State, Politics and Development Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The one that is not a characteristic of the state is ethnicity.

The state is usually defined, following Weber, as the body that successfully claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory. Its characteristics are a political apparatus of government, a defined territory, and law backed by force (with population and sovereignty).

Ethnicity, a shared cultural or ancestral identity, belongs to the idea of a nation or ethnic group. Many states contain several ethnic groups, so it is not a defining feature of the state.

Answer: B

It is an example of global disparities.

The figure comes from the UNDP Human Development Report 1998, which found that the richest fifth of the world's people, in the highest-income countries, accounted for 86% of total private consumption while the poorest fifth accounted for just over 1%. The point is the gap between rich and poor nations, which is what global disparity means.

Global poverty and endemic poverty describe the condition of the poor, not the share consumed by the rich, and 'dimension of poverty' names one aspect of deprivation rather than an inequality between nations.

Answer: B

The Preamble describes India as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.

The Preamble as adopted in 1949 read 'Sovereign Democratic Republic'. The 42nd Amendment of 1976 inserted the words 'Socialist' and 'Secular', giving the full description now in force: 'a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC'.

The other options each leave out part of that description. 'Sovereign and secular' and 'Secular and democratic' omit both 'republic' and other key words, and 'Secular, sovereign and democratic republic' omits 'socialist'.

Answer: C

The answer is There is secularism but not enough secularization.

Sociologists distinguish secularism, the constitutional and political principle that the state keeps an equal distance from all religions, from secularization, the social process by which religion loses its hold over everyday life and public institutions. Writers such as T. N. Madan pointed out that India adopted secularism as state policy while religion remained central to most people's lives, and this gap is the problem the stem refers to.

Secularization is plainly not complete, secularism is not treated as irrelevant by the Constitution, and the state has not opposed secularization.

Answer: B

The Kheda Satyagraha was started in March 1918.

After crop failure in 1917-18 the peasants of Kheda district in Gujarat asked for land revenue to be remitted under the famine rules. When the government refused, Gandhi launched a no-revenue satyagraha on 22 March 1918, supported by Vallabhbhai Patel, Indulal Yagnik and others.

The 1919 dates fall in the year of the Rowlatt Act, the Rowlatt Satyagraha and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and 1920 is the year of the Non-Cooperation Movement, so none of them fits Kheda.

Answer: A

The author is Samir Amin.

The Egyptian-French economist Samir Amin published Neo-Colonialism in West Africa in 1973. It examines how West African states such as Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana remained dependent on the metropolitan economy after independence, and belongs to his wider work on unequal development between centre and periphery.

Andre Gunder Frank wrote on the development of underdevelopment in Latin America, Gunnar Myrdal on Asian poverty in Asian Drama, and Eric Wolf on peasants and on Europe and the People Without History.

Answer: D

The programme was renamed in 1977.

After the excesses of forced sterilisation during the Emergency (1975-77), the Janata government that took office in 1977 renamed the Family Planning Programme the Family Welfare Programme, and announced that family planning would be voluntary and part of a wider package of maternal and child health.

1975 is the year the Emergency was declared, two years before the rename. 2001 and 2011 are census years, and the National Population Policy of 2000 came long after the rename.

Answer: A

The development perspective treats women as partners in development.

Earlier welfare approaches saw women as passive recipients of relief, as mothers and dependants. From the 1970s the development perspective, reflected in India's Sixth Five Year Plan with its first chapter on women and development, began to treat women as active participants and agents whose work contributes to development.

'Beneficiary of welfare schemes' and 'objects of charity' describe the earlier welfare view, and 'target population' describes the way family planning programmes saw women.

Answer: C

It is the 5th Schedule.

The Fifth Schedule provides for the administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in states other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, including Tribes Advisory Councils and the Governor's power to modify laws in those areas. The Sixth Schedule covers the tribal areas of those four north-eastern states.

The 3rd Schedule holds oaths and the 4th the allocation of Rajya Sabha seats; the 7th lists the Union, State and Concurrent subjects and the 8th the languages; the 10th deals with anti-defection.

Answer: B

The poverty line denotes a minimum standard of calories and nutritional intake.

In India the poverty line was first drawn by the Alagh task force (1979) as the income needed to buy 2,400 calories a day per person in rural areas and 2,100 in urban areas, and later committees (Lakdawala, Tendulkar, Rangarajan) kept nutrition at the core of the consumption basket.

Adequate housing is one item a poverty line may consider, not what it denotes. 'What is not needed' reverses the idea, and 'money and power' describes inequality rather than a minimum standard.