MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 24 of 100

Correct — option (4), All of the above. The Commission's key treats every one of the four programmes named in statements (a) to (d) as one that the United Nations Development Programme has supported alongside the Government of India for poverty reduction and the promotion of livelihoods, so the only option that admits all four is the answer. The detail on the page that explains why they belong together is the date range: statements (b), (c) and (d) each carry the years 2013 to 2017, and that is not a coincidence but the length of a UNDP country programme cycle. UNDP does not run projects in a country at random. Its work is organised into five-year country programmes, each set out in a Country Programme Document approved by the UNDP Executive Board and then given effect through a Country Programme Action Plan signed with the host government; the cycle covering these years was approved by the Executive Board in September 2012 and ran from 2013 to 2017, and it sat inside the wider United Nations Development Action Framework for India for the same period, which was drawn up with the Planning Commission and deliberately harmonised with the Twelfth Five Year Plan. Everything the United Nations system did in India in those years was meant to fit that framework's outcomes, which covered inclusive growth, food and nutrition security, gender equality, access to basic services, decentralisation and sustainable development. Read against that background, the four items in the list stop looking like an arbitrary collection and start looking like what they are: entries from one programme cycle, each attached to a different outcome — shelter, health system efficiency, governance and livelihoods, and the specific position of tribal communities. It is worth being clear about what UNDP's support means, because candidates routinely overstate it. UNDP is not a lender and does not finance national programmes in the way a development bank does; it works as a technical and advisory partner with central ministries, state governments and civil society organisations, contributing project design, pilot implementation, capacity building, monitoring systems and evidence, with delivery remaining the government's. Its presence in India is long-standing, going back to 1951, and its tribal work in this period included grassroots capacity building and support to the recognition of forest rights titles for forest-dwelling communities. The question is fundamentally one of recall from that programme list, and every printed item is on it, which makes option (4) the answer.

• (1)Only (a) — This option accepts only statement (a) and rejects the other three. It is the least defensible of the wrong options, because statements (c) and (d) name programmes whose very titles — Governance and Accelerated Livelihoods Support, and Strengthening National Capacities in Tribal Areas — describe governance and livelihood work of exactly the kind the stem asks about, and both carry the 2013 to 2017 range that identifies the country programme cycle. Choosing this option amounts to deciding that a single unfamiliar title is the whole answer, which is what a candidate does when the reading has stopped at the first statement. In a list question the discipline is to evaluate every statement before looking at the options at all, since an option can only be chosen once each statement has been marked in or out on its own.
• (2)(a), (b) and (c) — This option accepts (a), (b) and (c) and drops only the tribal areas programme at (d). There is no basis for singling that one out. Work with tribal communities is among the most visible parts of UNDP's engagement in India during this period, and it is squarely within the stem's subject, since the promotion of livelihoods among Scheduled Tribes is a poverty reduction objective in the most direct sense. A candidate is sometimes tempted to drop the last item in a list simply because three items feel like a natural answer and four feels like a trap, but a three-item option is not safer than a four-item one; it is only different, and it is wrong whenever the statement it excludes is true.
• (3)(b), (c) and (d) — This option accepts (b), (c) and (d) and drops the rural housing programme at (a), and it is the most tempting of the three because the printed page invites it. Statement (a) is the only one of the four that carries no date range, which makes it look typographically different from its neighbours, and a reader who has noticed that the other three share the years 2013 to 2017 may conclude that the odd one out does not belong. That is an inference about the printing rather than about the facts. The absence of a date on one entry of a list is not evidence that the entry is false, and the key treats all four as supported programmes. It is a useful habit to notice such asymmetries, because they often show where an examiner has laid a trap, but the trap here is the temptation to exclude rather than the item excluded.

The United Nations Development Programme is the development arm of the United Nations system and has had a presence in India since 1951. Its role is easily misunderstood, and understanding it correctly answers a large family of examination questions at once. UNDP is not a bank: it does not lend, and its financial contribution to a country the size of India is small beside the government's own spending. What it supplies is technical and advisory — designing and piloting interventions, building the capacity of officials and community institutions, setting up monitoring and evaluation systems, generating evidence, and connecting Indian practice to experience elsewhere — while the delivery of any programme at scale remains with central ministries, state governments and, increasingly, civil society organisations. The work is organised in cycles. For each country a Country Programme Document is prepared and approved by the UNDP Executive Board, and a Country Programme Action Plan is then signed with the host government to give it effect; the cycle relevant to this question was approved in September 2012 and ran from 2013 to 2017, with a successor cycle covering 2018 to 2022. Above the individual agency sits the United Nations Development Action Framework, which is the single plan shared by every United Nations entity working in the country; the Indian framework for 2013 to 2017 was drawn up with the Planning Commission and aligned to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, setting out six outcomes on inclusive growth, food and nutrition security, gender equality, access to quality basic services, decentralisation and sustainable development. Individual projects — on housing, on the efficiency of health systems, on governance and livelihoods, on tribal capacities — are the operational expression of those outcomes, which is why they share a start and end year.

MPSC uses questions of this kind to test whether a candidate follows the institutional side of development administration rather than only its economics. They are pure recall in form, and no amount of reasoning will supply a project title that has never been read. What reasoning can supply is a way of deciding between the options once some of the titles are unfamiliar, and this item shows the method well. Three of the four entries carry an identical date range, which tells a reader that they belong to one programme cycle; the fourth carries none, which makes it the natural candidate for exclusion and is exactly why an option excluding it is offered. Recognising that the asymmetry is typographic rather than substantive is what separates a considered answer from a guess. The wider habit worth building is a short institutional note for each of the major multilateral bodies that appear in Indian development questions — UNDP, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Labour Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization — recording what kind of body it is, whether it lends or advises, how its work in India is organised, and one or two named engagements. That note is more valuable than a list of project names, because it lets a candidate reject an option that mistakes one body's function for another's even when the specific project is unknown.

• The United Nations Development Programme has worked in India since 1951 and acts as a technical and advisory partner — designing and piloting interventions, building capacity, and generating evidence with central ministries, state governments and civil society — rather than as a lending institution.
• UNDP organises its work in five-year country programmes; the Country Programme Document for India covering 2013 to 2017 was approved by the UNDP Executive Board in September 2012, and a Country Programme Action Plan for the same period was signed with the Government of India.
• That is why three of the four programmes named in this question carry the identical range 2013 to 2017: the range identifies the country programme cycle to which the projects belong, not a coincidence of individual project durations.
• The United Nations Development Action Framework for India 2013 to 2017, prepared with the Planning Commission and harmonised with the Twelfth Five Year Plan, set out six outcomes covering inclusive growth, food and nutrition security, gender equality, access to quality basic services, decentralisation and sustainable development.
• Tribal development was an explicit strand of UNDP's Indian portfolio in this period, including grassroots capacity building with tribal communities and support to the recognition of forest rights titles for forest-dwelling communities; the successor country programme cycle ran from 2018 to 2022.

• Believing that UNDP funds or runs India's development programmes, when its contribution is technical and advisory and delivery at scale remains with the government
• Excluding the one item in a list that is printed without a date range, on the assumption that a typographic difference is evidence of a factual difference
• Treating a three-item option as inherently safer than an all of the above option, which is a guess about the examiner rather than a judgement about the statements
• Confusing UNDP with the United Nations Environment Programme or with the World Bank when a question names a report or a project, since each body has a distinct mandate and a distinct set of flagship publications

Multilateral agencies enter MPSC papers in three forms. The first is publication attribution — which body issues the Human Development Report, the World Development Report, the State of World Population or the Global Hunger Index — and it is the most frequently set of the three. The second is mandate identification, in which a body's function is described and the candidate names it, or the reverse. The third, used here, is portfolio recall: a list of named projects or programmes attached to a body, usually with an all of the above option waiting at the end. The third form cannot be prepared exhaustively and is not worth trying to prepare that way; what pays is knowing each agency's mandate well enough to judge whether a described project is the kind of thing that agency does, and then reading the printed list for internal clues such as shared date ranges. Questions on tribal development and on livelihoods appear often in Maharashtra's paper because the state has a substantial Scheduled Tribe population and a long administrative history of tribal sub-plan spending.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following best describes the role of the United Nations Development Programme in India's development programmes ?

  • (a)It lends money to the Government of India on concessional terms for infrastructure projects
  • (b)It acts as a technical and advisory partner, supporting design, capacity building and evaluation while delivery remains with the government
  • (c)It administers central sector schemes directly through its own field offices in the districts
  • (d)It regulates the flow of foreign contributions to Indian voluntary organisations

  Answer(b) It acts as a technical and advisory partner, supporting design, capacity building and evaluation while delivery remains with the government. UNDP is not a lending institution, which is what separates it from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; it does not run schemes through field offices of its own; and the regulation of foreign contributions to voluntary organisations is a domestic matter for the Ministry of Home Affairs. Its work in India is organised in five-year country programmes agreed with the Government of India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The United Nations Development Action Framework for India covering 2013 to 2017 was prepared in partnership with which body, and to which national plan was it harmonised ?

  • (a)The Ministry of External Affairs, harmonised with the Foreign Trade Policy
  • (b)NITI Aayog, harmonised with the Sustainable Development Goals
  • (c)The Planning Commission, harmonised with the Twelfth Five Year Plan
  • (d)The Ministry of Finance, harmonised with the Fourteenth Finance Commission report

  Answer(c) The Planning Commission, harmonised with the Twelfth Five Year Plan. The framework is the single plan shared by all United Nations entities working in India, and aligning it to the national plan of the same period is what allows individual agency projects to be described as supporting the government's own priorities. NITI Aayog is the wrong answer for these years because it replaced the Planning Commission only in 2015, after this framework had been agreed.