Which one of the following is not correctly matched ?

Question

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Correct — C, Santhanam Committee – Panchayati Raj Finances. In the standard vocabulary of Indian administrative reform that both UPPSC and UPSC use, an unqualified 'Santhanam Committee' means K. Santhanam's Committee on Prevention of Corruption — constituted in 1962, reporting in 1964, and remembered because its central recommendation produced the Central Vigilance Commission, set up by a Government of India Resolution on 11 February 1964. Its subject was corruption in the public services, not local-body finance. Set beside three rural-development and rural-credit bodies, that is the pair the commission reads as broken, and (c) is the marked answer. Now the part a serious student must be told plainly, because it is why this item is argued over. A second, entirely real K. Santhanam body also exists: the Study Team on Panchayati Raj Finances of 1963, which examined the revenue base of Panchayati Raj institutions and recommended Panchayati Raj Finance Corporations, consolidated grants to PRIs and limited taxation powers for them. Judged against that body, the pair in option (c) is accurate — so the item is defensible on its face and is contested for exactly that reason. The commission's key nevertheless marks (c), and the only reading on which the key holds together is the anti-corruption committee. The safe way to carry this into the exam hall is to learn both bodies by year and never let the bare surname stand alone: 1962 Committee on Prevention of Corruption → Central Vigilance Commission; 1963 Study Team on Panchayati Raj Finances → Panchayati Raj Finance Corporations.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. The G.V.K. Rao Committee was appointed by the Planning Commission in 1985 as the Committee to Review the Existing Administrative Arrangements for Rural Development and Poverty Alleviation Programmes. It found that rural development had been captured by the bureaucracy and cut off from the Panchayati Raj, and recommended that PRIs at district level and below — which is to say the Zila Parishad, the block and the village — be assigned the planning, implementation and monitoring of rural development programmes, along with a District Development Commissioner and regular elections to PRIs. Planning below the district, at the block, therefore sits squarely inside its brief.  (b) Correctly matched. The Reserve Bank appointed Prof. M.L. Dantwala, the agricultural economist, to head the Committee to Review the Working of Regional Rural Banks in 1977; it reported in 1978 and recommended that the RRBs be retained and made an integral part of the rural credit structure. Note one thing that makes this option feel unsafe: Dantwala also chaired the Planning Commission's Working Group on Block Level Planning, which reported in the same year, 1978. A chairman may legitimately be associated with more than one subject, and that does not make 'rural credit' a wrong pairing for him.  (d) Correctly matched, and the most clearly safe pair in the set. The Ashok Mehta Committee was appointed in 1977 to examine why Panchayati Raj had lost momentum; it reported in 1978 and recommended replacing the three-tier structure with a two-tier one — Zila Parishad at the top and Mandal Panchayat at the base — with the district as the first point of decentralisation below the State.

Concept: Post-independence India built its rural administration through a long line of named committees, and prelims questions live on matching the chairman to the subject. The Panchayati Raj line runs Balwant Rai Mehta (1957, democratic decentralisation and the three-tier system) → Ashok Mehta (1977–78, a two-tier Zila Parishad and Mandal Panchayat) → G.V.K. Rao (1985, rural development administration and planning by PRIs at district level and below) → L.M. Singhvi (1986, constitutional status for Panchayats). Running alongside it are bodies on rural finance and on administrative integrity, and it is the crossing of those lines that this question exploits.

State PCS 2024 Q25 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q25 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer