Government Schemes & Initiatives: previous-year questions

Answer: (B) digital, paperless census using electronic data collection methods.

Answer as of 2024 — this may have changed since.

Census 2027, India's 16th census and the 8th since Independence, is the first to be conducted by digital means: enumerators record data on a mobile app and households can self-enumerate through an online portal. It has two phases, the Houselisting and Housing Census (April to September 2026) and Population Enumeration (February 2027), with the reference date 00:00 hours of 1 March 2027 (1 October 2026 for Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand). It will also record caste for the first time since 1931. The census is taken under the Census Act, 1948 by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner (Ministry of Home Affairs); the last one was in 2011, the 2021 round having been postponed. Options A, C and D describe methods that are not being used, since enumerators still visit households but with phones instead of paper schedules.

Answer: (B) Sonam Wangchuk & Gitanjali J. Angmo. HIAL desires to address the educational and developmental challenges unique to Ladakh's exceptional geographical and cultural context.

The Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL), at Phyang near Leh, was founded by engineer-educator Sonam Wangchuk with Gitanjali J. Angmo as an alternative university where mountain youth learn by doing and work on problems of high-altitude regions such as water, energy, farming and tourism. Wangchuk earlier founded SECMOL (1988), invented the Ice Stupa artificial glacier and won the Ramon Magsaysay Award (2018); he has lately been in the news for the movement demanding statehood and Sixth Schedule status for Ladakh. 'Phunsukh Wangdu' (C) is the fictional character played by Aamir Khan in '3 Idiots', inspired by Wangchuk. Tenzing Norgay (A) climbed Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953 and was the first Director of Field Training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling.

Answer: (A) Cervical cancer in women

The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine prevents cervical cancer, nearly all cases of which are caused by persistent infection with high-risk HPV types, chiefly 16 and 18. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the nationwide drive from Ajmer, Rajasthan, on 28 February 2026: a free single dose of the quadrivalent vaccine Gardasil for about 1.15 crore girls aged 14 every year, given at government health facilities. Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among Indian women. Also remember CERVAVAC, India's indigenous HPV vaccine from the Serum Institute; Sikkim, the first state to run a statewide HPV programme (2018); and the WHO '90-70-90' targets for eliminating cervical cancer by 2030. HPV is not a cause of prostate, lung or breast cancer.

Answer: (B) National Development Council

The Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana was launched in 2007 following a resolution of the National Development Council to raise agricultural growth to 4%. ICAR is a research body, SBI a bank, and state research boards did not launch the scheme.

Answer: (A) Ministry of Commerce and Industry

The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is an initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. It was incorporated as a not-for-profit Section 8 company in December 2021, and its pilot phase began on 29 April 2022 in five cities: Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong and Coimbatore. ONDC is an open, interoperable network (often called the "UPI of e-commerce") meant to end the dominance of a few large platforms and bring small retailers online. The Ministry of Electronics and IT handles Digital India, DigiLocker and UMANG.

Answer: (A) Ministry of Education

NEAT (National Educational Alliance for Technology) is a public–private partnership of the Ministry of Education, implemented by AICTE, that brings the best ed-tech products on to a single platform; companies offer free seats to students from disadvantaged groups. NEAT 3.0 was launched on 3 January 2022 by Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, along with technical textbooks in regional languages. Other Ministry of Education platforms: SWAYAM, DIKSHA, NIPUN Bharat and PM eVIDYA. The ministry was called the Ministry of Human Resource Development until 2020, when the National Education Policy was adopted.

Answer: (D) 1989

The Jawahar Rozgar Yojana was launched on 1 April 1989, under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, by merging the National Rural Employment Programme (NREP, 1980) and the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP, 1983); the cost was shared 80:20 between the Centre and the States. It was restructured as the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana in 1999 and merged into the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana in 2001. The year 1989 was also Jawaharlal Nehru's birth centenary.

Answer: (A) SARS-CoV-2

The virus is officially named SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2), a name given by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses and used by WHO; the disease it causes is COVID-19 ('Coronavirus Disease 2019'), named by WHO on 11 February 2020. So option (B) is the disease, not the virus; '2019-nCoV' (novel coronavirus) was only the provisional name; and 'corona virus' is the whole family, which also includes SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020.

Answer: (D) National Mission for Clean Ganga

Namami Gange, approved in June 2014 as a flagship integrated conservation mission with an outlay of Rs. 20,000 crore, aims at abatement of pollution and the conservation and rejuvenation of the Ganga - sewage treatment plants, riverfront development, biodiversity and afforestation. It is implemented by the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, with the National Ganga Council headed by the Prime Minister. It is not about worship, canal irrigation or river-linking (that is the separate interlinking programme, e.g., Ken-Betwa). The Ganga was declared the National River in 2008; the earlier Ganga Action Plan dates from 1985-86.

Answer: (B) encourage brides to register their marriage

Answer as of 2020 — this may have changed since.

Under this scheme, the Assam government provides gold assistance to brides on the condition that their marriage is registered, aiming to boost marriage registration and curb child marriage.

Answer: (D) Pakistan

Answer as of 2020 — this may have changed since.

Pakistan's Sindh province ran an early large-scale rollout of the WHO-prequalified, India-made typhoid conjugate vaccine (Typbar-TCV) in 2019, following an outbreak of drug-resistant typhoid.

Answer: (D) Sikkim

Sikkim became India's first fully organic state in January 2016, having converted all its agricultural land to certified organic farming practices, banning chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

Answer: (B) 2 only

Answer as of 2019 — this may have changed since.

Hausla is actually a national-level festival organised by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, not the Ministry of Minority Affairs, making statement 1 incorrect; statement 2, describing it as a platform for children in Child Care Institutions to showcase their talents, is accurate.

Answer: (C) Hausla, 2017

The Ministry of Women and Child Development observed Child Rights Week from 16 to 20 November 2017 under the name 'Hausala 2017', an inter-Child Care Institution festival to showcase the talents of children living in such homes. The week falls between Children's Day (14 November) and Universal Children's Day (20 November). 'Hausala' means courage or morale; the other three names are only fillers.

Answer: (D) Rajasthan

In 2017 the Rajasthan cabinet approved a policy to run selected government schools under the Public Private Partnership model, allowing private parties to take over their management; the decision drew protests from teachers' organisations. Rajasthan's capital is Jaipur. The question is a typical 'state in news' item, where the other three states are only fillers.

Answer: (A) funds development in cities for transport only

Answer as of 2018 — this may have changed since.

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was launched in December 2005 for cities only, with sub-missions for urban infrastructure and governance and for basic services to the urban poor. In its original form it covered water supply, sanitation, roads, urban transport and housing, and from 2015 it was replaced by AMRUT and the Smart Cities Mission. what is certain is that the mission never covered villages or rural areas, so (B), (C) and (D) are wrong.

Answer: (B) 14th November, 2014

The National Bal Swachhta Mission was launched on November 14, 2014 (Children's Day) by Union Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi. It was launched on the 125th birth anniversary of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, to promote hygiene and cleanliness among children.

Answer: (D) M.K. Gandhi

The Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) was launched on October 2, 2014 — the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi — by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was launched as a national movement across the entire country to eliminate open defecation and improve sanitation infrastructure by October 2, 2019 (Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary).