UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 2 of 150

Correct — C, DHRUV. Formally the Pradhan Mantri Innovative Learning Programme (PMILP), DHRUV was launched by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (renamed the Ministry of Education in 2020) in October 2019 to identify exceptionally talented school children and mentor them so that they can reach their full potential. The first batch had 60 students drawn from classes 9 to 12 in both government and private schools — 30 in Science and 30 in Performing Arts — attached to expert mentors. The programme is named after the Pole Star (Dhruv tara), and the selected children are called 'Dhruv Taras'.

• (a)LAKSHYA — 'Lakshya' means goal or target and is a name the government has used for other initiatives, but it is not the talent-nurturing programme launched in October 2019 — that one is DHRUV.
• (b)PRATIBHA — The most tempting option, because 'pratibha' literally means talent and the question is about talented children. But the acronym-style name actually given to the Pradhan Mantri Innovative Learning Programme is DHRUV, after the Pole Star — not PRATIBHA.
• (d)PARIVARTAN — 'Parivartan' means change or transformation; it is not the name of the October 2019 school-talent programme.

DHRUV belongs to the 'gifted-child' strand of Indian education policy — programmes that do not build schools or pay fees but instead give already-outstanding students structured mentorship. The design is deliberately narrow: a very small cohort (60 in the first batch), a two-stream split between Science and Performing Arts, and pairing with accomplished mentors rather than classroom teaching. The name is the teaching device — Dhruv is the Pole Star, the fixed point by which others navigate, and the students are 'Dhruv Taras'.

Scheme-name questions are won by attaching each name to one hard hook. Here the hook is the star: 'talented children who will guide others' → Pole Star → DHRUV. PRATIBHA is planted as the semantic decoy — the option that means exactly what the question describes is very often the wrong one in this format, because the real scheme names in India are usually metaphorical rather than literal.

• DHRUV = Pradhan Mantri Innovative Learning Programme (PMILP), launched October 2019
• Launched by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (now the Ministry of Education)
• First batch: 60 students from classes 9-12 — 30 in Science and 30 in Performing Arts, from government and private schools
• Named after the Pole Star (Dhruv); the selected students are called 'Dhruv Taras'
• Purpose: expert mentorship for exceptionally gifted children, not scholarships or infrastructure

• Choosing PRATIBHA because the word itself means 'talent' — the scheme name is metaphorical, not literal
• Confusing this DHRUV with other official uses of the name, such as HAL's Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter
• Treating it as a scholarship scheme — DHRUV provides mentorship, not fee support

UPPSC asks scheme names as straight recall ('the programme launched on <date> for <purpose> is') or as a scheme-to-year / scheme-to-ministry match list; UPSC prefers 'consider the following statements about scheme X'.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  DHRUV, the Pradhan Mantri Innovative Learning Programme, was launched by which ministry?

  • (a)Ministry of Science and Technology
  • (b)Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Education)
  • (c)Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports
  • (d)Ministry of Culture

  Answer(b) the Ministry of Human Resource Development, since renamed the Ministry of Education.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first batch of students selected under the DHRUV programme was drawn from which two fields?

  • (a)Science and Performing Arts
  • (b)Science and Sports
  • (c)Mathematics and Literature
  • (d)Technology and Fine Arts

  Answer(a) Science and Performing Arts — 30 students in each, from classes 9 to 12.