State, Politics and Development Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Both statements are true. Women in rural India have gained greater voice and participation over the last two decades, and the 73rd Constitution Amendment gave panchayats constitutional status and reserved one third of their seats for women, which brought many rural women into local governance. The question as set accepts both statements as true without asking for a causal link, so the options that call the assertion or the reason false are wrong, and the one that makes the assertion true and the reason false is wrong for the same reason.

Answer: D

Both statements are true. A sense of alienation is increasing among Dalits, and atrocities against them have increased in recent years, which is a main reason for that feeling. The options that call either statement false therefore fail. The question asks only for the truth of each statement, so the correct choice is the one that accepts both as true and does not require a causal link.

Answer: D

The right combination is development projects, deforestation and land acquisition. Large dams, mines and industrial projects, the loss of forest on which tribal livelihoods depend, and state acquisition of land are the main forces that have uprooted tribal communities in India.

The first option mixes in a debt trap and land alienation, which push tribals off their land but are not the displacement caused by projects. The second and third options include debt trap or drought, which cause distress and migration but are not the chief causes of displacement the question has in mind.

Answer: B

The statement that ethnicity is a 'primordial' factor, given in the very condition of human existence, is associated with Clifford Geertz, who stressed the 'primordial attachments' of blood, language, religion and custom in the new states.

Fredrik Barth argued the opposite, that ethnic groups are defined by boundaries that people maintain, not by cultural content given at birth. Max Weber and M.G. Smith wrote on ethnic groups and pluralism in other terms, so the quotation does not come from them.

Answer: A

The Women in Development (WID) approach covers programmes drawn on poverty alleviation, welfare and equity, because it aimed to bring women into existing development through welfare, anti-poverty and equity measures.

Women and Development, and Gender and Development, are later approaches that question the structures of unequal relations. Women, Environment and Development links women's role with ecological concerns. The poverty, welfare and equity emphasis belongs to WID.

Answer: B

The concept of the 'vote bank' was coined by M.N. Srinivas, who used it to describe a group of voters, often a caste, that is mobilised by a patron to vote as a bloc.

Rajni Kothari wrote on caste and politics and the Congress system, Yogendra Yadav is a political scientist, and A.R. Desai wrote on Indian nationalism and Marxist sociology. The term is credited to Srinivas.

Srinivas introduced the idea in his writing on caste and politics in village India, where he saw patrons deliver the votes of their dependants and caste groups to a chosen candidate.

Answer: D

The words 'Socialist', 'Secular' and 'Integrity' were added to the Preamble by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976.

The Fourth Amendment (1955) dealt with property rights, the Seventh (1956) with the reorganisation of states, and the Fourteenth (1962) with the inclusion of Pondicherry. None changed the Preamble.

Secularism, socialism and integrity were added together in 1976 along with other changes to the Constitution, and the amendment is often called a 'mini-Constitution' for the number of changes it made.

Answer: D

The 73rd Amendment provides for reservation of women, reservation for dalits (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) and the involvement of the Gram Sabha in decision-making, so (i), (ii) and (iii).

'People participation' is the general aim and not a separately stated provision. The options that rely on it, or that leave out one of the three listed provisions, are wrong as the key has it.

Answer: C

Both statements are true. Development often leads to an upsurge of ethnic movements, since uneven benefits and costs fuel identity politics, and displacement due to big dams is one of the processes that causes grievances among affected communities.

The options calling either statement false do not match the record of development-linked ethnic mobilisation, which the key accepts.

Dam construction forces communities from their land, and this experience of loss and neglect has fed ethnic and regional movements, as in the anti-dam agitations in the tribal belts of central India.

Answer: C

By the 'Hindu method of tribal absorption' N.K. Bose meant the acceptance of the caste system by tribals because of the economic security and cultural liberalism it offered, so tribes entered the Hindu fold as castes.

It was not forcible absorption, or mere imitation, or exploitation by a colonial power. Bose described a peaceful process of absorption into the Hindu social order.

Bose's essay on the Hindu method of tribal absorption describes how tribes were drawn into the caste system through occupations and the adoption of Hindu practices, with the promise of economic security.