UPPSC 2025 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 121 of 150

Correct — D, Only 1 — the International Labour Organisation. The Global Wage Report is the ILO's own biennial flagship publication, produced from its headquarters in Geneva; the 2024-25 edition, released in November 2024, reported the first recovery in real wages after the global inflation shock, together with a long-run narrowing of wage inequality. It sits in the same family as the ILO's World Employment and Social Outlook and its World Social Protection Report — wages, employment and social security are the ILO's subject matter, and have been since 1919. The rest of this question is a structural giveaway, and the technique is worth learning. Items 2 and 3 are not two organisations; they are one. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, created at Bretton Woods in 1944, is the original and core lending arm of what everyone calls the World Bank — 'World Bank' being simply the working name for the IBRD together with the International Development Association. Items 2 and 3 must therefore stand or fall together, which kills options (a) and (c) on sight: (a) accepts the World Bank while rejecting the IBRD, and (c) accepts the IBRD while rejecting the World Bank. Each is asserting a thing and its negation about a single institution. Only (b), which takes both, and (d), which takes neither, are internally coherent — and the choice between those two turns on one fact: the World Bank's annual flagship is the World Development Report, not the Global Wage Report. So item 1 alone survives, and the answer is (d).

• (a)1 and 2 — The ILO half is right; the World Bank half is not. The World Bank's flagship annual publication is the World Development Report — UPSC asked precisely that in 2002 — and it has no wage report of its own. There is also a structural objection that disposes of this option before any fact is checked: it admits the World Bank (item 2) while rejecting the IBRD (item 3), even though the IBRD is the World Bank.
• (b)2 and 3 — This option at least treats items 2 and 3 alike, which is logically right, since they name the same institution — but it is factually wrong. Neither name publishes the Global Wage Report. Wage statistics of this kind fall squarely within the ILO's mandate: it has been the world's standard-setter on labour since 1919 and the United Nations' specialised agency for the world of work since 1946.
• (c)Only 3 — The mirror image of the flaw in option (a): it picks the IBRD while rejecting the World Bank, though the two are one body under two names. And on the merits the IBRD does not publish the Global Wage Report either — its annual flagship is the World Development Report.

The International Labour Organisation was founded in 1919 under Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, which makes it the only major creation of the League of Nations to have outlived the League itself. It became the first specialised agency of the United Nations in 1946 and is headquartered in Geneva. Its structure is unique in the UN system: it is tripartite, so government, employer and worker representatives sit and vote together. Alongside setting international labour standards through Conventions and Recommendations, the ILO publishes the reference statistics of the world of work — among them the biennial Global Wage Report, the World Employment and Social Outlook and the World Social Protection Report. India has been a member since the ILO's foundation, and the organisation received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969, its fiftieth year.

'Which body publishes report X' is one of the most reliably repeated question types in both UPPSC and UPSC, and it is answered from a short remembered table rather than by reasoning. This particular item, though, adds a second and more transferable skill: reading the option list for internal contradictions. When a list names an institution and one of its own arms — World Bank and IBRD here — those two items are logically welded, and every option that treats them differently can be eliminated before you check a single fact. The same move works whenever a paper sets 'World Bank' beside 'IDA', or 'United Nations' beside 'UN General Assembly'. Do the elimination first; then you need only one piece of knowledge — that the Global Wage Report belongs to the ILO — to finish the question.

• The Global Wage Report is the ILO's biennial flagship on wages; the 2024-25 edition was released in November 2024 and reported the first real-wage recovery after the global inflation shock along with a long-run narrowing of wage inequality
• The ILO was created in 1919 under Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, was the only major body of the League of Nations to survive it, became the first UN specialised agency in 1946, is headquartered in Geneva, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969
• The ILO alone in the UN system is tripartite — governments, employers and workers are all represented in its governing organs
• 'World Bank' is the working name for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Bretton Woods, 1944) together with the International Development Association (1960); the wider World Bank Group adds the IFC, MIGA and ICSID. The IBRD is therefore not a separate publisher
• Report-to-publisher pairs that both commissions recycle: Human Development Report — UNDP; World Development Report — World Bank; World Economic Outlook, Global Financial Stability Report and Fiscal Monitor — IMF; Global Competitiveness Report — World Economic Forum; State of World Population — UNFPA; Global Hunger Index — Concern Worldwide with Welthungerhilfe; Global Wage Report and World Social Protection Report — ILO

• Treating the IBRD as an organisation distinct from the World Bank. Whenever a paper lists both, the two items are logically inseparable, and every option that treats them differently can be struck out before you check a fact
• Confusing the ILO's Global Wage Report with the World Bank's World Development Report, or with the IMF's World Economic Outlook
• Assuming that anything with 'global' and money in its title belongs to the IMF or the World Bank — wages, employment and social protection are the ILO's territory

UPPSC most often sets this as a bare one-liner — 'World Social Protection Report is published by' in 2023 — and occasionally, as here, dresses it up as a numbered list with a code, which is what lets it plant the World Bank/IBRD duplication. UPSC prefers the plain single-answer form, as with the World Development Report in 2002 and the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019, or a four-pair match-list of organisation against publication, as in 2000.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The International Labour Organisation was established in 1919 by which one of the following?

  • (a)The Covenant of the League of Nations
  • (b)Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles
  • (c)The Bretton Woods Agreement
  • (d)The Charter of the United Nations

  Answer(b) Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles — the ILO was created by the peace treaty of 1919 and became the first specialised agency of the United Nations in 1946.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following pairs of report and publishing organisation: 1. World Social Protection Report — International Labour Organisation 2. Global Financial Stability Report — International Monetary Fund 3. World Development Report — United Nations Development Programme Which of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

  • (a)1 and 2 only
  • (b)2 and 3 only
  • (c)1 and 3 only
  • (d)1, 2 and 3

  Answer(a) 1 and 2 only — pairs 1 and 2 are correct; the World Development Report is the World Bank's publication, while the UNDP publishes the Human Development Report.