SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 24 September 2025, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 24 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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SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which Five Year Plan laid the foundation of India’s socialist pattern of society?

(a)First Plan
(b)Second Plan
(c)Third Plan
(d)Fourth Plan

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Parliament accepted the socialist pattern of society as the objective of economic policy in December 1954, and the Second Five Year Plan (1956-61) was the first plan framed around it.

The Plan's own text says its basic objectives had been 'summed up in the phrase socialist pattern of society': the test of development 'must not be private profit but social gain' → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
First Plan — The First Plan (1951-56) was drawn up before Parliament adopted the goal in December 1954. It put agriculture first, on the Harrod-Domar model.
(c)
Third Plan — The Third Plan (1961-66) inherited the goal from the Second rather than laying its foundation. It was knocked off course by the wars of 1962 and 1965.
(d)
Fourth Plan — The Fourth Plan (1969-74) came after the Plan holiday of 1966-69, well over a decade after the goal was set. Its stated aim was growth with stability and self-reliance.

Concept

The socialist pattern of society set the direction of planning in the Nehru years: development judged by social gain rather than private profit, and a public sector growing faster than the private.

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 30 April 1956 put it into industrial policy, keeping basic and strategic industries for the state. The Second Plan, on the Mahalanobis model, pushed basic and heavy industry to match.

The phrase was adopted by Parliament, not coined by the Plan. What the Second Plan did was make it the stated objective of planning.

Key facts

Parliament accepted the socialist pattern of society as the objective of economic policy in December 1954.
Second Five Year Plan: 1956-61, based on the Mahalanobis model, with emphasis on basic and heavy industries.
The Industrial Policy Resolution was placed before Parliament on 30 April 1956.
First Five Year Plan: 1951-56, priority to agriculture, Harrod-Domar model.

Study next

Industrial Policy Resolution, 1956 and its schedulesThe Mahalanobis model and heavy-industry-first strategyObjectives of the Third and Fourth Plans

Common traps

Choosing the First Plan because it came first. The goal was adopted only in December 1954, near the First Plan's end.
Confusing the socialist pattern of the Second Plan with the Garibi Hatao slogan linked to the Fifth.

The Second Plan's link to the socialist pattern appears as a true statement at 23 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.15, and its Mahalanobis basis and its tie to the 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution are asked at 11 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.23 and 23 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.24.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Economic Scene — all 144 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.