Which of the following statements is/are correct about National Commission for Scheduled Tribes [NCST] ?
(a) It is a constitutional body which came into existence in 2004.
(b) Its function is to inqui

Question

Which of the following statements is/are correct about National Commission for Scheduled Tribes [NCST] ?
(a) It is a constitutional body which came into existence in 2004.
(b) Its function is to inquire into specific complaints with respect to the deprivation of rights and safeguards of Scheduled Tribes.
(c) It works to improve literacy rate of Tribal community.
(d) Its function is to facilitate women empowerment of Tribal women.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), All of the above. Take the four printed statements in turn. Statement (a) says the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes is a constitutional body which came into existence in 2004, and that is right on both counts. It was created by the Constitution (Eighty-ninth Amendment) Act of 2003, which inserted Article 338A and split the former combined National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes into two separate commissions, and the new Scheduled Tribes commission came into existence in February 2004. Being constitutional rather than statutory is the distinction that matters here: the Commission owes its existence to the Constitution itself and not to an Act of Parliament, so its functions, its powers and the duty of governments to consult it are written into the constitutional text. Statement (b) reproduces one of those functions almost word for word — the Constitution requires the Commission to inquire into specific complaints with respect to the deprivation of rights and safeguards of the Scheduled Tribes — and it is the function most people associate with the body. Statements (c) and (d) are the ones a candidate hesitates over, because neither literacy nor the empowerment of tribal women is named in the constitutional text as a separate head. They do not need to be. The same clause of Article 338A that requires the Commission to inquire into complaints also requires it to participate in and advise on the planning process of the socio-economic development of the Scheduled Tribes and to evaluate the progress of that development under the Union and under any state, and to recommend in its reports to the President the measures that should be taken for the protection, the welfare and the socio-economic development of the Scheduled Tribes. Education and literacy are among the most basic components of socio-economic development, and the position of tribal women — who bear the disadvantages of tribal status and of gender together — falls squarely within welfare and development so understood. The Constitution further empowers the President to specify additional functions relating to the protection, welfare, development and advancement of the Scheduled Tribes, which confirms that the developmental mandate is meant to be read broadly rather than narrowly. The Commission is therefore not merely a grievance forum but a body with an advisory and developmental role, and the Union and every state government are required to consult it on all major policy matters affecting Scheduled Tribes. All four statements standing, option (4) is the answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option accepts only statement (a), the constitutional status and the year, and rejects everything about what the Commission does. It cannot be right, because statement (b) is not an interpretation of the Commission's role but a near-verbatim reproduction of a function written into Article 338A: to inquire into specific complaints with respect to the deprivation of rights and safeguards of the Scheduled Tribes. A candidate who selects this option has usually recognised the one fact he is sure of — that the body is constitutional and dates from 2004 — and treated the rest of the page as unverifiable. The three wrong options in this question form a ladder, each accepting one more statement than the last, and this is its bottom rung; climbing it correctly is a matter of knowing how far the Commission's mandate extends, not of guessing how many statements an examiner is likely to have made true.  (b) This option accepts (a) and (b) and rejects the two developmental statements, and it is the choice of a candidate who has read Article 338A carefully but too literally. The reasoning runs that the Constitution names investigation of safeguards and inquiry into complaints as the Commission's functions, that literacy and women's empowerment are nowhere named, and that a body confined to safeguards cannot be said to work on either. The premise about the text is wrong. The same clause requires the Commission to participate in and advise on the planning of the socio-economic development of the Scheduled Tribes, to evaluate the progress of that development, and to recommend measures for their protection, welfare and socio-economic development; and a further provision lets the President specify additional functions relating to their protection, welfare, development and advancement. A mandate framed in those words is not confined to grievances.  (c) This option accepts (a), (b) and (c) and rejects only the statement about tribal women, which makes it the most discriminating of the three errors and the one a well-prepared candidate is most likely to make. Having accepted that socio-economic development covers literacy, there is no principled ground left on which to exclude the position of tribal women, who are among the groups the Commission's protective and developmental mandate most obviously reaches, since they carry the disadvantages of tribal status and of gender at the same time. The hesitation usually comes from the printing rather than from the law: the English statement is worded with a visible redundancy, women empowerment of Tribal women, and a reader who notices the clumsiness may take it for a sign that the statement has been tampered with. Awkward drafting is not falsity, and this paper contains a good deal of it.

Concept: The Constitution's machinery for the Scheduled Tribes has three layers and the National Commission belongs to the third. The first layer is definitional: Article 366(25) defines Scheduled Tribes by reference to Article 342, under which the President specifies the tribes of a state by public notification after consulting the Governor, and only Parliament by law may thereafter include or exclude a community. The second layer is protective and developmental in substance — reservation in legislatures, in services and in education, the special provisions for the administration of Scheduled Areas and tribal areas under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, and the Governor's reporting duty in respect of Scheduled Areas. The third layer is institutional oversight, and this is where Article 338A sits. Until 2003 a single National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes served both groups under Article 338; the Eighty-ninth Amendment separated them, leaving Article 338 to the Scheduled Castes and inserting Article 338A for a distinct National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, which came into existence in 2004. The Commission consists of a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and three other members appointed by the President. Its functions run wider than the grievance role for which it is best known: it investigates and monitors all matters relating to the constitutional and legal safeguards for Scheduled Tribes and evaluates how those safeguards are working, inquires into specific complaints of the deprivation of rights, participates in and advises on the planning of socio-economic development and evaluates its progress, reports annually to the President, and recommends measures for the protection, welfare and socio-economic development of the Scheduled Tribes. In discharging the investigative functions it has the powers of a civil court trying a suit — summoning witnesses, requiring the production of documents, receiving evidence on affidavit and requisitioning public records. The Union and every state government are obliged to consult it on all major policy matters affecting Scheduled Tribes. Its recommendations, however, are not binding, which is the standing limitation on all such commissions and the usual subject of criticism.

State PCS 2022 Q34 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q34 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer