Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2020 recruitment test, advertisement 421. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, NMJX-U-GTA); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

In the year 1911, who among the following formed the Social Service League in Bombay ?

(a)G.K. Gokhale
(b)S.A. Dange
(c)N.M. Joshi
(d)M.R. Jayakar

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) N.M. Joshi. Narayan Malhar Joshi founded the Social Service League at Bombay in 1911. He had joined the Servants of India Society in 1909, and the League was his instrument for a particular kind of public work: improving the conditions of life and labour of the industrial workers of the city, in the mill districts where the working population lived. Its declared object was to secure for the masses better and reasonable conditions of life and work, and its programme was practical rather than political — day and night schools, reading rooms and libraries, dispensaries and medical relief, day nurseries, cooperative societies, boys' clubs and a scouts corps, legal aid and advice for the poor and illiterate, sanitary work, and the training of volunteers for relief in famines, floods and epidemics. What makes the League worth knowing beyond the date is where it led. Joshi moved from welfare work to organised labour and became the central figure of the early trade union movement: he was among the founders of the All India Trade Union Congress in 1920 and later served as its General Secretary, he organised the textile workers of Bombay, he represented Indian labour at the conferences of the International Labour Organization in Geneva and sat in the Central Legislative Assembly as a nominated member for labour, and he gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Labour of 1929-31. The line from a social service league of 1911 to statutory labour protection is the reason this item belongs in an EPFO paper at all.

Why the others are wrong

(a)G.K. Gokhale — Gopal Krishna Gokhale is the near-miss, and deliberately so: he founded the parent body, not this one. The Servants of India Society was established by Gokhale at Poona in 1905 to train a cadre of men who would devote their lives to the country's service on a subsistence allowance, and N.M. Joshi was one of its members when he set up the Social Service League six years later. Gokhale's own record belongs to a different register — the Moderate leader of the Congress, its president at the Banaras session of 1905, a member of the Imperial Legislative Council whose budget speeches were the most formidable Indian criticism of colonial finance, the man Gandhi called his political guru, and the mover of the Elementary Education Bill of 1911 for free and compulsory primary education, which the Council rejected the following year. He died in 1915. Note how easily the year 1911 attaches to him through that Bill; the coincidence is what makes this option work.
(b)S.A. Dange — Shripad Amrit Dange can be ruled out on chronology alone: born in 1899, he was about twelve years old in 1911. He belongs to the next generation and to a different tradition — the communist one. He wrote Gandhi vs. Lenin in 1921, started the weekly Socialist in 1922, was a founder of the Communist Party of India, was prosecuted in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case of 1924 and the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929, and later led the AITUC. That last fact is the trap in the option, because it puts Dange and Joshi in the same organisation a decade after the League was founded; but belonging later to a body a man founded is not the same as founding what he founded before you were grown.
(d)M.R. Jayakar — Mukund Ramrao Jayakar was a Bombay lawyer and a public figure of the same city and roughly the same period, which is what qualifies him as a distractor, but the Social Service League was not his. His record runs through constitutional politics: he was associated with the Responsive Cooperation group after the Swaraj Party's council entry, he attempted with Tej Bahadur Sapru the mediation between the government and the Congress in 1930 that prepared the ground for the Gandhi-Irwin pact, he took part in the Round Table Conferences, he was one of the negotiators of the Poona Pact of 1932, and after independence he became the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Poona and a member of the Constituent Assembly. A useful separation to hold: Jayakar worked on constitutions and settlements, Joshi worked on wages, hours and welfare.

Concept

Organised concern for the Indian industrial worker began outside the trade union form, in philanthropic and social-service bodies set up by nationalists of the constitutional school. The Servants of India Society, founded by Gokhale in 1905, trained full-time public workers and is the parent of much of this activity; the Social Service League that N.M. Joshi founded in Bombay in 1911 is its best known offshoot in the field of labour. These bodies did welfare work — schools, dispensaries, libraries, cooperative credit, relief — rather than collective bargaining, because there was as yet no legal space for bargaining and little organisation to do it with. The transition came after the First World War, when wartime inflation, the Russian revolution, the founding of the International Labour Organization in 1919 and the need to send worker representatives to its conferences pushed Indian labour into national organisation. The All India Trade Union Congress was founded in Bombay in 1920 with Lala Lajpat Rai as its first president, and N.M. Joshi was among its founders and later its General Secretary. Statutory protection followed over the next two decades — the Trade Unions Act of 1926, which gave registered unions legal status and immunity, the Trade Disputes Act of 1929, the Royal Commission on Labour of 1929-31, and the Payment of Wages Act of 1936 — and the framework that EPFO administers today stands at the end of that line.

This is the item in the paper's history strand that connects directly to the labour and social security strand: the man who is the answer is the man behind the AITUC and India's representation at the ILO. For a candidate that makes the name worth learning once and using twice. The item is also a clean example of how this examiner builds a distractor set — one man who founded the parent organisation, one who joined the same movement a generation later, and one contemporary from the same city working in a different field. Only precise attribution separates them, which is why learning founders with their bodies and years is worth more here than learning themes.

Key facts

N.M. Joshi founded the Social Service League in Bombay in 1911.
He had joined the Servants of India Society, founded by G.K. Gokhale at Poona in 1905, in 1909.
The League ran day and night schools, libraries and reading rooms, dispensaries, day nurseries, cooperative societies, boys' clubs and scouting, legal aid and relief training for famines, floods and epidemics.
Its object was to secure for the masses better and reasonable conditions of life and work.
Joshi was among the founders of the All India Trade Union Congress in 1920 and later its General Secretary.
He represented Indian labour at International Labour Organization conferences and sat in the Central Legislative Assembly as a nominated labour member.
The AITUC's first president was Lala Lajpat Rai.
Gokhale, who founded the Servants of India Society, also moved the Elementary Education Bill of 1911 for free and compulsory primary education; it was rejected in 1912.

One city, one period, four public men — and only one founded this body

N. M. Joshi→Narayan Malhar Joshi founded the Social Service League at Bombay in 1911. He had joined the Servants of India Society in 1909, and the League was his instrument for a particular kind of public work: improving the conditions of life and labour of the industrial workers of the city, in the mill districts where the working population lived. Its declared object was to secure for the masses better and reasonable conditions of life and work.

What the League actually did→Practical work rather than political — day and night schools, reading rooms and libraries, dispensaries and medical relief, day nurseries, cooperative societies, boys’ clubs and a scouts corps, legal aid and advice for the poor and illiterate, sanitary work, and the training of volunteers for relief in famines, floods and epidemics.

G. K. Gokhale — the near-miss, and deliberately so→He founded the PARENT body, not this one. The Servants of India Society was established by Gokhale at Poona in 1905 to train a cadre of men who would devote their lives to the country’s service on a subsistence allowance, and Joshi was one of its members when he set up the Social Service League six years later. Gokhale also moved the Elementary Education Bill of 1911 for free and compulsory primary education, which was rejected in 1912.

S. A. Dange — ruled out on chronology alone→Born in 1899, he was about twelve years old in 1911. He belongs to the next generation and to a different tradition: he wrote Gandhi vs. Lenin in 1921, started the weekly Socialist in 1922, was a founder of the Communist Party of India, and was prosecuted in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case of 1924 and the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929.

M. R. Jayakar→Mukund Ramrao Jayakar was a Bombay lawyer and a public figure of the same city and roughly the same period, which is exactly what qualifies him as a distractor. But his record runs through constitutional politics — the Responsive Cooperation group after the Swaraj Party’s council entry, and the attempt with Tej Bahadur Sapru to mediate between the government and the Congress.

Why this belongs in an EPFO paper→Joshi moved from welfare work to organised labour and became the central figure of the early trade union movement: a founder of the ALL INDIA TRADE UNION CONGRESS in 1920, whose first president was Lala Lajpat Rai, and later its General Secretary. He represented Indian labour at International Labour Organization conferences and gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Labour of 1929-31. Statutory protection followed on that line — the Trade Unions Act 1926, the Trade Disputes Act 1929, the Payment of Wages Act 1936.

Study next

The Servants of India Society and the constructive-work tradition within the national movementThe origins of the Indian trade union movement: AITUC 1920, the split of 1929, and the Royal Commission on LabourThe Trade Unions Act, 1926: registration, recognition, immunities and the political fundIndia and the International Labour Organization: the tripartite structure and India's founder membershipGokhale, the Moderates, and the record of Indian members in the Imperial Legislative Council

Common traps

Answering 'Gokhale' because the Servants of India Society is the body behind the League. The Society is his; the League is Joshi's.
Assuming any early labour body must be communist. The League and the AITUC's first leadership came from the liberal and nationalist mainstream.
Confusing social service work with trade unionism. The League ran schools and dispensaries; bargaining over wages came later and through different bodies.
Attaching a founder to the wrong city or decade. Bombay and 1911 are the anchors here, and Dange's dates alone rule him out.
Reading 'N.M. Joshi' as one of the better-known Joshis of the period. He is the labour leader, not a Congress politician.

Institution-and-founder items are a fixture of this paper's history strand and are always put in one line, with the year in the stem doing the discriminating work. Prepare them as triples — body, founder, year, and one sentence on what the body did — because the same names recur across the labour-law strand of EPFO papers, where the founder of the AITUC is asked about directly.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q102Open & attempt →

What is the maximum number of hours in a week that an adult worker is allowed to work for ?

(a) 35 hours
(b) 40 hours
(c) 45 hours
(d) 48 hours

Answer(d) 48 hours

A labour-law item from the paper's second statute block, on the maximum number of hours an adult worker may be required to work in a week under the Factories Act, 1948. It is the statutory destination of the movement this question begins: the welfare bodies of 1911 and the trade union organisation of the 1920s campaigned for exactly such limits, and the men who founded them, N.M. Joshi among them, carried the case to the legislature and to the International Labour Organization.

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q60Open & attempt →

Who among the following was the founder of Swatantra Party ?

(a) C. Rajagopalachari
(b) Deen Dayal Upadhyaya
(c) Shyama Prasad Mukherjee
(d) Acharya Narendra Dev

Answer(a) C. Rajagopalachari

Another founder-and-organisation item from the paper's current affairs and general knowledge block, this one on the founder of the Swatantra Party. It shows the shape recurring outside the history strand, and confirms that the safest way to hold this material is as a list of bodies each tied to one name.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Servants of India Society, of which N.M. Joshi was a member, was founded in 1905 by which one of the following ?
- (a)M.G. Ranade
- (b)G.K. Gokhale
- (c)B.G. Tilak
- (d)G.G. Agarkar
Answer(b) G.K. Gokhale
practice — not a real PYQ
Who among the following was the first President of the All India Trade Union Congress, founded in 1920 ?
- (a)N.M. Joshi
- (b)Lala Lajpat Rai
- (c)S.A. Dange
- (d)C.R. Das
Answer(b) Lala Lajpat Rai

Why