Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2017 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, GRS-A-TNS); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

StandUp India Programme envisages each bank branch to give loan between ₹ 10 lakh to ₹ 100 lakh 1. to at least one SC/ST borrower 2. to at least one woman borrower 3. to at least one rural unemployed youth borrower Select the correct answer using the code given below.

(a)1 only
(b)2 and 3
(c)1 and 3
(d)1 and 2

Answer

Why

Correct — D, (d) 1 and 2. Stand Up India is built around two mandates placed on every bank branch, and the item is asking whether a candidate knows what those two are. Taking the numbered items in turn:

Statement 1, to at least one SC/ST borrower — correct. Every branch is to finance at least one entrepreneur from the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes.

Statement 2, to at least one woman borrower — correct. Every branch is separately to finance at least one woman entrepreneur. The two requirements are independent of each other, one for each category, which is why the scheme is described as reaching two kinds of under-served borrower rather than one.

Statement 3, to at least one rural unemployed youth borrower — incorrect. There is no such category in Stand Up India. The scheme's targeting is by social category and by sex, not by age, employment status or place of residence, and it applies to branches everywhere rather than to rural branches. A candidate who marks this statement is importing the beneficiary definition of a different family of programmes — the employment-generation and rural-skilling schemes, which do target unemployed and rural youth, and which work through subsidy, training and placement rather than through a lending mandate on every branch.

So the correct combination is 1 and 2, which is option (d).

The rest of the design is worth holding with those two mandates. The loan is a composite one, term loan together with working capital, in a band running from ten lakh rupees at the bottom to one crore rupees at the top. It funds a greenfield enterprise, meaning the borrower's first venture in the activity, in the manufacturing, services or trading sector — which is what question 51 of this same paper asks. Where the enterprise is not an individual proprietorship, at least fifty-one per cent of the shareholding and the controlling stake must be with the SC, ST or woman entrepreneur, so that the concession cannot be routed through a nominal partner. Refinance runs through the Small Industries Development Bank of India, a credit guarantee facility allows the lending to be done without collateral, and an online handholding platform connects an applicant to the branch, the training institution and the district authorities.

Why the others are wrong

(a)1 only — This takes only the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe mandate and drops the woman-borrower mandate, which removes half the scheme. Stand Up India was designed from the start to address two distinct groups whose access to formal enterprise credit has been poor, and the two mandates sit side by side in the scheme's own description. A candidate reaching for this code has probably remembered the scheme as a caste-targeted programme, which is what it would have been had the second mandate not been written in.
(b)2 and 3 — This drops the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe mandate and admits the rural unemployed youth category, so it gets one true statement and one false one while discarding the other true one. The pairing is what a candidate constructs on the assumption that any credit scheme announced in this period must be aimed at women and at rural youth — the two groups most often named in financial-inclusion rhetoric. Stand Up India names women, but its other named group is defined by social category, not by age or location.
(c)1 and 3 — This keeps the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe mandate, drops the woman-borrower mandate and admits the rural unemployed youth category. It is the mirror image of option (b) and fails for the same reason: rural unemployed youth are not a beneficiary class under this scheme. The category belongs to the employment-generation and rural-skilling programmes, which reach their beneficiaries through margin-money subsidy or through placement-linked training rather than by requiring each bank branch to lend.

Concept

Stand Up India, launched on 5 April 2016, works by putting an obligation on the branch rather than by creating a subsidy for the borrower. Each bank branch is to extend a loan to at least one Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe entrepreneur and at least one woman entrepreneur for setting up a greenfield enterprise — the borrower's first venture in that activity — in the manufacturing, services or trading sector. The facility is a composite loan of term loan and working capital, running from ten lakh rupees to one crore rupees. For an enterprise that is not a sole proprietorship, at least fifty-one per cent of the shareholding and the controlling stake must be held by the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or woman entrepreneur. The supporting machinery consists of refinance through the Small Industries Development Bank of India, a credit guarantee facility that permits collateral-free lending, a margin contribution from the borrower of which a minimum share must be the borrower's own money, and an online portal for handholding — connecting the applicant with the branch, with training and skilling agencies and with the district administration. The scheme was later widened, with the Budget changes for 2021-22, to include activities allied to agriculture and to reduce the margin-money requirement.

Stand Up India appears twice in this paper — once on its sectors and once on its borrowers — which tells a candidate how the Commission thinks about a flagship scheme: not as a name to be recognised but as a set of boundaries to be known. For an Enforcement Officer that is exactly the right emphasis, because the day-to-day work is deciding whether a given case falls inside or outside a defined class. On statement-list items of this kind, the reliable technique is to ask what the scheme's targeting principle is before adjudicating the individual statements. Here the principle is social category and sex; a statement defined by age, employment status or geography is therefore suspect on its face, whatever its individual plausibility.

Key facts

Stand Up India requires every bank branch to lend to at least one Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe borrower and at least one woman borrower.
The two mandates are separate — one for each category.
There is no rural unemployed youth category in the scheme.
The loan is a composite facility of term loan and working capital, from ten lakh rupees up to one crore rupees.
It finances a greenfield enterprise, meaning the borrower's first venture in the activity.
The eligible sectors as the scheme was framed were manufacturing, services and trading.
For a non-individual enterprise, at least fifty-one per cent of the shareholding and the controlling stake must be with the SC, ST or woman entrepreneur.
Refinance is through the Small Industries Development Bank of India, and a credit guarantee facility supports collateral-free lending.
An online handholding portal connects applicants with branches, training agencies and district authorities.
The scheme was launched on 5 April 2016 and later widened, with the Budget changes for 2021-22, to activities allied to agriculture.

Two mandates, one on each category, and a third that belongs to a different family of schemes

1. At least one SC or ST borrower→Every bank branch is to finance at least one entrepreneur from the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes.

2. At least one woman borrower→Every branch is separately to finance at least one woman entrepreneur. The two requirements are independent of each other, one for each category, which is why the scheme is described as reaching two kinds of under-served borrower rather than one.

3. Rural unemployed youth — no such category→The scheme's targeting is by social category and by sex, not by age, employment status or place of residence, and it applies to branches everywhere rather than to rural branches.

Where that third category does belong→To the employment-generation and rural-skilling programmes, which do target unemployed and rural youth — and which reach their beneficiaries through margin-money subsidy or placement-linked training rather than by requiring each bank branch to lend.

The instrument is an obligation on the branch→Not a subsidy for the borrower. The facility is a composite loan of term loan and working capital, from ten lakh rupees up to one crore rupees, and for an enterprise that is not a sole proprietorship at least fifty-one per cent of the shareholding and the controlling stake must be held by the SC, ST or woman entrepreneur, so the concession cannot be routed through a nominal partner.

The machinery around the loan→Refinance through the Small Industries Development Bank of India; a credit guarantee facility that permits collateral-free lending; a margin contribution of which a minimum share must be the borrower's own money; and an online portal connecting the applicant with the branch, with training and skilling agencies and with the district administration.

Study next

Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana and how its Shishu, Kishore and Tarun bands sit below the Stand Up India bandEmployment-generation and rural-skilling schemes, and the beneficiary classes they actually usePriority sector lending targets and sub-targets, including the weaker-sections categoryCredit guarantee funds and why collateral-free lending to first-generation entrepreneurs needs themThe financial-inclusion architecture as a whole, from bank accounts through credit to insurance and pension

Common traps

Importing a beneficiary class from another scheme — rural unemployed youth belong to the employment-generation and skilling programmes, not to this one.
Treating the two mandates as alternatives when they are cumulative, one for each category.
Confusing Stand Up India with Start-up India — a bank-credit mandate for SC, ST and women entrepreneurs against a policy programme for innovation-driven firms.
Forgetting the fifty-one per cent shareholding and control requirement for enterprises that are not sole proprietorships.
Assuming the scheme is restricted to rural branches; the mandate applies to branches generally.

A flagship scheme is rarely asked once. This paper takes Stand Up India twice, from the sector side and from the borrower side, and the same technique answers both: hold the scheme as four boundaries — who qualifies, what activity qualifies, what the amount range is, and how the money reaches the borrower. Statement-list items then reduce to checking a claim against one of those four lines.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q51Open & attempt →

A StandUp enterprise can be established in 1. farming sector 2. manufacturing sector 3. service sector 4. trading sector Select the correct answer using the code given below.

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

Answer(d) 2, 3 and 4

The sector side of the same scheme, four questions earlier in this paper — in which sectors a StandUp enterprise may be established, and why farming is not one of them.

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q46Open & attempt →

Which one of the following bodies has formulated the ‘National Student Startup Policy’, launched by the President of India in November 2016?

(a) UGC
(b) NCERT
(c) AIU
(d) AICTE

Answer(d) AICTE

The other flagship of the same 2016 entrepreneurship push in this paper — which body formulated the National Student Startup Policy.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Under the Stand Up India scheme, where the enterprise is not a sole proprietorship, the minimum shareholding and controlling stake that must be held by the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or woman entrepreneur is
- (a)twenty-six per cent
- (b)thirty-three per cent
- (c)fifty-one per cent
- (d)seventy-six per cent
Answer(c) fifty-one per cent
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is a placement-linked skill training programme aimed at rural youth?
- (a)Stand Up India
- (b)Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana
- (c)Rashtriya Mahila Kosh
- (d)Startup India
Answer(b) Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana

Why