Social Policy and Planning Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The goal incorporated is Good health and well being.

Good Health and Well-being is the title of Sustainable Development Goal 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

The other options are problems the goals seek to end, not goals themselves: SDG 5 is gender equality, so gender inequality and discrimination are what it aims to remove, and infant mortality appears only as a target to be reduced under SDG 3.

Answer: C

(A) is true, but (R) is false.

Assertion A correctly describes social development as a comprehensive process of deliberate structural change in political, economic and cultural life, aimed at transforming society.

Reason R is false because of the word 'only'. Social development aims at human well-being in its broadest sense, including health, education, social justice, participation and quality of life, not only at economic means and their distribution. Economic growth is one component, not the whole. Since R is false, the options calling both statements true, and option D, are wrong.

Answer: C

The National Food Security Act was enacted in 2013.

The National Food Security Act, 2013 came into force in September 2013. It entitles up to 75 percent of the rural and 50 percent of the urban population to 5 kg of subsidised foodgrains per person per month, gives Antyodaya households 35 kg, and provides maternity benefits and meals for children.

2000 is the year the Antyodaya Anna Yojana began, 2010 predates the Act, and by 2015 the Act was already in force, with states rolling it out.

Answer: B

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana is a programme for skill development.

Launched in 2015 by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and implemented through the National Skill Development Corporation, PMKVY provides short-term, industry-relevant skill training and certification (including recognition of prior learning) to young people, to improve their employability.

Rural roads are built under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, adult education is covered by literacy programmes, and girls' education by schemes such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao; none of these is PMKVY.

Answer: B

The HDI is a comparative measure of (a), (b) and (d): life expectancy, literacy and income.

The UNDP's Human Development Index combines three dimensions: a long and healthy life (life expectancy at birth), knowledge (originally adult literacy and enrolment, now years of schooling), and a decent standard of living, measured by income per capita. In the question's terms, these are life expectancy, literacy and income.

'Standard of living' is the dimension that income measures, so the key treats income, not the broader phrase, as the component; options with (c) instead of (d), or without life expectancy, do not match.

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the Reason correctly explains the Assertion.

Gandhi was not against machines as such. He objected to the craze for machinery that displaced labour and concentrated wealth, and he accepted machines that lightened work, such as the sewing machine. His real objection was to an industrial, urban economy that lived off the villages, drawing away the fruits of the labour of peasants and artisans.

Because his opposition was aimed at that exploitative relationship rather than at technology itself, the Reason explains why he was not totally against mechanisation, ruling out the other options.

Answer: D

The keyed answer is the communication function.

Social indicators are statistical measures of social conditions. The functions usually named for them are descriptive (showing the state of society and its trends), analytical (explaining relations between conditions) and monitoring or evaluative (tracking change and testing whether policies work). These three are options A, B and C.

Communication is not among the standard listed functions, so the key treats it as the one that is not a main purpose. I could not find a source that names a communication function for social indicators; reporting to the public is sometimes described as a use of indicators, so the keyed answer rests on the standard three-function list rather than on a source that rules communication out.

Answer: B

Among the options, the proponent of welfare economics is Amartya Sen.

Welfare economics studies how economic arrangements affect social well-being. A.C. Pigou founded the field with The Economics of Welfare (1920), but he is not offered. Amartya Sen received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to welfare economics, including social choice theory, poverty measurement and the capability approach.

Mahbub ul Haq ('Mahboob Huq' in the paper) devised the Human Development Index, Karl Marx analysed capitalism and class, and Gunnar Myrdal is known for Asian Drama; none is the leading welfare economist among the options.

Answer: B

SWAYAM is an integrated platform and portal for online courses.

SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds), launched by the Government of India in 2017, offers free massive open online courses from school level to postgraduate level, taught by teachers from leading institutions, with credit transfer possible for university students.

Despite its name, which means 'self', it is not an employment generation, self-employment or employment guarantee scheme; employment guarantee, for example, is provided under MGNREGA.

Answer: A

The Marxist, neo-Marxist or conflict approach is the radical socialist approach.

In theories of social welfare and social policy, the radical or Marxist approach sees the welfare state as shaped by class conflict under capitalism: welfare both meets workers' needs and helps to preserve the capitalist system, and real welfare requires structural change in the ownership of resources.

The social democratic approach accepts the market economy but uses the state to reduce inequality, and the right or new right approach favours a minimal state and market solutions. 'Racist approach' is not a school of welfare theory.