Social Sector and Welfare Schemes

Mission Indradhanush was launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in December 2014 to raise full immunisation coverage among children up to two years of age and among pregnant women, targeting districts with the largest numbers of partially immunised and unimmunised children. The name refers to the seven colours of the rainbow, standing for the vaccine-preventable diseases originally covered, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis B, with further antigens added subsequently. Hence (a).

• Option (b) describes the Smart Cities Mission of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, launched in the same period, which is the strongest distractor purely because both are missions of the same government.
• Option (c) is an invention; there is no Indian exoplanet search programme of that name, and India's astronomy satellite of the period was AstroSat, which appears elsewhere in this paper.
• Option (d) refers to education policy, which was under review at the time but bears no such name. The item is easy because the name had been in continuous circulation for eighteen months before the paper.

• Statements 1 and 2 are correct and reproduce the Mission's own framing. Its stated objects are the reduction of stunting, undernutrition, low birth weight and anaemia, pursued through convergence, behaviour change communication and the use of technology, with pregnant women, lactating mothers, adolescent girls and children under six as the target groups. Awareness generation on malnutrition and reduction of anaemia therefore both appear as objectives on the face of the Mission documents.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Promotion of millets, coarse cereals and unpolished rice is a food and agriculture policy line pursued through the public distribution system, the Nutri Cereals initiative and later the millet mission; it is not among the Mission's stated objectives, which are framed as outcome targets on stunting, anaemia and birth weight rather than as dietary composition directives.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. Promotion of poultry egg consumption is not a Mission objective, egg provision being a matter for individual State supplementary nutrition and midday meal decisions. Rejecting statement 4 eliminates (c) and (d) at once, which is the elimination route a candidate should find, leaving (a) against (b) to be settled on statement 3 alone. The official answer (a) follows.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Permitting foreign educational institutions to establish campuses in India is a question of higher education regulation, pursued through successive foreign educational institutions bills and later through the National Education Policy framework. It has no connection with a school volunteer programme.
• Statement 2 is correct and states the purpose accurately: Vidyanjali is a school volunteer programme under which individuals, alumni, retired professionals, corporate employees and non governmental organisations offer their time and skills to government schools in co scholastic activities, reading, arts, sports, language and career counselling, thereby drawing private and community capacity into the government school system.
• Statement 3 is incorrect and is the discriminating statement, since it is the only one a well prepared candidate is likely to accept wrongly. Vidyanjali as originally conceived sought the contribution of service and time, not money; the programme was expressly not a channel for monetary donations towards infrastructure. Rejecting statement 1 eliminates (c), and rejecting statement 3 then eliminates (b) and (d), leaving (a). Governing principle: read the currency of the contribution a scheme solicits, since a volunteering programme and a donation programme are different instruments even where both invite private participation in public schooling.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. The National Food Security Act, 2013 abandoned the below poverty line and above poverty line classification as the basis of entitlement. It covers up to 75 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban population, divided into Antyodaya Anna Yojana households and priority households, with the identification of priority households left to the States within centrally determined coverage ratios. Confining eligibility to below poverty line families would describe the earlier targeted public distribution system, not the Act.
• Statement 2 is correct. Section 13 provides that for the purpose of issue of ration cards the eldest woman in the household, not being less than eighteen years of age, shall be the head of the household, and that where no such woman is available the eldest male member acts until she attains that age.
• Statement 3 is incorrect on the figure. Schedule II prescribes a take home ration of not less than 600 calories per day, with 18 to 20 grammes of protein, for pregnant women and lactating mothers during pregnancy and for six months after childbirth, along with maternity benefit of not less than six thousand rupees. The 1600 figure is roughly the daily requirement of an adult and is far above any supplementary ration, which is the tell. Elimination route: statement 2 is the single most quoted provision of the Act and can be accepted with confidence, which removes (c) and (d); the choice between (a) and (b) then rests on the below poverty line claim in statement 1, and the whole point of the Act was to move away from that classification.

Hence (b).

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Janani Suraksha Yojana is a centrally sponsored scheme launched in 2005 under the National Rural Health Mission, now the National Health Mission, and is fully funded by the Centre for cash assistance even though States implement it. Describing it as an intervention of the State Health Departments misplaces its origin.
• Statement 2 is correct, since the scheme targets reduction of maternal and neo natal mortality.
• Statement 3 is correct and states the central mechanism of the scheme, namely conditional cash transfer to promote institutional delivery among poor pregnant women, with differential entitlements for low performing and high performing States and for rural and urban areas.
• Statement 4 is incorrect and is the trap. Free treatment for sick infants up to one year of age belongs to the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram of 2011, a separate initiative that provides free delivery, drugs, diagnostics, diet and transport. Two statements stand, giving (b).

• Statement 1 is incorrect and turns on a single word. Anaemia Mukt Bharat provides prophylactic iron and folic acid supplementation, not calcium, across its six target groups. Calcium supplementation exists in maternal health programming but is not the anaemia intervention.
• Statement 2 is correct. Delayed cord clamping, holding the clamp for at least one to three minutes after birth, allows placental transfusion to the newborn and improves infant iron stores, and it is one of the six interventions in the six by six by six strategy.
• Statement 3 is correct, periodic deworming being included because helminth infestation causes chronic blood loss and impairs iron absorption.
• Statement 4 is correct, the strategy explicitly addressing non nutritional causes in endemic pockets with focus on malaria, haemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease and thalassaemia, and fluorosis. Three of four gives (c), and (d) requires the calcium error to pass.

• Statement 2 is correct. The scheme rests substantially on voluntarism, inviting private sector obstetricians, gynaecologists and radiologists to donate services one day a month at nearby government facilities, and it recognises such volunteers formally.
• Statement 1 is incorrect. The scheme provides a fixed day assured, comprehensive and quality antenatal check up on the ninth of every month to pregnant women in their second and third trimesters at government health facilities, but it does not extend to six months of post delivery health care. Post natal care is delivered through other components of the reproductive and child health programme, notably Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram and the LaQshya and SUMAN initiatives. The addition of the post delivery clause is what makes statement 1 fail. Hence (b).
• Options (a) and (c) accept the false post delivery guarantee, and (d) wrongly rejects the volunteer provision.

• Statement 2 is correct. Contributions are age specific, ranging from about fifty five rupees a month for a subscriber joining at eighteen to about two hundred rupees for one joining at forty, with the Central Government making a matching contribution.
• Statement 3 is correct. Subscribers receive an assured minimum pension of three thousand rupees a month on attaining sixty.
• Statement 1 is incorrect. The entry age band is eighteen to forty years, not twenty one to forty, and the scheme is open to unorganised sector workers with monthly income up to fifteen thousand rupees.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. On the death of the subscriber, the spouse is entitled to a family pension of fifty per cent of the pension. The benefit does not extend to unmarried daughters. Hence 2 and 3 only, which is (b).
• Options (a) and (d) both admit the wrong entry age, and (c) drops the correct pension amount.