Which of the following schemes is launched by the Ministry of Rural Development ? ?->(Show Answer!)

1. Which of the following schemes is launched by the Ministry of Rural Development ?

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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions: In every religion, culture and civilization feeding the poor and hungry is considered one of the most noble deeds. However such large scale feeding will require huge investment both in resources and time. A better alternative is to create conditions by which proper wholesome food is available to all the rural poor at affordable price. Getting this done will be the biggest charity.Our work with the rural poor in villages of Western Maharashtra has shown that most of these people are landless laborers. After working the whole day in the fields in scorching sun they come home in the evening and have to cook for the whole family. The cooking is done on the most primitive chulha (wood stove) which results in tremendous indoor air pollution. Many of them also have no electricity so they use primitive and polluting kerosene lamps. World Health Organization (WHO) data has shown that about 300,000 deaths/ year in India can be directly attributed to indoor air pollution in such -nuts. At the same time this pollution results in many respiratory ailments and these people spend close Rs. 200-400 per month on medical bills. Besides the pollution, rural poor also eat very poor diet. They eat whatever is available daily at Public Distribution System (PDS) shops and most of the times these shops are out of rations. Thus they cook whatever is available. The hard work together with poor eating takes a heavy toll on their health. Besides this malnutrition also affects the physical and mental health of their children and may lead to creation of a whole generation of mentally challenged citizens. So I feel that the best way to provide adequate food for rural poor is by setting up rural restaurants on large scale. These restaurants will be similar to regular ones but for people below poverty line (BPL) they will provide meals at subsidized rates. These citizens will pay only Rs. 10 per meal and the rest, which is expected to be quite small, will come as a part of Government subsidy. With existing open market prices of vegetables and groceries average cost of simple meal for a family of four comes to Rs. 50 per meal or Rs. 12.50 per person per meal. If the PDS prices are taken for the groceries then the average cost will be Rs. 7.50 per person per meal. This makes the subsidy approximately Rs. 2.50 per person per meal only and hence quite small. The buying of meals could be by the use of UID (Aadhar) card by rural poor. The total cost should be Rs. 30 per day for three vegetarian meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner. The rural poor will get better nutrition and tasty food by eating in these restaurants. Besides the time saved can be used for resting and other gainful activities like teaching children. Since the food will not be cooked in huts, this strategy will result in less pollution in rural households. This will be beneficial for their health. Besides, women's chores will be reduced drastically. Another advantage of eating in these restaurants will be increased social interaction of rural poor since this could also become a meeting place. Eating in restaurants will also require fewer utensils in house and hence less expenditure. For other things like hot water for bath, making tea, boiling milk and cooking on holidays some utensils and fuel will be required. Our Institute NARI has developed an extremely efficient and environment-friendly stove which provides simultaneously both light and heat for cooking and hence may provide the necessary functions. Providing reasonably priced wholesome food is the basic aim and program of Government of India (GOI). This is the basis of their much touted food security program.However in 65years they have not been able to do so. Thus I feel a public private partnership can help in this. To help the restaurant owners the GOI or state Governments should provide them with soft loans and other line of credit for setting up such facilities. Corporate world can take this up as a part of their corporate social responsibility activity. Their participation will help ensure good quality restaurants and services. Besides the charitable work, this will also make good business sense. McDonald's-type restaurant systems for rural areas can be a good model to be set up for quality control both in terms of hygiene and in terms of quality of food material. However focus will be on availability of wholesome simple vegetarian food in these restaurants.More clientele (volumes) will make these restaurants economical. Existing models of dhabas, udipi type restaurants etc. can be used in this scheme. These restaurants may also be able to provide midday meals in rural schools. At present the midday meal program is faltering due to various reasons. Food coupons in western countries provide cheap food for poor. However quite a number of fast food restaurants in US do not accept them. Besides these coupons are most of the times used for non-food items, it will be mandatory for rural restaurants to accept payment via UID cards for BPL citizens. Existing soup kitchens, lagers and temple food are based on charity. For large scale rural use it should be based on good social enterprise business model. Cooking food in these restaurants will also result in much more efficient use of energy since energy/ kg of food cooked in households is greater than that in restaurants. The main thing however will be to reduce drastically the food wastage In these restaurants. Rural restaurants can also be forced to use clean fuels like LPG or locally produced biomass-based liquid fuels. This strategy is very difficult to enforce for individual households. Large scale employment generation in rural areas may result because of this activity. With an average norm of 30 people employed/ 100-chair restaurant, this program has the potential of generating about 20 million jobs permanently in rural areas. Besides the infrastructure development in setting up restaurants and establishing the food chain etc will help the local farmers and will create huge wealth generation in these areas. In the long run this strategy may provide better food security for rural poor than the existing one which is based on cheap food availability in PDS - a system which is prone to corruption and leakage.In accordance with the view expressed by the writer of this article, what is the biggest charity ?
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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given. Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. From a technical and economic perspective, many assessments have highlighted the presence of cost-effective opportunities to reduce energy use in buildings. However several bodies note the significance of multiple barriers that prevent the take-up of energy efficiency measures in buildings. These include lack of awareness and concern, limited access to reliable information from trusted sources, fear about risk, disruption and other ‘transaction costs’ concerns about up-front costs and inadequate access to suitably priced finance, a lack of confidence in suppliers and technologies and the presence of split incentives between landlords and tenants. The widespread presence of these barriers led experts to predict thatwithout a concerted push from policy, two-thirds of the economically viable potential to improve energy efficiency will remain unexploited by 2035. These barriers are albatross around the neck that represent a classic market failure and a basis for governmental intervention. While these measurements focus on the technical, financial or economic barriers preventing the take-up of energy efficiency options in buildings, others emphasise the significance of the often deeply embedded social practices that shape energy use in buildings. These analyses focus not on the preferences and rationalities that might shape individual behaviours, but on the ‘entangled’ cultural practices, norms, values and routines that underpin domestic energy use. Focusing on the practice-related aspects of consumption generates very different conceptual framings and policy prescriptions than those that emerge from more traditional or mainstream perspectives. But the underlying case for government intervention to help to promote retrofit and the diffusion of more energy efficient particles is still apparent, even though the forms of intervention advocated are often very different to those that emerge from a more technical or economic perspective. Based on the recognition of the multiple barriers to change and the social, economic and environmental benefits that could be realised if they were overcome, government support for retrofit (renovating existing infrastructure to make it more energy efficient) has been widespread. Retrofit programmes have been supported and adopted in diverse forms in many setting and their ability to recruit householders and then to impact their energy use has been discussed quite extensively. Frequently, these discussions have criticised the extent to which retrofit schemes rely on incentives and the provision of new technologies to change behaviour whilst ignoring the many other factors that might limit either participation in the schemes or their impact on the behaviours and prac-tices that shape domestic energy use. These factors are obviously central to the success of retrofit schemes, but evaluations of different schemes have found that despite these they can still have significant impacts. Few experts that the best estimate of the gap between the technical potential and the actual in-situ performance of energy efficiency measures is 50%, with 35% coming from performance gaps and 15% coming from ‘comfort taking’ or direct rebound effects. They further suggest that the direct rebound effect of energy efficiency measures related to household heating is Ilkley to be less than 30% while rebound effects for various domestic energy efficiency measures vary from 5 to 15% and arise mostly from indirect effects (i.e., where savings from energy efficiency lead to increased demand for goods and services). Other analyses also note that the gap between technical potential and actual performance is likely to vary by measure, with the range extending from 0% for measures such as solar water heating to 50% for measures such as improved heating controls. And others note that levels of comfort taking are likely to vary according to the levels of consumption and fuel poverty in the sample of homes where insulation is installed, with the range extending from 30% when considering homes across all income groups to around 60% when considering only lower income homes. The scale of these gapsis significant because it materially affects the impacts of retrofit schemes and expectations and perceptions of these impacts go on to influence levels of political, financial and public support for these schemes. The literature on retrofit highlights the presence of multiple barriers to change and the need for government support, if these are to be overcome. Although much has been written on the extent to which different forms of support enable the wider take-up of domestic energy efficiency measures, behaviours and practices, various areas of contestation remain and there is still an absence of robust ex-post evidence on the extent to which these schemes actually do lead to the social, economic and environmental benefits that are widely claimed.Which of the following is most nearly the OPPOSITE in meaning to the word ‘CONCERTED’ as used in the passage ?
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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the question. Political ploys initially hailed as master-strokes often end up as flops. The Rs. 60,000 crore farm loan waiver announced in the budget writes off 100% of overdues of small and marginal farmers holding upto two hectares, and 25% of overdues of larger farmers. While India has enjoyed 8%-9% GDP growth for the past few years, the boom has bypassed many rural areas and farmer distress and suicides have made newspaper headlines. Various attempts to provide relief (employment guarantee scheme, public distribution system) have made little impact, thanks. to huge leakages from the government’s lousy delivery systems. So, many economists think the loan waiver is a worthwhile alternative to provide relief. However the poorest rural folk are landless labourers, who get neither farm loans nor waivers. Half of the small and marginal farmers get no loans from banks and depend entirely on money-lenders, and will not benefit. Besides, rural India is full of the family holdings rather than individual holdings and family holdings will typically be much larger than two hectares even for dirt-poor farmers, who will, therefore, be denied the 100% waiver. It will thus fail in both economic and political objectives. IRDP loans to the rural poor in the 1980s demonstrated that crooked bank officials demand bribes amounting to one-third the intended benefits. Very few of the intended beneficiaries who merited relief received it. After the last farm loan waiver will Similarly slow down fresh loans to deserving farmers. While overdues to cooperatives may be higher, economist Surjit Shalla says less than 5% of farmer loans to banks are overdue i.e. overdues exist for only 2.25 million out of 90 million farmers. If so, then the 95% who have repaid loans will not benefit. They will be angry at being penalised for honesty. The budget thus grossly overestimates the number of beneficiaries, It also underestimates the negative effects of the waiver-encouraging willful default in the future and discouraging fresh bank lending for some years. nstead of trying to reach the needy, through a plethora of leaky schemes we should transfer cash directly to the needy using new technology like biometric smart cards, which are now being used in many countries, and mobile phones bank accounts. Then benefits can go directly to phone accounts operable only by those with biometric cards, ending the massive leakages of current schemes. The political benefits of the loan waiver have also been exaggerated since if only a small fraction of farm families benefit, and many of these have to pay bribes to get the actual benefit, will the waiver really be a massive vote- winner? Members of joint families will feel aggrieved that, despite having less than one hectare per head, their family holding is too large. Lo qualify for the 100% waiver. Alliance ministers, of central or state governments, give away freebies in their last budgets, hoping to win electoral regards, Yet, four-fifth of all incumbent governments are voted out. This shows that beneficiaries of favours are not notably grateful, while those not so favoured may feel aggrieved, and vote for the opposition. That seems to be why election budgets constantly fail to win elections in India and the loan waiver will not change that pattern.Why do economists feel that loan waivers will benefit farmers in distress?
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MCQ-> In the given passage there are blanks, each of which has been numbered. Against each five words are suggested, one of which fits the blank appropriately. Find out the appropriate word in each case.If China’s state owned commercial banks seem burdened by bad debts, the country’s rural financial sector is even worse. In the villages, the only formal banking institutions are what are known as rural credit co-operatives. These ___(1)___the distinction in China of having been officially declared insolvent. The rural credit co-operatives are ill named. They are often reluctant to___(2)___ and they are not run as cooperatives as they do not ___(3)___ any profits and their customers have no say in their operations. Until 1996, they were offshoots of the Agricultural Bank of China.. Since then they have been ___(4)___by the Central Bank, though they are in reality run by county governments. Even the word ‘rural’ is misleading. ___(5)___ of their deposits are sucked up and put in the urban banking system. Farmers usually find it easier to ___(6)___ from friends or relatives or black market moneylenders. Yet the co-operatives remain a big part of China’s financial system. Last year, they___(7)___1 for 12 percent of deposits and 11 percent of loans. In recent years, commercial banks (in eluding the Agricultural bank) have closed down___(8)___in the countryside. Yet some 40,000 credit co-operatives remain in place with one in almost every township (as the larger villages or smaller) rural loans are___(9)___. If as the government claims, the credit co-operatives are beginning to turn a profit after six years of losses, it is not because they are any better run. In an effort to ___(10)
___ a stagnant rural economy, the central bank has pumped more than $9 billion into them hoping that they will lend more to farmers. But the root causes of their problems remain and the real solution may have to involve a mix of approaches from commercial banking to real cooperatives.(10)
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MCQ->According to the passage, what ails the process of technology aided development in rural areas ? (A)Creation of demand for technology aided development in rural areas is missing. (B)There is a lack of participation of rural people in the process of technology aided development. (C)There is a dearth of appropriate linkages needed for bringing about technology aided development.....