SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 15 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 10 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.

In which five-year plan was the 'food, work, and productivity' slogan used?

(a)Fourth
(b)Seventh
(c)Sixth
(d)Fifth

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The Seventh Five Year Plan (1985-90) ran under the slogan 'food, work and productivity'.

Its three words are its three targets: foodgrain output, employment generation and rising productivity, pushed through modernisation in agriculture and industry. Option (b) is the plan those objectives belong to, and SSC quotes the slogan word for word.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Fourth — The Fourth Plan (1969-74) is tagged with 'growth with stability' and progressive self-reliance. Its shorthand has nothing to do with food, work and productivity.
(c)
Sixth — The Sixth Plan (1980-85) carried a direct attack on poverty as its theme. It sits immediately before the Seventh, which is why it is the closest wrong answer here.
(d)
Fifth — The Fifth Plan (1974-79) is the 'Garibi Hatao' plan — removal of poverty and attainment of self-reliance. Same era of planning, a different slogan.

Concept

Plan slogans are the shortest route into planning history: each Five Year Plan carries a phrase, a model or a target, and the question is a matching exercise.

The Seventh Plan (1985-90) sits at the end of the controlled-economy era, one plan before the 1991 reforms. Its priorities were raising output and jobs rather than building fresh heavy industry, which had been the Second Plan's brief.

Hold the plans as a numbered list with one tag each and this whole family stops being guesswork.

SSC recycles the tag rather than the plan's contents. A candidate who has filed 'Seventh = food, work, productivity' answers in seconds without recalling a single plan outlay.

Key facts

The Seventh Five Year Plan ran from 1985 to 1990 under the slogan 'food, work and productivity'.
The Fifth Plan (1974-79) is the plan tagged with 'Garibi Hatao'.
The Second Plan was built on the Mahalanobis model of heavy industry.
The First Plan followed the Harrod-Domar model and prioritised agriculture.

Study next

Themes and slogans of the First to the Twelfth Five Year PlansThe Mahalanobis model and the Second Plan's heavy-industry pushThe end of the Planning Commission and the creation of NITI Aayog in 2015

Common traps

Swapping the Seventh Plan's slogan with the Fifth Plan's 'Garibi Hatao'.
Reading 'food' as the Green Revolution, which belongs to the late 1960s.
Mismatching plan numbers and decades — the Seventh is 1985-90, not a 1970s plan.

Plan tagging returns across shifts — 'Garibi Hatao' to the Fifth Plan (10 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.5), the Mahalanobis model to the Second (11 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.23), the Harrod-Domar model to the First (18 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.12) and the Drought Prone Area Programme to the Fourth (18 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.24).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.