Indian Economy Questions and Answers

Answer: C

India's first shale gas was discovered in West Bengal.

In January 2011, ONGC struck shale gas in a well at Ichhapur near Durgapur, in the Damodar valley of West Bengal, the first shale gas find in India.

Assam and Gujarat are India's older conventional oil and gas producers, and Maharashtra's offshore Bombay High produces oil and gas, but none of them was the site of the first shale gas discovery.

Answer: D

The first Indian product to receive a Geographical Indication was Darjeeling Tea.

Darjeeling Tea was registered in 2004-05, the first entry under India's Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, which came into force in 2003. The tag protects the name for tea grown in the defined Darjeeling area.

Basmati Rice and Malabar Coffee received GI protection later, and 'Indian Rubber' is not a registered GI.

Answer: A

The Sonapani Mini Hydel Power Project is in Meghalaya.

It is a small hydel station of about 1.5 MW in East Khasi Hills district, built by the Meghalaya government and commissioned among the state's mini and micro hydel schemes. Meghalaya has many such small projects on its hill streams.

Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh also use small hydel power, but Sonapani is not in any of them.

Answer: D

The primary sector activity is Agriculture.

The primary sector covers activities that use natural resources directly: agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining. Agriculture is the largest primary activity in India.

Food processing and manufacturing turn raw materials into products, so they are secondary sector activities. Telecom services belong to the tertiary or service sector.

Answer: B

GST stands for Goods and Services Tax.

The Goods and Services Tax, introduced on 1 July 2017 under the 101st Constitutional Amendment, is a single indirect tax on the supply of goods and services. It replaced many central and state taxes such as excise duty, service tax and VAT.

'General Sales Tax', 'Government Special Tax' and 'General Service Tax' are not what the letters stand for.

Answer: D

The chairman was N. K. Singh.

The Fifteenth Finance Commission was constituted in November 2017 with Nand Kishore Singh, a former IAS officer and Rajya Sabha member, as its chairman. It recommended how central taxes should be shared with the states for 2020-21 and for 2021-26.

Anurag Thakur was then Minister of State for Finance, V.K. Singh a former Army Chief and Union minister, and 'R. Jain' was not its chairman.

Answer: B

NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission with effect from 1st January, 2015.

The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) was set up by a Union Cabinet resolution of 1 January 2015, replacing the Planning Commission that had existed since 1950. The Prime Minister is its chairperson.

The decision to wind up the Planning Commission was announced on 15 August 2014, which explains the 2014 and 15 August options, but the new body came into being on 1 January 2015, not in July or April.

Answer: B

The "Gadgil Yojana" is the Third Plan.

The Third Five-Year Plan (1961-66) is popularly called the Gadgil Yojana, after the economist D. R. Gadgil. It aimed at a self-reliant and self-generating economy, but was disrupted by the wars of 1962 and 1965 and the drought of 1965-66.

The Second Plan is the Mahalanobis Plan. The Fourth Plan is the usual trap, because the Gadgil formula for distributing central assistance among the states was adopted with it, in 1969. The Fifth Plan is associated with 'Garibi Hatao'.

Answer: C

The Community Development Programme was launched in 1952.

It began on 2 October 1952 with 55 projects, aiming at the all-round development of rural areas through people's participation, with the block as the unit of planning. Its limited success led to the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee of 1957 and to Panchayati Raj.

1950 is the year the Planning Commission was set up, and 1951 the start of the First Five-Year Plan. 1955 is not associated with the programme's launch.

Answer: C

The Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog in 2015.

The government announced the change in 2014, and the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog was formally constituted on 1 January 2015 as a policy think-tank, with the Prime Minister as chairperson.

2014 is the trap, as the decision to wind up the Planning Commission was announced that August, but NITI Aayog itself came into being in 2015. 2012 and 2016 are not linked to the change.