Women Technology Parks (WTPs) have been set up in which of the following states to promote gender equality and empower women through science and technology based solutions.
(a) Gujarat
(b) Tamilnadu
(

Question

Women Technology Parks (WTPs) have been set up in which of the following states to promote gender equality and empower women through science and technology based solutions.
(a) Gujarat
(b) Tamilnadu
(c) Sikkim
(d) Maharashtra
(e) Uttar Pradesh

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), 'All of the above'. Women Technology Parks are not a one-off pilot in a handful of States; they are a long-running Department of Science and Technology programme that has produced dozens of parks spread across the country, and all five States named in the stem are credited by the Commission's key. There is a clean elimination route here that does not require you to have memorised a State list. Look at what each partial option leaves out. Option (1) omits Gujarat and Maharashtra. Option (2) omits Tamil Nadu and Sikkim. Option (3) omits Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Now bring in the parks that are individually documented: a rural Women Technology Park serving Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, one in Patan block of Satara district in Maharashtra, and one at a Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh. Option (1) is dead because it drops Maharashtra; option (2) is dead because it drops Tamil Nadu; option (3) is dead because it drops both Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Every partial option fails on a State that demonstrably hosts a park, and only option (4) is left standing. That is exactly the discipline the escape option demands. 'All of the above' is offered eleven times in this booklet, and it is right only when every named item survives inspection and wrong the moment one of them fails. You do not establish it by feeling that the list looks comprehensive; you establish it either by verifying each item, or — as here — by showing that every alternative option excludes something that cannot be excluded. On the geography of the option set: the five States chosen span four regions — western India, the south, the Himalayan north-east and the Gangetic plain. That spread is itself a hint about the programme's design. A scheme whose stated purpose is to take science and technology to rural women through appropriate, locally suited technology is one that must run in many different agro-climatic and social settings, and any option that confines it to three States is asserting a narrowness the programme does not have.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This keeps Tamil Nadu, Sikkim and Uttar Pradesh but drops Gujarat and Maharashtra. Dropping Maharashtra is decisive: a rural Women Technology Park has operated in Patan block of Satara district. The option looks attractive because its three States are geographically spread, which gives a false impression of completeness, but a spread of three is not the same as the full list.  (b) This keeps Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh but drops Tamil Nadu and Sikkim. Tamil Nadu cannot be dropped — a rural Women Technology Park has served Coimbatore district. The option is the trap for a candidate who assumes such programmes concentrate in the larger northern and western States, which is precisely the assumption a national science-and-technology programme is designed to defeat.  (c) This keeps Gujarat, Sikkim and Maharashtra while dropping both Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, each of which has a documented park — Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu and a Krishi Vigyan Kendra centre at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. It is the weakest of the three partial options because it excludes two verifiable States rather than one.

Concept: A Women Technology Park is a demonstration and training centre rather than an industrial park. Its purpose is to put working models of livelihood technologies in front of rural women — food processing, value addition to local produce, water and sanitation, energy devices, handicraft and small manufacturing tools — and to train them to run those technologies as a livelihood. The programme belongs to the Department of Science and Technology, which invites proposals for establishing parks through its Science for Equity, Empowerment and Development division; it sits within the Department's long-running effort on science and technology for women, begun in the early 1980s. The declared objectives are to promote the development and adaptation of appropriate technologies, to transfer proven technologies, and to demonstrate live technology models so that women's employment and incomes rise. As reported on the Government's science and technology portal, twenty-eight parks have been completed and a further twelve were running, with about ten thousand rural women benefiting over a five-year period.

State PCS 2026 Q94 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q94 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer