SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 21 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

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What was the main objective of the Industrial Policy of 1956?

(a)Profit Maximization
(b)Growth with equity
(c)Laissez-faire policy
(d)Open market reforms

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The Industrial Policy Resolution of 30 April 1956 set out to build a socialist pattern of society through state-led industrialisation.

It paired faster industrial growth with an equitable distribution of income and wealth and with preventing the concentration of economic power. Growth together with a fairer spread of its gains is growth with equity → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Profit Maximization — Profit maximisation is a firm's goal, not the state's. The 1956 resolution expanded the public sector to build basic industries, not to maximise profit.
(c)
Laissez-faire policy — Laissez-faire means the state stays out of industry. The 1956 resolution did the opposite, reserving key industries for the state and keeping private industry regulated.
(d)
Open market reforms — Open market reforms belong to the 1991 industrial policy, which abolished licensing for almost all industries. 1956 built the controlled system that 1991 dismantled.

Concept

The 1956 resolution replaced the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 and sorted industry into three schedules.

Schedule A listed 17 industries reserved for the state alone. Schedule B listed 12 in which the state would set up new units, with private enterprise supplementing it. The rest, Schedule C, was left to the private sector.

Its stated ends were faster industrialisation, a fairer spread of income and wealth, and no concentration of economic power.

Key facts

The Industrial Policy Resolution was adopted on 30 April 1956.
It aimed at a socialist pattern of society through state-led industrialisation.
Schedule A reserved 17 industries for the state, and Schedule B listed 12 more for progressive state ownership.
The 1991 industrial policy abolished licensing for almost all product categories.

Study next

The three schedules of the 1956 resolutionThe Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951 and industrial licensingThe industrial policy of 1991

Common traps

Picking 'open market reforms' because both policies are about industry. 1956 expanded state control, and 1991 dismantled it.
Confusing the 1956 resolution with the 1948 one it replaced. 1956 is the one tied to the socialist pattern of society and the Second Plan.

Here the 1956 resolution is asked for its aim. The plan that carried it out is asked at 23 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.24, its central theme of state control of the commanding heights at 23 Sep 2025, 16:00, GA Q.24, and the 1991 break with it at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.17.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: General Policy — all 308 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.