Indian Economy Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Its object was to train rural youth for self-employment.

TRYSEM, launched in 1979, trained rural young people aged 18 to 35 from families below the poverty line in a trade, and linked the training to credit under the IRDP so that they could set up on their own.

Answer: B

It is total receipts minus total expenditure, where receipts exclude borrowings.

\[\text{Fiscal deficit} = \text{Total expenditure} - (\text{Revenue receipts} + \text{Non-debt capital receipts})\] It measures the government's entire borrowing requirement for the year, and so its addition to the stock of public debt.

Answer: C

Assam is the largest tea producer.

It grows roughly half of India's tea, in the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys, where the soil, heavy rainfall and high humidity suit the plant. The first Indian tea garden was established there in 1837.

Answer: A

The bank rate is the rate at which the RBI gives credit to commercial banks.

It is the rate at which the central bank rediscounts eligible bills or lends without collateral. Raising it makes borrowing from the RBI dearer, so banks raise their own lending rates and credit contracts. The repo rate has since become the operative policy rate.

Answer: C

Life insurance policies are not national debt.

They are liabilities of the insurer to the policyholder, not borrowings by the government. Provident fund balances, national savings certificates and long-term government bonds are all sums the government has borrowed and must repay, and so form part of the national debt.

Answer: D

It was recognised in the Eighth Plan.

The Eighth Plan, 1992-97, was the first framed after liberalisation and put human resource development - education, health, drinking water - at the centre, treating people as the object as well as the means of development.

Answer: D

NSSO is the National Sample Survey Organisation.

Set up in 1950 on P.C. Mahalanobis's initiative, it conducts nationwide household surveys on consumption, employment, health and other subjects. Its rounds are the source of India's poverty and unemployment estimates.

Answer: D

Corporation tax and income tax together yield the most.

Direct taxes now account for more than half the Union government's gross tax revenue, corporation tax and personal income tax being the two largest single heads. Union excise was the largest source in the decades before the 1990s, which is the older answer to this question.

Answer: D

It bears the signature of the Finance Secretary.

The one-rupee note is issued by the Government of India under the Coinage Act, not by the Reserve Bank, and is legal tender in its own right. Every higher denomination is an RBI note and carries the Governor's signature.

Answer: D

This is the Blue Revolution.

It refers to the rapid growth of fish production through inland aquaculture and improved marine fishing. India is now the second largest fish producer in the world after China, and inland fisheries have overtaken marine in volume.