International Trade & Commerce — Global Economy

Why This Chapter Matters

Awards and honours questions show up in nearly every IBPS and SBI Clerk paper, usually 3 to 4 marks, and they reward exactly the kind of preparation most aspirants skip because the list "feels too long to memorise." It isn't. Once you sort awards by category — civilian, gallantry, film, literature, international — the list becomes short and the patterns repeat every year, so learning the structure once pays off across multiple exam attempts.

The single biggest mistake candidates make is mixing up award categories that sound similar or confusing the highest award in one field with the highest award overall. Students routinely mix up Bharat Ratna with Padma Vibhushan, or the Jnanpith with the Sahitya Akademi Award, and lose a guaranteed mark on a question that only needed the correct hierarchy, not obscure trivia. This chapter fixes that by grouping every award by field and rank, so on exam day you are not recalling isolated facts — you are locating a name inside a structure you already know cold.

1. National Civilian Awards of India

India's civilian honours system has four tiers, awarded annually by the President of India on the recommendation of the Padma Awards Committee (for Padma awards) and separately for the Bharat Ratna.

Bharat Ratna is India's highest civilian award, instituted in 1954. It recognises exceptional service of the highest order in any field, including public service, without restriction — it has gone to scientists, freedom fighters, statesmen, musicians, and even one sportsperson. There is no fixed number awarded each year; some years see none at all. The award is a peepal-leaf-shaped medallion, and importantly, it carries no formal title that can be used before the recipient's name, unlike some foreign honours.

Notable Bharat Ratna recipients students must know include Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and C. Rajagopalachari (among the first recipients in 1954), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1990), Sachin Tendulkar (2014, the youngest recipient and the only one honoured primarily for sport), Mother Teresa (1980), APJ Abdul Kalam (1997), and more recently figures such as Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur, L.K. Advani, P.V. Narasimha Rao, M.S. Swaminathan, and Charan Singh, all honoured in 2024, showing the award still actively recognises leaders across politics, agriculture science, and public service.

Exam trap: Bharat Ratna has no fixed annual quota and is not always awarded every year — do not confuse it with Padma awards, which are announced every year around Republic Day with dozens of recipients across three tiers.

Padma Awards form the next tier, announced every year on the eve of Republic Day (26 January) and instituted in 1954 as well, though briefly discontinued between 1977-1980 and 1993-1997 before resuming. There are three levels, in descending order of rank:

Padma Vibhushan — for exceptional and distinguished service, the second-highest civilian award overall.

Padma Bhushan — for distinguished service of a high order.

Padma Shri — for distinguished service in any field, the entry-level tier but still a major national honour.

Memory hook: Remember the Padma order using "V-B-S goes big to small" — Vibhushan (highest), Bhushan (middle), Shri (base tier). Think of it like a pyramid: Vibhushan at the peak, Shri at the wide bottom holding the most recipients each year.

Gallantry Awards

India's military and civilian gallantry awards recognise acts of bravery, and the exam frequently tests their exact ranking and the difference between wartime and peacetime honours.

Param Vir Chakra (PVC) is India's highest wartime gallantry award, instituted in 1950, given for the most conspicuous bravery in the presence of the enemy. Major Somnath Sharma was the first recipient, honoured posthumously for the 1947-48 Kashmir operations. Most PVC awards in India's history have been posthumous, awarded after the recipient's death in action.

Maha Vir Chakra ranks second among wartime gallantry awards, followed by Vir Chakra at the third tier.

For peacetime bravery, the equivalent ladder runs Ashoka Chakra (highest peacetime gallantry award, equivalent in stature to the Param Vir Chakra but for non-battlefield situations like anti-terror operations), followed by Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra.

Exam trap: Param Vir Chakra is for wartime bravery; Ashoka Chakra is its peacetime equivalent. Students often assume Ashoka Chakra ranks below Param Vir Chakra in absolute terms, but they are parallel top-tier awards for different circumstances, not a strict single ladder.

Civilian bravery in disaster or rescue situations is recognised separately through medals like the President's Police Medal for Gallantry and civilian gallantry awards instituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs, though these appear less often in banking exams than the military tier.

2. Nobel Prizes and India

The Nobel Prize was established through the will of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, and first awarded in 1901, across five original categories — Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. A sixth category, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was added later by Sweden's central bank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969; strictly speaking it is not one of Nobel's original five, though it is presented alongside the others each year in Stockholm. The Peace Prize alone is awarded in Oslo, Norway, while all others are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden — a detail examiners like to test.

Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian and the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his collection Gitanjali.

C.V. Raman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for the discovery of what is now called the Raman Effect — the scattering of light when it passes through a transparent medium, changing wavelength depending on the material. He remains the only person to win a Nobel Prize for science work done entirely in India.

Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work with the poor in Kolkata through the Missionaries of Charity.

Amartya Sen, an Indian economist, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his contributions to welfare economics, including work on famine and poverty measurement.

Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian child rights activist, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 with Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai for their work against the suppression of children and for children's right to education.

Other Nobel laureates of Indian origin, holding foreign citizenship at the time of the award, include Har Gobind Khorana (Medicine, 1968, shared, on genetic code research), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Physics, 1983, on stellar structure and evolution), and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Chemistry, 2009, on ribosome structure). Abhijit Banerjee, along with his co-laureates, won the Economic Sciences prize in 2019 for experimental approaches to alleviating global poverty.

Memory hook: Remember the India-born, India-residing Nobel winners with "TRAM-K" — Tagore (Literature), Raman (Physics), Amartya Sen (Economics), Mother Teresa (Peace), Kailash Satyarthi (Peace). Picture riding a tram through Kolkata, since three of these five have direct Kolkata connections.

Exam trap: C.V. Raman won for scientific work carried out entirely within India, unlike several other Indian-origin laureates who did their prize-winning research abroad after emigrating. This distinction — "Indian citizen working in India" versus "person of Indian origin working abroad" — is a favourite exam distinction.

3. Film and Literary Awards

National Film Awards

The National Film Awards, instituted in 1954 and presented annually, are India's most prestigious film honours, administered by the Directorate of Film Festivals under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The top honour, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, recognises a lifetime contribution to Indian cinema and is named after Dadasaheb Phalke, widely regarded as the father of Indian cinema for making Raja Harishchandra (1913), generally considered India's first full-length feature film.

Exam trap: The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is a lifetime achievement honour, not a "best film" or "best actor" category award — it recognises a career's total contribution to Indian cinema, awarded to only one individual per year.

The National Film Awards cover categories across Best Feature Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and dedicated regional-language film categories, alongside non-feature (documentary) film awards. Best Feature Film winners often receive the Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) Award, while several other feature categories are honoured with the Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus) Award.

International Film Festival of India (IFFI)

Held annually in Goa, IFFI is one of Asia's oldest and most significant film festivals, first held in 1952, showcasing Indian and international cinema and honouring global filmmakers alongside domestic talent.

Jnanpith Award

The Jnanpith Award is India's highest literary honour, instituted in 1965 by the Bharatiya Jnanpith trust, and given for the "most outstanding contribution" toward Indian literature written in any language recognised in the Constitution's Eighth Schedule, plus English, over that writer's body of work.

Malayalam writer G. Sankara Kurup was the first Jnanpith Award recipient, honoured in 1965 for his poetry collection Odakkuzhal. The award has since gone to writers across many Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Odia, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Assamese, reflecting India's literary diversity.

Exam trap: Do not confuse the Jnanpith Award (India's highest literary honour, covering all Indian languages) with the Sahitya Akademi Award, which is a separate annual literary honour given language-by-language every year by the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters), and is considered slightly less prestigious in overall stature though still a major honour.

Kannada has produced the highest number of Jnanpith Award winners among Indian languages, followed closely by Hindi, a fact tested more than once in past papers.

4. Other Major National Awards

Param Vir Chakra, Bharat Ratna, and Jnanpith cover the top of three separate ladders — military, civilian public service, and literature respectively. Beyond these, a few more honours deserve attention.

Arjuna Award, instituted in 1961, recognises outstanding achievement in sports, given annually by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in 2021 in honour of India's legendary hockey player, is India's highest sporting honour, ranking above the Arjuna Award. The renaming itself has been asked in recent exams, so remember: the award is the same honour, only the name changed in 2021 from Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna to Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna.

Dronacharya Award recognises excellence in sports coaching, honouring the coaches behind India's top athletes, named after the legendary teacher-warrior Dronacharya from the Mahabharata.

Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, and Vishisht Seva Medal form a separate ladder recognising distinguished non-battlefield service by armed forces personnel, awarded on Republic Day and Independence Day.

Bharatiya Jnanpith's Moortidevi Award and the Vyas Samman, instituted by the K.K. Birla Foundation, are other notable Hindi and Indian-language literary honours, though they rank below the Jnanpith in general prestige and are asked about less frequently.

Gandhi Peace Prize, instituted by the Government of India in 1995 to mark Mahatma Gandhi's 125th birth anniversary, is awarded annually for contributions toward social, economic, and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods, and can be given to both Indian and international recipients or institutions.

5. Major International Awards

Pulitzer Prize, awarded annually in the United States, recognises achievement in newspaper and online journalism, literature, and musical composition, established through the will of publisher Joseph Pulitzer and first awarded in 1917.

Booker Prize (formerly the Man Booker Prize), established in 1969, honours the best original novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The International Booker Prize, a related but separate award, honours fiction translated into English from any language, and Indian-language literature has found notable success here — Geetanjali Shree's Hindi novel Tomb of Sand (translated by Daisy Rockwell) won the International Booker Prize in 2022, the first work translated from Hindi to win the honour.

Exam trap: The Booker Prize (for original English-language novels) and the International Booker Prize (for translated fiction) are two distinct awards with different eligibility rules — do not treat them as the same prize with different names.

Ramon Magsaysay Award, often called "Asia's Nobel Prize," is named after a former Philippine president and recognises greatness of spirit and transformative leadership across Asia, awarded from Manila.

Templeton Prize honours individuals who have made exceptional contributions affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works, and was previously won by figures such as Mother Teresa in its early years.

Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the "Alternative Nobel Prize," is a Swedish-based international award honouring work that addresses today's most urgent challenges, recognising activists and change-makers globally.

6. Recent and Notable Award Patterns Worth Remembering

Award questions in banking exams often test the most recent one or two years of winners alongside the permanent structural facts, since these are freshest in an examiner's mind when the paper is set. Rather than memorise an ever-shifting list of names by rote, focus on remembering the categories, the years the awards were instituted, and the general pattern of what each award honours — that structural knowledge answers most questions even when a specific year's winner slips your memory.

A pattern worth noting: sportspersons increasingly cross over into Padma and Bharat Ratna recognition (Sachin Tendulkar's Bharat Ratna being the standout example), and Jnanpith winners increasingly come from a wider spread of Indian languages beyond the historically dominant Hindi and Bengali literary traditions, reflecting a deliberate push toward representing India's full linguistic range.

Exam trap: When a question gives you an award name and asks for the "field," always check whether it is asking about the award's category (literature, sport, civilian service, bravery) rather than the specific person's profession — a sportsperson can receive a Padma award (a civilian honour), which is a different question from asking what field the Arjuna Award itself covers.

Keep three anchor points in mind for any award question you are unsure about: what field it honours, what rank it holds within that field (is it the top award or a second-tier one), and roughly when it was instituted. Those three data points solve the large majority of exam questions even without knowing the latest winner's name.

7. Business, Science, and Miscellaneous Honours

Banking exams occasionally reach beyond the standard civilian-gallantry-literature triangle, so a working knowledge of a few more award families helps you avoid a blank stare on an unfamiliar question.

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India's top science and technology honour for researchers below the age of 45, is awarded annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) across categories like physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and engineering sciences. It functions as a kind of career-launching recognition for young Indian scientists, similar in spirit to how the Arjuna Award recognises rising sporting talent rather than only lifetime greats.

Kalinga Prize, awarded by UNESCO, honours individuals for popularising science among the general public, and has been won by several Indian science communicators and writers over the decades.

Bharat Ratna for sport remains a one-off case worth remembering precisely because it is an exception, not a pattern: sportspersons more commonly receive Padma awards or the Khel Ratna rather than the Bharat Ratna, so treat Tendulkar's award as the outlier it is, not the rule.

Padma Awards and the private sector: business leaders, scientists, doctors, and social workers frequently receive Padma Shri or Padma Bhushan honours for contributions in their respective fields, a reminder that Padma awards, unlike gallantry medals, span virtually every walk of life rather than being tied to one profession.

RBI and banking-linked recognitions: while not traditional "award" categories in the classic civilian sense, professional bodies and financial institutions periodically confer honorary recognitions on economists and bankers for contributions to financial policy, a detail occasionally referenced in current-affairs-style GK questions bridging banking awareness with static GK. Treat such references as current-affairs add-ons layered on top of the core static structure covered in this chapter, not separate fixed categories to memorise by rote.

A final practical tip: when an exam question names an award you do not immediately recognise, first ask whether it sounds military (Chakra-suffixed names usually are), literary (Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Booker), scientific (Bhatnagar, Kalinga), or civilian-general (Bharat Ratna, Padma tier). That single sorting step, even without knowing the specific winner, often narrows a four-option question down to two plausible answers, turning a guess into an educated guess.

Quick Revision — One-Line Facts

• Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, was instituted in 1954.
• Bharat Ratna carries no formal title prefix and has no fixed number of annual recipients.
• Sachin Tendulkar (2014) is the youngest Bharat Ratna recipient and the only one honoured primarily for sport.
• Padma Awards rank, highest to lowest: Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri.
• Padma Awards are announced annually around Republic Day (26 January).
• Param Vir Chakra is India's highest wartime gallantry award, instituted in 1950.
• Major Somnath Sharma was the first Param Vir Chakra recipient (posthumous).
• Wartime gallantry ladder: Param Vir Chakra → Maha Vir Chakra → Vir Chakra.
• Peacetime gallantry ladder: Ashoka Chakra → Kirti Chakra → Shaurya Chakra.
• The Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901 based on Alfred Nobel's will.
• Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo; all other Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm.
• Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian Nobel laureate, Literature, 1913, for Gitanjali.
• C.V. Raman won the Physics Nobel in 1930 for the Raman Effect, work done entirely in India.
• Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
• Amartya Sen won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998.
• Kailash Satyarthi shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 with Malala Yousafzai.
• Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India's highest lifetime honour in cinema, under the National Film Awards.
• Dadasaheb Phalke made Raja Harishchandra (1913), India's first feature film.
• Best Feature Film category in National Film Awards is honoured with the Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus).
• Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honour, was instituted in 1965.
• G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam) was the first Jnanpith Award winner, in 1965.
• Kannada language has produced the highest number of Jnanpith winners among Indian languages.
• Sahitya Akademi Award is a separate annual language-wise literary honour, distinct from Jnanpith.
• Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna was renamed Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in 2021.
• Arjuna Award (1961) recognises outstanding sporting achievement in India.
• Dronacharya Award recognises excellence in sports coaching.
• Gandhi Peace Prize was instituted in 1995 to mark Gandhi's 125th birth anniversary.
• Pulitzer Prize, established via Joseph Pulitzer's will, was first awarded in 1917.
• Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand won the International Booker Prize in 2022, first Hindi work to do so.
• Ramon Magsaysay Award is often called "Asia's Nobel Prize."
• IFFI, held annually in Goa, was first organised in 1952.

Memory Tables

Table 1: India's Civilian and Gallantry Award Ladders

Category	Highest	Second	Third
Civilian (overall)	Bharat Ratna	Padma Vibhushan	Padma Bhushan
Wartime gallantry	Param Vir Chakra	Maha Vir Chakra	Vir Chakra
Peacetime gallantry	Ashoka Chakra	Kirti Chakra	Shaurya Chakra

Table 2: Indian Nobel Laureates (Citizens at Time of Award)

Laureate	Year	Category
Rabindranath Tagore	1913	Literature
C.V. Raman	1930	Physics
Mother Teresa	1979	Peace
Amartya Sen	1998	Economic Sciences
Kailash Satyarthi	2014	Peace

Table 3: Award vs. Field vs. Instituted Year

Award	Field	Instituted
Bharat Ratna	Civilian/public service	1954
Jnanpith Award	Literature	1965
Dadasaheb Phalke Award	Cinema (lifetime)	1969
Arjuna Award	Sports	1961
Param Vir Chakra	Military (wartime)	1950

Practice MCQs

Q1. Which is India's highest civilian award, instituted in 1954? (a) Padma Vibhushan (b) Bharat Ratna (c) Jnanpith Award (d) Ashoka Chakra

Q2. Who was the only Bharat Ratna recipient honoured primarily for sporting achievement, in 2014? (a) Milkha Singh (b) P.T. Usha (c) Sachin Tendulkar (d) Dhyan Chand

Q3. Arrange the Padma Awards in correct descending order of rank. (a) Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan (b) Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri (c) Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Shri (d) Padma Shri, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan

Q4. India's highest wartime gallantry award is: (a) Ashoka Chakra (b) Maha Vir Chakra (c) Param Vir Chakra (d) Kirti Chakra

Q5. Which award is the peacetime equivalent in stature to the Param Vir Chakra? (a) Vir Chakra (b) Ashoka Chakra (c) Shaurya Chakra (d) Kirti Chakra

Q6. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for which work? (a) Gora (b) Gitanjali (c) Ghare Baire (d) Kabuliwala

Q7. C.V. Raman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for discovering: (a) The photoelectric effect (b) Nuclear fission (c) The Raman Effect on light scattering (d) X-ray diffraction

Q8. Which Indian economist won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998? (a) Abhijit Banerjee (b) Amartya Sen (c) Raghuram Rajan (d) Jagdish Bhagwati

Q9. Kailash Satyarthi shared the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with which co-laureate? (a) Aung San Suu Kyi (b) Malala Yousafzai (c) Wangari Maathai (d) Tawakkol Karman

Q10. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest honour in cinema, recognises: (a) The best film released that year (b) A lifetime contribution to Indian cinema (c) The best debut director (d) The best regional-language film

Q11. Who was the first recipient of the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honour, in 1965? (a) G. Sankara Kurup (b) Ashapoorna Devi (c) Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa (d) S.K. Pottekkatt

Q12. Which language has produced the highest number of Jnanpith Award winners? (a) Hindi (b) Bengali (c) Kannada (d) Marathi

Q13. The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award was renamed in 2021 in honour of which sporting legend? (a) Milkha Singh (b) Major Dhyan Chand (c) P.T. Usha (d) Kapil Dev

Q14. Geetanjali Shree's novel Tomb of Sand, originally written in Hindi, won which major international award in 2022? (a) Booker Prize (b) International Booker Prize (c) Pulitzer Prize (d) Nobel Prize in Literature

Q15. The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is held annually in which state? (a) Maharashtra (b) Kerala (c) Goa (d) West Bengal

Answer Key

Q	Answer	Reason
1	(b) Bharat Ratna	Bharat Ratna, instituted in 1954, sits at the top of India's civilian honours, above the three Padma tiers.
2	(c) Sachin Tendulkar	Tendulkar received the Bharat Ratna in 2014, the only recipient honoured chiefly for sport, and the youngest ever.
3	(b) Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri	This is the correct descending rank order among the three Padma tiers.
4	(c) Param Vir Chakra	Param Vir Chakra, instituted 1950, is the highest gallantry award for bravery in wartime combat.
5	(b) Ashoka Chakra	Ashoka Chakra matches Param Vir Chakra in prestige but honours peacetime bravery, such as anti-terror operations.
6	(b) Gitanjali	Tagore's Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 was awarded for his poetry collection Gitanjali.
7	(c) The Raman Effect on light scattering	Raman's 1930 Physics Nobel recognised his discovery of wavelength change in scattered light, the Raman Effect.
8	(b) Amartya Sen	Amartya Sen won the Economic Sciences prize in 1998 for work on welfare economics and famine analysis.
9	(b) Malala Yousafzai	Satyarthi and Yousafzai jointly received the 2014 Peace Prize for work on children's rights and education.
10	(b) A lifetime contribution to Indian cinema	The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is a career-long lifetime achievement honour, not a single-film award.
11	(a) G. Sankara Kurup	Kurup, a Malayalam poet, won the first Jnanpith Award in 1965 for his collection Odakkuzhal.
12	(c) Kannada	Kannada has produced the highest count of Jnanpith Award winners among all Indian languages so far.
13	(b) Major Dhyan Chand	India's highest sporting honour was renamed after hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand in 2021.
14	(b) International Booker Prize	This prize honours translated fiction; Tomb of Sand was the first Hindi-language work to win it, in 2022.
15	(c) Goa	IFFI has been held annually in Goa since being established there, first organised in 1952.