BPSC 70th CCE Prelims Q74: When did Bihar State introduce the Green Budget for the

Q: What is the answer to BPSC 70th CCE Prelims Q74?

B. Correct — B, Financial Year 2020-21. Bihar's green budget is a separate document laid before the legislature alongside the annual state budget, which pulls together every scheme across departments that carries an environmental or climate purpose and shows what the state is spending on them as a single number. The series begins with the financial year 2020-21: the earliest green-budget document on the state finance department's own budget portal is the one for 2020-21, there is no earlier one, and the arithmetic of the series confirms it independently — the green budget presented for 2026-27 is described as Bihar's seventh, and counting seven back from 2026-27 lands exactly on 2020-21. The size of that first document is worth carrying with the year, because it is what makes the fact concrete rather than a bare date: roughly Rs 5,693 crore, about 7 per cent of the state's total budget for the year, spread over 96 schemes. The green share then rose to over 9.6 per cent in 2021-22 and peaked at 12.5 per cent in 2023-24 before easing back, while the number of schemes in the document grew to 298 by 2026-27 — more than three times the original 96. So the answer is not merely 'some year around 2020'; it is the first entry in a series whose growth can be traced year by year.

BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 74 of 143

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Question order, option order and answers follow the official BPSC Booklet Series E, paper code 09/C/GO/CC/PT-2024(Q).

When did Bihar State introduce the Green Budget for the first time ?

(a)Financial Year 2018-19
(b)Financial Year 2020-21
(c)Financial Year 2019-20
(d)Financial Year 2021-22

Answer

Why

Correct — B, Financial Year 2020-21. Bihar's green budget is a separate document laid before the legislature alongside the annual state budget, which pulls together every scheme across departments that carries an environmental or climate purpose and shows what the state is spending on them as a single number. The series begins with the financial year 2020-21: the earliest green-budget document on the state finance department's own budget portal is the one for 2020-21, there is no earlier one, and the arithmetic of the series confirms it independently — the green budget presented for 2026-27 is described as Bihar's seventh, and counting seven back from 2026-27 lands exactly on 2020-21. The size of that first document is worth carrying with the year, because it is what makes the fact concrete rather than a bare date: roughly Rs 5,693 crore, about 7 per cent of the state's total budget for the year, spread over 96 schemes. The green share then rose to over 9.6 per cent in 2021-22 and peaked at 12.5 per cent in 2023-24 before easing back, while the number of schemes in the document grew to 298 by 2026-27 — more than three times the original 96. So the answer is not merely 'some year around 2020'; it is the first entry in a series whose growth can be traced year by year.

Why the others are wrong

(a)Financial Year 2018-19 — Two years too early. No green-budget document exists for 2018-19 on the state's budget portal, and 2018-19 predates the whole cluster of Bihar's climate initiatives — the Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali mission itself was launched only in 2019.
(c)Financial Year 2019-20 — The most attractive wrong answer, and for a real reason: 2019-20 is the year Odisha brought out a climate budget, and it is also the year Bihar launched Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali, so a candidate who has anchored on 'around 2019' will pick it. Bihar's own green budget document, however, begins with 2020-21.
(d)Financial Year 2021-22 — This is the SECOND green budget, not the first — the year in which the green share of the state budget rose above 9.6 per cent. Candidates who remember a figure from the second year rather than the first are the ones this option is set to catch.

Concept

A green budget does not create new money; it re-reads the existing budget through an environmental lens. Departments tag the schemes whose outlays serve environmental or climate objectives — afforestation, pond and river rejuvenation, solar power, clean transport, waste management, irrigation efficiency — and the finance department consolidates those tagged lines into one statement laid before the House. The technique is the same one used for gender budgeting, where allocations benefiting women are separated out and reported, and both belong to a wider family of 'budget tagging' instruments recommended for tracking cross-cutting priorities that no single department owns. The value is transparency and comparison over time: because the tagged total can be expressed as a share of the whole budget, a legislature can ask whether the environmental share is rising or falling. The limitation is equally real, and Bihar's own record illustrates it — the tagged amount can grow while the physical indicators on the ground move very little, because tagging measures intent and expenditure, not outcome.

The way to hold this fact is to anchor it to the policy cluster around it rather than memorising a bare year. Bihar's environmental push is built around Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali, the state's flagship water and greenery mission launched in 2019, and the green budget is the fiscal reporting instrument that came in immediately after it, from 2020-21. That ordering — mission first in 2019, green budget from 2020-21 — is what separates option (c) from option (b), and it is exactly the pair the examiner has set against each other. One claim to handle carefully: Bihar is very widely described, including in state government material, as the first Indian state to present a green budget. Treat that as a claim about a document with that particular name, not as settled precedence, because Odisha had already presented a climate budget for 2019-20. For the exam, the year of Bihar's own first green budget — 2020-21 — is the fact being tested, and it is not disturbed by the argument over who was first.

Key facts

Bihar's first green budget was for the financial year 2020-21; the earliest such document on the state finance portal is the one for that year
It amounted to roughly Rs 5,693 crore, about 7 per cent of Bihar's total budget for 2020-21, and covered 96 schemes
The green share rose above 9.6 per cent in 2021-22 and peaked at 12.5 per cent in 2023-24; the 2026-27 green budget is Bihar's seventh and covers 298 schemes
Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali, Bihar's flagship water-conservation and greenery mission, was launched in 2019 — the year before the first green budget, which is why 2019-20 is the tempting wrong answer
Bihar is commonly called the first Indian state to present a green budget, but Odisha had already presented a climate budget for 2019-20, so the 'first' claim depends on what the document is called

The long cream-coloured Bihar Vidhan Sabha building in Patna seen from the road — arched windows and a run of parapet pavilions along its facade, palms and a clipped lawn in front of it behind an iron railing and low boundary wall — A green budget is a document laid before this House alongside the annual budget, which is what makes it a fiscal instrument rather than a departmental report — the legislature can compare the environmental share of spending year by year.Image: Itcell.bla · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Study next

Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali Abhiyan — its components (ponds and aahar-pyne restoration, plantation, rainwater harvesting, solar energy) and Bihar's Environment, Forest and Climate Change DepartmentBihar's Economic Survey and Budget documents — Annual Financial Statement, demands for grants, and the special statements laid alongsideGender budgeting in India and the Gender Budget Statement of the Union Budget, the closest analogue to a green budgetThe National Action Plan on Climate Change, its eight missions, and State Action Plans on Climate ChangeBihar's forest and tree cover position in the India State of Forest Report, and why it is among the lowest shares in the country

Common traps

Confusing the launch of Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali (2019) with the first green budget (financial year 2020-21)
Repeating 'Bihar is India's first state to present a green budget' as an unqualified fact — Odisha's climate budget for 2019-20 came earlier
Reading a green budget as extra money for the environment; it is a re-tagging and consolidation of existing scheme allocations

BPSC asks Bihar's schemes and fiscal instruments as bare year-identification questions, with the distractors set one year on either side of the truth, so a rough memory is worth nothing and the exact year is worth a full mark. UPSC almost never asks a state's budget year; it asks instead what a scheme is FOR, and builds statement sets where one plausible-sounding aim — green accounting in the budget, for instance — has to be rejected because it belongs to a different instrument.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2016_GS1_Q332016Open & attempt →

Which of the following best describes/describe the aim of 'Green India Mission' of the Government of India? 1. Incorporating environmental benefits and costs into the Union and State Budgets thereby implementing the 'green accounting' 2. Launching the second green revolution to enhance agricultural output so as to ensure food security to one and all in the future 3. Restoring and enhancing forest cover and responding to climate change by a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures Select the correct answer using the code given below.

(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer(c) 3 only

Its statement 1 describes precisely what a green budget does — incorporating environmental benefits and costs into Union and State budgets, or green accounting — and UPSC's point is that this is a distinct instrument, not what the Green India Mission does.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali Abhiyan, the flagship water-conservation and greenery mission, belongs to which State ?
- (a)Odisha
- (b)Bihar
- (c)Jharkhand
- (d)Madhya Pradesh
Answer(b) Bihar — launched in 2019, it covers pond and aahar-pyne restoration, plantation, rainwater harvesting and solar energy, and its schemes feed into Bihar's green budget from 2020-21 onwards.
practice — not a real PYQ
A 'green budget' presented by a State government is best described as
- (a)a separate fund created outside the Consolidated Fund for environmental works
- (b)a statement consolidating the environment-related allocations already spread across departments
- (c)the share of the budget financed by green bonds issued in the market
- (d)a central grant earmarked for States under the National Action Plan on Climate Change
Answer(b) a statement consolidating the environment-related allocations already spread across departments — it is a tagging and reporting exercise, like gender budgeting, not a new fund or a new source of money.