandhi Peace Prize.

The Nobel Prizes (recall)

• Instituted from the will of Alfred Nobel (the inventor of dynamite), first awarded in 1901, in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace (the Economics prize, a later memorial prize from the Swedish central bank, was added in 1969). The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo; the others in Stockholm.
• Indian and India-connected Nobel laureates to recognise: Rabindranath Tagore (Literature, 1913, the first Indian and first Asian), C.V. Raman (Physics, 1930), Mother Teresa (Peace, 1979), Amartya Sen (Economics, 1998), Kailash Satyarthi (Peace, 2014), and Abhijit Banerjee (Economics, 2019, jointly). Hargobind Khorana (Medicine, 1968), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Physics, 1983) and V.S. Naipaul (Literature, 2001) were of Indian origin.

Other major international prizes (recall)

• The Booker Prize (English-language fiction; several writers of Indian origin have won). The Magsaysay Award (Asia's "Nobel", recognising public service, given in the Philippines). The Pulitzer Prize (American journalism and letters). The Right Livelihood Award (the "alternative Nobel").