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Social Issues · Rural Livelihoods & SHGs (DAY-NRLM)

UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 30

The concept being tested: Rashtriya Gokul Mission for indigenous cattle conservation and rural poor upliftment.

Consider the following statements about the Rashtriya Gokul Mission: I. It is important for the upliftment of rural poor as majority of low producing indigenous animals are with small and marginal farmers and landless labourers. II. It was initiated to promote indigenous cattle and buffalo rearing and conservation in a scientific and holistic manner. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Options

  1. AI only
  2. BII only
  3. CBoth I and IICorrect answer
  4. DNeither I nor II

The answer: Both I and II

The Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM) was launched in December 2014 under the National Programme for Bovine Breeding and Dairy Development, run by the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying. Its stated purpose is to conserve and develop indigenous bovine breeds in a focused, scientific and holistic way, through Gokul Gram breed centres, distribution of disease-free high genetic merit indigenous bulls, and use of assisted reproduction to upgrade nondescript stock. This is exactly what statement II describes. The scheme's poverty-linkage rationale, stated in official government literature on RGM, is that low-producing indigenous animals are disproportionately owned by small and marginal farmers and landless labourers, so raising their productivity directly lifts rural household incomes at the bottom of the pyramid, which is what statement I describes. Since both the conservation objective and the pro-poor justification are integral, documented parts of the scheme's design, the answer must affirm both together.

What UPSC was testing

The two-statement format here checks whether aspirants can hold a scheme's technical objective (indigenous breed conservation) and its socio-economic rationale (rural poor upliftment) as equally valid facts, rather than assuming only the headline conservation goal is exam-worthy and dismissing the poverty angle as filler.

How often this comes up

This concept has appeared 2 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2017 and 2025.

The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.