Consider the following and arrange them in correct chronological order.
1. Jawahar Rojgar Yojana
2. Development of women and children in Rural Areas
3. Integrated Rural Development Programme
4. Nation

Question

Consider the following and arrange them in correct chronological order.
1. Jawahar Rojgar Yojana
2. Development of women and children in Rural Areas
3. Integrated Rural Development Programme
4. National Rural Employment Programme
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, 3, 4, 2, 1. The four programmes belong to four different moments of India's rural-development effort, and in order of starting they run: the Integrated Rural Development Programme (3), launched in 1978-79 in 2,300 development blocks and extended to every block in the country from 2 October 1980; the National Rural Employment Programme (4), restructured and renamed in October 1980 and made a regular plan programme from April 1981; the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (2), begun in 1982-83 in fifty districts as a sub-scheme of IRDP and extended to all districts by 1994-95; and the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (1), launched on 1 April 1989 by merging the National Rural Employment Programme with the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme of 1983. IRDP first, NREP next, DWCRA third, JRY last — 3, 4, 2, 1.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) It opens correctly with IRDP and NREP but then inverts the last pair, placing Jawahar Rozgar Yojana before DWCRA. That cannot be: JRY was created in 1989 out of NREP and RLEGP, whereas DWCRA had already been running since 1982-83 as a women's sub-scheme of IRDP. A programme that absorbs an older one is necessarily late in the sequence.  (b) Wrong at both ends. It puts the National Rural Employment Programme ahead of IRDP, although IRDP began in 1978-79 and NREP only in 1980, and it again places JRY ahead of DWCRA. The order it produces would have the 1989 merger scheme predate the 1982-83 sub-scheme.  (c) The most attractive of the wrong options, because its second half — DWCRA then JRY — is right. It fails on the first two only: NREP is placed before IRDP. IRDP was a Janata-period initiative of 1978-79 that was universalised on 2 October 1980, while NREP took its name and shape in October 1980, so IRDP is the earlier of the two.

Concept: These four programmes are not four versions of the same idea; they are the three distinct strategies Indian rural policy has used, in the order it adopted them. IRDP was the self-employment strategy: a package of bank credit and government subsidy given to identified families below the poverty line to buy an income-generating asset — a milch animal, a handcart, tools for an artisan trade. NREP was the wage-employment strategy: public works that pay wages, partly in foodgrain, to whoever needs work in the slack season, leaving a village asset behind. DWCRA was the group strategy: instead of assisting an individual, it organised rural women into groups of about fifteen, gave the group a revolving fund and helped it take up a common economic activity — the ancestor of the self-help-group model that DAY-NRLM runs today. JRY then consolidated the wage-employment line by folding NREP and the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme into a single scheme, with a statutory share of the work reserved for women; it was itself replaced by later schemes and the wage-employment idea finally became a right under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005.

State PCS 2025 Q39 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q39 — Economy PYQ with Answer