Globalisation, Population, Poverty and Social Empowerment

GS-I asks for four blocks that the Indian Society chapter touches only at the edges: the effects of globalisation on Indian society; population and its associated issues, which go beyond the demographic transition covered there; poverty and developmental issues, including inclusion; and social empowerment, meaning education and health and the institutions that deliver them. The Indian Society chapter already carries diversity, women, urbanisation and the fertility figures, so this chapter begins where that one stops. The discipline that earns marks is the same as across GS-I: name the concept precisely, say what would count as evidence for it, and treat policy as a design with a stated mechanism rather than as a slogan. Two habits need particular care here. Globalisation and poverty both invite a verdict, and the answer should offer a ledger or a measure instead. Schemes are easy to praise or condemn, so the answer should first say what a scheme is designed to do, and only then how well it has done.

How GS-I Asks These Blocks, and How to Answer Them

In Mains these blocks arrive in four recurring shapes. Analytical: examine how a process such as globalisation or ageing has affected a social institution. Measurement: discuss how poverty or development should be measured, and what each measure hides. Policy-design: evaluate a scheme or institution, usually on its design and delivery rather than on claims of outcome. Demographic: explain what a population’s age structure or migration pattern implies for jobs, health and services. In Prelims the same material returns as facts: which index has how many indicators, which institution delivers which service, which Article or Act underlies which right. The answer that scores uses the right term and then shows the mechanism.

  • Define the measure before you judge it. "Poverty" means little until the line, the dimensions or the survey is named. Say which measure you use and what it leaves out.
  • Use a ledger for globalisation. Gains and costs, each with its mechanism, and a conclusion about who bears the costs. A verdict without a ledger is opinion.
  • Keep the survey and its year with the number. Name the NFHS round, the census, the Periodic Labour Force Survey or the national index and its edition. A figure without its source earns no credit, and a figure that changes from answer to answer is worse.
  • Describe a scheme by its design, then by its evidence. What it is meant to do, who is entitled, how the money moves, which institution delivers it. A claim of outcome needs a named evaluation; without one, say what the design predicts.
  • Scheme names change; principles do not. Governments rename, merge and restructure programmes. Anchor the answer on the constitutional provision, the Act or the design principle, and name the scheme as it stood when you last checked it.

Globalisation and Indian Society: Culture, Family, Labour, Identity and the Consumer

Treat globalisation as a set of flows (of goods, capital, people, media and ideas), and every social effect travels through one of them. The policy episode is the 1991 reforms, which opened trade, investment and the financial system, but the sociology is wider: a satellite channel, a migrant’s remittance, an export factory and a platform application all reach a household. The useful analytical tool is Arjun Appadurai’s idea of scapes (ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes), which explains why one global flow lands differently in each locality. The table sets out five domains, the concept to use for each, and the point that keeps the answer balanced.

Five domains: what changes, the concept to use, and the balancing point
DomainWhat changesConcept to useBalancing point
CultureForeign media, food, dress and language enter everyday lifeGlocalisation (Roland Robertson): global forms adapted locally, so the two blendHomogenisation is a claim to test, not a finding. Cuisine, cinema and advertising show adaptation as often as replacement
FamilyMigration separates spouses and parents from children; care arrangements for children and elders are reorganisedMigration-led households and care chains, in which care passes between generations and between kin and paid workersChange is plural. Households reorganise rather than disappear, and the strain falls on the care of children and the elderly
LabourServices and information technology grow; contract, informal and platform work expand beside formal jobsJobless growth: output rising faster than employment; informalisation of the workforceGrowth in high-productivity sectors does not by itself absorb workers leaving agriculture. The Code on Social Security, 2020, covers gig and platform workers and has been in force since 21 November 2025
IdentityAn urban middle class and a consumer culture emerge; caste and community reappear as associations and online networksOrganisational forms of identity, as the Indian Society chapter sets out for casteGlobalisation changes the form in which identity is organised rather than erasing it
ConsumerAdvertising, credit, online retail and digital services reach households directlyThe consumer as a bearer of rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019The consumer is courted and also regulated: the central authority acts on misleading advertisements, e-commerce rules date from 2020, and dark-pattern guidelines from 2023
⚠️ Liberalisation is not the whole of globalisation
The 1991 reforms are a policy episode: liberalisation, privatisation and opening to trade and investment. Globalisation is wider. It includes migration, the global spread of media and ideas, and the transnational organisation of production. An answer that equates the two dates its social analysis to a single year, and misses the migrant and the viewer, who are not moved by a tariff schedule. Use "reforms" for the policy and "globalisation" for the flows.

Population: Age Structure, Distribution, Migration and the Dividend

The question has moved from how fast the population grows to what shape it takes. Four features define that shape. The age structure decides the dependency burden and the size of the working-age population. The distribution across regions decides where jobs, schools and health services will be needed. Migration moves people within a short span of years and changes the places they land in. The sex ratio and the share of older persons change what care, pensions and health systems must provide. The concept that joins the first and the last of these is the dependency ratio: dependants (the young, under 15, and the old, typically 65 and above) per hundred persons of working age. It falls while the working-age share rises, and rises again as the population ages.

Population features, what each measures, and the trap in each
FeatureWhat it measuresTrap
Age structureShare of the young, the working-age and the old in the total populationTreating a large youth share as a benefit in itself. It is a dividend only if the young find work
DistributionDensity and growth across regions, and between rural and urban areas (urbanisation is in the Indian Society chapter)Describing regional growth as one "north problem". Southern states are ageing earlier, while parts of the northern plain still have high fertility
MigrationMovement across districts and states for work, marriage, education or distressCounting all migration as distress. A large share of recorded female migration is linked to marriage, and much male migration is seasonal work for income
Sex ratioFemales per thousand males, at birth and among children, and in the population as a wholeQuoting the overall census ratio for the child sex ratio. They are different indicators, and the birth sex ratio puzzle is in the Indian Society chapter
Older personsShare aged 60 and above, the very old, and their living arrangementsEquating ageing with a burden alone. It is also a demand for health care, pensions and support for care

The demographic dividend is a window, not a guarantee. It opens when the working-age share is large and a falling dependency ratio leaves households and the state more to invest, and it closes as the cohort ages. What makes the dividend real is a set of conditions, and an answer should name them one by one:

  1. Learning, not enrolment. Children in school must acquire the skills that employers and society need. A child who is enrolled but cannot read a simple text has been admitted, not educated.
  2. Jobs that absorb entrants. Labour-intensive manufacturing and services with a route out of agriculture and out of informal work. Without them, a large young cohort becomes educated unemployment.
  3. Health. A young entrant who is undernourished or chronically ill is a weaker worker for life, and the dividend is lost at the start of working age.
  4. Women in the labour force. A dividend that leaves out half the working-age population is a smaller dividend, and the reasons for low female participation are those of the Indian Society chapter: care work, safety, mobility and the lack of acceptable local jobs.
  5. Cities that can absorb migrants. Housing, transport and training that follow the people who arrive. A migrant without a place to live and no route to a skill is not an asset to any city.

East Asian economies that gained strongly from their working-age population combined rising schooling with export-oriented manufacturing that employed the new cohorts. The lesson for an answer is the pairing, not the list of countries: the window was used because schooling and jobs were in place together. Ageing is the second face of the same transition. The National Policy for Older Persons, 1999 and the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 shape the response, and the Act places a legal duty on children to maintain their parents, enforceable before a tribunal, which makes a family obligation justiciable. The National Population Policy, 2000 aimed at replacement-level fertility by 2045.

ℹ️ Dating a population figure
Census 2011 is the last completed enumeration; the 2021 round was postponed, and the next has a reference date of 1 March 2027. Estimates and projections after 2011 are not counts, and a survey such as the NFHS gives rates for its own period, not a census count. Date every figure to its source, and say when it is a projection.

Poverty and Development: Concepts, Multidimensional Measures and Inclusion

Poverty is best understood as the deprivation of what a person can do and be, and not only as a shortfall of income. The distinction matters for measurement. Absolute poverty is a fixed standard of minimum need; relative poverty is measured against the living standards of the society around. Income or consumption poverty counts what a household can buy; multidimensional poverty counts what it lacks, such as health, schooling, housing, water, fuel, assets and bank access. Amartya Sen’s capability approach, set out in Development as Freedom (1999), supplies the reason: income is a means to capabilities, and two households with the same income can differ sharply in capability because of disability, caste, location or the absence of services. Ragnar Nurkse’s vicious circle of poverty (1953) supplies the dynamic: low income limits saving and investment, which keeps productivity and income low. In this language, development means expanding capabilities as well as incomes.

Measures of poverty and development: what each captures, and its limit
MeasureWhat it capturesLimit
Consumption-expenditure poverty line (committees of 2009, under Suresh Tendulkar, and 2014, under C. Rangarajan)Money spent on a basket of goods, adjusted for prices across states and over timeSpending is an imperfect proxy for welfare. The basket and the price adjustment are judgements that the committees set differently
Calorie-based norm (used in earlier official estimates)Food energy needed for a minimum dietCalorie intake does not rise in step with income, so a fixed calorie cut-off is contested as a measure of poverty
Multidimensional Poverty Index (UNDP and OPHI globally; NITI Aayog for India)Share of people deprived across weighted health, education and living-standard indicators; a household counts as poor past a cut-offWeights, cut-offs and indicators are value judgements. Comparisons hold only within one edition and one method
Human Development Index (UNDP)Average achievement in health (life expectancy), education (years of schooling) and income (per-capita income)An average hides who is left behind, and the index is not a count of the poor

India’s national index, published by NITI Aayog in 2021, adapts the global design to Indian surveys. It uses 12 indicators in three dimensions: health (nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal health), education (years of schooling, school attendance) and living standards (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, bank accounts). Each dimension carries one-third weight, and a household is multidimensionally poor when its weighted deprivation score reaches one-third. The 2021 baseline used the fourth NFHS round (2015–16), and a 2023 progress review used the fifth (2019–21), which reported a sharp fall in the share of poor people between the two. Quote any reduction with its edition and its survey, and check the figures in the report before using them, since the two publications give different values for the earlier period.

Two social-protection designs illustrate the choice between entitlement and targeting. The rural employment guarantee of 2005 gave every rural household a legal claim to wage employment, with social audit as its accountability tool. It has since been repealed and replaced by the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, so check the operative terms against the notification before quoting them. The National Food Security Act, 2013 provides subsidised grain through the public distribution system to priority households. Entitlement gives a claim that does not depend on a list; targeting concentrates money on the poor but depends on the list being right.

Inclusion is the second half of this block. Financial inclusion moved through the Jan Dhan accounts from 2014 and then through the combination of Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar and mobile numbers, which allowed transfers to reach bank accounts directly. Targeted schemes carry a built-in tension. A narrow target cuts cost but produces exclusion errors, in which an eligible household is left out for want of a card, a link or a document. A broad target includes the ineligible, which is an inclusion error. Digital identity removes some errors and creates others, when authentication fails for people whose biometrics do not register. An answer on inclusion should name the error it fears and the design choice that produces it.

⚠️ A poverty line is a convention, not a discovery
The number of poor people depends on the line, and the line depends on the method: the basket, the price adjustment, the calorie norm or the set of indicators. Two credible estimates can differ widely for the same year. The trap is to quote a headcount as if it were a fact of nature. The strong answer names the method, says what the method is sensitive to, and argues from the direction of change, which the methods usually share.

Social Empowerment: Education and Health, and the Institutions That Deliver Them

Empowerment, in the capability sense, is the ability to make choices that matter, and education and health are the two capabilities that make the others usable. A child who cannot read, or an adult who is ill for want of care, cannot use a legal right, a job or a vote in the way the Constitution assumes. The Constitution anchors both. Article 21A makes education for children aged six to fourteen a fundamental right, implemented by the Right to Education Act, 2009, and Article 47 makes raising nutrition, living standards and public health a duty of the State. The Supreme Court read a right to health into Article 21 in the Consumer Education and Research Centre case of 1995, which makes health a justiciable entitlement and not merely a programme.

Education and health: the anchor, the delivering institution, and the design of the main scheme
SectorAnchorDelivering institutionScheme, by design
Elementary educationArticle 21A; Right to Education Act, 2009School Management Committees under the Act; the state education department and local bodiesSamagra Shiksha (2018), which brought the earlier school-education schemes under one framework: funding for school infrastructure, teachers and learning support against a state plan
Nutrition in schoolArticle 47 (the State’s duty to raise nutritional standards)Government and aided schools, with kitchen arrangements at the school levelPM POSHAN (the mid-day meal scheme, renamed in 2021): a hot cooked meal for enrolled children, joining nutrition to attendance
Girls’ educationArticle 15(3) (special provision for women and children)Residential schools in educationally backward blocksKasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (2004): a residential upper-primary school for girls from disadvantaged families in identified blocks
Early childhood and nutritionArticle 45 (early childhood care); Article 47Anganwadi centres, staffed by anganwadi workersIntegrated Child Development Services (1975): supplementary nutrition, health check-ups and pre-school education at the anganwadi
Primary health careArticle 47; the National Health MissionSub-centres, primary health centres, community health centres and health and wellness centres, in a three-tier referral systemNational Health Mission (2013), which merged the earlier rural and urban missions, and relies on the accredited social health activist (ASHA), a community health worker who links households to services
Health financingArticle 21, as read by the courts to include the right to healthEmpanelled hospitals and state health agenciesAyushman Bharat PM-JAY (2018): hospitalisation cover for secondary and tertiary care for households identified through deprivation criteria, cashless at the point of care
Persons with disabilitiesRights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016Schools, hospitals and government bodies, which must make services accessibleAccessible education and health services, with reservation in higher education and government employment set out in the Act

Delivery is where empowerment is won or lost. Most failures of these institutions are not failures of design. Teacher vacancies and absence, a sub-centre without its staff nurse, medicines that are not stocked and referrals that cannot be made all leave a well-designed scheme as a promise on paper. The tools built into the design, namely the social audit, the grievance mechanism and the Right to Information Act, 2005, are the means by which a citizen can see whether a promised service is delivered. An answer that names the failure and the tool that addresses it, rather than calling for more funds, scores well, and the examiner can see the link.

🎯 Enrolment is not learning, and admission is not treatment
Enrolment and admission rates measure access. Learning and health outcomes measure whether access produced capability. Annual surveys of learning, such as the Annual Status of Education Report run by the civil-society organisation Pratham, have repeatedly found children in school who cannot read or do arithmetic at their grade level. The useful question for an answer is which of the two a scheme measures, and whether the second is measured at all.

Key takeaways

  • Treat globalisation as flows, not as the 1991 reforms alone. Culture is glocalised rather than simply replaced; families reorganise care rather than vanish; labour growth can be jobless and informal, and gig and platform workers are covered by the Code on Social Security, 2020, in force since 21 November 2025; the consumer is both courted and regulated under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
  • After the transition, ask about shape: the age structure and the dependency ratio, distribution across regions, migration for work, marriage or distress, the sex ratio, and the share of older persons. Date every figure to its survey, and name Census 2011 as the last completed count.
  • The demographic dividend is a window with conditions: learning rather than enrolment, jobs that absorb entrants, health, women in the labour force, and cities that can absorb migrants. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 makes a parent’s maintenance a legal duty, and the National Population Policy, 2000 aimed at replacement fertility by 2045.
  • Define poverty by the measure. Consumption lines depend on the basket and the price adjustment; the calorie norm is contested because intake does not rise with income; the national multidimensional index uses 12 indicators in three equal dimensions with a one-third cut-off. The Human Development Index is an average and not a count of the poor. Compare estimates only within one edition and method.
  • Inclusion is a design choice with a named error. A narrow target produces exclusion errors (the eligible left out for want of a document or link); a broad target produces inclusion errors; digital authentication creates its own exclusion. Entitlement gives a claim that does not depend on a list; targeting concentrates money but depends on the list being right.
  • Education and health are the entry capabilities. Article 21A and the Right to Education Act, 2009, Article 47, and the right to health read into Article 21 anchor the institutions: the School Management Committees, the National Health Mission and its ASHAs, the anganwadi, and PM-JAY. Describe each by its design and its delivering institution before judging its results.
  • Most failures of empowerment are failures of delivery: vacancies, absence, missing medicines, and referrals that cannot be made. Name the failure and the tool that tests it, such as the social audit, the grievance mechanism or the Right to Information Act, 2005. Enrolment is not learning, and admission is not treatment.

Practice questions (16)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. The term "glocalisation", as used in the sociology of globalisation, refers to:

    1. Global products and practices adapted to local tastes, so that the two blend
    2. Local industries displaced entirely by imported goods
    3. The return of workers to villages after losing urban jobs
    4. A policy that restricts foreign investment to domestically owned firms
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Global products and practices adapted to local tastes, so that the two blend

    Glocalisation, a term associated with Roland Robertson, describes global forms adapted to local tastes, practices and languages, so the two blend rather than one replacing the other. The tempting trap is the second option, which describes wholesale displacement: that is the homogenisation thesis glocalisation is used to qualify, not to restate. The fourth option describes a policy rule, and globalisation is a set of flows rather than an investment regulation.

  2. Consider the following statements about the labour effects of globalisation in India: (1) Growth in high-productivity services has not by itself absorbed the bulk of workers leaving agriculture. (2) Contract and informal employment has grown alongside formal jobs. (3) The Code on Social Security, 2020, excludes gig and platform workers from its provisions. Which of the statements are correct?

    1. Only 2 and 3 are correct
    2. Only 3
    3. Only 1 and 2
    4. 1, 2 and 3
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Only 1 and 2

    Statements 1 and 2 are the standard labour picture: high-productivity services absorb few of the workers leaving agriculture, and contract and informal work has grown beside formal jobs. Statement 3 reverses the law, since the Code on Social Security, 2020 defines and covers gig and platform workers. The trap is accepting statement 3 because it sounds like a criticism of reform, when the text says the opposite.

  3. Which statement best reflects the sociological evidence on family change under globalisation and migration in India?

    1. Nuclear households have replaced the joint family everywhere, so family structure is now settled
    2. Change is plural: households reorganise through migration and care, while nuclear and joint forms coexist
    3. Globalisation has changed family consumption but left household structure and care roles untouched
    4. Families have become wholly individualistic, so that elder care has passed entirely to the state and the market and the household no longer has any role
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Change is plural: households reorganise through migration and care, while nuclear and joint forms coexist

    The evidence shows reorganisation rather than replacement: migration separates spouses and parents from children, joint and nuclear households coexist, and care work moves between generations and between family and paid workers. The trap is the fourth option, a claim of total individualisation that the evidence does not support. The third option assumes that change in consumption leaves care roles untouched, which is the opposite of what the care arrangements show.

  4. Under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Central Consumer Protection Authority is empowered to:

    1. Fix the retail prices of all essential goods across the country
    2. Decide wage disputes between employers and workers in the platform economy
    3. Set the terms of credit that banks may offer to retail borrowers
    4. Investigate violations of consumer rights, including misleading advertisements, and order corrective action
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Investigate violations of consumer rights, including misleading advertisements, and order corrective action

    The Authority can investigate violations of consumer rights, order corrective action and act against misleading advertisements. The trap is the second option: platform work involves a worker and a wage, which is labour law rather than consumer protection. The consumer and the worker are different legal identities, even where the same person is both.

  5. The demographic dividend refers to:

    1. A rise in the total population that automatically raises per-capita income
    2. The fall in the crude death rate that follows improved sanitation
    3. An economic opportunity that arises when the working-age share of the population is large relative to dependants, and that is realised only with jobs and skills
    4. The share of the population above sixty years, which determines the size of pension liabilities
    Show answer

    Answer: C — An economic opportunity that arises when the working-age share of the population is large relative to dependants, and that is realised only with jobs and skills

    The dividend is the economic window that opens when the working-age population is large relative to dependants. It is an opportunity rather than an entitlement, and it materialises only with jobs, skills and health. The trap is the first option, which assumes that more people automatically means more income per head: the age structure opens a window, and the conditions decide whether it is used.

  6. Consider the following statements about the dependency ratio: (1) It is the number of dependants per hundred persons of working age. (2) It can fall while the population is still growing in absolute numbers. (3) A rise in the ratio always means that the working-age population is shrinking. Which of the statements are correct?

    1. 1 and 2 only
    2. 2 and 3 are correct, but not 1
    3. 1 and 3 only
    4. Only 3
    Show answer

    Answer: A — 1 and 2 only

    Statements 1 and 2 are correct: the ratio is a proportion, not a headcount, so it can fall while the total grows, provided the working-age population grows faster. Statement 3 is the trap: a rising ratio can come from a growing elderly population even while the working-age population still grows, so it does not imply that the working-age group is shrinking.

  7. Census data record migrants by place of birth and by place of last residence. Which is the most accurate use of these counts in an answer?

    1. They show the number of people who moved because of a natural disaster
    2. They measure the total income sent home by migrant workers
    3. They record every movement between districts and states, so every migrant can be read as a distress migrant
    4. They show where people now live against where they were born or last lived, not why they moved
    Show answer

    Answer: D — They show where people now live against where they were born or last lived, not why they moved

    A census migration table records origin and destination, meaning place of birth or place of last residence, but not the motive. Reasons for moving must come from a survey that asks about them, and even then the categories of work, marriage, education and distress overlap. The trap is the third option, which treats every move as distress, and the second option, which confuses a count of movements with a measure of money sent home.

  8. Consider the following pairs of concept and meaning: (1) Dependency ratio: the share of dependants in the working-age population. (2) Population momentum: continued growth after fertility falls to replacement level, because a large cohort is still entering the reproductive ages. (3) Sex ratio at birth: the number of births per thousand population. Which pairs are correctly matched?

    1. 1 and 3 are correct, but not 2
    2. 1 and 2 only
    3. 2 and 3 only
    4. 1, 2 and 3
    Show answer

    Answer: B — 1 and 2 only

    Pairs 1 and 2 are correct: the dependency ratio measures dependants relative to the working-age population, and population momentum explains continued growth after fertility reaches replacement level, as the Indian Society chapter describes. Pair 3 is wrong, since the sex ratio at birth counts females per thousand males born, not births per thousand people. The trap is that pair 3 uses a familiar-sounding definition, but what it describes is a birth rate.

  9. Amartya Sen’s capability approach to poverty holds that:

    1. Poverty is measured only by household consumption expenditure
    2. Poverty is a permanent condition that no policy can change
    3. Poverty is a deprivation of what a person can do and be, and income is only one means to that
    4. Poverty is best reduced by transferring income alone, since capabilities follow automatically from income
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Poverty is a deprivation of what a person can do and be, and income is only one means to that

    For Sen, poverty is a shortfall of capabilities, meaning the freedom to be healthy, educated and mobile and to take part, and income is one instrument toward them. Two people with the same income can differ in capability because of disability, location or the absence of services. The trap is the fourth option, the view that capabilities follow income automatically, which the approach argues they often do not.

  10. Which of the following is true of the multidimensional poverty index that NITI Aayog constructed for India?

    1. It uses 12 indicators in three equal-weight dimensions: health, education and living standards
    2. It uses only income and consumption, with a single poverty line
    3. It counts a household as poor if it has any single deprivation at all, whatever weight that deprivation carries
    4. It uses the 2011 census as its only data source for every year
    Show answer

    Answer: A — It uses 12 indicators in three equal-weight dimensions: health, education and living standards

    The national index uses 12 indicators in three dimensions, each carrying one-third weight, and a household is poor when its weighted deprivation score reaches one-third. The trap is the third option, which counts a household as poor on any single deprivation whatever its weight. The cut-off is what stops one missing item from classifying a household as poor.

  11. Consider the following statements on poverty measurement: (1) A calorie-based norm assumes that calorie intake rises steadily with income. (2) A multidimensional index can register poverty where income is above a money line, because it counts deprivations such as sanitation and schooling. (3) Two estimates of poverty for the same year may differ widely because their lines, weights or indicators differ. Which of the statements are correct?

    1. Statement 1 alone is correct
    2. Statements 1 and 2 are correct, though 3 is not
    3. Statements 1 and 3 are correct, though 2 is not
    4. Statements 2 and 3 are correct
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Statements 2 and 3 are correct

    Statements 2 and 3 are correct. A multidimensional index can register deprivation in sanitation, schooling or housing even where income is above a money line, and estimates differ with the line, weights and indicators chosen. Statement 1 is the trap: the calorie norm sets a fixed requirement and does not assume that intake rises with income. The critique rests on the opposite observation, that intake does not rise in step with income.

  12. In a targeted welfare scheme, an "exclusion error" means:

    1. Benefit paid to people who are not eligible for it
    2. An eligible household left out because of a missing card, link or document
    3. The administrative failure to close a scheme once it has been replaced
    4. A decision to make the scheme universal rather than targeted
    Show answer

    Answer: B — An eligible household left out because of a missing card, link or document

    An exclusion error is the failure to reach someone who is eligible, often because a document, bank link or identity authentication is missing. The first option describes the reverse, an inclusion error, where benefit reaches someone who should not receive it. The fourth option is a design choice in the debate between targeted and universal schemes, not an error category, and the answer should not treat it as one.

  13. Which Article of the Constitution makes free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen a fundamental right?

    1. Article 21A
    2. Article 45
    3. Article 47
    4. Article 15(3)
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Article 21A

    Article 21A, inserted by the 86th Amendment in 2002, makes education for children aged six to fourteen a fundamental right, and the Right to Education Act, 2009 implements it. The trap is the second option: Article 45 concerns early childhood care for children below six and is a directive principle, not an enforceable right. Article 47 is a directive on nutrition and public health, and Article 15(3) permits special provision for women and children.

  14. Consider the following pairs of scheme or institution and its design: (1) Accredited social health activist (ASHA): a community health worker who links households to health services. (2) Health and wellness centres: primary care extended to the sub-centre level, with a wider range of services. (3) Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY: free outpatient care at every sub-centre for all households. Which pairs are correctly matched?

    1. 1 and 3 only
    2. 2 and 3 only
    3. 1 and 2 only
    4. 1, 2 and 3 are all correct
    Show answer

    Answer: C — 1 and 2 only

    Pairs 1 and 2 are correct: the ASHA works within the National Health Mission framework as the link between households and services, and health and wellness centres extend the sub-centre to a wider primary-care package. Pair 3 is the trap: PM-JAY is hospitalisation insurance for secondary and tertiary care, not an outpatient service at sub-centres.

  15. Which of the following best describes the design of a mid-day meal scheme for school children, as distinct from its outcomes?

    1. It guarantees a fixed rise in learning levels in every school
    2. It is financed entirely by private donations to school management committees
    3. It is a health insurance scheme that pays for the hospital care of children and their mothers in all districts
    4. It is designed to give a cooked meal to enrolled children in government and aided schools
    Show answer

    Answer: D — It is designed to give a cooked meal to enrolled children in government and aided schools

    A design description states what a scheme is meant to do and who receives it: a cooked meal for enrolled children in government and aided schools, with nutrition and attendance as linked goals. The trap is the first option, which turns an intended effect into a guaranteed one, and an answer should not claim outcomes without a named evaluation. The second option gets the financing wrong, since the scheme is funded from public budgets, and the third confuses it with health insurance.

  16. A health sub-centre has a sanctioned staff nurse post that has been vacant for a long time, and medicines are often out of stock. Which tool is most directly suited to find out whether the promised service is actually delivered?

    1. A higher budget allocation for the health mission in the next year
    2. A social audit in which villagers and the gram panchayat check records and services against the scheme’s entitlements
    3. A new scheme with a national brand name that replaces the existing one
    4. Transferring the health subject to the Union List, so that staffing and medicine decisions are taken centrally for every district
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    Answer: B — A social audit in which villagers and the gram panchayat check records and services against the scheme’s entitlements

    The question asks for a tool that tests delivery. A social audit compares recorded entitlements with what villages actually receive, and it draws on the same records that the right to information and grievance systems open. The trap is the first option: more money does not fill a post that has not been filled, and the third (a renamed scheme) does not change who is posted. The fourth option is a constitutional change that would not address the gap and is not a delivery test at all.