UPSC Prelims 2016 · Question 57 of 98

UPSC Prelims 2016 question on Mission Indradhanush

‘Mission Indradhanush’ launched by the Government of India pertains to

  1. immunization of children and pregnant women
  2. construction of smart cities across the country
  3. India’s own search for the Earth-like planets in outer space
  4. New Educational Policy
Show answer

Answer: A. immunization of children and pregnant women

Verdict

The answer is immunisation of children and pregnant women. Mission Indradhanush is a vaccination drive.

Analysis

Launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in December 2014, the mission aims to fully immunise all children up to two years of age and all pregnant women who were previously unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. It initially targeted seven vaccine preventable diseases, that is diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio, measles and hepatitis B, with the goal of raising full immunisation coverage to at least ninety per cent. The smart cities, space exploration and education policy options belong to entirely different ministries and programmes.

Source

The Hindu and Press Information Bureau material on Mission Indradhanush.

How to crack it

Decode the name, since indradhanush means rainbow and a rainbow has seven colours, matching the seven vaccine preventable diseases the mission originally targeted. Government scheme names in Hindi are usually chosen to encode a numerical or thematic feature, and reading that encoding is faster and more durable than memorising objectives. Where a scheme is named for a natural object, ask what property of that object the name is pointing at.

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