NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 81 of 149

Correct — B, Agriculture Growth Rate of 5 per cent. The Twelfth Five-Year Plan fixed its farm-sector growth target at 4 per cent a year, not 5 per cent, and that single altered digit is what makes this the odd one out. The farm target was deliberately the most modest of the three sectoral figures, because agriculture had been growing more slowly than the rest of the economy. The other three options reproduce genuine Twelfth Plan targets — 8 per cent for real GDP, 10 per cent for manufacturing and one million hectares of additional green cover every year of the Plan.

• (a)Real GDP Growth Rate of 8 per cent — This is a real target. The Plan was drafted around a 9 per cent ambition, and the National Development Council approved the revised figure of 8 per cent on 27 December 2012 as the global slowdown bit.
• (c)Manufacturing Growth Rate of 10 per cent — Also a genuine target. The Plan wanted manufacturing to grow faster than the economy as a whole so that its share in output and employment would rise, which is the same ambition the National Manufacturing Policy carried.
• (d)Increase in green cover by 1 million hectare every year during the Plan period — This too is a stated Twelfth Plan target, sitting in its environment and sustainability group along with targets on emissions intensity and renewable energy.

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan, running from 2012 to 2017, carried 25 monitorable targets spread across economic growth, poverty and employment, education, health, infrastructure, environment and sustainability, and service delivery. Sectoral growth targets were deliberately differentiated — agriculture at 4 per cent, manufacturing at 10 per cent, and the economy as a whole at 8 per cent — because the Plan wanted the structure of output to shift while the farm sector stabilised.

In an odd-one-out question of this kind, the examiner rarely invents a whole target; the standard trick is to keep a real target and move one number. Here three of the four options are exact and the fourth has been nudged from 4 per cent to 5 per cent. That makes the numbers worth memorising rather than merely recognising. The Twelfth Plan was the last of the series, so no thirteenth plan followed — NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission in 2015, works through strategy documents instead.

• Twelfth Plan targets included real GDP growth of 8 per cent, agriculture 4 per cent and manufacturing 10 per cent.
• The 8 per cent figure was approved by the National Development Council on 27 December 2012, revised down from 9 per cent.
• Green cover was to rise by 1 million hectare every year of the Plan period.
• The Plan ran from 2012 to 31 March 2017 and was the last Five-Year Plan India adopted.

• Recognising a familiar-looking target without checking the number attached to it.
• Assuming the farm target must be the highest because agriculture employs the most people; it was the lowest of the three sectoral figures.

NDA sets plan questions as target-matching or odd-one-out items, so revise the Twelfth Plan's headline numbers as a short list of figures.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The agricultural growth rate targeted in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan was

  • (a)2 per cent
  • (b)4 per cent
  • (c)6 per cent
  • (d)8 per cent

  Answer(b) 4 per cent — the lowest of the Plan's three headline sectoral growth targets.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The real GDP growth target of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, as finally approved by the National Development Council, was

  • (a)6 per cent
  • (b)7 per cent
  • (c)8 per cent
  • (d)9 per cent

  Answer(c) 8 per cent — revised down from the 9 per cent originally proposed.