UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 106 of 150

Correct — C, IV, II, I, III — that is, Karve first, then Abid Hussain, then Nayak, then S.S. Kohli. The one thing every source agrees on is where the sequence begins and where it ends. The Karve Committee (IV) is the Village and Small Scale Industries Committee of 1955, a Planning Commission body of the Second Five Year Plan era; the other three are all creatures of the post-1991 liberalisation decade. The S.S. Kohli Committee (III), the RBI committee on rehabilitation of sick small-scale industrial units, is the most recent of the four. Look at the codes with only that in hand: option (a) buries Karve in third place, options (b) and (d) both end with Karve, and only (c) puts Karve first and Kohli last. So the elimination is clean and (c) is the answer that earns the mark. Now the honest part, because you will find the years elsewhere and they will not agree with this code: the documented dates are Karve 1955, Nayak 1991-92, Abid Hussain 1997 and S.S. Kohli 2000, which give the order IV, I, II, III — and that sequence is not printed as any of the four options. The commission's key marks (c), which swaps Nayak and Abid Hussain relative to those dates. Author's note for the student: treat (c) as the marked answer, and carry away the part that is safe and sourced — Karve is the oldest by more than three decades, Kohli is the newest, and the middle pair is where this question is contested.

• (a)I, II, IV, III — Places the Karve Committee third, after two committees of the 1990s. Karve belongs to the Second Five Year Plan (1955), the era when small and village industries were being written into national planning; it cannot follow bodies constituted after the 1991 reforms.
• (b)III, II, I, IV — Inverted at both ends. It opens with S.S. Kohli, the most recent of the four (an RBI committee on sick SSI units, 2000), and closes with Karve, the oldest (1955).
• (d)I, II, III, IV — Simply repeats the order in which the four names are printed in the question — the standard 'no rearrangement' trap. It again leaves Karve (1955) last, behind three committees of the reform period.

The small-scale sector has been re-examined by a committee at every turning point in Indian industrial policy, so the names cluster into two very different eras. The Karve Committee — formally the Village and Small Scale Industries Committee, 1955 — belongs to the planning era: its brief was to fit village and small industries into the Second Five Year Plan's heavy-industry strategy, and it argued for protecting and promoting them, the thinking that later hardened into product reservation for the small-scale sector. The other three names are all from the liberalisation decade, when the questions changed from protection to credit, competitiveness and sickness. The Nayak Committee was an RBI committee under Deputy Governor P.R. Nayak, constituted in December 1991 and reporting in 1992, on the flow of credit to small-scale industry; its lasting contribution is the 'Nayak norm' that banks should provide working capital of at least 20 per cent of a unit's projected annual turnover. The Abid Hussain Expert Committee on Small Enterprises, which reported in 1997, took the opposite tack from Karve and recommended abolishing product reservation altogether so small firms would have to compete. The S.S. Kohli Committee, an RBI committee of 2000, dealt with the rehabilitation of sick small-scale industrial units.

Chronology questions are answered from the ends inward, not by recalling four dates. Ask first which name is obviously the oldest and which the newest. Karve is unmistakably a Nehru-era planning name, and Kohli is an RBI committee of the sickness-and-restructuring years — pin those two and three of the four codes collapse. That habit matters especially here, because this particular question is one where the printed options do not line up perfectly with the documented years: the middle pair is disputed, but the two anchors are not. Also note the tempting shortcut in option (d) — reproducing the list order I, II, III, IV — which UPPSC plants in almost every 'arrange in chronological order' question.

• Karve Committee = Village and Small Scale Industries Committee, 1955, of the Second Five Year Plan; it made village and small industries a plank of national planning and backed protection for them
• Nayak Committee = RBI committee under Deputy Governor P.R. Nayak, constituted 9 December 1991 and reporting in 1992, on credit to small-scale industry; source of the norm that banks lend working capital of at least 20% of projected annual turnover
• Abid Hussain Committee = Expert Committee on Small Enterprises, report 1997; recommended abolishing the reservation of products for the small-scale sector
• S.S. Kohli Committee = RBI committee, 2000, on the rehabilitation of sick small-scale industrial units
• Key conflict to know: those documented years give the order IV, I, II, III, which is not among the printed options; the official UPPSC key marks (c) IV, II, I, III. The uncontested part is that Karve is first and Kohli is last

• Reading the printed list order I, II, III, IV as the chronological order — that is option (d), and it is a trap in nearly every UPPSC arrangement question
• Confusing the Nayak Committee on SSI credit with the Narasimham Committees on banking-sector reform, both of the same period
• Assuming the middle pair here is settled — the documented years put Nayak before Abid Hussain, while the official key puts Abid Hussain first

UPPSC almost always asks committees as a chronological arrangement or a committee-to-year match; UPSC prefers the functional question — 'which committee recommended X' — as it did in 2002 with Abid Hussain and the abolition of small-scale reservation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which committee recommended that banks provide small-scale industrial units working capital of at least 20 per cent of their projected annual turnover?

  • (a)Karve Committee
  • (b)Nayak Committee
  • (c)Abid Hussain Committee
  • (d)S.S. Kohli Committee

  Answer(b) Nayak Committee — the RBI committee under Deputy Governor P.R. Nayak (1991-92), whose working-capital norm is still called the Nayak norm.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Village and Small Scale Industries Committee, popularly known as the Karve Committee, was associated with which Five Year Plan?

  • (a)First Five Year Plan
  • (b)Second Five Year Plan
  • (c)Fourth Five Year Plan
  • (d)Sixth Five Year Plan

  Answer(b) Second Five Year Plan — the committee reported in 1955, as the Second Plan's heavy-industry strategy was being framed, and argued for a protected place for village and small industries within it.