MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 43 of 100

Correct — option (4). The scheme the paper prints as 'Pradhanmantri Shramyogi Mandhan Yojana' is the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan, PM-SYM, announced in the Union Budget of February 2019 and implemented from 15 February 2019 by the Ministry of Labour and Employment. It is a voluntary, contributory old-age pension scheme for unorganised workers, and its eligibility is written in terms of a worker's circumstances rather than a worker's trade: an unorganised worker whose monthly income is Rs 15,000 or less, who is between 18 and 40 years of age at entry, who is not covered by the National Pension System, the Employees' State Insurance Corporation scheme or the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, and who is not an income-tax payer. Because the test is an income and coverage test, the scheme reaches across occupations rather than picking any one of them out, and the government's own description makes that explicit by naming a long list of trades. The Ministry's list runs: home based workers, street vendors, mid-day meal workers, head loaders, brick kiln workers, cobblers, rag pickers, domestic workers, washer men, rickshaw pullers, landless labourers, own account workers, agricultural workers, construction workers, beedi workers, handloom workers, leather workers, audio-visual workers and similar other occupations. All three of the trades printed in this question — construction workers, audio-visual workers and mid-day meal workers — appear in that single sentence, which is why no one of them can be the answer and the option that gathers all three is. The benefit is an assured pension of Rs 3,000 a month once the subscriber turns 60. The subscriber pays a monthly contribution fixed by the age at which they joined, from Rs 55 a month for someone entering at 18 to Rs 200 a month for someone entering at 40, and the Central Government pays an equal matching amount into the same account. Enrolment is free, through a Common Service Centre or through self-registration on the maandhan portal, and needs only an Aadhaar number and a savings or Jan Dhan account.

• (1)Construction workers — This option is not false — construction workers are named in the government's own list of the unorganised occupations PM-SYM covers — and that is exactly what makes it dangerous. In an option set whose last row gathers all three trades, a true but partial choice is a wrong answer, because the question asks who the scheme is applicable for and the honest reply names everyone it reaches. Construction workers are also the trade a candidate is likeliest to stop at, since construction labour is the standard textbook example of unorganised employment and there is a separate statutory apparatus for it in the Building and Other Construction Workers legislation and the welfare boards and cesses built on it. The existence of that separate apparatus is what tempts a reader to think of construction as a category apart. Under PM-SYM it is not a category apart: the eligibility test is income, age and non-coverage by NPS, ESIC or EPFO, not trade.
• (2)Audio-visual workers — Audio-visual workers appear by name in the Ministry of Labour and Employment's list of the occupations PM-SYM covers, so this option too is true and incomplete, and incomplete is wrong here. It is the option a candidate rejects fastest and for the worst reason — the phrase sounds like skilled media employment rather than the hand labour that 'unorganised worker' brings to mind, so it reads as though it has been inserted to be eliminated. The reality behind the phrase is a large body of technicians, light and camera assistants, spot boys, junior artistes and set workers engaged job by job with no continuing employer, no provident fund and no pension, which is precisely the condition the scheme was written for. A candidate who eliminates this option on the strength of how modern the words sound has been caught by the very assumption the option was placed there to test.
• (3)Mid-day-meal workers — Mid-day meal workers are the third trade named in the same official sentence, so this option is once again true and once again too narrow to be the answer. The women who cook and serve under the mid-day meal scheme are engaged as honorarium-paid workers rather than as regular government employees, which is why they fall on the unorganised side of the line and why they are listed among PM-SYM's intended beneficiaries. A candidate might reject this option on the assumption that anyone working in a government school programme must already have some social security cover; the assumption fails, and the scheme's exclusion clause shows why it matters — PM-SYM is closed to those already covered by NPS, ESIC or EPFO, and mid-day meal workers as a class are not. The option is eliminated only because a fourth row exists that includes it along with the other two.

PM-SYM belongs to a family of contributory pension schemes built on one design for people outside formal employment. A worker joins between 18 and 40, pays a small monthly contribution scaled to the age of entry, the Central Government pays an equal matching contribution, and from the age of 60 the subscriber draws an assured Rs 3,000 a month; on the subscriber's death the spouse receives half that as family pension. Two sister schemes use the same architecture and the same Rs 3,000 promise — the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maan-dhan Yojana for small and marginal farmers, and the National Pension Scheme for Traders and Self-Employed Persons for small shopkeepers and retail traders. The problem all three address is that India's social-security machinery grew up around the organised sector: the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and the Employees' State Insurance Corporation cover establishments above threshold sizes, which leaves the overwhelming majority of India's workforce with no employer to make a contribution on their behalf. The Code on Social Security, 2020, one of the four labour codes, was drafted to extend cover further, and the e-Shram database was created to register unorganised workers so that benefits could be delivered to them. PM-SYM's eligibility rule — an income ceiling of Rs 15,000 a month, an entry age window, and exclusion of anyone already inside NPS, ESIC or EPFO — is the practical expression of that design: it targets the uncovered rather than any named trade.

Government schemes are the most reliably examinable part of MPSC's economy and polity sections, because a scheme has a launch year, a ministry, an eligibility rule, a benefit amount and a target group, and each of those is a question. This item takes the target group and tests it in the least forgiving way, by offering three genuine beneficiary groups and a row that collects them. That shape is worth recognising in the hall: when three options are all plausible members of one category and the fourth gathers them, the setter is usually testing the breadth of a definition rather than any single fact, and the gathering row deserves serious weight rather than the reflexive suspicion candidates often give it. The way to prepare a scheme so that this shape holds no fear is to learn the eligibility rule rather than the beneficiary list — once you know PM-SYM turns on an income ceiling, an age window and non-coverage by the three formal schemes, you can settle any trade the paper cares to print without having memorised the list. Note also the spelling: the paper writes 'Pradhanmantri Shramyogi Mandhan Yojana' as three run-together words, while the official name is Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan. The stem is reproduced as printed.

• Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan (PM-SYM) was announced in the Union Budget of February 2019 and implemented from 15 February 2019 by the Ministry of Labour and Employment as a voluntary contributory pension scheme for unorganised workers.
• Eligibility: an unorganised worker with monthly income of Rs 15,000 or less, entry age between 18 and 40, not covered by the National Pension System, the ESIC scheme or the EPFO, and not an income-tax payer.
• The Ministry's own list of covered occupations names home based workers, street vendors, mid-day meal workers, head loaders, brick kiln workers, cobblers, rag pickers, domestic workers, washer men, rickshaw pullers, landless labourers, own account workers, agricultural workers, construction workers, beedi workers, handloom workers, leather workers and audio-visual workers, among others.
• The subscriber contributes between Rs 55 and Rs 200 a month depending on the age of entry, the Central Government contributes an equal matching amount, and the assured pension is Rs 3,000 a month from the age of 60, with half of that as family pension to the spouse on the subscriber's death.
• Enrolment is free through a Common Service Centre or by self-registration on the maandhan portal; the sister schemes on the same design are the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maan-dhan Yojana for small and marginal farmers and the National Pension Scheme for Traders and Self-Employed Persons.

• Stopping at a single true option when a later row gathers all of them — a partially true choice is a wrong answer in this format, and this question is built on that alone
• Eliminating an unfamiliar-sounding trade such as audio-visual workers on the assumption that it is too modern or too skilled to count as unorganised employment
• Memorising a beneficiary list rather than the eligibility rule, which leaves a candidate helpless the moment the paper prints a trade the list did not mention
• Confusing PM-SYM with the Atal Pension Yojana: both are contributory old-age pension schemes, but their contribution structures, benefit slabs and administering ministries differ
• Assuming that anyone engaged in a government programme already has social security cover, when the exclusion clause runs on actual NPS, ESIC or EPFO membership

Scheme questions in MPSC papers take four regular shapes. The first asks for the target group, as here, often by offering three real beneficiaries and a row that collects them. The second asks for a number — the pension amount, the income ceiling, the entry-age window, the premium — and these are best held as a small table rather than as prose. The third asks for the ministry or the year of launch, which is where candidates who have read only newspaper coverage tend to fail, since coverage names the Prime Minister and rarely the ministry. The fourth is a match-the-columns item that sets three or four schemes against their benefits or their target groups, and this is where sister schemes with similar names do their damage, so PM-SYM, PM Kisan Maan-dhan and the traders' scheme should be learnt together and their differences noted explicitly rather than left to be inferred.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  What is the assured monthly pension payable under the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan scheme, and from what age ?

  • (a)Rs 1,000 from the age of 58
  • (b)Rs 3,000 from the age of 60
  • (c)Rs 5,000 from the age of 60
  • (d)Rs 2,000 from the age of 65

  Answer(b) Rs 3,000 from the age of 60 — the subscriber pays between Rs 55 and Rs 200 a month depending on the age at which they joined, the Central Government pays an equal matching contribution, and the pension begins at 60. On the subscriber's death the spouse receives half of it as family pension. The same Rs 3,000 promise runs through the two sister schemes built on the identical design, the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maan-dhan Yojana and the National Pension Scheme for Traders and Self-Employed Persons.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following disqualifies a worker from joining the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan scheme ?

  • (a)Being engaged as a street vendor
  • (b)Being 35 years of age
  • (c)Already being a member of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation
  • (d)Earning Rs 12,000 a month

  Answer(c) Already being a member of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation — PM-SYM is closed to anyone covered by the EPFO, the ESIC scheme or the National Pension System, and to income-tax payers, because it is designed for workers who have no employer making contributions on their behalf. A street vendor is a named beneficiary, 35 falls inside the 18-to-40 entry window, and Rs 12,000 a month is below the Rs 15,000 income ceiling, so none of the other three is a disqualification.