Which of the following is not among the top ten principal commodities of India’s export during April-September 2024-25?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Basmati Rice. The decisive point is classificatory, not arithmetical. India's merchandise trade is compiled by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), Kolkata, under a fixed list of headings called 'Principal Commodities', and that list is reproduced every year in the Economic Survey's Statistical Appendix — Table 6.3A of the Economic Survey 2024-25 carries the April-September 2024-25 provisional figures the question is built on. In that table the agricultural heading is simply 'Rice': USD 5,120 million on 7,371.1 thousand tonnes for the half-year. There is no heading called 'Basmati Rice' anywhere in the classification, so it cannot occupy a top-ten slot no matter how large basmati shipments are in their own right. Basmati is a varietal and quality category, policed by APEDA — which registered basmati rice as a Geographical Indication on 15 February 2016 and notifies which seed varieties may legally be exported as basmati — and a variety notification is not a customs commodity heading. The Commission said the same thing when it disposed of objections on 31 October 2025: rice is a principal commodity, basmati rice is not named in the official data, there are many rice varieties, and basmati is only a portion of total rice exported. The other two options are nowhere near the margin. Mineral fuels and lubricants including coal — the petroleum-products block — came to USD 38,411 million in April-September 2024-25, roughly 18 per cent of the USD 212,662 million total. Iron and steel sits inside 'Machinery, transport and metal manufactures', which alone was USD 55,224 million. One honest caveat you should carry into the exam hall: there is no single canonical 'official top ten'. DGCI&S principal commodities and the Commerce Ministry's monthly top-ten-commodities release are different groupings that do not produce identical rankings. What is stable across both is that 'Rice' appears and 'Basmati Rice' never does.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Petroleum products are one of India's two biggest merchandise export lines — mineral fuels and lubricants including coal earned USD 38,411 million in April-September 2024-25 against total exports of USD 212,662 million, about one rupee in every five and a half earned abroad, second in that table only to machinery, transport and metal manufactures at USD 55,224 million. India imports crude, refines it at complexes such as Jamnagar and re-exports the products; that re-export trade is far too big to fall out of any top ten.  (b) Iron and steel is a standing member of the engineering-goods block, which DGCI&S carries as 'Machinery, transport and metal manufactures' — USD 55,224 million for the half-year. Two things tempt candidates to strike it out: they confuse it with iron ore (a separate and far smaller line, ores and minerals excluding coal being only USD 3,314 million), and they remember that India was a net importer of finished steel that year. Net balance is not gross export value.  (d) This would require at least two of the three named items to be off the list. Petroleum products and iron and steel are both securely on it, so exactly one item — basmati rice — is the odd one out and the composite option collapses. 'More than one of the above' is this paper's default fourth option, printed on dozens of questions; it is correct only where the stem genuinely admits several, and here the Commission's own remark names a single item.

Concept: Official trade statistics are built on headings, not on brand names or marketing categories. DGCI&S, the Kolkata-based statistical arm of the Department of Commerce, compiles India's exports and imports from shipping bills and groups them under 'Principal Commodities' — a small, stable list of about thirty headings nested inside four broad blocks: agricultural and allied products; ores and minerals excluding coal; manufactured goods; and mineral fuels and lubricants including coal. Every heading corresponds to an HS-code family, so a heading exists only where the customs tariff draws a boundary. 'Rice' is such a heading. 'Basmati Rice' is not: basmati is defined by seed variety and grain characteristics under APEDA's notification and by the Geographical Indication registered in 2016, which is a quality-assurance instrument, not a statistical one. The same logic explains why 'Alphonso mango' or 'Darjeeling tea' never appear in the principal-commodity table either, however famous they are. Read against that table, India's April-September 2024-25 basket was overwhelmingly manufactured — USD 146,846 million of USD 212,662 million, about 69 per cent — with petroleum at USD 38,411 million, agricultural and allied products at USD 24,079 million (roughly 11 per cent), and ores and minerals a small USD 3,314 million tail.

State PCS 2025 Q37 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q37 — Economy PYQ with Answer