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UPSC PYQs: Main Idea

Review complete published questions grouped by topic: Main Idea.

19 published questions

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Questions

According to the RTE passage, what is critical in bringing quality to education?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
What is the essential message of the RTE passage?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage describes the planet as a biological system and criticizes treating it like a giant shopping mall. What is the crucial inference?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage rejects the idea that leadership is purely innate. What does the author believe?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage reflects on science and the possibility of a happier world. Which statement best captures its message?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage discusses tension between WTO agricultural rules and India's public food-distribution and food-security policies. What is the central issue?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage reviews competing dieting claims and changing nutritional advice. What is its main message?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage discusses the industrial production of meat and its resource use and environmental impacts. What is the crucial message?2018 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
The man who perpetually hesitates between two things will do neither; one who resolves but changes course at the first counter-suggestion accomplishes little. The person who consults wisely, resolves firmly and executes with perseverance can advance to eminence. The keynote of the passage is that:2017 · Prelims CSAT · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea
There is no harm in cultivating non-injurious habits. Habits simplify the mechanism of life and enable us to do many things automatically. The author suggests that habits:2017 · Prelims CSAT · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea
Accountability, or the lack of it, in governance generally, and civil services in particular, is a major factor underlying deficiencies in governance and public administration. Designing an effective framework for accountability has been a key element of the reform agenda. A fundamental issue is whether civil services should be accountable to the political executive of the day or to society at large. In other words, how should internal and external accountability be reconciled? Internal accountability is sought through internal performance monitoring, official supervision by bodies like the Central Vigilance Commission and Comptroller and Auditor General, and judicial review of executive decisions. Articles 311 and 312 of the Constitution provide job security and safeguards to the civil services, especially the All India Services. The framers envisaged that these safeguards would produce a civil service not totally subservient to the political executive but strong enough to function in the larger public interest. The need to balance internal and external accountability is thus built into the Constitution. Over the years, emphasis seems to have tilted in favour of greater internal accountability to political leaders of the day, who in turn are expected to be externally accountable to society through elections. This system has not worked out and has led to adverse consequences for governance. Measures can be considered for improving accountability. Articles 311 and 312 should be reviewed and laws and regulations framed to ensure external accountability. The respective roles of professional civil services and political executive should be defined so professional managerial functions and management of civil services are depoliticized. Effective statutory civil service boards should be created at the Centre and in the States. Decentralization and devolution of authority to bring government and decision-making closer to people also helps enhance accountability.\n\nWhich one of the following is the essential message implied by this passage?2016 · Prelims CSAT · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea
In general, religious traditions stress our duty to God, or to some universal ethical principle. Our duties to one another derive from these. The religious concept of rights is primarily derived from our relationship to this divinity or principle and the implication it has on our other relationships. This correspondence between rights and duties is critical to any further understanding of justice. But for justice to be practiced, rights and duties cannot remain formal abstractions. They must be grounded in a community bound together by a sense of common union. Even as a personal virtue, this solidarity is essential to the practice and understanding of justice.\n\nWhich one of the following is the crux of this passage?2016 · Prelims CSAT · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea
In the last decade, the banking sector has been restructured with a high degree of automation and products that mainly serve middle-class and upper-middle-class society. Today there is need for a new agenda for banking and non-banking financial services that does not exclude the common man.\n\nWhich one of the following is the message essentially implied in the passage?2016 · Prelims CSAT · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea
As we look to 2050, when we will need to feed two billion more people, the question of which diet is best takes on new urgency. The foods we choose to eat in coming decades will have dramatic ramifications for the planet. A diet revolving around meat and dairy—an eating pattern on the rise throughout the developing world—will take a greater toll on the world's resources than one revolving around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables.\n\nWhat is the critical message conveyed by the passage?2016 · Prelims CSAT · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea
A passage challenges the idea that democracy is exclusively Western. Which option best reflects the author's view?2013 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage says childhood malnutrition often results from inadequate awareness of young children's feeding needs. Which measure best reduces it?2013 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
What observation follows from the agricultural-risk passage?2013 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
What is the central theme of the agricultural-slurry/eutrophication passage?2013 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea
A passage argues that human misery persists until character and ignorance change. Which proposed reason best fits the passage?2013 · Prelims CSAT · CSAT · Main Idea