In the Union Budget speech for 2024-25, which oilseeds were noted as not being covered under the goal of ‘Atmanirbharta’ (self-reliance) for oil ?

Question

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Correct — A, Coconut. The Union Budget 2024-25 speech, delivered on 23 July 2024, carries a paragraph headed "Missions for pulses and oilseeds" which reads: "For achieving self-sufficiency in pulses and oilseeds, we will strengthen their production, storage and marketing. As announced in the interim budget, a strategy is being put in place to achieve 'atmanirbharta' for oil seeds such as mustard, groundnut, sesame, soybean, and sunflower." Five crops are named, and three of the four options are among them — sesame, groundnut and soybean are all inside the goal, so none of those can be what the stem is asking for. Coconut is the only option missing from the list, which makes it the answer. Its absence follows a real administrative line rather than an accident of drafting. The five named crops are annual field oilseeds, sown and harvested within a season in the kharif and rabi cycles and handled through the oilseeds stream of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. Coconut is a perennial palm grown on plantations and administered through the horticulture stream, and the same Budget speech keeps the two apart: paragraph 11 speaks of new varieties of "field and horticulture crops" as distinct groups, and vegetables and horticulture get their own paragraph immediately after the oilseeds mission. One more detail is worth carrying: the 2024-25 speech says the strategy was "announced in the interim budget", the interim Budget presented on 1 February 2024, so the same five names appear in both of that year's Budget speeches and either one answers this question.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Sesame — named in the speech in exactly that word, second-last in the list of five. Sesame (til, sesamum) is one of India's oldest oilseed crops and a genuine target of the self-reliance push, so it is inside the goal and therefore cannot be the crop 'not covered' by it.  (c) Groundnut — named in the speech, and the most tempting wrong answer because a candidate who half-remembers the list often recalls only mustard and soybean from it. Groundnut is a principal kharif oilseed of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and sits squarely inside the atmanirbharta strategy.  (d) Soybean — named in the speech, and the crop that dominates the oilseed belt of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Soybean oil is also one of the vegetable oils India imports in bulk, which is precisely why it is a target of the self-reliance goal rather than an exception to it.

Concept: India does not grow enough vegetable oil for its own consumption and has met the gap with imports for decades, which is why 'atmanirbharta in oil' is a standing policy objective rather than a one-Budget announcement. The response has come in waves — the Technology Mission on Oilseeds of the 1980s, the National Mission on Oilseeds and Oil Palm that followed, the National Mission on Edible Oils devoted to oil palm launched in 2021, and now the oilseeds self-reliance strategy first set out in the interim Budget of February 2024 and repeated in the full Budget of July 2024. Underlying all of them is a classification that decides questions like this one. In Indian agricultural administration, 'oilseeds' means annual seed crops raised in the field and crushed for oil, and those crops sit with the agriculture wing. Tree-borne and plantation oil sources — coconut and oil palm above all — are counted with horticulture and run through separate programmes and separate boards. So a crop can supply cooking oil to millions of households and still fall outside an 'oilseeds' mission, because the mission is defined by the category of crop, not by whether oil comes out of it.

State PCS 2024 Q9 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q9 — Economy PYQ with Answer