Which of the following statements about India's largest Charkha is/are true?
1. It was inaugurated in Noida.
2. It is made of used plastic waste.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below:

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, both 1 and 2. India's largest charkha was unveiled at Sector 94 in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, on 1 October 2019 — the eve of Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary — by Union Minister Smriti Irani, along with the local MP, MLA and the Noida Authority CEO. So statement 1 is true. It was built out of roughly 1,250 kg of used plastic collected in a waste-collection drive run by the Noida Authority, which is precisely the point of the installation: the spinning wheel of self-reliance rebuilt from the material that now chokes Indian cities. So statement 2 is true as well, and the combination gives option (c).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The location is right, but rejecting statement 2 is wrong — the plastic-waste construction is not decoration added by the question-setter, it is the defining feature of the installation and the reason it made the news.  (b) The material is right, but the site is Noida (Gautam Buddh Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh). Candidates drop statement 1 because they associate charkha and khadi imagery with Ahmedabad, Wardha or Delhi rather than a NCR industrial city.  (d) Both statements are factually correct, so a blanket rejection cannot be right. This option only tempts candidates who never encountered the October 2019 news item and are guessing defensively.

Concept: The charkha (spinning wheel) is the emblem of Gandhi's swadeshi and self-reliance programme and remains the symbol of the khadi movement. Around Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary in 2019, governments and civic bodies across India put up commemorative installations; the Noida one combined that commemoration with the Swachh Bharat theme of plastic-waste management by fabricating the wheel entirely out of collected waste plastic. It measured about 14 x 20 x 8 feet, weighed roughly 1,650 kg in total, and was recognised by the India Book of Records as the country's largest charkha made of used plastic waste.

State PCS 2019 Q9 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q9 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer