MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 94 of 100

Correct — option (4), 'All of the above'. Women Technology Parks are not a one-off pilot in a handful of States; they are a long-running Department of Science and Technology programme that has produced dozens of parks spread across the country, and all five States named in the stem are credited by the Commission's key. There is a clean elimination route here that does not require you to have memorised a State list. Look at what each partial option leaves out. Option (1) omits Gujarat and Maharashtra. Option (2) omits Tamil Nadu and Sikkim. Option (3) omits Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Now bring in the parks that are individually documented: a rural Women Technology Park serving Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, one in Patan block of Satara district in Maharashtra, and one at a Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh. Option (1) is dead because it drops Maharashtra; option (2) is dead because it drops Tamil Nadu; option (3) is dead because it drops both Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Every partial option fails on a State that demonstrably hosts a park, and only option (4) is left standing. That is exactly the discipline the escape option demands. 'All of the above' is offered eleven times in this booklet, and it is right only when every named item survives inspection and wrong the moment one of them fails. You do not establish it by feeling that the list looks comprehensive; you establish it either by verifying each item, or — as here — by showing that every alternative option excludes something that cannot be excluded. On the geography of the option set: the five States chosen span four regions — western India, the south, the Himalayan north-east and the Gangetic plain. That spread is itself a hint about the programme's design. A scheme whose stated purpose is to take science and technology to rural women through appropriate, locally suited technology is one that must run in many different agro-climatic and social settings, and any option that confines it to three States is asserting a narrowness the programme does not have.

• (1)Only (b), (c), (e) — This keeps Tamil Nadu, Sikkim and Uttar Pradesh but drops Gujarat and Maharashtra. Dropping Maharashtra is decisive: a rural Women Technology Park has operated in Patan block of Satara district. The option looks attractive because its three States are geographically spread, which gives a false impression of completeness, but a spread of three is not the same as the full list.
• (2)Only (a), (d), (e) — This keeps Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh but drops Tamil Nadu and Sikkim. Tamil Nadu cannot be dropped — a rural Women Technology Park has served Coimbatore district. The option is the trap for a candidate who assumes such programmes concentrate in the larger northern and western States, which is precisely the assumption a national science-and-technology programme is designed to defeat.
• (3)Only (a), (c), (d) — This keeps Gujarat, Sikkim and Maharashtra while dropping both Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, each of which has a documented park — Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu and a Krishi Vigyan Kendra centre at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. It is the weakest of the three partial options because it excludes two verifiable States rather than one.

A Women Technology Park is a demonstration and training centre rather than an industrial park. Its purpose is to put working models of livelihood technologies in front of rural women — food processing, value addition to local produce, water and sanitation, energy devices, handicraft and small manufacturing tools — and to train them to run those technologies as a livelihood. The programme belongs to the Department of Science and Technology, which invites proposals for establishing parks through its Science for Equity, Empowerment and Development division; it sits within the Department's long-running effort on science and technology for women, begun in the early 1980s. The declared objectives are to promote the development and adaptation of appropriate technologies, to transfer proven technologies, and to demonstrate live technology models so that women's employment and incomes rise. As reported on the Government's science and technology portal, twenty-eight parks have been completed and a further twelve were running, with about ten thousand rural women benefiting over a five-year period.

The design logic is worth grasping because it explains why the parks are scattered across such different States. 'Appropriate technology' means technology matched to what a place actually produces and to the skills and capital available there, so a park in a coastal district, a hill district and a Gangetic plain district will demonstrate quite different things. Parks are commonly hosted by an institution already embedded in the rural economy — a Krishi Vigyan Kendra, a college or a voluntary organisation — rather than built from scratch, which also spreads them widely. For a Maharashtra candidate the documented example is the rural park in Patan block of Satara district; other individually documented locations include Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu and a Krishi Vigyan Kendra centre at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. The Commission's key for this question credits Gujarat and Sikkim as well as those three.

• Women Technology Parks are a Department of Science and Technology programme; proposals for establishing them are invited through the Department's Science for Equity, Empowerment and Development division
• Their purpose is to demonstrate and transfer appropriate livelihood technologies to rural women and to train them to run those technologies as a source of income
• The Department's science-and-technology-for-women effort dates from the early 1980s; as reported on the Government's science and technology portal, twenty-eight parks have been completed and twelve were ongoing, benefiting about ten thousand rural women over five years
• Documented park locations include Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, Patan block of Satara district in Maharashtra, and a Krishi Vigyan Kendra centre at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh
• The Commission's key for this question credits all five States named in the stem — Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh

• Reading a national programme as a regional one. Schemes designed around locally appropriate technology are deliberately spread across agro-climatic zones, and options that confine them to three States usually understate their reach
• Choosing 'All of the above' because the list feels comprehensive. The escape option must be earned — either verify every item, or show that each of the other options excludes something that cannot be excluded
• Confusing a Women Technology Park with an industrial or software technology park. It is a demonstration and training centre for rural livelihood technologies, not a production estate or an export zone

State-coverage questions on central schemes are a State PSC staple, and they appear in two forms: a list of States to be sorted, as here, or a single 'in which State was the first X established'. Both reward the same preparation — knowing the implementing ministry or department, the purpose of the scheme, and at least one documented location, which is usually enough to break a partial option. When a question offers five items and one blanket option, count what each partial option leaves out; a partial option can be killed by a single item you are sure about, whereas the blanket option can only be confirmed by clearing them all.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Women Technology Parks in India are a programme of which ministry or department of the Union Government ?

  • (a)Ministry of Women and Child Development
  • (b)Department of Science and Technology
  • (c)Ministry of Rural Development
  • (d)Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises

  Answer(b) Department of Science and Technology — the parks are set up through the Department's Science for Equity, Empowerment and Development division, within its long-running work on science and technology for women. They demonstrate and transfer appropriate livelihood technologies to rural women rather than delivering welfare payments or credit.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The central purpose of a Women Technology Park is best described as :

  • (a)providing subsidised industrial plots to enterprises owned by women
  • (b)demonstrating and transferring appropriate livelihood technologies and training rural women to use them
  • (c)running incubation centres for women-led technology start-ups in cities
  • (d)conducting research on gender disparities in scientific employment

  Answer(b) demonstrating and transferring appropriate livelihood technologies and training rural women to use them — the parks put working models of technologies such as food processing, water and energy devices and small manufacturing tools in front of rural women, and train them to operate these as a livelihood.