MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 95 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Only (b) is correct.' The Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana was launched by the Chief Minister of Odisha on 15 September 2023, together with a companion scheme called the Pada Pushti Yojana, and its purpose is stated in its name: pushti is nutrition, and the scheme exists to meet the nutritional needs of mothers, adolescent girls and children in the state. Its components make the object unmistakable. Nutritional supplements are provided to adolescent girls in the fifteen-to-nineteen age group; additional dry ration goes to pregnant and lactating women; severely malnourished children receive a complete food supplement, and moderately malnourished and severely underweight children receive vitamin-enriched chhatua, the roasted-gram flour that is a staple of Odisha's supplementary feeding, together with eggs. The companion Pada Pushti Yojana provides hot cooked meals to children in remote and tribal hamlets, where an anganwadi centre may be far from the settlement. Statement (b) — improving maternal and child nutrition in the state — is therefore an accurate summary of the primary objective, and it is the only statement that is. Statement (a) is about higher education for girls, statement (c) about employment for adolescent girls and statement (d) about agricultural production; none of the three describes what this scheme does, and only option (2) selects (b) alone.

• (1)Only (a) is correct. — This option makes the scheme one for promoting higher education among girls. Adolescent girls do appear in the scheme, but as recipients of nutritional supplements in the fifteen-to-nineteen age band, not as students receiving educational support. The confusion is understandable — Indian states run many girl-child schemes that combine scholarships with health benefits — but the two objects are distinct, and the name of this scheme points to nutrition. When a scheme's name contains a plain descriptive word in Hindi, Odia, Marathi or Sanskrit, translating it is often the fastest route to the answer.
• (3)(a) and (d) are correct. — This option combines two objects the scheme does not have — education for girls and a boost to agricultural production. Statement (d) is the sort of general developmental aim that could be attached to almost any state programme, which is exactly why it is offered: a candidate who does not know the scheme may reason that a state scheme with a Sanskrit name is likely to be about rural welfare in some broad sense and pick a broad-sounding answer. A statement is only correct if it describes the scheme's own object, and here that object is nutrition.
• (4)(c) and (d) are correct. — This option makes the scheme one for employment and for agriculture. The employment claim is the more seductive half, because adolescent girls genuinely are a target group of the scheme — but what they receive is nutritional supplementation, not work or skill training. Substituting one kind of benefit for another while keeping the beneficiary group correct is a standard way of writing a false statement about a welfare scheme, and it defeats a candidate who has registered only who the scheme is for and not what it gives them.

State nutrition schemes sit on top of a national framework and are best understood in that relation. The Integrated Child Development Services, delivered through anganwadi centres, provides supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-ups, referral services and pre-school education to children under six and to pregnant and lactating women; POSHAN Abhiyaan, launched in 2018 and later restructured as Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0, adds targets for reducing stunting, undernutrition, anaemia and low birth weight. Within that framework, states add schemes of their own aimed at gaps the central programme does not fully close. The Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana, launched in Odisha in September 2023, is one such addition: it extends supplementary nutrition to adolescent girls aged fifteen to nineteen, gives extra dry ration to pregnant and lactating women, and provides differentiated food support to severely and moderately malnourished children, with the companion Pada Pushti Yojana taking hot cooked meals into remote and tribal hamlets. The design reflects the epidemiology the National Family Health Survey reports — that undernutrition in India is concentrated in the first thousand days of life and in adolescent girls, who become the next generation of mothers.

MPSC and other state commissions ask about schemes from states other than their own, and the reason is worth understanding: a candidate cannot be expected to know the details, so the question tests whether the objective can be inferred from the name and the general shape of Indian welfare policy. That inference is legitimate and it is what this question rewards. 'Pushti' means nourishment; a scheme launched by a chief minister with that word in its title is about nutrition, and the option that says so is the answer. The wider habit is to hold a small mental taxonomy of state schemes by their purpose — nutrition, girl child, farm income support, housing, health insurance — and to attach two or three flagship names to each. The second lesson is about the answer format: three of the four options here bundle statements together and only one names a single statement, which should not by itself make the single-statement option suspicious. Each statement must be judged on its own before the options are read.

• The Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana is an Odisha state scheme launched on 15 September 2023 by the Chief Minister.
• Its objective is to meet the nutritional needs of mothers, adolescent girls and children in the state.
• It provides nutritional supplements to adolescent girls aged fifteen to nineteen and additional dry ration to pregnant and lactating women.
• Severely malnourished children receive a complete food supplement, and moderately malnourished and severely underweight children receive vitamin-enriched chhatua and eggs.
• The companion Pada Pushti Yojana, launched the same day, provides hot cooked food to children in remote and tribal hamlets.
• Nationally, supplementary nutrition is delivered under the Integrated Child Development Services and POSHAN Abhiyaan, restructured as Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0.

• Substituting a different benefit for the right beneficiary group — adolescent girls receive nutrition here, not employment or scholarships
• Choosing a broad developmental objective such as agricultural growth because it sounds like something a state scheme would do
• Overlooking the meaning of the scheme's name, which in this case states the objective outright
• Assuming a bundled option must be right because three of the four options bundle statements

Scheme questions in MPSC papers come in three forms: which state launched a named scheme, what its objective is, and which ministry or department runs it. Schemes from other states are asked as objective-inference questions of exactly this kind, where the name carries the answer. Prepare by keeping a list of the year's flagship state schemes with the state, the launch date and a one-line objective, and by learning the handful of Sanskrit and vernacular words that recur in scheme names — pushti for nutrition, shakti for empowerment, awas for housing, samman for income support.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana, launched in September 2023, belongs to which state ?

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

  Answer(a) Odisha — the scheme was launched by the Chief Minister of Odisha on 15 September 2023, together with the Pada Pushti Yojana, to meet the nutritional needs of mothers, adolescent girls and children in the state.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Supplementary nutrition to children under six and to pregnant and lactating women is delivered nationally through which programme ?

  • (a)The Integrated Child Development Services
  • (b)The Mid-Day Meal Scheme
  • (c)The National Health Mission
  • (d)The Antyodaya Anna Yojana

  Answer(a) The Integrated Child Development Services — delivered through anganwadi centres, it provides supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-ups, referral services and pre-school education. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme, now PM POSHAN, covers school children; the National Health Mission is a health-systems programme; and the Antyodaya Anna Yojana is a food-subsidy scheme for the poorest households.