MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 47 of 100

Correct — option (3), 'Senior citizens who are not under National Old Age Pension Scheme'. The Annapurna Scheme was launched with effect from 1 April 2000 by the Ministry of Rural Development to close a specific and easily overlooked gap in India's old-age welfare provision. The National Old Age Pension Scheme, which forms part of the National Social Assistance Programme, pays a monthly pension to indigent elderly people, but it has always been a targeted scheme with a limited number of sanctioned beneficiaries in each state, so that a person could satisfy every condition of eligibility and still receive nothing simply because the state's allocation was exhausted. Annapurna was designed for exactly that category: the destitute senior citizen who qualifies for the old age pension but is not in fact receiving it, whether under the national scheme or a state pension scheme. Such a person is given ten kilograms of foodgrains a month, free of cost, delivered through the state's food and civil supplies machinery and the public distribution system, so the benefit is a food entitlement rather than a cash transfer. The design intention was that no eligible old person should be left entirely without support: if the pension cannot reach them, at least the grain will. That is why the name of the scheme, taken from Annapurna, the goddess associated with food and its abundant provision, points at food security rather than at income. The option text reproduces the scheme's own defining condition — senior citizens who are not covered by the National Old Age Pension Scheme — which is why it is the answer, and why none of the other three groups printed can be.

• (1)School girls — The name of the scheme is what makes this option tempting, since Annapurna is the goddess of food and a food scheme for children in school is one of the most familiar programmes in the country. But the school feeding programme is a different one: the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, now run as PM POSHAN, provides a cooked meal to children in government and government-aided schools, and it is administered by the education ministry rather than by the rural development ministry. Schemes aimed specifically at girls in school are different again and work through enrolment and retention rather than through grain. The lesson is that the word 'Anna' in a scheme's title identifies the benefit as food, not the beneficiary as a child, and the beneficiary has to be learnt separately.
• (2)Casual labours — Casual and unskilled labourers are the target of India's wage employment programmes, not of Annapurna, and the distinction is deliberate rather than accidental. Wage employment schemes are built on the principle of self-selection through work: the household that is willing to do manual labour at the notified wage is presumed to need it, and the guarantee of employment is what delivers the benefit. Annapurna is designed for precisely the people that principle cannot reach — the aged and destitute, who cannot present themselves for manual work at all, and for whom an unconditional entitlement to grain is the only workable form of support. A candidate who chooses this option has probably matched a food benefit to the poorest working group without asking which programme actually carries the name.
• (4)Retired soldiers — Retired soldiers have their own welfare architecture altogether, administered by the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare in the Ministry of Defence rather than by the Ministry of Rural Development, and it is built around pensions, resettlement, health care and educational concessions for the ex-serviceman's family. Annapurna carries no service condition of any kind: eligibility turns on age and destitution and on the person's failure to receive the old age pension, and a former soldier drawing a service pension would be excluded by that very condition. This option is in the set as a plausible-sounding welfare category, and it can be eliminated by asking which ministry would run the scheme, since the answer is a different one.

India's non-contributory social assistance for the poor is organised chiefly under the National Social Assistance Programme, and it is worth holding as a small family of components rather than as a list of names. Its pension components pay a monthly amount to three categories of destitute persons: the elderly under the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, widows under the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme, and persons with disabilities under the Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme. Alongside them sit a lump-sum death benefit to a bereaved poor household under the National Family Benefit Scheme, and the Annapurna Scheme, which is the only component that delivers food rather than money. Annapurna's position in that family explains its design: it is not an alternative to the old age pension but a residual safety net beneath it, engaged exactly when the pension does not reach someone who qualifies for it. This is a recurring shape in Indian welfare policy — a targeted scheme with a limited number of places, backed by a second scheme that catches those the first cannot accommodate — and recognising the shape makes the individual schemes far easier to remember than learning them one at a time.

Government schemes are among the most heavily examined topics in MPSC's economy and current affairs sections, and the Commission's usual method is exactly the one used here: name the scheme and ask who the beneficiary is, or name the beneficiary and ask for the scheme. That format punishes a candidate who has memorised scheme names without their target groups, which is why the useful unit of preparation is not the name but a four-part note — beneficiary, benefit, ministry, and year of launch. For Annapurna that note reads: destitute senior citizens eligible for but not receiving the old age pension; ten kilograms of foodgrains a month, free; Ministry of Rural Development; 2000. A second habit that pays on scheme questions is to ask which ministry would plausibly run the programme, because the option that belongs to a different ministry is usually eliminable on that ground alone, as the ex-servicemen option is here. Note also that scheme names are printed in Latin script in both language columns of this paper, so the name itself carries no clue that is available in one language and not the other.

• The Annapurna Scheme was launched with effect from 1 April 2000 by the Ministry of Rural Development to provide food security to indigent senior citizens who are eligible for the National Old Age Pension Scheme but are not receiving a pension under it.
• Beneficiaries of the scheme receive ten kilograms of foodgrains a month free of cost, delivered through the states' food and civil supplies departments and the public distribution system, so the benefit is in kind and not in cash.
• Annapurna is one of the components of the National Social Assistance Programme and is the only component of that programme that delivers food rather than a cash pension or a lump-sum grant.
• The other components of the National Social Assistance Programme are the old age, widow and disability pension schemes named after Indira Gandhi and the National Family Benefit Scheme, which pays a lump sum to a poor household on the death of its breadwinner.
• The scheme exists because the old age pension is a targeted programme with limited sanctioned places, so a person can meet every condition of eligibility and still receive nothing; Annapurna is the residual entitlement designed for that person.

• Inferring the beneficiary group from a scheme's name; 'Anna' identifies the benefit as food and says nothing about who receives it
• Confusing Annapurna with the school feeding programme, which is the Mid-Day Meal Scheme now running as PM POSHAN under the education ministry
• Forgetting the defining condition that the beneficiary must be eligible for the old age pension yet not receiving it, which is what separates Annapurna from the pension itself
• Assigning a welfare scheme to the wrong ministry, when the administering ministry is often the quickest way to eliminate a wrong option

Scheme questions in MPSC papers take a small number of shapes: who the beneficiaries are, what the benefit is, which ministry runs it, in which year it was launched, and occasionally which schemes have been merged into or replaced by a newer one. Older schemes such as Annapurna keep reappearing even decades after launch, so a candidate who prepares only the current year's announcements is exposed. The Commission also likes options that are real welfare categories in their own right — school girls, casual labourers, ex-servicemen — so that every choice sounds like something the government does for someone, and only knowledge of the particular scheme separates them. Building the four-part note for every scheme in the syllabus, and revising the note rather than the name, is what makes this family of questions reliable.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Annapurna Scheme, an eligible beneficiary receives which of the following benefits every month ?

  • (a)A cash pension equal to the old age pension
  • (b)Ten kilograms of foodgrains free of cost
  • (c)A cooked midday meal at an anganwadi centre
  • (d)A subsidy on the purchase of a cooking gas cylinder

  Answer(b) Ten kilograms of foodgrains free of cost — Annapurna is a food entitlement rather than a cash transfer, and the grain is delivered through the states' food and civil supplies departments and the public distribution system. It exists to reach destitute senior citizens who qualify for the National Old Age Pension Scheme but are not actually receiving a pension under it, so it deliberately does not duplicate the cash benefit.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Annapurna Scheme forms a component of which of the following umbrella programmes ?

  • (a)The National Rural Livelihoods Mission
  • (b)The National Social Assistance Programme
  • (c)The Integrated Child Development Services
  • (d)The National Rural Health Mission

  Answer(b) The National Social Assistance Programme — Annapurna sits alongside the old age, widow and disability pension schemes and the National Family Benefit Scheme, and it is the only one of those components that delivers food rather than money. The Integrated Child Development Services also provides food, but to children under six and to pregnant and nursing mothers, which is a different beneficiary group altogether.