MPPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 27 of 100

Correct — D, Jabalpur. The Indian Council of Medical Research's tribal-health institute stands on a 36-acre campus in Jabalpur. It began in 1984 as the Regional Medical Research Centre for Tribals (RMRCT) in three rooms of the adjoining Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College, Jabalpur, moved into its own campus in April 2002, and was re-designated the National Institute for Research in Tribal Health (NIRTH) in 2014 (ICMR currently lists it as the National Institute for Tribal Health Research). It is ICMR's institute dedicated to tribal health, working on haemoglobinopathies including sickle cell disease, malaria, tuberculosis with a specific focus on the Sahariya tribe, and viral diseases of central India.

• (a)Indore — Indore is MP's commercial capital and an education hub (IIT Indore, IIM Indore, MGM Medical College), but ICMR has no institute there — and none dedicated to tribal health.
• (b)Bhopal — The most tempting option, because Bhopal genuinely hosts ICMR bodies — the National Institute for Research in Environmental Health (ICMR-NIREH, 2010) and the Bhopal Memorial Hospital & Research Centre (ICMR-BMHRC, 1998). Neither is the tribal-health institute; being the state capital does not make Bhopal the default answer.
• (c)Gwalior — Gwalior hosts DRDO's Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) and IIITM Gwalior, but no ICMR institute.

ICMR runs a national network of specialised research institutes, each with a defined mandate and each located where its subject matter is concentrated — virology at Pune, nutrition at Hyderabad, environmental health at Bhopal, and tribal health at Jabalpur. Jabalpur sits in the Mahakoshal region, ringed by the tribal districts of Mandla, Dindori, Shahdol and Umaria, which is why the tribal-health institute was placed there.

Questions of the type 'which city hosts institute X' are decided by two habits: (i) never assume the state capital by default, and (ii) attach each institute to the reason for its location. Tribal health → the tribal belt → Jabalpur; environmental health → the site of the 1984 gas disaster → Bhopal. The acronym pair NIRTH (Jabalpur) and NIREH (Bhopal) is designed to be confused.

• Established in 1984 at Jabalpur as the Regional Medical Research Centre for Tribals (RMRCT); re-designated NIRTH in 2014.
• Moved to its own 36-acre campus in Jabalpur in April 2002.
• Core research: haemoglobinopathies/sickle cell disease, malaria, tuberculosis (with a specific focus on the Sahariya tribe) and fluorosis mitigation through nutrition and safe drinking water.
• Madhya Pradesh's other ICMR presence is at Bhopal: NIREH (environmental health, 2010) and BMHRC (1998).
• Madhya Pradesh has the largest Scheduled Tribe population of any Indian state (Census 2011), the context for a dedicated tribal-health institute in the state.

• Confusing NIRTH (Jabalpur, tribal health) with NIREH (Bhopal, environmental health) — near-identical acronyms, different cities and mandates.
• Defaulting to Bhopal because it is the state capital.
• Assuming the institute is new — it dates to 1984 under its older name RMRCT.

'Which city hosts institute X' is a standing MPPSC pattern — IIFM in 2022, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance in 2024, NIRTH in 2025. Learn institutes as city + mandate + founding decade, not as names alone.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  ICMR-NIREH, the national institute working on environmental health research, is located at:

  • (a)Jabalpur
  • (b)Bhopal
  • (c)Indore
  • (d)Gwalior

  Answer(b) Bhopal — NIREH was set up there in 2010; the tribal-health institute is at Jabalpur.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission was launched in July 2023 from which state?

  • (a)Madhya Pradesh
  • (b)Gujarat
  • (c)Odisha
  • (d)Jharkhand

  Answer(a) Madhya Pradesh — the mission was launched from Shahdol, a tribal district of MP.