Political Processes in India Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The one that is not a social movement is the Asom Gana Parishad.

The Asom Gana Parishad is a regional political party, formed in 1985 after the Assam Accord by leaders of the student-led Assam movement. Once it contested elections and formed a government, it became a party, not a movement.

The others are social movements: Chipko (1973) was a forest-protection movement in the Garhwal Himalayas, the Narmada Bachao Andolan opposed the displacement caused by the Sardar Sarovar dam, and the Bandhua Mukti Morcha campaigned against bonded labour.

Answer: C

The Politburo is the highest decision-making body of the CPI (M).

Communist parties follow the Leninist structure of democratic centralism: the Party Congress elects a Central Committee, which elects a Politburo to direct the party between its meetings. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has a Politburo headed by its General Secretary.

The other parties are organised differently. The Congress's top body is the Congress Working Committee, the BJP's is its Parliamentary Board, and the BSP is run by its national president and executive. None of them has a Politburo.

Answer: C

The identity that is not primordial is Citizenship.

Primordial identities, a term made familiar by Clifford Geertz, are those a person is born into and which are felt as 'given': kinship, caste, religion, language, race and region.

Citizenship is a civic, legal identity conferred by a modern state and its laws. It can be acquired, changed or lost, and it cuts across caste, religion and language, so it is the odd one out. Options A, B and D are all classic primordial ties.

Answer: A

Frank and Fuentes wrote Nine Theses on Social Movements.

Andre Gunder Frank, the dependency theorist, and Marta Fuentes published 'Nine Theses on Social Movements' in 1987. They argued that social movements are old, cyclical and mostly middle- and working-class, that most are defensive, and that they seek autonomy rather than state power.

Option C, as its own title says, is a critique of their nine theses, not their article. 'New Social Movements' and 'Essays on New Social Movements' are generic titles for the literature on movements around identity, gender and environment, not the article in question.

Answer: D

The one that is not a civil society campaign is Swachh Bharat.

The Swachh Bharat Mission was launched by the Government of India on 2 October 2014. It is a government programme, run through ministries and funded by the state, even though it invites public participation.

The others arose from civil society: the campaign for LGBT rights led by activists and groups such as the Naz Foundation, the campaign to save Marathi-medium schools in Maharashtra, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan against the Sardar Sarovar dam.

Answer: A

The key's matching is (a)-(3), (b)-(4), (c)-(2), (d)-(1).

The classification follows Almond and Powell. An anti-corruption movement is a spontaneous mass mobilisation without a formal membership, a non-associational or anomic group. The All India Kisan Sabha, the peasants' front of the Left parties, works as a pressure group on agrarian policy. FICCI, the apex chamber of Indian business, lobbies government on economic policy. Greenpeace is a formally organised body with members and staff that pursues a defined cause, an associational interest group.

The other codes give, for example, FICCI the label of an associational group or the anti-corruption movement that of a lobby, which do not fit this scheme.

Answer: B

The 'Congress system' was proposed by Rajni Kothari.

In his 1964 article 'The Congress System in India', Kothari described the one-party dominance of the Nehru years: the Congress was a broad coalition that absorbed rival interests through its internal factions, while opposition parties acted as a 'margin of pressure' outside it rather than as alternatives.

Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress; they were the subjects of such analysis, not the scholars who framed the concept.

Answer: B

The session was at Madras (Avadi).

The Avadi session of the Indian National Congress, held near Madras in January 1955, resolved that the goal was a 'socialistic pattern of society'. The paper dates it 1956, the year the Industrial Policy Resolution and the Second Plan took up the same goal, but Avadi is the session that first declared it, and it is the only option naming Avadi.

New Delhi in 1947, Mumbai in 1960 and Bangalore in 1972 are not the session that adopted the socialistic pattern.

Answer: D

Non-Congressism was proposed by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia.

In the 1960s Lohia argued that the Congress's dominance could be broken only if opposition parties of every shade cooperated against it. The strategy bore fruit in the 1967 elections, when the Congress lost power in several states to Samyukta Vidhayak Dal coalition governments.

Rahul Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi were all Congress leaders, so none would have proposed a strategy aimed against the Congress.

Answer: B

The party is the Bhartiya Janata Party.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha election the BJP won 282 of 543 seats, the first time since 1984 that a single party won a majority on its own, and the first such majority of the twenty-first century. It won again in 2019 with 303 seats.

The Telugu Desam Party, the DMK and the YSR Congress are regional parties. They have won majorities in their own state assemblies but never a national majority in the Lok Sabha.