UPSC Prelims 2016 · Question 73 of 98
UPSC Prelims 2016 question on Millets Nutritional Security Initiative
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2016
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectScience and Technology
- TopicHealth
- DifficultyHard
- TypeStatement
With reference to ‘Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millets Promotion’, which of the following statements is/are correct?
1. This initiative aims to demonstrate the improved production and post-harvest technologies, and to demonstrate value addition techniques, in an integrated manner, with cluster approach.
2. Poor, small, marginal and tribal farmers have larger stake in this scheme.
3. An important objective of the scheme is to encourage farmers of commercial crops to shift to millet cultivation by offering them free kits of critical inputs of nutrients and microirrigation equipment.
Select the correct answer using the code given below.
Show answer
Answer: C. 1 and 2 only
Verdict
The answer is 1 and 2 only. The millets initiative demonstrates improved technologies with a cluster approach and benefits poor and tribal farmers, but it does not lure commercial crop farmers with free kits.
Analysis
Statement 1 is CORRECT. The Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millets Promotion demonstrates improved production and post harvest technologies and value addition techniques in an integrated manner using a cluster approach. Statement 2 is CORRECT. Millets are grown in regions of low rainfall and poor arid soils by farmers who cannot afford costly irrigation, so poor, small, marginal and tribal farmers have the larger stake. Statement 3 is INCORRECT. The scheme works with existing millet growers rather than offering free inputs and micro irrigation to shift commercial crop farmers into millets.
Source
Department of Agriculture and Cooperation material on the initiative.
How to crack it
Match the intervention to its natural constituency. Millets are the crop of dryland, resource poor farming, so a millet promotion scheme addresses those farmers rather than commercial crop growers, and the two ideas cannot both be true. Statement 3 also promises free inputs, and free is a strong word that agricultural schemes usually avoid in favour of subsidy and demonstration. Constituency plus quantifier settles it.
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