UPSC: Indian Polity NCERT Based Test- 1 UPSC MCQs & solutions - Free

• Referendum: A direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may be adoption of a new constitution, a law or a specific governmental policy.
• Veto: The right of a person, party or nation to stop a certain decision or law. The word comes from Latin, which means ‘I forbid’. A veto gives unlimited power to stop a decision, but not to adopt one.

• Prejudice is a negative attitude that one has based mostly on opinions and stereotypes rather than facts/evidence.
• Although prejudice is a noun and not a verb, the behavior is often influenced by bias. Once the switch is made from "thought/feeling" to "action," discrimination has occurred.
• Psychology definition experts hold that prejudice involved three main things: 1. Negative feelings 2. Stereotyped beliefs 3. A tendency to discriminate against a stereotyped group.

• Fundamental Rights has often been referred to as the ‘conscience’ of the Indian Constitution. Fundamental Rights protect citizens against the arbitrary and absolute exercise of power by the State.
• The Constitution guarantees the rights of individuals against the State as well as against other individuals. Dr. Ambedkar has said about these Fundamental Rights, their object is two-fold. The first objective is that every citizen must be in a position to claim those rights.
• And secondly, these rights must be binding upon every authority that has got the power to make laws.

• The Indian State is secular and works in order to prevent religious domination. The Indian Constitution guarantees Fundamental Rights that are based on these secular principles. Article 30 mandates that all minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions.
• The Indian Constitution grants the right to religious communities to set up their own schools and colleges. Indian governments can give financial aid to these religious communities on a non-preferential basis.

According to our Constitution, it is the primary duty of the government to ensure the welfare of the people and provide healthcare facilities to all. Government utilises the taxes paid by the public to provide public facilities like, healthcare services, defence services, judicial services, etc.

• The Central Government shall make provisions for construction of kitchen sheds. The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal program of the government of India designed to improve the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide.
• The program supplies free lunches on working days for children in primary and upper primary classes in government, government aided, local body, Education Guarantee Scheme, and alternate innovative education centres, Madarsa and Maqtabs supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and National Child Labour Project schools run by the ministry of labour.

• Some States were created not on the basis of language but to recognise differences based on culture, ethnicity or geography.
• These include States like Nagaland, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. The advantage of creating linguistic states has actually made the country more united. It has also made administration easier.

• The assertion of social diversities in a country need not be seen as a source of danger. In a democracy, political expression of social divisions is very normal and can be healthy. This allows various disadvantaged and marginal social groups to express their grievances and get the government to attend to these.
• Expression of various kinds of social divisions in politics often results in their cancelling one another out and thus reducing their intensity. This leads to strengthening of a democracy.

People’s successful struggle against privatisation of water in Bolivia reminds that popular struggles are integral to the working of democracy. Bolivia is a poor country in Latin America. The World Bank pressured the government to give up its control of municipal water supply.

• One of the steps taken by the government includes the midday meal scheme. This refers to the programme introduced in all government elementary schools to provide children with cooked lunch.
• Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to introduce this scheme, and in 2001, the Supreme Court asked all state governments to begin this programme in their schools within six months. This programme has had many positive effects.
• These include the fact that more poor children have begun enrolling and regularly attending school.
• This programme has also helped reduce caste prejudices because both lower and upper caste children in the school eat this meal together, and in quite a few places, Dalit women have been employed to cook the meal.
• The midday meal programme also helps reduce the hunger of poor students who often come to school and cannot concentrate because their stomachs are empty.

• A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government.
• They agree on some policies and programmes for the society with a view to promote the collective good.
• Since there can be different views on what is good for all, parties try to persuade people why their policies are better than others.They seek to implement these policies by winning popular support through elections. Thus, parties reflect fundamental political divisions in a society.

• All of the statements are correct.

The term 'invisible' means the work that women generally do inside the home and is not given due recognition ,they are not paid for it. Example - looking after the family members and cooking food for them. Double-burden literally literally means a double load. This term is commonly used to describe the women’s work situation. It has emerged from a recognition that women typically labour both inside the home (housework) and outside.

• The Indian State is not ruled by a religious group and nor does it support any one religion.In India, government spaces like law courts, police stations, government schools and offices are not supposed to display or promote any one religion.
• Government schools cannot promote any one religion either in their morning prayers or through religious celebrations because the celebration of the religious festival within the school would have been a violation of the government’s policy of treating all religions equally.However, this rule does not apply to private schools.

• Democracy has been expanding to more and more regions and countries all over the world. Thus, more and more countries are becoming democratic. By 2020 about 167 countries were holding multi-party elections. This number was higher than ever before.
• More than 80 previously non-democratic countries have made significant advances towards democracy since 1980.But, even today, there are many countries where people cannot express their opinion freely.They still cannot elect their leaders. They cannot make big decisions about their present and future life.

• International Monetary Fund (IMF) is one of the biggest moneylenders for any country in the world. Its 189 member states (as on 12 April 2016) do not have equal voting rights.
• The vote of each country is weighed by how much money it has contributed to the IMF.
• More than 40% of the voting power in the IMF is in the hands of only seven countries (US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy and Canada).The remaining 182 countries have very little say in how these international organisations take Decisions.

• Rosa Parks was an African–American woman. Tired from a long day at work she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man on 1 December 1955.
• Her refusal that day started a huge agitation against the unequal ways in which African–Americans were treated and which came to be known as the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, religion or national origin. It also stated that all schools would be open to African–American children and that they would no longer have to attend separate schools specially set up for them.

According to the Right to Equality as mentioned in the Constitution, every person is equal before the law i.e. every person, from the President of the country to a domestic worker, has to obey the same laws. No person can be discriminated against on the basis of their religion, race, caste, place of birth or gender.

• In a democracy several different kinds of organisations work behind any big struggle. These organisations play their role in two ways.
• One obvious way of influencing the decisions in a democracy is direct participation in competitive politics.
• This is done by creating parties, contesting elections and forming governments. There are many indirect ways in which people can get governments to listen to their demands or their point of view.
• They could do so by forming an organisation and undertaking activities to promote their interest or their viewpoint. These are called interest groups or pressure groups. Pressure groups are organisations that attempt to influence government policies.
• But unlike political parties, pressure groups do not aim to directly control or share political power. These organisations are formed when people with common occupation, interest, aspirations or opinions come together in order to achieve a common objective.

• Most countries in the world have a Constitution.All democratic countries are likely to have a Constitution but it is not necessary that all countries that have a Constitution are democratic.
• A Constitution helps serve as a set of rules and principles that all persons in a country can agree upon as the basis of the way in which they want the country to be governed.This includes not only the type of government but also an agreement on certain ideals that they all believe the country should uphold.

• While the Constitution states that the right to health is an aspect of our fundamental rights, its provisioning is rather unequal. Right to health is considered to be included under the Right to life (Article 21). Due to non-availability of clean drinking water, more people suffer from waterborne communicable diseases.
• Communicable diseases, such as cholera, diarrhoea, hepatitis etc., occur due to the consumption of unclean water.

• There are limitations imposed on the enjoyment of fundamental rights. Fundamental rights are conditional and subject to reasonable restrictions.
• Article 15 and 16 ensures equality of opportunity in public employment and prevents discrimination which in turn ensures social justice.

• Despite having the highest number of hospitals and doctors, the level of healthcare is poor in India.
• The main reason for this is that most doctors settle in urban areas. People in rural areas have to travel long distances to reach a doctor.
• The number of doctors with respect to the population is much less in the rural areas. Despite being a big producer and exporter of drugs, the cost of medicines is high here, thus medicines are not adequately accessible to every citizen.
• Several deaths are caused because of it.

• The Constitution itself cannot ensure that the good people come to power .For example, Indian Constitution has authorized the Parliament to determine the procedure for election to the Loksabha, Rajya Sabha and Legislative chambers of States & UTs.
• Since the existing provisions of Representation of Peoples Act are not foolproof, a significant percentage of legislators of the present day are with criminal records. Constitutional norms provide the overarching framework within which one pursues individual aspirations, goals and freedoms.
• For instance, the Preamble of Indian constitution broadly reflects this framework. One may have many identities prior to the Constitution.
• But by agreeing to certain basic norms and principles prescribed by the Constitution, one constitutes one's basic political identity. However, the Constitution also sets authoritative Constraints upon what one may or may not do. It defines the fundamental values that one may not trespass. So the Constitution also gives MORAL Identity.

The Cabinet Mission of 1946 to India aimed to discuss and plan for the transfer of power from the British Government to Indian leadership, providing India with independence.

• There are many institutions at the world level that perform some of the functions in a democratic way.
• The yardstick here is whether each of the countries has free and equal say in the decisions that affect them.
• For example: Every one of the 193 member states of the United Nation has one vote in the UN General Assembly. It meets in regular yearly sessions under a president elected from among the representatives of the member countries.General Assembly is like the parliament where all the discussion takes place. In that sense the UN appears to be a very democratic organisation.

• Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) was one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism.
• A pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, Bose was known for his “Indian style” of painting. He was influenced by the Tagore family and the murals of Ajanta; his classic works include paintings of scenes from Indian mythologies, women, and village life.
• He was also famously asked by Jawaharlal Nehru to sketch the emblems for the Government of India’s awards, including the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Shri. Along with his students, Nandala Bose took up the historic task of beautifying /decorating the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.

• The Constituent Assembly (elected for an undivided India) met for the first time on 9 December 1946, reassembling on 14 August 1947 as a sovereign body and successor to the British parliament’s authority in India. As a result of the partition, under the Mountbatten plan a separate constituent assembly was established in Pakistan on 3 June 1947.
• The representatives of the areas incorporated into Pakistan ceased to be members of the Constituent Assembly of India. New elections were held for West Punjab and East Bengal; the membership of the Constituent Assembly was 299 after the reorganization, and it met on 31 December 1947.