MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 37 of 100

Correct — option (4), '(a)-(iv), (b)-(iii), (c)-(ii), (d)-(i)'. The four programmes belong to four different moments in the history of rural anti-poverty policy, and their order is fixed. The Integrated Rural Development Programme was launched in 1978, initially in a limited number of blocks and extended to all blocks of the country in 1980; it was a self-employment programme that combined a government subsidy with bank credit so that a poor household could acquire an income-generating asset. The Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme followed in 1983, addressing a different group by a different method — wage employment for landless households, with the central government meeting the whole cost. The Jawahar Rozgar Yojana came in 1989, created by merging the National Rural Employment Programme with the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme into a single wage-employment scheme implemented through the panchayats. The Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana came in 2001, again by merger, this time of the Employment Assurance Scheme and the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana. So statement (a) takes 1978, item (iv); statement (b) takes 1983, item (iii); statement (c) takes 1989, item (ii); and statement (d) takes 2001, item (i) — which is option (4). There is a structural shortcut here worth noticing. List-I is printed in chronological order, oldest first, while List-II is printed in reverse chronological order, newest first. The correct mapping is therefore the exact reversal — first to last, second to third, third to second, last to first — and the straight diagonal that a hurried candidate reaches for is precisely wrong. One remembered anchor secures the whole thing: the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana was launched in 1989, the birth centenary year of Jawaharlal Nehru, after whom it is named. Fix statement (c) to item (ii) and only option (4) survives.

• (1)(a)-(i), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iii), (d)-(iv) — The straight diagonal, and in this question the exact inversion of the truth. It dates the Integrated Rural Development Programme to 2001 and the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana to 1978 — placing a scheme named for the 'total' rural employment consolidation of the 2000s more than two decades before the programme it eventually descended from. The option exists because List-II has been printed in reverse chronological order, so a candidate who matches position to position without reading the years produces this answer.
• (2)(a)-(iv), (b)-(i), (c)-(ii), (d)-(iii) — Gets two pairings right — the Integrated Rural Development Programme in 1978 and the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana in 1989 — and then swaps the other two, dating the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme to 2001 and the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana to 1983. That is impossible on the internal history of the schemes: the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana of 1989 was itself created by merging the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme into a new scheme, so the older programme cannot postdate it by twelve years.
• (3)(a)-(iv), (b)-(iii), (c)-(i), (d)-(ii) — Correct on the first two pairings and wrong on the last two, dating the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana to 2001 and the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana to 1989. This is the most dangerous option in the set, because a candidate who confidently places the two older schemes and then guesses between the two later ones has a straight coin-toss between this option and the right one. The tie-breaker is the name: the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana was launched in 1989, the birth centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru, which is a date to remember rather than to reason out.

India's rural anti-poverty programmes fall into two families that have run in parallel since the late 1970s, and almost every scheme in the syllabus belongs to one or the other. The self-employment family tries to raise a household's earning capacity permanently by putting an income-generating asset in its hands: the Integrated Rural Development Programme of 1978 did this with a subsidy-plus-credit package, it was merged with its allied schemes into the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana in 1999, and that in turn was restructured as the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, built around self-help groups and now known as the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana. The wage-employment family tries instead to provide immediate income and, in doing so, to create durable rural assets: the National Rural Employment Programme and the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme were merged into the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana in 1989, which became the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana in 1999, was merged with the Employment Assurance Scheme into the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana in 2001, and was finally superseded by the employment guarantee enacted in 2005. The recurring pattern is consolidation — several schemes merged into one, renamed, then merged again — which is why the dates and the mergers, rather than the scheme contents, are what examiners ask about.

The decisive break in this sequence came in 2005, when Parliament converted wage employment from a scheme into a statutory entitlement. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, later renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, gives every rural household a legal right to a hundred days of unskilled manual work in a financial year, with unemployment allowance payable if work is not provided within fifteen days. That is a different kind of instrument from everything before it: an earlier programme could be cut back when budgets tightened, whereas an entitlement is enforceable. The programme rolled out from 2006 in an initial set of districts and reached the whole country by 2008. For a Maharashtra candidate the earlier history matters too, because the model came from the state — Maharashtra's own Employment Guarantee Scheme, in operation since the 1970s and funded by a dedicated cess, was the demonstration that a guarantee of work on demand could be administered at scale, and it is regularly cited as the antecedent of the national Act.

• Integrated Rural Development Programme, 1978 — a self-employment programme combining government subsidy with bank credit so that poor households could acquire income-generating assets. It was extended to all blocks of the country in 1980 and was merged with its allied schemes into the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana in 1999.
• Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme, 1983 — a wage-employment programme aimed at landless households, funded entirely by the central government, and intended both to provide employment and to create durable community assets.
• Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, 1989 — created by merging the National Rural Employment Programme with the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme, and implemented through the panchayati raj institutions. It was launched in the birth centenary year of Jawaharlal Nehru, after whom it is named, and was restructured as the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana in 1999.
• Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana, 2001 — formed by merging the Employment Assurance Scheme with the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana, and later subsumed into the national employment guarantee programme.
• The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, later renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, replaced schemes with a statutory entitlement to a hundred days of unskilled manual work per rural household per financial year, with an unemployment allowance if work is not provided. Maharashtra's own Employment Guarantee Scheme of the 1970s is its acknowledged antecedent.

• Matching a list positionally when one list is printed in reverse order. Here List-I runs oldest to newest and List-II newest to oldest, so the correct answer is the reversal and the straight diagonal is exactly wrong — a construction this paper uses more than once.
• Confusing the wage-employment line of schemes with the self-employment line. IRDP and its successors put assets in the hands of households; NREP, RLEGP, JRY and SGRY paid wages for work on public assets. Mixing the two produces impossible merger histories.
• Forgetting that most of these schemes were created by merging earlier ones. A merger fixes a chronology: JRY of 1989 absorbed RLEGP, so RLEGP must be older; SGRY of 2001 absorbed JGSY, so it must be younger. The merger history is often enough to date a scheme without recalling the year.

Government schemes are examined in four shapes: scheme-to-year matching, as here; scheme-to-ministry; scheme-to-objective or target group; and the merger question, asking which earlier programmes were combined to form a later one. The fourth is the most discriminating and the least prepared for, and it also makes the first easier, because a merger fixes the relative order of two schemes even when the exact years are forgotten. Build the topic as a single dated line from 1952 to the present, marking against each entry whether it is wage employment or self-employment and what it absorbed. Add the mnemonics where a name carries a date — the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana in Nehru's birth centenary year of 1989 is the clearest — because in a four-by-four match one certain pair is usually enough to eliminate every wrong option.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, launched in 1989, was formed by merging which two earlier programmes ?

  • (a)Integrated Rural Development Programme and TRYSEM
  • (b)National Rural Employment Programme and Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme
  • (c)Employment Assurance Scheme and Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana
  • (d)Food for Work Programme and Integrated Rural Development Programme

  Answer(b) National Rural Employment Programme and Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme — the two wage-employment schemes of the 1980s were combined into a single programme implemented through the panchayati raj institutions. The Employment Assurance Scheme and Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana pairing is a real merger too, but it produced the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana in 2001, not the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana, launched in 2001, was created by merging which two schemes ?

  • (a)Integrated Rural Development Programme and Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana
  • (b)National Rural Employment Programme and Jawahar Rozgar Yojana
  • (c)Employment Assurance Scheme and Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana
  • (d)Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and Indira Awaas Yojana

  Answer(c) Employment Assurance Scheme and Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana — the Employment Assurance Scheme dated from 1993 and the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana was the 1999 restructuring of the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana. The merged programme was itself later subsumed into the statutory employment guarantee enacted in 2005.