Consider the following statements: The Government is promoting the 'Kisan Drone' for 1. Spraying weedicides. 2. Digitisation of land records. 3. Crop assessment. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 and 2
- (b)2 and 3
- (c)1 only
- (d)3 only
Correct — B, 2 and 3. The announcement being tested is paragraph 33 of the Union Budget speech of 1 February 2022, which reads in full: 'Use of Kisan Drones will be promoted for crop assessment, digitization of land records, spraying of insecticides, and nutrients.' Three uses are named — crop assessment, digitisation of land records, and the spraying of insecticides and nutrients — and weedicides are not among them. So statement 3 is in the speech word for word, statement 2 is in it word for word, and statement 1 is the one that is not. A drone flying a grid over a field can photograph crop condition for yield estimation and insurance assessment, can carry survey-grade cameras for cadastral mapping, and can carry a tank of liquid for spraying; the exam has simply asked whether you know which of those the Government actually put its name to.
- (a)1 and 2 — Pairs the one false statement with a true one. Digitisation of land records is genuinely in the announcement, but spraying of weedicides is not — the speech names insecticides and nutrients.
- (c)1 only — Picks only the statement that fails. Weedicide spraying is the single item in the list that the Kisan Drone announcement does not mention.
- (d)3 only — Crop assessment is correct but incomplete: it drops digitisation of land records, which the same sentence of the Budget speech names alongside it.
Kisan Drones are the agricultural application of India's drone push — small unmanned aircraft used over farmland for three broad jobs: sensing, mapping and spraying. Sensing means photographing a standing crop to estimate area, health and likely yield, which feeds crop insurance and procurement planning. Mapping means flying survey-grade cameras over village land to build accurate cadastral records. Spraying means carrying a tank of pesticide or liquid nutrient and applying it in a fraction of the time a knapsack sprayer would take, without a worker walking through the treated crop.
Current affairs items built on a Budget speech reward reading the sentence rather than the theme. The theme here would let you argue for weedicides — a drone that can spray an insecticide can obviously spray a herbicide, and later operating procedures for drone-based agrochemical application do cover a wider set of formulations. But the question asks what the Government is promoting Kisan Drones for, and the announcement's own words stop at insecticides and nutrients. Notice too how the distractors are built: every wrong option either includes statement 1 or excludes statement 2, so pinning down those two settles the question without needing statement 3 at all. One present-day line: the policy has since been widened, with drones supplied to women's self-help groups under a separate central scheme, and with subsidies for drone purchase routed through the agricultural mechanisation programme.
- Budget speech of 1 February 2022, paragraph 33, verbatim: 'Use of Kisan Drones will be promoted for crop assessment, digitization of land records, spraying of insecticides, and nutrients.'
- The Budget was presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
- Weedicides are not named in that announcement, which is the entire basis for rejecting statement 1.
- The same speech separately promotes Drone Shakti and Drone-As-A-Service through startups, in paragraph 45.
- Drone use in Indian civil airspace is governed by the Drone Rules, 2021, which replaced the far more restrictive 2021 unmanned aircraft rules.
- Reading 'insecticides' as covering weedicides; the announcement's wording is what is being tested.
- Assuming a drone use that is technically possible must have been announced — the item is about the text of a policy statement.
- Confusing Kisan Drones with SVAMITVA, which is the separate drone-based survey of inhabited rural land.
As a statements item listing three or four plausible drone uses, with one deliberately absent from the official announcement.
Consider the following activities : 1. Spraying pesticides on a crop field 2. Inspecting the craters of active volcanoes 3. Collecting breath samples from spouting whales for DNA analysis At the present level of technology, which of the above activities can be successfully carried out by using drones ?
- (a) 1 and 2 only
- (b) 2 and 3 only
- (c) 1 and 3 only
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(d) 1, 2 and 3
The capability question that sits underneath the policy question. That item asks what drones can do, and the answer is all three; this item asks what the Government said it would use them for, which is a narrower list. Keeping those two questions apart is the whole skill here.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The SVAMITVA scheme uses drone survey technology primarily for which one of the following?
- (a)Spraying of nutrients on standing crops
- (b)Mapping inhabited land in villages to issue property cards
- (c)Monitoring forest fires
- (d)Estimating reservoir storage
Answer(b) Mapping inhabited land in villages to issue property cards — drones survey the abadi area and owners receive record-of-rights documents.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Civil drone operations in India are currently governed by which one of the following?
- (a)The Aircraft Rules, 1937 alone
- (b)The Drone Rules, 2021
- (c)The Telegraph Act, 1885
- (d)The Environment Protection Rules, 1986
Answer(b) The Drone Rules, 2021 — they replaced the earlier and far more restrictive unmanned aircraft system rules.