State, Politics and Development Questions and Answers

Answer: B

It may be termed Totalitarian.

A totalitarian regime seeks to control every aspect of life, social, cultural, political and economic, through a single party and an official ideology, mass mobilisation and propaganda; Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union are the classic cases studied by Hannah Arendt and others.

An authoritarian or despotic regime concentrates political power but may leave much of social and economic life alone, and a democratic order allows competing parties and ideologies, the opposite of one ideology dominating everything.

Answer: B

Section 497 dealt with Adultery.

In Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018), a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court struck down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, which made adultery an offence by a man with another man's wife, as violating Articles 14, 15 and 21. The court held it treated a wife as her husband's property; adultery remains a civil ground for divorce.

Honour killings, child sexual abuse and workplace harassment are dealt with under other provisions; none was the subject of Section 497.

Answer: A

The three types are Parochial, Subject and Participant.

In The Civic Culture (1963), Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba classified political cultures by citizens' orientations to politics. In a parochial culture people have little awareness of the national political system, in a subject culture they are aware of it but passive, and in a participant culture they see themselves as active participants. The civic culture is a mixture of the three.

The other triads mix in terms such as 'active', 'regional' or 'universal' that are not part of their typology.

Answer: C

The group that is not a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group in Maharashtra is Manner Warlu.

Maharashtra has three PVTGs: the Katkaria (Kathodi), the Kolam and the Maria Gond (Madia Gond). These groups were identified for their pre-agricultural technology, low literacy and stagnant or declining population.

The Mannervarlu are a Scheduled Tribe of Maharashtra but are not on the PVTG list, so they are the odd one out.

Answer: B

The assertion was made by the Knowledge Commission of India.

The National Knowledge Commission, set up in 2005 under Sam Pitroda, argued in its reports that India had missed the industrial revolution but could not afford to miss the knowledge revolution, and recommended reforms in education, libraries, translation, e-governance and innovation.

The Education Commission (Kothari Commission, 1964-66) reported on education, not on the knowledge revolution, and there was no industrial or agricultural commission associated with this line.

Answer: B

The model is the Pluralistic model.

Pluralists such as Robert Dahl argue that power in modern democracies is dispersed among many competing interest groups (business, unions, professions, voluntary associations), none of which dominates all decisions; the state acts as a broker among them.

The power elite model (C. Wright Mills) holds that a small, connected elite rules, and the Marxist model locates power in the dominant economic class. 'Democratic model' is not the name of this theory.

Answer: A

The answer is Clause (1) of Article 244.

Article 244(1) applies the Fifth Schedule to the administration and control of the Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in all States other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram; the Fifth Schedule (paragraph 6) then empowers the President to declare areas to be Scheduled Areas.

Article 244(2) applies the Sixth Schedule to the tribal areas of those four north-eastern States, which are called tribal areas, not scheduled areas. Article 244 has no clauses (3) or (4).

Answer: D

Participation in work-force is not one of the GDI's measures.

The Gender-related Development Index, introduced by UNDP in 1995, adjusts the three dimensions of the Human Development Index for gender inequality. It uses life expectancy at birth (health), adult literacy and school enrolment (knowledge) and estimated earned income (standard of living), each calculated separately for women and men.

Labour-force participation is an indicator in the Gender Inequality Index, which replaced the older Gender Empowerment Measure, not in the GDI. Life expectancy, literacy and earned income are all GDI components.

Answer: A

The HDI's indicators are health, education and income.

The Human Development Index of the UNDP combines three dimensions: a long and healthy life (life expectancy at birth), knowledge (years of schooling) and a decent standard of living (gross national income per head). The geometric mean of the three normalised indices gives a value between 0 and 1, by which countries are ranked.

Freedom, equality, fraternity, equity, social justice, liberty and openness are political and moral ideals. They are not measured by the HDI.

Answer: A

The elite theory of power was developed by Vilfredo Pareto.

Pareto, with Gaetano Mosca and later Robert Michels, argued that every society is ruled by a minority, the elite. In his theory of the 'circulation of elites', governing elites of 'lions' (who rule by force) and 'foxes' (who rule by cunning) rise and decline in turn.

Talcott Parsons saw power as a generalised capacity of the social system, not an elite possession. Friedrich Engels and Ralph Miliband are Marxists, who explain power through class, with the state serving the dominant class.