MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 89 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Only A, C and D'. The Maharashtra budget for 2023-24 was presented on 9 March 2023 by Shri Devendra Fadnavis, then Deputy Chief Minister holding the finance portfolio, and it was built around five goals the speech called the 'Panchamrut'. Under the second of those goals, the inclusive development of all sections of society, the speech announced the establishment of four new economic development corporations under the Maharashtra State Other Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation, each with an authorised share capital of fifty crore rupees: the Jagdjyoti Mahatma Basaveshwar Economic Development Corporation for the youth, educated unemployed and new entrepreneurs of the Lingayat community; the Sant Kashiba Guru Youth Economic Development Corporation for the Gurava Samaj; the Raje Umaji Naik Economic Development Corporation for the Ramoshi community; and the Pailwan Kai. Maruti Chavan-Vadar Economic Development Corporation for the Vadar community. Three of those four appear in this question as statements A, C and D, which is why option (2) is the answer. Statement B, the 'Marathwada Milk Development Corporation', was not among them, and the reason it feels familiar is that the same budget did announce something adjacent. Paragraph 25 of the speech proposed an outlay of a hundred and sixty crore rupees in 2023-24 for the second phase of the Dairy Development Project in eleven districts of Vidarbha and Marathwada — but that is a project and not a corporation, and it covers Vidarbha as well as Marathwada rather than Marathwada alone. The budget's other new corporation in this field was the Maharashtra Sheep and Goat Cooperative Development Corporation, announced with its headquarters at Ahmednagar to channel interest-free loans to the Dhangar and allied communities. So a milk corporation for Marathwada was not created, and any option containing statement B fails. Note that the paper prints the names slightly differently from the budget speech, as 'Saint Kashiba Gurav' and 'Jagadjyoti'; these are transliteration variants of the same two corporations and nothing turns on them.

• (1)Only A and D — 'Only A and D' names the Raje Umaji Naik and Saint Kashiba Gurav corporations, both of which were announced, and then omits the Jagadjyoti Mahatma Basaveshwar Economic Development Corporation, which was announced in the very same paragraph of the budget speech and for the same purpose — providing financial assistance to youth, educated unemployed and new entrepreneurs, in its case of the Lingayat community. The four corporations were created as a set, under a single parent body and with identical authorised share capital of fifty crore rupees each, so an option that admits two of them and rejects a third is almost certainly wrong on its face. The one merit of this option is that it correctly excludes statement B; but excluding the false statement is only half the task in a combination question, and a candidate who stops there loses the mark just as surely as one who admits it.
• (3)Only B, C and D — 'Only B, C and D' is the option that both admits the false statement and omits a true one. Statement B fails because no Marathwada Milk Development Corporation was announced in the 2023-24 budget; what the speech provided was a hundred and sixty crore rupees for the second phase of a Dairy Development Project across eleven districts of Vidarbha and Marathwada, which is a project rather than a corporation and is not confined to Marathwada. Meanwhile statement A, the Raje Umaji Naik Economic Development Corporation for the Ramoshi community, was one of the four announced and cannot be excluded. The distinction the option ignores is the one this question is really about: a budget speech announces outlays, projects, missions and corporations, and only the last of these is a body corporate with share capital that can borrow, lend and hold assets in its own name.
• (4)Only B and C — 'Only B and C' rejects two of the announced corporations and keeps the one that was not announced, which makes it the weakest of the four options. The Raje Umaji Naik corporation in statement A and the Saint Kashiba Gurav corporation in statement D were both established by the same paragraph of the budget speech as the Jagadjyoti Mahatma Basaveshwar corporation in statement C, so any option retaining C while discarding A and D is inconsistent with the way these bodies were created. A candidate lands here by recognising two names out of four and reasoning that the recognised ones must be the answer. Recognition is a poor guide in a question of this kind, because all four names are the names of real figures in Maharashtra's social history and all four sound equally plausible attached to a development corporation; only the budget speech itself settles which were used.

Maharashtra channels much of its community-directed welfare through finance and development corporations — State-owned companies, each attached to a particular social group, that lend to individuals for self-employment, subsidise interest, guarantee loans and run training. The apex bodies in this structure include the Maharashtra State Other Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation, under which the four new corporations of the 2023-24 budget were placed; alongside them sit long-standing bodies named in the same budget, among them the Sahityaratna Lokshahir Annabhau Sathe Development Corporation, the Annasaheb Patil Economic Development Corporation, the Mahatma Phule Economic Development Corporation, the Shyam Rao Peje Economic Development Corporation, the Vasantrao Naik Vimukt Jati and Bhatkya Jamati Development Corporation, the Maulana Azad Minorities Economic Development Corporation and the Women Finance Development Corporation. The pattern is consistent: a corporation is named after a figure revered by the community it serves, is given an authorised share capital by the State, and delivers credit-linked schemes to that community's entrepreneurs. Understanding the pattern makes the budget's announcements legible — a new corporation means a new community brought into this structure, which is a political as much as an economic act, and it is announced in the section of the speech dealing with the inclusive development of all sections of society.

The State budget is the single richest source of MPSC current affairs questions in any year, and the Commission mines it in a predictable way: who presented it and on what date, what the year's organising theme was, the new corporations and missions announced, the headline outlays, and the schemes named after historical figures. The 2023-24 budget offers all of these — presented on 9 March 2023 by Devendra Fadnavis as Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister, structured around the five 'Panchamrut' goals, and carrying announcements from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Theme Park at Ambegaon to the establishment of MITRA, the Maharashtra Institution for Transformation, on the lines of NITI Aayog. The discipline this particular question rewards is distinguishing the kind of thing that was announced. A budget speech mentions outlays, projects, missions, institutions and corporations in adjacent sentences, and an examiner can build a false statement simply by converting a project into a corporation, as has been done here with the dairy programme for Vidarbha and Marathwada. Reading the budget speech itself once, rather than a summary of it, is the preparation that pays: the summary flattens exactly the distinction the question turns on.

• The Maharashtra budget for 2023-24 was presented on 9 March 2023 by Devendra Fadnavis, then Deputy Chief Minister with the finance portfolio, and was built around five goals the speech called the 'Panchamrut'.
• It announced four new economic development corporations under the Maharashtra State Other Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation, each with authorised share capital of fifty crore rupees.
• The four are the Jagdjyoti Mahatma Basaveshwar Economic Development Corporation for the Lingayat community, the Sant Kashiba Guru Youth Economic Development Corporation for the Gurava Samaj, the Raje Umaji Naik Economic Development Corporation for the Ramoshi community and the Pailwan Kai. Maruti Chavan-Vadar Economic Development Corporation for the Vadar community.
• No Marathwada Milk Development Corporation was announced; the budget instead proposed a hundred and sixty crore rupees for the second phase of the Dairy Development Project in eleven districts of Vidarbha and Marathwada.
• The same budget announced the Maharashtra Sheep and Goat Cooperative Development Corporation, with headquarters at Ahmednagar, to channel interest-free loans to the Dhangar and allied communities.

• Confusing a project announced in the budget with a corporation established by it, which is exactly how the false statement in this question was built
• Recognising two names in a combination question and choosing the option that contains them, when all four names are equally plausible-sounding
• Attaching a Vidarbha-and-Marathwada programme to Marathwada alone, when the outlay covered eleven districts across both regions
• Preparing the State budget from a summary rather than the speech, which loses the distinctions between outlay, project, mission and corporation that the questions turn on

The State budget generates several MPSC questions every year and they follow a small number of templates: who presented it and when, the theme or organising slogan of the year, which new bodies were announced, and how much was allotted to a named programme. The statement-combination form used here is the hardest of them, because the candidate must verify four announcements rather than recall one, and because the examiner constructs the false statement out of something the budget really did contain, altered in one respect — a region narrowed, a project promoted to a corporation, an amount changed. Names of corporations are especially favoured, since Maharashtra creates them regularly and each is named after a historical or religious figure associated with the community it serves, which makes any invented name sound as convincing as a real one. Reading the budget speech once, and noting the new institutions with the communities they serve, is the preparation that answers the whole family.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The four new economic development corporations announced in the Maharashtra budget for 2023-24 were established under which parent body ?

  • (a)The Maharashtra State Other Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation
  • (b)The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation
  • (c)The Maharashtra State Financial Corporation
  • (d)The Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank

  Answer(a) The Maharashtra State Other Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation — the budget speech placed all four new corporations under it and gave each an authorised share capital of fifty crore rupees, so that they could run credit-linked schemes for the Lingayat, Gurava, Ramoshi and Vadar communities respectively. The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, named in the second option, develops industrial estates and has no role in community finance.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Maharashtra budget for 2023-24 was built around five major goals collectively described in the budget speech as

  • (a)Panchsutra
  • (b)Panchamrut
  • (c)Panchsheel
  • (d)Panchayat Vikas

  Answer(b) Panchamrut — the speech described the State's first budget of the Amrut Kaal as resting on five goals, covering sustainable farming and prosperous farmers, the inclusive development of all sections of society, infrastructure development with substantial capital investment, employment generation, and environment-friendly development. The new community corporations were announced under the second of these five.