Welfare and Development Services Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The Chairperson is chosen from prominent women social workers.

The Central Social Welfare Board was set up in 1953 to promote voluntary social welfare organisations, with Durgabai Deshmukh as its first chairperson. Its chairperson has traditionally been an eminent woman social worker, appointed by the Central Government, reflecting the Board's focus on welfare of women and children through voluntary action.

Sociologists, activists and psychologists may serve the sector, but the Board's chairperson is drawn from women with experience of social work.

Answer: A

NGOs are also known as the "third sector".

Society is often described as having three sectors: the state (government) as the first, the market (private business) as the second, and the voluntary or non-profit sector of NGOs, charities and community organisations as the third. The term emphasises that NGOs are neither governmental nor profit-making.

'Third world' was a Cold War term for developing countries, and 'third state' and 'third view' are not names for the voluntary sector.

Answer: A

On the key, a minimum of two persons is required.

A non-profit company is registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013 (Section 25 of the old 1956 Act). A Section 8 company can be formed as a private company, which needs a minimum of two members (and two directors), so two persons are enough to register it.

Three is the minimum number of directors for a public company, and seven the minimum number of members for a public company or for registering a society, so those figures do not give the minimum for a Section 8 company.

Answer: C

Nehru Yuva Kendras work on the principles of voluntarism, self-help and community participation.

Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan, set up in 1972 under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, describes its aim as channelising the power of youth on the principles of voluntarism, self-help and community participation, mainly through village youth clubs.

Patriotism, sports and culture, and village self-reliance all feature in its activities, but they are not the three guiding principles; each wrong option swaps community participation for one of them.

Answer: C

The Principle of Planned Group Formation is not a principle of social welfare administration.

Planned group formation is a principle of social group work, in Trecker's list: the worker forms the group deliberately, with attention to its size, composition and purpose.

The other three are principles of social welfare administration: services must be based on community and client needs, must fit the cultural setting in which the agency works, and must follow the agency's stated purpose. That is why the group-work principle is the odd one out.

Answer: B

Pratham was established in 1995 to educate children in the slums of Mumbai.

Pratham began as a partnership between UNICEF, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and citizens, running pre-schools (balwadis) and learning support in Mumbai's slums. It has since grown into one of India's largest education NGOs and publishes the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER).

Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata were not its starting point, though Pratham later spread to many states.

Answer: A

The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act was enacted in 1976.

The FCRA of 1976, passed during the Emergency, regulated the acceptance and use of foreign contributions by organisations and individuals so that foreign funds did not influence national affairs. It was replaced by a new Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act in 2010, later amended in 2020.

1986, 1996 and 2006 are not enactment years. The 2010 Act is the likely source of confusion, but none of the options names it.

Answer: B

An unofficial channel of communication is known as the grapevine.

In organisations, the grapevine is the informal network through which information, gossip and rumours pass from person to person outside the official chain of command. It is fast and often partly accurate.

An interface is a point of contact between systems. Verbal intonation is the rise and fall of the voice, and linear communication is a one-way model of sending messages. None of them names informal channels.

Answer: B

The key gives evaluation and feedback as the two functions added to POSDCORB.

Gulick and Urwick's POSDCORB lists seven functions: planning, organising, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. Evaluation and feedback are the natural functions to add, because they close the loop of administration by checking what has been done and feeding the result back into planning.

I could not confirm in any source that evaluation and feedback are the two functions usually named, because the search found only the original seven. Research, cooperation and supervision are not recognised additions that I could find either, so the key is kept by elimination and the question's wording ('recently') rests on the textbook the paper used.

Answer: D

The definition is given by Walter Friedlander.

In Introduction to Social Welfare (1955), Friedlander defined social welfare as 'the organised system of social services and institutions, designed to aid individuals and groups to attain satisfying standards of life and health'. It is the most quoted definition in Indian social work texts.

Harleigh Trecker and Gisela Konopka wrote on social group work, and Helen Harris Perlman on casework and its problem-solving model. None of them gave this definition.