MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 33 of 100

Correct — option (3), Mahila E-Haat. The Ministry of Women and Child Development launched Mahila E-Haat on the seventh of March 2016, on the eve of International Women's Day, as a direct online marketing platform for women entrepreneurs, self-help groups and non-governmental organisations working with women. The design of the platform is what makes it the answer rather than merely a plausible candidate. It is a listing and connection service rather than a shop: a woman producer registers, and her product or service is displayed with a photograph, a description, a price and her own mobile number and address, so that a buyer contacts the seller directly and the transaction is settled between them. There is no intermediary taking a commission, no requirement that the seller hold stock in a warehouse, and no charge levied on the participant, and the whole of a seller's dealing with the platform can be conducted from a mobile telephone. That last point is the substance of the idea: the barrier for a woman running a small enterprise from her home or through a self-help group is not usually the ability to make something worth buying, it is access to a market beyond her immediate neighbourhood and the working capital and paperwork that a conventional retail channel demands. A direct listing platform removes the market barrier without imposing the others. The initiative was placed by the government within its wider Digital India and Stand Up India efforts, which is a useful thing to know precisely because option (4) offers Digital India itself: Mahila E-Haat was described as a part of those programmes, not as an alternative to them, and the umbrella cannot be the answer when the question asks for the platform. The stem is worth reading carefully too, since it is not phrased as a question at all but as an instruction — name the online platform launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to support women entrepreneurs — and it ends in a full stop rather than a question mark, as several stems in this paper do. Two conditions are packed into it and both discriminate: the platform must have been launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, which rules out a programme owned by another ministry, and it must be an online platform supporting entrepreneurs, which rules out the two schemes offered here that provide shelter and protection rather than a marketplace. Only Mahila E-Haat satisfies both, and option (3) is the answer.

• (1)One Stop Centre Scheme — The One Stop Centre Scheme is indeed a scheme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, which is what makes it the most carefully chosen of the three wrong options — it satisfies the ministry condition in the stem and fails only the second one. Its purpose is entirely different from marketing. One Stop Centres, popularly called Sakhi centres, are established to give a woman affected by violence access under a single roof to the whole range of assistance she may need: emergency and non-emergency medical aid, help in lodging a police complaint, legal advice and counselling, psychosocial support and temporary shelter. The scheme is supported from the Nirbhaya Fund. It is a protection and support service, not an online platform, and it has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, so a candidate who has attached the right ministry to it must still read the rest of the stem before choosing.
• (2)SWADHAR Scheme — The SWADHAR scheme, printed here in full capitals, is another programme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and again it fails on function rather than on ownership. It is a shelter-based scheme for women in difficult circumstances who are without family support — the destitute, widows without means, women released from custody and unable to return home, survivors of trafficking awaiting rehabilitation, and women affected by disaster or displacement — and it provides accommodation, food, clothing, health care, counselling and help towards eventual rehabilitation, delivered through Swadhar Greh homes run largely by voluntary organisations. It is welfare and protection rather than enterprise promotion, and it is not an online platform of any kind. Its presence in this option set is a reminder that the Ministry of Women and Child Development runs a wide range of schemes and that naming the ministry correctly settles nothing on its own.
• (4)Digital India — Digital India is the government's umbrella programme for transforming the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, launched in July 2015 and implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, not by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It therefore fails the ministry condition in the stem, and it also fails the description, since it is a broad programme covering digital infrastructure, the delivery of government services electronically and digital literacy rather than a marketplace for anybody's products. What makes it a clever distractor is that the connection is real but runs the other way: Mahila E-Haat was presented as forming part of the Digital India and Stand Up India efforts, so a candidate who has read that sentence may retain the association and reach for the larger name. When a question asks for a specific platform, an umbrella programme that contains it is not an acceptable substitute.

Schemes for women in India divide into three families, and keeping the families apart answers most questions about them without any further detail. The first is protection, which responds to violence and to acute distress: One Stop Centres bringing medical, police, legal and counselling help under one roof, the women's helpline, and shelter homes under the Swadhar Greh scheme for women without family support. The second is welfare and human development, which addresses nutrition, health, education and the survival of the girl child: the Integrated Child Development Services, maternity benefit schemes, and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. The third is economic empowerment, which treats a woman as a producer rather than as a beneficiary, and it is the newest and the smallest of the three. Mahila E-Haat belongs to that third family. Its logic is worth understanding because it recurs in later initiatives: the constraint on a very small producer is not usually the capacity to produce but access to a market, and the conventional retail chain solves that problem only by imposing costs — margins to intermediaries, stock held on credit, packaging and compliance requirements — that a home-based or self-help group enterprise cannot bear. A direct listing platform inverts the arrangement. The seller lists what she has, the buyer sees her price and her contact details, and the two deal with each other; the platform charges nothing and holds nothing. What such a model gains in simplicity it gives up in the assurances a full marketplace provides, since there is no escrow, no rating system and no dispute resolution to fall back on, which is the standing limitation of the design. Mahila E-Haat was operated under the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, the national credit fund for women that works under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and it was launched into the wider context of the Digital India and Stand Up India efforts, the second of which was aimed at bank lending to enterprises promoted by women and by Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe entrepreneurs.

Central schemes are among the highest-yield topics in an MPSC paper, because they are numerous, dateable and easy to test unambiguously, and the Commission sets them in a consistent way: a stem that names one or two attributes — the ministry, the year, the beneficiary group or the function — and four scheme names of which three fail on at least one attribute. This question is a textbook example, because two of the three wrong options belong to the same ministry as the answer and are eliminated only by function, while the third has the right general subject but the wrong ministry. The method that works is to read the stem as a list of conditions before looking at the options, then to test each option against every condition rather than against the first one that comes to mind. A candidate who checks only the ministry will find three of the four options surviving, which is exactly what the option set is built to produce. It is worth noting how this stem is printed, since the pattern recurs in this paper: it is an imperative sentence ending in a full stop rather than an interrogative ending in a question mark, and a reader moving quickly can take it for the introduction to a statement list that never comes. The preparation that pays for this topic is a table of schemes with the ministry, the launch year, the target group and a one-line description, revised for the two or three years before the examination in particular, since the newest schemes are the ones most likely to be asked about.

• Mahila E-Haat was launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development on the seventh of March 2016, on the eve of International Women's Day, as a direct online marketing platform for women entrepreneurs, self-help groups and non-governmental organisations working with women.
• The platform lists a product or service with its photograph, description and price along with the seller's mobile number and address, so that the buyer contacts the seller directly; there is no intermediary and the seller's entire dealing with the platform can be conducted from a mobile telephone.
• It was operated under the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh and was presented as part of the wider Digital India and Stand Up India efforts, which is why Digital India appears as a distractor and cannot itself be the answer.
• The One Stop Centre Scheme, also of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, provides a woman affected by violence with medical aid, police assistance, legal advice, counselling and temporary shelter under a single roof and is supported from the Nirbhaya Fund.
• The SWADHAR scheme, likewise of the same ministry, provides shelter, food, clothing, health care and counselling through Swadhar Greh homes for women in difficult circumstances who are without family support, and is a protection scheme rather than an enterprise platform.

• Testing an option against only the ministry named in the stem, when two of the three wrong options here belong to the same ministry and are eliminated only by their function
• Choosing an umbrella programme such as Digital India when the question asks for a specific platform, especially where the platform was genuinely described as forming part of that programme
• Reading a stem that ends in a full stop as an incomplete sentence introducing a statement list, when it is an instruction to name something and the four rows below are ordinary options
• Confusing shelter and protection schemes with economic empowerment schemes, which is the distinction that decides this question and several others built from the same ministry's portfolio

Central and state schemes appear in every MPSC paper and in more than one section of it, since a scheme can be tested as economy, as social development or as current affairs. The recurring shapes are: name the scheme from a description, name the ministry that runs a named scheme, give the year of launch, and identify the target group. The hardest variant is the one used here, in which several options belong to the same ministry so that ownership does not discriminate and only function does. Newly launched schemes are asked about disproportionately, so the two or three years before the examination deserve close attention, while older schemes should be held as a stable table. For a state commission, schemes of the state government must be prepared alongside the central ones, because a stem will sometimes name the Government of Maharashtra where a candidate is expecting the Government of India, and the option set will mix the two.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following features distinguishes Mahila E-Haat from a conventional online retail marketplace ?

  • (a)It holds stock in warehouses and delivers products through its own logistics network
  • (b)It lists the seller's own contact details so that the buyer deals with her directly, without an intermediary taking a commission
  • (c)It restricts participation to registered companies with an annual turnover above a stated threshold
  • (d)It operates only through physical outlets run by the Ministry of Women and Child Development

  Answer(b) It lists the seller's own contact details so that the buyer deals with her directly, without an intermediary taking a commission. The platform is a listing and connection service rather than a shop: it holds no stock, charges the participant nothing, and can be operated by a seller from a mobile telephone, which is what makes it usable by a home-based producer or a self-help group. The trade-off is that a direct model offers none of the escrow, rating or dispute resolution machinery that a full marketplace provides.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  One Stop Centres established by the Ministry of Women and Child Development are intended to provide which of the following ?

  • (a)An online marketplace for products made by women's self-help groups
  • (b)Vocational training and placement services for women graduates
  • (c)Integrated medical, police, legal, counselling and temporary shelter support under one roof for women affected by violence
  • (d)Micro-credit at concessional rates to women starting small enterprises

  Answer(c) Integrated medical, police, legal, counselling and temporary shelter support under one roof for women affected by violence. The centres, popularly called Sakhi centres, are supported from the Nirbhaya Fund and belong to the protection family of schemes rather than to the enterprise family. Micro-credit for women's enterprises is the business of separate instruments such as the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh and Stand Up India, and market access is what Mahila E-Haat was created to provide.