CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 58 of 120

Correct — D, New Delhi. The National Tribal Research Institute was inaugurated on 7 June 2022 by the Union Minister for Home and Cooperation at the campus of the Indian Institute of Public Administration on Ring Road in New Delhi, as part of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs' Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav events. Its purpose is set by what it sits above: India already had a network of State-level Tribal Research Institutes, one in most States with significant Scheduled Tribe populations, but no national body tying them together. The NTRI was created as that link — a national nodal agency and knowledge centre feeding research into policy on tribal welfare, and a repository for tribal cultural heritage, museums and festivals.

• (a)Bilaspur — Bilaspur is in Chhattisgarh, a State with a very large Scheduled Tribe population, which makes it a plausible-sounding site. But Chhattisgarh's tribal research body sits at Raipur, and neither is the national institute.
• (b)Raipur — Raipur genuinely hosts a Tribal Research Institute — the State one for Chhattisgarh. That is precisely the level of body the National Tribal Research Institute was set up to coordinate, not to be.
• (c)Ranchi — Ranchi also hosts a State Tribal Research Institute, for Jharkhand. Like Raipur, it is one of the network's nodes rather than its centre.

Tribal Research Institutes are the research arm of tribal administration in India. Each is a State body, supported by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, and does the documentation work that policy depends on — ethnographic studies, identification of particularly vulnerable tribal groups, evaluation of schemes, museum and archive work, and training. The Ministry's own portal records that around two dozen such institutes are supported across the States. The National Tribal Research Institute was created to sit at the top of that network.

The three wrong options are not random towns; every one of them is a place where tribal research really happens, which is what makes the question harder than it looks. Bilaspur, Raipur and Ranchi all lie in the tribal heartland, and Raipur and Ranchi actually host State institutes. The reasoning that gets you there is that a body called national, meant to coordinate State institutes and to advise the Union Government, would be placed where the Union Government is. Anchor the item to its date — the institute opened in June 2022, three months before this paper was written, which is why the examiner reached for it.

• The National Tribal Research Institute was inaugurated on 7 June 2022 in New Delhi, at the Indian Institute of Public Administration campus.
• It was set up under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs as the national link connecting the State Tribal Research Institutes.
• State Tribal Research Institutes supported by the Ministry number in the mid-twenties; Chhattisgarh's is at Raipur and Jharkhand's at Ranchi.
• The Ministry of Tribal Affairs itself was created in 1999, on the bifurcation of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
• The institute's remit includes acting as a national knowledge centre for the protection and promotion of tribal cultural heritage.

• Reaching for a tribal-majority State capital because the subject is tribal; the word in the stem is 'National'.
• Confusing the National Tribal Research Institute with the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, which is a constitutional body under Article 338A.
• Assuming Bilaspur and Raipur are interchangeable; Chhattisgarh's tribal research institute is at Raipur.

As a where-is-it item on a newly created national institution, or as a matching item pairing institutions with the ministries that run them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Tribal Research Institute functions under which one of the following ministries?

  • (a)Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment
  • (b)Ministry of Tribal Affairs
  • (c)Ministry of Culture
  • (d)Ministry of Rural Development

  Answer(b) Ministry of Tribal Affairs — the ministry created in 1999 on the bifurcation of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes derives its status from which one of the following?

  • (a)An Act of Parliament
  • (b)Article 338A of the Constitution
  • (c)An executive resolution of the Union Government
  • (d)The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution

  Answer(b) Article 338A of the Constitution — it is a constitutional body, unlike the research institute, which is an administrative one.