Match List-I with List-II
List-I
a) Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme
b) Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI)
c) The Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) initiative

Question

Match List-I with List-II
List-I
a) Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme
b) Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI)
c) The Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) initiative
d) National Clean Air Programme (NCAP)
List-II
1) Introduced in the Union Budget for 2023-24
2) Aims to reduce emissions in energy-intensive industries
3) Launched in 2019 as a national-level strategy
4) Launched at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021
a b c d

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, 2 1 4 3. Build the code pairing by pairing instead of reading the four options. (a) Perform, Achieve and Trade is the Bureau of Energy Efficiency's market instrument under the Ministry of Power. It fixes a mandated cut in specific energy consumption — energy used per tonne of output — on each notified 'designated consumer', the largest plants in energy-intensive sectors such as thermal power, iron and steel, cement, aluminium and fertiliser, and lets a plant that beats its target sell the surplus as a tradeable Energy Savings Certificate. Its legal machinery was notified as GSR 269(E) on 30 March 2012 under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, and BEE's own dashboard puts its reach at 1,333 industrial units, about 55% of all industrial energy consumed in India, and 25.78 million tonnes of oil equivalent saved. That is item 2, 'Aims to reduce emissions in energy-intensive industries'. (b) MISHTI was announced by the Finance Minister in the Union Budget speech of 1 February 2023 — the Budget for 2023-24 — and launched on World Environment Day, 5 June 2023, so b) takes item 1. (c) The 'LIFE — Lifestyle For Environment' idea was put to the world by the Prime Minister in India's National Statement at COP26, Glasgow, on 1 November 2021, in the same address that carried the Panchamrit pledges, so c) takes item 4. (d) The National Clean Air Programme was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 10 January 2019 as India's first national, time-bound air-quality strategy, so d) takes item 3. Read in the printed order a-b-c-d that is 2 1 4 3, which is option (c). Notice also that List-II offers each attribute exactly once — one bare year, one Budget, one international summit and one functional description — so every item is used once and no pairing can be doubled up.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) All four pairings fail. It makes PAT the Union Budget 2023-24 announcement, when PAT is a regulatory instrument notified under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 and not a Budget scheme at all; it dates MISHTI to 2019, which is NCAP's year; it sends the Lifestyle for Environment initiative to 'energy-intensive industries', when LiFE targets individual and household behaviour and sets no industrial target; and it puts the National Clean Air Programme on the COP26 stage, when NCAP was launched domestically in New Delhi in January 2019.  (b) This is the mirror-image error and is wrong in all four places. It dates PAT to 2019 (that is NCAP's launch year), sends MISHTI to COP26 Glasgow (MISHTI is a domestic mangrove-restoration scheme run by MoEFCC and was never announced at a Conference of the Parties), makes LiFE a Union Budget 2023-24 item (the Budget item that year was MISHTI, alongside Amrit Dharohar and GOBARdhan), and turns the National Clean Air Programme into an industrial energy-efficiency scheme when its entire architecture is city-level air-quality action plans for particulate matter.  (d) In a matching question only one permutation of List-II can be the correct answer, because each List-I entry has exactly one true partner. For 'More than one of the above' to hold, two different codes would have to be simultaneously correct, which is arithmetically impossible here. Checking directly: (a) mis-pairs all four items and (b) mis-pairs all four items, so neither can join (c). BPSC's fourth option is genuinely correct on other questions in this paper, so treat it as a live possibility and disprove it — but on a single code-matching item it can never be right.

Concept: The four names in List-I look alike — all four are Government of India environmental programmes of the last decade — but each one is a different kind of policy instrument, and that is what the question really tests. PAT is market-based regulation: a statutory target imposed on named industrial plants under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, made tradeable through Energy Savings Certificates, so the cheapest tonne of energy saved gets saved first. MISHTI is a budget-announced, convergence-funded ecosystem-restoration scheme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, paying for physical mangrove planting out of CAMPA, MGNREGS and State plan money rather than a new line of its own. LiFE is a demand-side behaviour-change movement with no target, no penalty and no beneficiary list — it works on what individuals buy and waste, and its purpose is diplomatic as much as domestic. NCAP is a national target-setting programme delivered through city action plans, with money routed to municipal bodies and cities graded on whether their particulate readings fall. Regulation, restoration, behaviour and abatement targets are four distinct levers, and once you can name the lever a programme pulls, you can usually place it even when its launch year escapes you.

State PCS 2025 Q46 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q46 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer