BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 59 of 150

Correct — C, 2 and 4. Begin with a caveat that the question itself does not state, because it decides how you should revise this topic. The Constitution nowhere divides the Directive Principles into Socialistic, Gandhian and Liberal-intellectual groups. Part IV simply runs from Article 36 to Article 51 as one undivided list. The three-fold grouping is a taxonomy from standard Indian polity textbooks — it is a teaching device for organising sixteen articles, not a constitutional label — and BPSC, like UPSC before it, examines the textbook grouping. Within that grouping the four items sort cleanly. Statement 1, organisation of village panchayats, is Article 40: 'The State shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government.' Gram swaraj is the Gandhian idea in its purest constitutional form, so statement 1 does follow Gandhian principles. Statement 3, promotion of cottage industry in rural areas, is the closing limb of Article 43, which after directing a living wage adds that the State 'shall endeavour to promote cottage industries on an individual or co-operative basis in rural areas' — khadi, village industry and decentralised production, again unmistakably Gandhian. That leaves the two the Commission identified. Statement 2, a common civil code, is Article 44: 'The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.' It descends from the liberal, rationalist tradition of a single secular law for all citizens, and the textbooks place it in the liberal-intellectual group alongside Articles 45, 48, 48A, 49, 50 and 51. Statement 4, the right to work, is Article 41, under which the State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement — a welfare-state guarantee that the textbooks group with the socialistic principles, with Articles 38, 39, 39A, 42 and 43A. Neither the uniform civil code nor a state-guaranteed right to work belongs to the Gandhian programme of village self-rule and decentralised cottage production, and the Commission's own published remark of 31 October 2025 says exactly that: statements 2 and 4 are not related to Gandhian principles. Hence option (c).

• (a)1 and 2 — Right about the common civil code, wrong about village panchayats. Article 40 is the most quoted Gandhian Directive Principle of all — panchayati raj is Gandhi's gram swaraj written into Part IV, and it is the article the 73rd Amendment of 1992 later built Part IX upon. Picking this option means calling the very principle that produced India's village republics non-Gandhian.
• (b)Only 2 — The half-right answer, and the one this item is designed to catch. A candidate correctly spots that the uniform civil code is liberal rather than Gandhian, then stops, treating 'right to work' as a broadly Gandhian aspiration because Gandhi valued labour and self-reliance. But Article 41's right to work is a claim on the State for employment and public assistance — a socialistic welfare guarantee, not a call for decentralised village production.
• (d)1 and 3 — The exact inversion of the truth: statements 1 and 3 are Articles 40 and 43, the two items on the list that are unambiguously Gandhian. This option catches candidates who misread the negative in the stem — the question asks which principles do NOT follow Gandhian principles, and 'do not' is easy to lose in a hurried reading.

The Directive Principles occupy Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, borrowed in form from the Irish Constitution of 1937 and in spirit from the Instrument of Instructions in the Government of India Act, 1935. Article 37 fixes their status precisely: they 'shall not be enforceable by any court', yet the principles laid down 'are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country' and it is the duty of the State to apply them in making laws. Because Part IV is not internally organised, textbook writers group its articles by the political philosophy each expresses, and that grouping — socialistic, Gandhian, liberal-intellectual — is what examiners test. The socialistic set is about the welfare state and distributive justice: Articles 38, 39, 39A, 41, 42, 43 and 43A. The Gandhian set is about decentralisation and rural reconstruction: Article 40 on village panchayats, Article 43 on cottage industries, Article 43B on co-operative societies, Article 46 on the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Article 47 on prohibition of intoxicating drinks and drugs, and Article 48 on the prohibition of cow slaughter. The liberal-intellectual set covers Articles 44, 45, 48, 48A, 49, 50 and 51. Because the scheme sorts ideas and not articles, a single article can appear in two groups — Article 43 is quoted as socialistic for its living wage and as Gandhian for cottage industries, and Article 47 as socialistic for nutrition and public health and as Gandhian for prohibition. That overlap is itself the proof that these are teaching labels rather than a constitutional scheme.

Reason to the answer by asking, of each item, what problem the principle was written to solve — not by trying to recall a memorised list. Gandhian principles all answer the same question: how do you rebuild India from the village upward? Village panchayats as units of self-government (Article 40) and cottage industries in rural areas (Article 43) both answer it, so statements 1 and 3 are in the Gandhian camp and cannot be part of an answer to a question asking which are not. A uniform civil code answers a completely different question — how do you make one secular law govern all citizens regardless of religious community — which is a liberal-constitutionalist project, not a village-reconstruction one. And a right to work answers a third question — what does a citizen have a claim to when the market fails — which is the socialistic welfare project. That gives 2 and 4, which is option (c), and the Commission confirmed precisely this when it disposed of objections. Two discriminators are worth carrying into the exam hall. The first is the single most reliable one: if a principle points at the village, it is Gandhian; if it points at a claim against the State's economic capacity, it is socialistic; if it points at a uniform, rational rule for all citizens, it is liberal-intellectual. The second is a reading discipline rather than a fact. This stem contains a negative — 'do not follow' — and option (d) is built from exactly the two items you would choose if you dropped that negative. Under time pressure that is a far likelier failure than not knowing which article is which.

• Article 40: 'The State shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government.' — the Gandhian principle later given machinery by the 73rd Amendment Act, 1992, which added Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule.
• Article 43 directs a living wage and conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life, and closes with the words 'the State shall endeavour to promote cottage industries on an individual or co-operative basis in rural areas' — the source of statement 3 and the reason the same article is cited under both the socialistic and the Gandhian heads.
• Article 44 is the whole of statement 2: 'The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.' — classified with the liberal-intellectual principles, not the Gandhian ones.
• Article 41 is statement 4: the State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want — a socialistic principle. BPSC's published remark of 31 October 2025 states simply that statements 2 and 4 are not related to Gandhian principles.
• Article 37 makes Part IV non-justiciable but 'fundamental in the governance of the country'; the two Gandhian items in this question are joined in the Constitution's own text, because item 9 of the Eleventh Schedule, the list of subjects panchayats may be entrusted with under Article 243G, is 'Khadi, village and cottage industries'.

• Missing the negative in the stem — the question asks which principles do NOT follow Gandhian principles, and option (d) is precisely the answer to the opposite question
• Treating the socialistic / Gandhian / liberal-intellectual grouping as constitutional text — the Constitution nowhere uses these labels; they come from standard polity textbooks, and a single article such as 43 or 47 can be cited in two groups at once
• Classing the right to work as Gandhian because Gandhi valued labour — Article 41 is a welfare claim on the State's economic capacity and is grouped with the socialistic principles

BPSC asks it in the negative and gives you four items with no 'select using the code below' scaffolding, so the mark turns on reading 'do not' correctly as much as on knowing the taxonomy — and when candidates objected, the Commission answered in one flat line, that statements 2 and 4 are not related to Gandhian principles. UPSC asks the identical thing in the positive: in 2012 it listed a uniform civil code, village panchayats, cottage industries and workers' leisure and asked which were the Gandhian principles, and in 2008 it tested whether prohibition of intoxicating drinks sits in Part IV at all while forced labour sits in Part III. Same syllabus line, opposite polarity — practise both directions.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following Directive Principles of State Policy are classified in standard texts as Gandhian principles? 1. Promotion of co-operative societies 2. Prohibition of the consumption of intoxicating drinks and drugs injurious to health 3. Separation of the judiciary from the executive 4. Promotion of the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

  • (a)1 and 2 only
  • (b)1, 2 and 4 only
  • (c)2, 3 and 4 only
  • (d)1, 2, 3 and 4

  Answer(b) 1, 2 and 4 only — Article 43B (co-operative societies, added by the 97th Amendment), Article 47 (prohibition) and Article 46 (SCs, STs and weaker sections) are grouped as Gandhian; Article 50, separation of the judiciary from the executive, is a liberal-intellectual principle.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following Articles of the Constitution of India directs the State to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government?

  • (a)Article 40
  • (b)Article 43
  • (c)Article 243G
  • (d)Article 51A

  Answer(a) Article 40 — the Gandhian Directive Principle; Article 243G, inserted by the 73rd Amendment in 1992, is the operative provision that empowers panchayats and links them to the Eleventh Schedule, while Article 43 covers a living wage and rural cottage industries.