MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 73 of 100

Correct — option (4). Note first what this question is and is not. It is not a two-column matching item: the paper itself prints each labelled statement as a pair already formed, so 'A. America – Post of Vice President' is a single assertion with the dash inside it, and the task is to judge each printed pair true or false rather than to re-pair anything. The subject is the borrowed features of the Constitution — the provisions the framers drew from other constitutions and adapted, a process Dr Ambedkar described in the Constituent Assembly as having ransacked the known constitutions of the world. Taking the four in turn. Statement A pairs America with the post of Vice-President, and that is correct: the United States Constitution supplied the model of a Vice-President, and India took the office along with the American features of Fundamental Rights, judicial review, the independence of the judiciary, the impeachment of the President and the removal of judges. Statement B pairs Canada with the concept of a 'Union' for the central government, and that is correct on the standard account: Canada supplied the model of a federation with a strong Centre, together with the vesting of residuary powers in the Centre, the appointment of state Governors by the Centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and Article 1 accordingly describes India as a Union of States rather than a federation formed by agreement among them. Statement C pairs South Africa with the method of electing the Rajya Sabha, and that is correct: from South Africa the framers took the procedure for amending the Constitution and the election of the members of the Council of States, who are chosen by the elected members of the State Legislative Assemblies through proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. Statement D pairs Ireland with the nomination of Rajya Sabha members by the President from persons who have done special work in a particular field, and that too is correct: Ireland supplied the Directive Principles of State Policy, the method of electing the President and the nomination of members to the upper house, and Article 80 accordingly allows the President to nominate twelve members having special knowledge or practical experience of literature, science, art and social service. All four pairs therefore hold, and the answer is option (4). It is worth noticing that a borrowed feature is never a copied one: the American Vice-President is elected on the same ticket as the President and succeeds to the office on a vacancy, whereas the Indian Vice-President is elected separately by an electoral college of both Houses of Parliament, serves as ex-officio Chairman of the Council of States, and on a vacancy only acts as President until a new President is elected.

• (1)Only A — This option accepts statement A alone and rejects the other three, but each of them is correct as printed. The American origin of the Vice-Presidency is the pairing candidates recall most readily, which is exactly why it is offered on its own: an option naming only the item everyone is sure of is attractive to a candidate who has not verified the rest, and on a list where all four statements happen to be true it is the costliest possible selection. The general lesson for 'which of the following is/are correct' items is that certainty about one statement tells you nothing about the others, and the list must be worked through to the end. Here the remaining three — Canada and the Union, South Africa and the Rajya Sabha election method, Ireland and the nomination of members — are all standard entries in the table of borrowed features and none of them can be dropped.
• (2)A and C — This option takes statements A and C, both of which are correct, but discards statements B and D, which are correct as well. South Africa's contribution of the Rajya Sabha election method is properly included here — it comes paired in the standard account with the procedure for amending the Constitution — but the omissions are not defensible. Canada is the recognised source of the strong-Centre federal design and of the description of India as a Union, and Ireland is the recognised source of the nomination of members to the upper house alongside the Directive Principles and the method of electing the President. This option is the trap for a candidate who has learnt some of the table and is reluctant to commit to the whole of it, and it illustrates why partial recall converts a question with four true statements into a lost mark.
• (3)A, B and D — This option correctly accepts statements A, B and D but leaves out statement C, and the exclusion is the interesting one, because South Africa is the source candidates most often forget. Its two contributions to the Indian Constitution are the procedure for amendment under Article 368 and the method of electing the members of the Rajya Sabha, who are chosen by the elected members of the State Legislative Assemblies through proportional representation by the single transferable vote. Because South Africa contributes only these two items, it is easily crowded out of memory by the longer lists associated with Britain, the United States and Ireland, and the Commission knows it: an option that is right about the three prominent sources and silent about the fourth is the natural resting place for a candidate whose table of borrowed features is nearly but not quite complete.

The framers of the Indian Constitution drew deliberately on the constitutional experience of other countries, adapting rather than copying, and the resulting table of sources is a fixed item of the polity syllabus. From the Government of India Act, 1935 came the largest single block of material — the federal scheme, the office of Governor, the structure of the judiciary, the public service commissions, the emergency provisions and a great deal of administrative detail. From Britain came parliamentary government, the rule of law, single citizenship, the legislative procedure, the cabinet system, the prerogative writs and parliamentary privileges. From the United States came Fundamental Rights, the independence of the judiciary, judicial review, the impeachment of the President, the removal of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and the post of Vice-President. From Ireland came the Directive Principles of State Policy, the method of electing the President and the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha. From Canada came a federation with a strong Centre, residuary powers vested in the Centre, the appointment of state Governors by the Centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. From Australia came the Concurrent List, freedom of trade and commerce, and the joint sitting of the two Houses. From the Weimar Constitution of Germany came the suspension of Fundamental Rights during an emergency; from the Soviet Union the Fundamental Duties and the ideal of justice in the Preamble; from France the republican form and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity; from South Africa the amendment procedure and the election of Rajya Sabha members; from Japan the phrase 'procedure established by law'. The adaptations matter as much as the borrowings — India's Vice-President is elected separately rather than on a ticket, and Indian federalism, expressed in Article 1 as a Union of States, is deliberately more centralised than the American model from which so much else was taken.

The table of borrowed features is among the most heavily worked topics in state service polity papers, because it is finite, unambiguous and easy to set a question on: pair a country with a feature, and the answer is either in the table or not. MPSC's characteristic construction is visible here — rather than one wrong pair among four, all four pairs are correct, and the difficulty is moved into the option list, which offers 'Only A', 'A and C' and 'A, B and D' as staging posts for a candidate whose knowledge stops short of complete. That design punishes partial recall specifically, and it means the safe procedure is to judge every statement before consulting the options, never to select an option because it contains the pairing you are surest of. A second point of technique concerns the format. Because each printed item already contains a dash, a candidate scanning quickly may read the question as a match-the-columns item and start looking for a second column that is not there; recognising that the pairs are formed and only need to be judged saves both time and error. Worth remembering too that the Commission tests this table in both directions, sometimes giving the country and asking for the feature and sometimes the reverse, so the table should be learnt as pairs and not as a list of countries.

• The post of Vice-President was drawn from the Constitution of the United States, along with Fundamental Rights, judicial review, the independence of the judiciary, the impeachment of the President and the procedure for removing judges.
• From Canada came the model of a federation with a strong Centre, the vesting of residuary powers in the Centre, the appointment of state Governors by the Centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court; Article 1 accordingly describes India as a Union of States.
• From South Africa came the procedure for amending the Constitution and the method of electing members of the Rajya Sabha, who are chosen by the elected members of the State Legislative Assemblies by proportional representation through the single transferable vote.
• From Ireland came the Directive Principles of State Policy, the method of electing the President, and the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha; under Article 80 the President nominates twelve members having special knowledge or practical experience of literature, science, art and social service.
• A borrowed feature is an adapted one: the American Vice-President is elected on the same ticket as the President and succeeds to the office, whereas the Indian Vice-President is elected separately by an electoral college of both Houses, is ex-officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, and only acts as President until a new President is elected.

• Selecting the option that names the one pairing you are certain of, when a list may consist entirely of true statements and certainty about one item says nothing about the rest
• Reading a list of dash-joined statements as a match-the-columns question and hunting for a second column, when each item is already a formed pair to be judged as printed
• Forgetting South Africa, whose only two contributions are the amendment procedure and the Rajya Sabha election method, and which is therefore the source most often omitted
• Confusing Ireland's contribution of nominated Rajya Sabha members with South Africa's contribution of the election method for the elected ones, since both concern the same House
• Assuming a borrowed feature was adopted unchanged, when the Indian versions of the Vice-Presidency and of federalism both differ substantially from the models they were taken from

Borrowed features appear in MPSC papers in three forms: a single-pair question asking from which country a named feature was taken, a matching item joining four countries to four features, and the statement list used here in which several formed pairs must each be judged. The Commission draws on the same short table every time, so the preparation is finite and the return on learning it thoroughly is high. The wrong pairs it constructs are almost always plausible cross-pairings within the table — Ireland's Directive Principles offered as American, Australia's Concurrent List offered as Canadian, Britain's writs offered as American — rather than inventions from outside it, which means every option in such a question tends to name a genuine source and a genuine feature. Related items ask which features came from the Government of India Act, 1935, the single largest source, or ask about the Preamble's ideals and their French and Soviet origins.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution were drawn from the constitutional experience of which country ?

  • (a)The United States of America
  • (b)Ireland
  • (c)Canada
  • (d)Australia

  Answer(b) Ireland — the Directive Principles came from the Irish Constitution, together with the method of electing the President and the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha. The United States supplied Fundamental Rights and judicial review, Canada the strong-Centre federal design and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and Australia the Concurrent List, freedom of trade and commerce, and the joint sitting of the two Houses.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The members of the Rajya Sabha representing the States are elected by which of the following methods ?

  • (a)Direct election by the people of the State
  • (b)Nomination by the Governor of the State
  • (c)Election by the elected members of the State Legislative Assembly by proportional representation through the single transferable vote
  • (d)Election by the members of the local bodies of the State

  Answer(c) Election by the elected members of the State Legislative Assembly by proportional representation through the single transferable vote — this method was drawn from South Africa, whose other contribution to the Indian Constitution is the procedure for amendment. It must be kept distinct from the twelve nominated members of the same House, who are appointed by the President from persons with special knowledge of literature, science, art and social service, a device taken from Ireland.