MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 27 of 100

Correct — option (3), statements (a), (b) and (c). The stem asks through which factors the fisheries development programme is effectively implemented, and three of the four items named are genuine instruments of fisheries development while the fourth belongs to a different sector altogether. Statement (a), the Fishery Survey of India, is the resource-assessment arm: headquartered in Mumbai and working under the Department of Fisheries, it surveys the fishery resources of India's exclusive economic zone by research vessel, estimates what stocks exist and where, and supplies the scientific basis without which any development effort would be guesswork about how much fish can be taken and from where. Statement (b), the National Fisheries Development Board, is the coordination and funding arm: established in 2006 and based at Hyderabad, it was created as an autonomous body precisely to give fisheries a single national agency for planning, funding and implementing development activity across inland and marine sub-sectors. Statement (c), the development of fishing harbours, is the infrastructure arm: harbours and fish landing centres are the physical points at which a catch is landed, iced, graded and sold, and without them a fleet cannot operate safely or a catch reach market without spoiling — which is why harbour and landing-centre construction is a standing component of central fisheries schemes. Statement (d), meat marketing, is the odd one out: meat belongs to livestock and animal husbandry, a related but separate line of activity, and it does nothing to implement a fisheries programme. So the three that belong are (a), (b) and (c), and option (3) is the only choice that names exactly those three.

• (1)(a), (b) — This option correctly keeps the Fishery Survey of India and the National Fisheries Development Board but drops (c), the development of fishing harbours, and there is no ground for dropping it. A fisheries programme is not implemented by institutions alone; a fleet needs somewhere to berth, land its catch, take on ice and fuel and be repaired, and a catch needs a landing point with cold storage if it is to reach a market in saleable condition. Harbour and landing-centre development is accordingly a standing component of India's central fisheries schemes, not an optional extra, and the option that excludes it treats the administrative machinery as the whole programme.
• (2)(a), (b), (d) — This option brings in (d), meat marketing, in place of the fishing-harbour item. Meat marketing belongs to the livestock and animal husbandry side of the same ministry, not to fisheries: it concerns slaughterhouses, meat processing plants, hygiene standards and the sale of animal meat, and none of that implements a fisheries development programme. The two sectors are administered together in India, which is exactly why the distractor is plausible, but administrative proximity is not the same as functional relevance, and the option compounds the error by also dropping the genuinely relevant harbour item.
• (4)(c), (d) — This is the weakest of the three wrong options because it keeps only one relevant item, (c) fishing harbours, pairs it with the irrelevant (d) meat marketing, and discards both of the institutions that actually run fisheries development in India. Excluding the Fishery Survey of India removes the source of resource assessment, and excluding the National Fisheries Development Board removes the body set up in 2006 to coordinate and fund fisheries development nationally. An answer that keeps infrastructure while dropping both the survey and the development board describes no workable programme.

Fisheries development in India is organised around three distinct functions, and the question is built on the distinction between them. The first is resource assessment — finding out what fish exist, in what quantity and in which waters — which is the work of the Fishery Survey of India, operating survey vessels across the exclusive economic zone. The second is institutional coordination and funding, which since 2006 has been the role of the National Fisheries Development Board at Hyderabad, an autonomous body created to give a scattered sector a single national agency. The third is physical infrastructure: fishing harbours, fish landing centres, cold chains, ice plants and market linkages, without which neither science nor funding reaches the fisherman. The administrative structure above all three was raised in importance in 2019, when a separate Department of Fisheries was created and then placed under a dedicated Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, and the sector's flagship scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, was launched in 2020 to bring resource management, infrastructure and welfare measures under a single programme.

MPSC asks about fisheries both as a national economic sector and as a Maharashtra subject, since the state has a long Konkan coastline with an active marine fishery alongside substantial inland fisheries in its reservoirs. The design of this question is the Commission's standard one for schemes and institutions: list several genuine components of a programme and plant one item from an adjacent sector, so that the question tests whether the candidate knows what the programme actually contains rather than whether the words sound official. The habit to build is to ask of each listed item what specific function it performs in the programme named in the stem — resource assessment, coordination, funding, infrastructure, welfare — and to discard anything that cannot be assigned one. Meat marketing has an obvious function, but it belongs to a different programme.

• The Fishery Survey of India, headquartered at Mumbai under the Department of Fisheries, conducts survey and assessment of the country's marine fishery resources within the exclusive economic zone.
• The National Fisheries Development Board was established in 2006 and is based at Hyderabad, functioning as an autonomous body for the planning, funding and coordination of fisheries development.
• Fishing harbours and fish landing centres are recognised infrastructure components of India's central fisheries schemes, since they determine whether a catch can be landed, preserved and marketed.
• A separate Department of Fisheries was created in 2019 and placed under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, giving the sector its own administrative structure for the first time.
• The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, launched in 2020, is the sector's flagship scheme, covering marine and inland fisheries, aquaculture, infrastructure and fishermen's welfare.

• Accepting an item because it belongs to the same ministry — meat marketing sits under animal husbandry in the same ministry as fisheries but is not part of a fisheries programme
• Treating infrastructure as less essential than institutions and dropping the fishing-harbour item, when harbours and landing centres are a standing component of the central schemes
• Confusing the Fishery Survey of India, which assesses the resource, with the National Fisheries Development Board, which funds and coordinates development
• Assuming an option that names more items must be the fuller and therefore better answer, when one of the added items comes from a different sector

Questions on government programmes in MPSC papers are usually built as a list of components with one plant from a neighbouring sector or a neighbouring scheme, and the candidate is asked which belong. The Commission rarely tests the year or the outlay of a scheme in isolation; it tests whether the candidate can say what the scheme does. For fisheries specifically, expect the institutions — Fishery Survey of India, National Fisheries Development Board — and the infrastructure and welfare components of the current flagship scheme to recur, sometimes as a match-the-columns pairing of body with function.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Fisheries Development Board, set up as an autonomous body to coordinate and fund fisheries development in India, is headquartered at which city ?

  • (a)Mumbai
  • (b)Hyderabad
  • (c)Kochi
  • (d)Kolkata

  Answer(b) Hyderabad — the National Fisheries Development Board was established in 2006 and functions from Hyderabad. Mumbai is the headquarters of the Fishery Survey of India, which assesses the country's marine fishery resources; the two bodies perform different functions and are often confused in questions of this type.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, the flagship central scheme for the fisheries sector, was launched in which year ?

  • (a)2006
  • (b)2015
  • (c)2019
  • (d)2020

  Answer(d) 2020 — the scheme brought marine and inland fisheries, aquaculture, infrastructure and fishermen's welfare under a single programme. The National Fisheries Development Board dates from 2006, the Blue Revolution scheme from the middle of the last decade, and the separate Department of Fisheries was created in 2019.