International Relations Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 24)

India’s Embassy in Tallinn opened on 28 December 2021. Before that, India’s Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, handled relations with Estonia concurrently.

Diplomatic relations were established on 2 December 1991. India had actually recognised Estonia once before, on 22 September 1921, before it was absorbed into the Soviet Union; 2004 is instead the year Estonia joined the EU.

Both sides reviewed cooperation between India’s National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) and Poland’s Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP), initiated in 2024.

Trade roughly tripled between 2013 and 2025, to about $6.36 billion. Poland is now India’s largest trading and investment partner in Central and Eastern Europe.

Modi and Polish PM Donald Tusk elevated ties to a Strategic Partnership, adopting a five-year Action Plan spanning defence, trade, agri-tech, energy, and more.

Maharaja Digvijaysinhji Jadeja, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, built the children a camp with a school, library, and church. Poland’s Parliament honoured him in 2016.

India and Poland established diplomatic relations on 7 January 1954. India’s Embassy in Warsaw opened in 1957.

The US had been a member since the Colombo Plan’s founding in 1951, so its January 2026 withdrawal ended 75 years of membership. The exit was part of a broader US withdrawal from 66 international organisations.

Mrs. Chulamanee Chartsuwan of Thailand became the 9th Secretary-General for a term running to June 2030. Dr. Benjamin P. Reyes was her predecessor; Julie Chung was the outgoing US envoy who chaired the Colombo Plan Council; António Guterres heads a different body, the United Nations.

The plan was conceived at a conference in Colombo, Ceylon, in January 1950, though operations only began the following year. The Plan’s Secretariat has stayed in Colombo, Sri Lanka, ever since.

Seven Commonwealth countries founded the Colombo Plan: Australia, the UK, Canada, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Pakistan, New Zealand, and India.

The Colombo Plan began operations on 1 July 1951. Its starting date came before the 1952 AIIMS foundation stone. New Zealand later supported the AIIMS project through the Plan. The 1956 date concerns AIIMS legislation, rather than the aid programme’s beginning.

Bilateral trade in goods and services stood at approximately USD 3.70 billion in 2025-26, up about 25% on the previous year.

DESI stands for Digitalisation, Education, Sustainability, and Innovation, the framework launched on 20 September 2023.

The Strategic Partnership was announced during President Alexander Stubb’s State Visit to India, 4-7 March 2026.

Diplomatic relations between India and Finland were established in 1949; 2024 marked their 75th anniversary.

Menon secured the first rank in the combined Civil Services Examination in 1922, before joining the Indian Civil Service (the Indian Foreign Service did not yet exist at the time).

K.P.S. Menon Sr. is Shivshankar Menon’s grandfather — three generations of the family served in Indian foreign policy roles.

The United Nations appointed Menon Chairman of the UN Commission on Korea (UNCOK) in 1948.

Menon met Stalin on 13 February 1953, and is reportedly remembered as the last foreigner to see him alive, just three weeks before Stalin’s death.

Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was the fifth founding leader. Zhou Enlai was a key figure at the 1955 Bandung Conference, a precursor event, but China was never a NAM member. Sirimavo Bandaranaike hosted a later NAM summit, in Colombo in 1976, but was not one of the 1961 founders.

Uganda has chaired NAM since January 2024, when it hosted the 19th Summit in Kampala, and holds the role until 2027. It also hosted the 19th Mid-Term Ministerial Meeting in Kampala in October 2025, where India was represented by Minister of State Kirti Vardhan Singh.

The Brioni meeting was an important diplomatic stepping stone, not NAM’s founding. The Movement itself was only formally established at Belgrade in 1961, five years later.