MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 75 of 100

Correct — option (1), which pairs (a) with (i), (b) with (ii), (c) with (iii) and (d) with (iv). Take the four items in turn. Single citizenship, item (a), comes from the United Kingdom, item (i). India is a federation, but unlike the United States it does not give a person one citizenship of the Union and another of the State in which he lives; there is a single citizenship of India alone, so that every citizen carries the same rights everywhere in the country and no State can treat the people of another State as outsiders. That arrangement, together with the parliamentary system, the rule of law, the office of Speaker, the legislative procedure and the parliamentary privileges, comes from the British constitutional tradition. Judicial review, item (b), comes from the United States, item (ii). It is the power of the courts to examine the constitutionality of a legislative enactment or an executive order and to declare it void if it violates the Constitution, a doctrine developed by the Supreme Court of the United States and carried into the Indian Constitution alongside the Fundamental Rights, the independence of the judiciary, the impeachment of the President, the removal of Supreme Court and High Court judges and the office of Vice-President. The Directive Principles of State Policy, item (c), come from Ireland, item (iii), whose own constitution contains Directive Principles of Social Policy that are not enforceable in any court but are declared fundamental in the governance of the country — the very formula Article 37 uses. From Ireland India also took the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha and the method of electing the President. The Concurrent List, item (d), comes from Australia, item (iv), whose constitution supplied the idea of a list of subjects on which both the central and the State legislatures may make laws, along with the freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse and the device of a joint sitting of the two Houses. So the four pairings run in the same order as the two printed columns, which is the one arrangement candidates are always warned about — and the warning is worth restating properly. The columns are printed side by side because the reader has to match them, and physical adjacency on the page never asserts a pairing. Here the alignment happens to be correct, but that has to be established item by item from what each country contributed, not inferred from the layout. Note the printing: the English stem sets List "A" and List "B" in curly double quotes, while the answer choices are laid out as a grid with a header row of (a), (b), (c), (d) above four numbered rows of Roman numerals.

• (2)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (i) — This reverses the order completely, asserting that single citizenship came from Australia, judicial review from Ireland, the Directive Principles from the United States and the Concurrent List from the United Kingdom. Every one of the four is wrong, and the last is the most instructive. The United Kingdom has no Concurrent List and could not have supplied one, because it is a unitary state with no constitutional division of legislative subjects between a centre and constituent units at all; devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a statutory arrangement of recent decades, not a federal scheme of the kind the Seventh Schedule embodies. Equally, the Directive Principles cannot come from the United States, whose constitution contains no such chapter of non-justiciable social and economic goals. An option built by simply inverting the order is a common device in matching questions, and it is defeated by settling any single pair with certainty.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii) — This asserts that single citizenship came from Ireland, judicial review from the United Kingdom, the Directive Principles from Australia and the Concurrent List from the United States. The second of these is the one worth dwelling on, because it is the most seductive error in the whole topic. Britain gave India a great deal — the parliamentary system, the rule of law, single citizenship, the writs — but it could not have given judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation, because the United Kingdom has no written constitution against which an Act of Parliament could be tested and its tradition is one of parliamentary sovereignty, under which Parliament may make or unmake any law. The power of a court to strike down a statute for unconstitutionality is an American contribution. Note also that the United States does not have a Concurrent List; its constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government and reserves the rest to the States.
• (4)(a) - (ii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (iii) — This asserts that single citizenship came from the United States, judicial review from Australia, the Directive Principles from the United Kingdom and the Concurrent List from Ireland — and the first pairing inverts the truth in a way that is worth fixing permanently. The United States is the classic home of dual citizenship, each person being a citizen both of the United States and of the State in which he resides, and it was precisely to avoid the divisiveness of that arrangement that the framers of the Indian Constitution adopted single citizenship on the British model. The third pairing fails as well, since the United Kingdom has no written constitution and therefore no chapter of Directive Principles; that idea reached India from Ireland, whose Directive Principles of Social Policy are the acknowledged model. Matching questions are best attacked by finding the one pair a candidate is certain of and eliminating every option inconsistent with it.

The Constitution of India was framed by a Constituent Assembly that studied the constitutions of many countries and adapted from each what suited Indian conditions, so a standard table of borrowed features is part of the polity syllabus. From the United Kingdom came the parliamentary form of government, the rule of law, the legislative procedure, single citizenship, the cabinet system, the prerogative writs, parliamentary privileges and bicameralism. From the United States came the Fundamental Rights, the independence of the judiciary, judicial review, the impeachment of the President, the removal of Supreme Court and High Court judges, the office of Vice-President and the idea of a written constitution with a preamble. From Ireland came the Directive Principles of State Policy, the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha and the method of election of the President. From Australia came the Concurrent List, the freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse, and the joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament. From Canada came a federation with a strong Centre, the vesting of residuary powers in the Centre, the appointment of State Governors by the Centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. From the Weimar constitution of Germany came the suspension of Fundamental Rights during an emergency; from the Soviet Union the Fundamental Duties and the ideals of justice in the Preamble; from France the republican form and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity; from South Africa the procedure for amending the Constitution and the election of members of the Rajya Sabha; and from Japan the phrase 'procedure established by law' in Article 21. What was borrowed was in every case adapted rather than copied, and the Constituent Assembly's own contribution lies in the combination.

Borrowed features are among the most predictable questions in MPSC's polity section, and they are almost always set as a matching exercise, because the table lends itself to four-by-four pairing. The Commission's method is to choose items whose sources are commonly confused — single citizenship against the American model of dual citizenship, judicial review against the British parliamentary tradition, the Concurrent List against the American enumeration of federal powers — so a candidate who has memorised the table without understanding why each idea came from where it did is vulnerable to a well-chosen distractor. The reasoning is usually simple: a country cannot have given India something its own constitutional system does not contain. Britain has no written constitution and no federal division of subjects, so neither judicial review of legislation nor a Concurrent List can be British; the United States has dual citizenship, so single citizenship is not American. On the mechanics of a matching question, the two columns are printed side by side because they have to be matched, and adjacency in the printed grid is layout and never an answer. The efficient technique is to settle whichever pair is most certain and eliminate every option that contradicts it, which usually disposes of two or three of the four choices at once.

• Single citizenship was taken from the United Kingdom; India has one citizenship for the whole country, unlike the United States, where a person is a citizen both of the Union and of the State in which he resides.
• Judicial review — the power of the courts to test the constitutionality of legislative and executive action and to declare it void — was taken from the United States, along with the Fundamental Rights, the independence of the judiciary and the office of Vice-President.
• The Directive Principles of State Policy were taken from Ireland, whose constitution contains Directive Principles of Social Policy that are not enforceable in any court; from Ireland India also took the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha and the method of electing the President.
• The Concurrent List was taken from Australia, together with the freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse and the provision for a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament.
• Other principal sources are Canada for a federation with a strong Centre and residuary powers at the Centre, the Weimar constitution of Germany for the suspension of Fundamental Rights during an emergency, the Soviet Union for the Fundamental Duties, France for the republican ideals in the Preamble, South Africa for the amendment procedure and Japan for the phrase 'procedure established by law'.

• Assuming that judicial review came from the United Kingdom because so much else did, when Britain has no written constitution to test legislation against and follows parliamentary sovereignty
• Attributing single citizenship to the United States, which in fact has dual citizenship of the Union and of the State — the very arrangement India deliberately avoided
• Treating adjacency in the printed grid of a matching question as a pairing, when the columns are printed side by side simply because they have to be matched
• Learning the borrowed-features table by rote without the reason for each source, which leaves a candidate defenceless against a well-chosen swap of two entries

MPSC asks borrowed features almost every year, generally as a four-by-four matching question of the kind set here, occasionally as a single-line item asking from which country a named feature was taken, and sometimes in the negative form asking which pair is wrongly matched. The items chosen are usually those with a plausible alternative source, so the Commission favours single citizenship, judicial review, the Concurrent List, the Fundamental Duties, the emergency provisions and the amendment procedure. The topic connects naturally to the Constituent Assembly, its committees and its timeline, which is examined in the same section, and to the sources of particular articles such as Article 21 and Article 32. A candidate who prepares the table as a set of reasons rather than a set of names — Britain for parliamentary institutions, America for the rights and the courts, Ireland for the social goals, Australia for the concurrent legislative field, Canada for the strong Centre — will answer any rearrangement of it.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The idea of the Fundamental Duties in the Indian Constitution was borrowed from the constitution of which country ?

  • (a)Ireland
  • (b)The erstwhile Soviet Union
  • (c)Australia
  • (d)Canada

  Answer(b) The erstwhile Soviet Union — the Fundamental Duties, added to the Constitution as Article 51A by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, were modelled on the Soviet constitution, which was also the source of the ideals of social, economic and political justice in the Preamble. Ireland supplied the Directive Principles of State Policy, Australia the Concurrent List and the freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse, and Canada the federation with a strong Centre and the vesting of residuary powers in the Union.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of a constitutional feature and its source is NOT correctly matched ?

  • (a)Rule of law — United Kingdom
  • (b)Impeachment of the President — United States
  • (c)Residuary powers vested in the Centre — Canada
  • (d)Directive Principles of State Policy — Australia

  Answer(d) Directive Principles of State Policy — Australia is the pair that is wrongly matched; the Directive Principles came from Ireland, whose constitution contains Directive Principles of Social Policy declared fundamental in the governance of the country but not enforceable in any court. Australia's contributions were the Concurrent List, the freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse, and the joint sitting of the two Houses. The other three pairs are correct: the rule of law is a British inheritance, the impeachment of the President follows the American model, and the vesting of residuary powers in the Centre follows the Canadian one.