Social Policy and Planning Questions and Answers

Answer: A

'Learning without burden' is the outcome of the Yash Pal Committee.

In 1992 the Ministry of Human Resource Development set up a national advisory committee chaired by Prof. Yash Pal to reduce the academic burden on school children. Its 1993 report, titled Learning Without Burden, criticised rote learning and overloaded syllabi and influenced the National Curriculum Framework of 2005.

The Kothari Commission (Education Commission, 1964-66) produced the report that shaped the 1968 education policy, and the Radhakrishnan Commission (1948-49) dealt with university education. Neither, nor the Rajgopal Committee, produced this report.

Answer: A

The key's answer is that (A) is true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

Assertion: demands from various communities for inclusion in reservation for jobs, such as the agitations of the Jats, Patidars and Marathas, grew steadily in the years before this paper.

Reason: neoliberal policies since 1991 shifted the economy towards free markets, while public sector employment shrank and secure jobs grew scarce. As secure employment became harder to find, groups that had not sought reservation before turned to it as protection, so the Reason explains the Assertion. That rules out the options saying (R) does not explain (A) or that either is untrue.

Answer: D

The scheme is the National Youth Corps.

Under the National Youth Corps, run by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, young people aged 18-25 are engaged as volunteers for up to two years and paid an honorarium to work in nation building activities in their areas, such as literacy, health awareness and helping people use government schemes.

The National Service Scheme enrols college and school students as volunteers alongside their studies, without a two-year full-time engagement. The National Cadet Corps gives students military-style training as cadets. 'National Volunteer Scheme' is not the name of the scheme described.

Answer: D

The key is Eighth five-year plan.

The Eighth Plan (1992 to 1997) is the one that stressed people's participation and the involvement of voluntary organisations in development, and it is the Plan the key names for the role of NGOs in conserving the environment. The Seventh Plan stressed an integrated approach to conserving land, water, flora and fauna, and the key does not credit it with the stress on NGOs.

What could not be confirmed: the Plan chapter's own wording on NGOs and the environment was not found, and the Sixth and Seventh Plans also mentioned voluntary action in general terms. The answer follows the University's key.

Answer: A

The Ministry of Welfare was renamed in 1998.

The Ministry of Welfare became the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 1998. The ministry deals with the welfare and empowerment of Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes, senior citizens, victims of substance abuse and other marginalised groups; the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities was carved out of it later, in 2012.

1988, 1978 and 1968 are earlier dates when the ministry still bore other names.

Answer: A

The National Commission for Women is an autonomous body.

The NCW was set up in January 1992 under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990. It is a statutory body, created by an Act of Parliament, that functions autonomously to review the constitutional and legal safeguards for women, recommend remedial legislation, look into complaints and advise the government on policy affecting women.

Since it is created by a statute, it is not a non-statutory body, and 'semi-statutory' and 'quasi-statutory' are not accurate descriptions of a commission set up by its own Act. Of the options given, its autonomous character is the correct description.

Answer: C

The exponent is R. M. Titmuss.

Richard Titmuss, the first professor of social administration at the London School of Economics, founded social policy as an academic subject. He wrote from a democratic socialist position that valued universal social services, altruism and social integration, seen most clearly in The Gift Relationship (1970), and he developed the residual, industrial achievement-performance and institutional redistributive models of social policy.

T. H. Marshall is known for his theory of civil, political and social citizenship rather than a socialist standpoint. B. B. Gilbert is a historian of British national insurance, and A. V. Dicey a constitutional lawyer known for the rule of law.

Answer: A

Under the residual model, the state provided food and shelter to cases of extreme need arising out of physical handicap such as old age or joblessness over an extended period.

In Titmuss's residual welfare model, the family and the market are the natural channels for meeting needs, and the state steps in only temporarily, when these break down, as a last resort for those in extreme need. Help is minimal, often means-tested and stigmatising.

Providing primary education and public health, or all services such as health, education and housing, describes the institutional model, in which the state accepts wide responsibility for welfare. Providing only higher education and health services fits no model of social policy.

Answer: A

The strategy belonged to the National Agricultural Policy of India, 2000.

The National Agricultural Policy announced in July 2000 aimed at over 4 per cent annual growth in agriculture that would be sustainable. One of its stated aims was to promote technically sound, economically viable, environmentally non-degrading and socially acceptable use of the country's natural resources, land, water and genetic endowment, to promote sustainable development of agriculture.

The National Environment Policy, 2006 covers environmental protection as a whole, the National Forest Policy concerns forests, and the National Policy on Biofuels, 2018 deals with ethanol and biodiesel; none is the policy for sustainable agriculture.

Answer: D

The HDI does not include the population below the poverty line.

The UNDP's Human Development Index combines three dimensions: a long and healthy life, measured by life expectancy at birth; knowledge, measured by mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling; and a decent standard of living, measured by gross national income per capita.

Poverty is measured separately, by the Multidimensional Poverty Index and by national poverty lines; it is not one of the HDI's indicators.