Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions based on the passage:
The Viksit Bharat - Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act (VB-GRAM G), 2025, has been replaced by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The goal of this modification is to improve Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which protects the right to life. MGNREGA has improved socioeconomic conditions by facilitating wage payments, providing unemployment benefits, and promoting equal earnings. There has been sustainable development, and research has confirmed the impact of this program to raise earnings, alleviate poverty, and encourage school enrollment. In the past five years, women have comprised 58% of the workforce, significantly contributing to rural development, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given these factors, it is important to assess both the benefits and current challenges of the system.
Despite MGNREGA’s successes, the program has faced implementation challenges, mainly due to inadequate funding, as acknowledged by the Ministry of Finance. Delays in wage payments and fewer work opportunities have resulted from this lack of funds. Recent rules, such as introducing an attendance application that uses photos, have created new problems and made corruption easier. Due to these issues, the VB-GRAM G Act has introduced important changes, including sections 5(1) and 4(5), which give the Union Government greater control over the public works program.
What does “sustainable development” mean most nearly in the context of the passage?
- (a)Outcomes that emphasize the creation of jobs in the short term, even if there are uncertain long-term consequences for individual welfare
- (b)Discusses advancements that are characterized by fast infrastructure development without consideration of administrative viability.
- (c)Improvements relating to long-term socioeconomic benefits for rural households via stable program design
- (d)Strategies that place emphasis mainly on technological diffusion as a principal means of rural transformation
Answer
Why
Correct — C. The phrase sits in this sentence: 'There has been sustainable development, and research has confirmed the impact of this program to raise earnings, alleviate poverty, and encourage school enrollment.'
The examples define it: higher earnings, less poverty, more schooling. These are long-term socioeconomic gains for rural households.
'Sustainable' adds lasting. Option (c) carries both.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)Outcomes that emphasize the creation of jobs in the short term, even if there are uncertain long-term consequences for individual welfare — Short-term jobs with uncertain long-term consequences are the opposite of sustainable, which means lasting. The passage's examples, poverty relief and school enrollment, are long-term gains.
- (b)Discusses advancements that are characterized by fast infrastructure development without consideration of administrative viability. — Nothing in the passage concerns the speed of building, and development 'without consideration of administrative viability' contradicts 'sustainable', which implies lasting.
- (d)Strategies that place emphasis mainly on technological diffusion as a principal means of rural transformation — The gains the passage lists — wage payments, unemployment benefits, equal earnings — are socioeconomic, not technological. The one technology it names, a photo attendance app, sits among rules that 'created new problems'.
Concept
A meaning in context question asks what the phrase means in this passage, not in a dictionary. Read its sentence and the one before it.
Before: MGNREGA 'improved socioeconomic conditions by facilitating wage payments, providing unemployment benefits, and promoting equal earnings'. After: research confirms it raised earnings, alleviated poverty and encouraged school enrollment.
So the passage's sustainable development is lasting improvement in rural households' lives.
The textbook definition comes from the Brundtland Commission's 1987 report, Our Common Future: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Both senses stress the long term, which is what rules out option (a).
Key facts
- Sustainable means able to continue over time — lasting.
- Brundtland Report (1987): development that meets present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs.
- In a context question, the passage's own examples define the phrase.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing option (d) from a general idea that development means technology — the passage's gains are wages, earnings and schooling.
- Choosing option (a) because MGNREGA is about jobs — 'sustainable' rules out short-term.
The same most-nearly-means format appears at 15 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.19 ('commodification of art') and 21 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.3 ('dialectic'), and in each the words around the phrase settle it.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.