BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 37 of 150

Correct — C, Basmati Rice. The decisive point is classificatory, not arithmetical. India's merchandise trade is compiled by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), Kolkata, under a fixed list of headings called 'Principal Commodities', and that list is reproduced every year in the Economic Survey's Statistical Appendix — Table 6.3A of the Economic Survey 2024-25 carries the April-September 2024-25 provisional figures the question is built on. In that table the agricultural heading is simply 'Rice': USD 5,120 million on 7,371.1 thousand tonnes for the half-year. There is no heading called 'Basmati Rice' anywhere in the classification, so it cannot occupy a top-ten slot no matter how large basmati shipments are in their own right. Basmati is a varietal and quality category, policed by APEDA — which registered basmati rice as a Geographical Indication on 15 February 2016 and notifies which seed varieties may legally be exported as basmati — and a variety notification is not a customs commodity heading. The Commission said the same thing when it disposed of objections on 31 October 2025: rice is a principal commodity, basmati rice is not named in the official data, there are many rice varieties, and basmati is only a portion of total rice exported. The other two options are nowhere near the margin. Mineral fuels and lubricants including coal — the petroleum-products block — came to USD 38,411 million in April-September 2024-25, roughly 18 per cent of the USD 212,662 million total. Iron and steel sits inside 'Machinery, transport and metal manufactures', which alone was USD 55,224 million. One honest caveat you should carry into the exam hall: there is no single canonical 'official top ten'. DGCI&S principal commodities and the Commerce Ministry's monthly top-ten-commodities release are different groupings that do not produce identical rankings. What is stable across both is that 'Rice' appears and 'Basmati Rice' never does.

• (a)Petroleum Products — Petroleum products are one of India's two biggest merchandise export lines — mineral fuels and lubricants including coal earned USD 38,411 million in April-September 2024-25 against total exports of USD 212,662 million, about one rupee in every five and a half earned abroad, second in that table only to machinery, transport and metal manufactures at USD 55,224 million. India imports crude, refines it at complexes such as Jamnagar and re-exports the products; that re-export trade is far too big to fall out of any top ten.
• (b)Iron and Steel — Iron and steel is a standing member of the engineering-goods block, which DGCI&S carries as 'Machinery, transport and metal manufactures' — USD 55,224 million for the half-year. Two things tempt candidates to strike it out: they confuse it with iron ore (a separate and far smaller line, ores and minerals excluding coal being only USD 3,314 million), and they remember that India was a net importer of finished steel that year. Net balance is not gross export value.
• (d)More than one of the above — This would require at least two of the three named items to be off the list. Petroleum products and iron and steel are both securely on it, so exactly one item — basmati rice — is the odd one out and the composite option collapses. 'More than one of the above' is this paper's default fourth option, printed on dozens of questions; it is correct only where the stem genuinely admits several, and here the Commission's own remark names a single item.

Official trade statistics are built on headings, not on brand names or marketing categories. DGCI&S, the Kolkata-based statistical arm of the Department of Commerce, compiles India's exports and imports from shipping bills and groups them under 'Principal Commodities' — a small, stable list of about thirty headings nested inside four broad blocks: agricultural and allied products; ores and minerals excluding coal; manufactured goods; and mineral fuels and lubricants including coal. Every heading corresponds to an HS-code family, so a heading exists only where the customs tariff draws a boundary. 'Rice' is such a heading. 'Basmati Rice' is not: basmati is defined by seed variety and grain characteristics under APEDA's notification and by the Geographical Indication registered in 2016, which is a quality-assurance instrument, not a statistical one. The same logic explains why 'Alphonso mango' or 'Darjeeling tea' never appear in the principal-commodity table either, however famous they are. Read against that table, India's April-September 2024-25 basket was overwhelmingly manufactured — USD 146,846 million of USD 212,662 million, about 69 per cent — with petroleum at USD 38,411 million, agricultural and allied products at USD 24,079 million (roughly 11 per cent), and ores and minerals a small USD 3,314 million tail.

Reason in two moves and the question stops being a memory test. First, eliminate on magnitude. Petroleum products at USD 38.4 billion for six months, and iron and steel inside an engineering block worth USD 55.2 billion, are not marginal items that could drift in and out of a top ten; a list that excluded either would not be a list of India's principal exports at all. That kills options (a), (b) and, with them, (d). Second — and this is the single fact that discriminates — the surviving item fails for a reason that has nothing to do with size. Ask not 'is basmati a big export?' but 'is Basmati Rice a heading in the official classification?' It is not. Official tables aggregate to 'Rice'; basmati is a variety inside that line, and no April-September 2024-25 table publishes it separately. A candidate who reasons purely by value can be led badly astray here, because India's basmati shipments are individually worth billions of dollars a year and feel top-ten-sized. They are simply never counted on their own in this classification. Two further warnings. Do not try to memorise a numbered top ten — the DGCI&S list and the Commerce Ministry's monthly release group commodities differently and rank them differently, so there is no one list to learn. And treat 'More than one of the above' with suspicion on a negative stem: it is only right when two genuinely fail, and here just one does.

• Economic Survey 2024-25, Statistical Appendix Table 6.3A (source: DGCI&S, Kolkata): India's total merchandise exports in April-September 2024-25 were USD 212,662 million provisional, of which manufactured goods were USD 146,846 million — about 69 per cent of the basket.
• The agricultural heading in that table is 'Rice' — USD 5,120 million on 7,371.1 thousand tonnes for April-September 2024-25. The classification contains no separate 'Basmati Rice' heading, which is exactly why the answer is (c).
• Mineral fuels and lubricants including coal — the petroleum-products block — earned USD 38,411 million in April-September 2024-25, roughly 18 per cent of all merchandise exports; the larger line in the same table is machinery, transport and metal manufactures including iron and steel, at USD 55,224 million.
• Iron and steel is carried inside 'Machinery, transport and metal manufactures', USD 55,224 million for the half-year; the same group also carries electronic goods and computer software. Ores and minerals excluding coal, by contrast, were only USD 3,314 million.
• Basmati is a variety class, not a customs heading: APEDA registered basmati rice as a Geographical Indication on 15 February 2016 and notifies the seed varieties that may be exported under the name. Other agricultural lines for the same half-year: fish and fish preparations USD 3,385 million, spices USD 2,090 million, meat USD 1,847 million, sugar and molasses USD 1,119 million.

• Judging the answer by size instead of by classification — basmati shipments are worth billions of dollars, but the official table has no 'Basmati Rice' heading at all, only 'Rice'
• Trying to memorise a numbered 'official top ten' — DGCI&S principal commodities and the Commerce Ministry's monthly top-ten release are different groupings with different rankings
• Confusing iron and steel (a manufactured export inside the engineering block) with iron ore (a raw mineral in the small 'ores and minerals excluding coal' line)

BPSC asks trade composition as a flat recall item lifted from the current Economic Survey or a Commerce Ministry release — name the commodity, name the period, one mark — and rewards a candidate who has actually turned to the Statistical Appendix. UPSC almost never asks for a rank. It asks what the composition implies: in 1996 it wanted the shift that best signals structural transformation, and in 2023 it set India's share of world goods exports as a Statement-I / Statement-II pair. Learn the shape of the basket and the direction it is moving, not the ordinal list.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India's merchandise exports are classified under 'Principal Commodities' and the underlying trade statistics are compiled by which organisation ?

  • (a)NITI Aayog
  • (b)Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Kolkata
  • (c)Reserve Bank of India
  • (d)Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority

  Answer(b) Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Kolkata — DGCI&S, under the Department of Commerce, compiles India's export-import data from shipping bills; the RBI publishes balance-of-payments data separately and APEDA only promotes agri exports.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following blocks accounted for the largest share of India's merchandise exports during April-September 2024-25 ?

  • (a)Agricultural and allied products
  • (b)Ores and minerals excluding coal
  • (c)Manufactured goods
  • (d)Mineral fuels and lubricants including coal

  Answer(c) Manufactured goods — USD 146,846 million out of total exports of USD 212,662 million, about 69 per cent. Petroleum was USD 38,411 million, agriculture and allied USD 24,079 million and ores and minerals only USD 3,314 million.