SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 3 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following is NOT the socio-economic objective of Industrial Policy Statement 1980?

(a)Higher employment generation
(b)Promotion of export-oriented industries
(c)Consumer protection against high prices and bad quality
(d)Allowing the maximum foreign direct investment

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The Industrial Policy Statement of 1980 was written inside the licence-permit framework, and its socio-economic aims were domestic: higher employment, export promotion, consumer protection, better use of installed capacity and correction of regional imbalance.

Allowing the maximum foreign direct investment is nowhere among them. Opening up to foreign capital is the language of the 1991 policy, eleven years later, so option (d) is the odd one out.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Higher employment generation — Higher employment generation is on the 1980 list. The statement named employment as a socio-economic goal alongside optimum use of installed capacity.
(b)
Promotion of export-oriented industries — Promotion of export-oriented industries is on the list too — the export push was one of the statement's declared socio-economic objectives.
(c)
Consumer protection against high prices and bad quality — Consumer protection against high prices and bad quality is likewise a stated 1980 objective, aimed at the sheltered market that licensing had created.

Concept

The Industrial Policy Statement of 1980 was a course correction inside a closed economy, not an opening of it.

It kept industrial licensing and the reserved public sector, and tried to make the existing system work better — regularising excess capacity, promoting economic federalism, pushing exports and shielding consumers from the prices a protected market produced.

Liberalisation proper, meaning delicensing and open doors to foreign investment, is the Industrial Policy of 1991.

Read this as a two-era test. If an option sounds like liberalisation it belongs to 1991, and in a NOT question that is exactly what makes it the answer.

Key facts

The Industrial Policy Statement of 1980 listed higher employment generation among its socio-economic objectives.
Export-oriented industries and consumer protection against high prices and bad quality were also 1980 objectives.
The Industrial Policy of 1991 liberalised foreign investment and removed licensing for most industries.

Study next

Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 and its three schedules of industriesIndustrial Policy of 1991 and the changes to licensing and the MRTP ActIndustrial Policy Statement of 1977 and its focus on small-scale industry

Common traps

Answering a NOT question with the first objective you recognise as genuine.
Treating the 1980 statement as the start of liberalisation, when it left licensing intact.

SSC tests the policy years by the thing each one did. At 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.17 it asks which industrial policy began liberalisation, and at 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.12 it ties the Harrod-Domar model to the First Five Year Plan.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.