Social Welfare Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The primary catalyst of social welfare services is Voluntary Organisations.

In India social welfare services such as care of women, children, the aged and the disabled were pioneered by voluntary organisations, and government policy has relied on them to deliver such services. The Central Social Welfare Board, set up in 1953, was created mainly to assist and fund voluntary organisations rather than to run services itself.

The Social Welfare Board is therefore a channel for voluntary effort rather than the primary agent. Panchayats and Zila Parishads are general bodies of rural local government whose welfare functions are only part of their work.

Answer: C

The key gives R.G. Karve, as printed, meaning Raghunath Dhondo Karve.

R.D. Karve, a mathematics teacher and son of the social reformer Dhondo Keshav Karve, was the pioneer of birth control in India. In Bombay in the 1920s he ran a birth control clinic, the first in the country, and he campaigned for contraception and sex education through his Marathi journal Samaj Swasthya, at the cost of his job and of prosecutions. The question's year and initials are given as printed.

Lokmanya Tilak, Sardar Patel and Gandhi did not start any such programme; Gandhi in fact opposed artificial contraception and advocated self-control.

Answer: A

The Family Planning Programme has been run at the national level since 1952.

India became the first country in the world to launch a national family planning programme, in 1952, as part of the First Five Year Plan. It began with clinics and the rhythm method, moved to the extension approach in the 1960s, and was renamed the Family Welfare Programme in 1977.

1949 predates the First Plan, and 1956 and 1960 fall in the Second Plan, when the programme was already running and being expanded, so they are not its starting year.

Answer: A

The process is social welfare administration.

The classic definition, credited to John C. Kidneigh, describes social welfare (social work) administration as the process of transforming social policy into social services. Policy states what society intends to do for those in need, and administration turns that intention into actual services delivered to people.

Social service is the end product, not the process of producing it. Social security schemes are one kind of programme, providing income support against risks such as old age and sickness. Development administration is concerned with planned economic and social development in general, not specifically with turning welfare policy into services.

Answer: D

The group that is not the Ministry's target is labour.

Workers' welfare, wages and industrial relations belong to the Ministry of Labour and Employment.

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment works for the Scheduled Castes, the Other Backward Classes and other disadvantaged groups. Its social defence division covers senior citizens, transgender persons and persons engaged in begging, along with victims of substance abuse. So senior citizens, transgender persons and beggars are all within its remit, and only labour falls outside it.

Answer: B

It would be called a non-profit organization.

'Non-governmental organisation' is the term used in the United Nations system and in most of the developing world. In the United States the same kind of body, a private organisation that pursues a public or social purpose and does not distribute profits, is usually called a non-profit organisation, so the two names often refer to the same thing in different countries.

Development, welfare and social organisations are descriptions of what particular NGOs do, not the general name used in other countries for the whole category.

Answer: B

The keyed answer is M.V. Pylee.

M.V. Pylee is the author of Constitutional Government in India and a standard commentator on the Directive Principles of State Policy, which he describes as setting out the fundamentals towards which the State works and the path to the ideals of the Preamble. A remark that the Directive Principles are the guarantee of a genuine democracy is in keeping with his view of them as a guide to the Preamble's ideals.

I could not trace the exact quotation to any author, so the key is kept as printed. The other names are less likely: Dr B.R. Ambedkar spoke of the Directive Principles as aiming at economic democracy and as instruments of instruction to future governments, B.N. Rau drafted the framework of the Directive Principles as the Constitutional Adviser and is not known for this remark, and M.C. Setalvad is known as an Attorney General and jurist.

Answer: B

The article is 334.

Article 334 originally provided that the reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and the state Legislative Assemblies, and the nomination of Anglo-Indians, would cease ten years after the Constitution came into force. The period has been extended by a constitutional amendment each decade, which is the ten-year term the question refers to.

Article 338 provides for the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, Article 244 for the administration of Scheduled and Tribal Areas, and Article 164 for the appointment of Ministers in the states. None of them sets a ten-year term.

Answer: B

The term is Scheduled Caste.

The Government of India Act, 1935, introduced the expression 'Scheduled Castes' for the castes and groups that had earlier been called the depressed classes, and the Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1936, listed them in a schedule. That is the origin of the name, which the Constitution later carried forward.

'Other Backward Classes' came into official use after independence, through the backward classes commissions. The term 'Scheduled Tribes' was introduced by the Constitution, so 'Scheduled Caste and Tribe' does not date from 1935, and women's empowerment is not a term of the 1935 Act at all.

Answer: C

The economic criterion was first introduced under P. V. Narsimha Rao.

In September 1991 the Narasimha Rao government issued an office memorandum that, alongside the Mandal reservation of 27 per cent for backward classes, reserved a further 10 per cent of central government posts for economically backward sections of the people not covered by any existing scheme of reservation. In Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) the Supreme Court struck down this 10 per cent, holding that reservation under Article 16(4) could not rest on economic criteria alone.

Nehru and Shastri introduced no such reservation. The Modi government's 103rd Amendment of 2019, providing 10 per cent for economically weaker sections, came later, so it was not the first.