State and Local Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The observation that the growth of rural settlements which have acquired urban characteristics is very slow was made in the 11th Five Year Plan, as the key gives. The Plan discussed the process of urbanization and the slow reclassification of large villages.

The 10th Plan, the National Sample Survey and the National Development Council are not the source of this observation. The Plan documents of the period discuss urbanisation and the reclassification of villages as towns. The quoted observation about slow growth of rural settlements with urban traits is from the Eleventh Plan, as the key gives.

Answer: B

The Panchayati Raj Day is celebrated in India on 24 April. The date marks the day in 1993 when the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, which gave constitutional status to the Panchayati Raj institutions, came into force.

The 21st of April is Civil Services Day, 2 October is Gandhi Jayanti and 14 November is Children's Day. So the other options are wrong. The day is observed to remind the country of the third tier of government. Panchayati Raj institutions were given a constitutional basis by the 73rd Amendment, and the date of its coming into force is the one marked each year.

Answer: C

Lord Ripon's Resolution on Local Self-Government was adopted on 18 May 1882. It is regarded as the Magna Carta of local self-government in India, because it called for elected local boards and non-official chairmen.

The other dates in the options are not the date of the Resolution. The Resolution followed the Government of India's wish to train Indians in self-government, and it came while Ripon was Viceroy from 1880 to 1884. Its date, in May of 1882, is the point the question tests.

Answer: A

Planning for economic and social development is not included in the Eleventh Schedule. The schedule lists the subjects of the Panchayats, such as agriculture, rural housing and poverty alleviation programmes.

Non-conventional energy sources, the poverty alleviation programme and technical training and vocational education are among its 29 subjects, so they are the distractors. Planning for economic and social development is a function listed in the Twelfth Schedule, which belongs to the municipalities, and not in the Eleventh Schedule, which was added by the 73rd Amendment for the Panchayats.

Answer: A

All four are recommendations of the P.K. Thungon Committee, so the code is (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv). It recommended a fixed term of five years for the Panchayati Raj bodies, that they should not remain superseded for more than six months, that the District Collector should be the CEO of the Zila Parishad, and that a State Finance Commission be set up.

Codes with fewer items leave out some of the recommendations.

Answer: C

MNREGA is open to social audit, is implemented by the Gram Panchayat at the village level and is meant for all unskilled able bodied persons desirous of seeking work, which is the code (i), (ii) and (iv).

The Gram Panchayat is the main implementing agency for the programme at the village level, and a village development officer is not named in the Act as the implementer. So (iii) is wrong, and the codes containing it are rejected.

Answer: A

Both statements are correct and the Reason is the correct explanation of the Assertion.

Rural development programmes suffer from the lack of effective monitoring and evaluation. This is explained by the weaknesses that the Reason names: the rural development administration is deficient in professionalism and there is a multiplicity of authorities, so no one owns the task of checking results. The codes calling either statement false are wrong.

Answer: C

The chronological order is the Local Finance Enquiry Committee, the Taxation Enquiry Commission, the Rural-Urban Relationship Committee and the National Commission on Urbanisation, that is (iv), (iii), (i), (ii).

The Local Finance Enquiry Committee reported in the early 1950s, the Taxation Enquiry came shortly after, the Rural-Urban Relationship Committee was in the 1960s, and the National Commission on Urbanisation reported in 1988. The other codes place the Commission on Urbanisation before earlier bodies.

Answer: A

Rural development means all four: the provision of social services, improving infrastructure facilities, providing economic help to individuals and groups for self-employment, and capacity building of rural local government. So the code is (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv).

The shorter codes cover only a part of the meaning. Rural development is a wide concept that takes in the economic, social and institutional aspects of village life.

Answer: B

The key gives the sequence as the Tribal Area Development Programme, the Intensive Area Development Scheme, the Drought-prone Area Programme and the Command Area Development Programme, which is the code (ii), (i), (iii), (iv).

The other codes begin with a later programme such as the Command Area Development Programme, or put the Intensive Area Development Scheme before the tribal programme, which does not match the order in which they were begun.