Which of the following statements about 'Operation Sadbhavana' in Ladakh is/are correct? 1. Indian Army undertakes welfare activities, such as running of Army Goodwill Schools in remote areas of Ladakh. 2. It aims at building harmonious relationships between religious communities in Ladakh. Select the correct answer using the code given below:
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Correct — A, 1 only. Operation Sadbhavana is the Indian Army's civic-action and welfare effort in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, begun in 1998 and run on a winning-hearts-and-minds approach — the Army working directly with the civil population rather than only against militancy. Army Goodwill Schools are its best-known component: English-medium schools, more than fifty of them, in places such as Rajouri, Poonch, Uri and Kargil, serving well over fourteen thousand students, and staying open through periods when little else did. The rest of the operation is of the same kind — medical camps, women's vocational and empowerment centres, national-integration tours for young people, sports, model villages, artificial limbs for victims of militancy, and coaching for engineering entrance examinations. Statement 1 describes this accurately. Statement 2 changes the target. The operation's declared aim is to bring the Army closer to the local population and build mutual trust, and its projects are developmental — schooling, health, skills, infrastructure. Reconciling religious communities with one another is not what it is set up to do, and no official description of it frames the aim that way.
- (b)2 only — Drops the correct statement and keeps the invented aim. The Goodwill Schools are the single most documented part of the operation.
- (c)Both 1 and 2 — The natural guess, because 'Sadbhavana' translates as goodwill or harmony and the word pulls a reader towards inter-community relations. The operation's goodwill runs between the Army and the civilian population, not between religious groups.
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Statement 1 is straightforwardly true, so nothing supports rejecting both.
Operation Sadbhavana is a long-running Indian Army programme of development and welfare work in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, launched in 1998. It is the Indian expression of a doctrine armies elsewhere call winning hearts and minds: alongside counter-insurgency, the force invests in schools, clinics, roads, water supply, vocational centres and exposure tours, and hands the completed assets to the civil administration. Over four hundred and fifty crore rupees of such infrastructure has been transferred this way.
Two-statement items about a named operation almost always keep the visible facts and rewrite the purpose, and that is what happens here. The examiner's lever is the name itself — sadbhavana means goodwill, and goodwill sounds like communal harmony. Test the second statement by asking who the two parties are. In every published account of this operation the relationship being repaired is Army-to-civilian, in a region where the Army's ordinary role is armed. Ladakh matters in the stem because the operation extended there with schools in Kargil and the Nubra and Zanskar areas, where distances make government schooling hardest. As of the 2023 exam Ladakh had been a separate union territory since August 2019, so the Army's civic work there now runs alongside a union-territory administration rather than a State government.
- Operation Sadbhavana was launched by the Indian Army in 1998 in Jammu and Kashmir, and later extended across Ladakh.
- Army Goodwill Schools — more than fifty of them, in Rajouri, Poonch, Uri, Kargil and other districts — teach over fourteen thousand students.
- Other components include medical camps, women's vocational centres, national-integration tours, sports leagues, model villages and artificial limbs for victims of militancy.
- The operation follows the winning-hearts-and-minds approach; its stated purpose is to bring the Army closer to the population and build mutual trust.
- Welfare infrastructure worth over four hundred and fifty crore rupees has been handed over to civil authorities under it.
- Letting the meaning of the word 'sadbhavana' decide the answer instead of the operation's documented aim.
- Confusing Sadbhavana with Operation Rakshak, the counter-insurgency operation in the same theatre.
- Assuming the Goodwill Schools are run by the State education department; they are Army-run institutions.
As a two-statement item that keeps one verifiable activity and rewrites the operation's objective.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Army Goodwill Schools in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are run under which of the following?
- (a)Operation Vijay
- (b)Operation Sadbhavana
- (c)Operation Meghdoot
- (d)Operation Rakshak
Answer(b) Operation Sadbhavana — the Army's welfare and civic-action programme in the region, begun in 1998.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Operation Sadbhavana is best described as which one of the following?
- (a)A counter-insurgency operation along the Line of Control
- (b)A joint naval exercise in the Arabian Sea
- (c)An Army-run development and welfare programme for the civil population
- (d)A disaster-relief operation after the 2004 tsunami
Answer(c) An Army-run development and welfare programme for the civil population — schools, clinics, vocational centres and infrastructure handed over to civil authorities.