Law of Demand states that, there is a negative relationship between ________.

The correct answer is B, 2015. NITI Aayog, the National Institution for Transforming India, was set up by a Cabinet resolution on 1 January 2015 and took the place of the Planning Commission, which had run since 1950. Neither body was created by the Constitution or by an Act of Parliament, so both are extra-constitutional and non-statutory. The change ended centralised five-year planning and the old practice of handing plan funds to the states; NITI Aayog works instead as a think tank that advises the Union and the states, frames long-term strategy and ranks states on health, education, water and other indices. The Prime Minister is its chairperson, and the Governing Council brings in every Chief Minister and the Lieutenant Governors. A is wrong because 2016 is a year after the change. C is wrong because by 2018 the new body was already publishing its state indices. D is wrong because 2017 was only the year the twelfth five-year plan ran out. Exam tip: Planning Commission 1950 to 2014, NITI Aayog from 1 January 2015.

The correct answer is C, High level of illiteracy. Skill is built on schooling and training, so a workforce in which a large share of workers is illiterate or barely schooled cannot absorb technical instruction the way a fully literate one can. India's literacy rate stayed far below that of the industrial West through the decades after independence, and much of the labour force still enters work without finishing school or taking any vocational course, which is why output per worker remains low. Economists therefore treat education and training as investment in human capital, and the Industrial Training Institutes and the Skill India Mission exist to close this gap. A is wrong because low wages are a result of low skill and not its cause. B is wrong because poor capital reduces output per worker but does not leave the worker untrained. D is wrong because the strength of trade unions bears on bargaining, not on a worker's skill. Exam tip: schooling and training build human capital, and human capital decides labour productivity.

The correct answer is B, present value of money. Money has a time value, so a rupee received years later is worth less than a rupee in hand, and every cash flow of a project is first brought to today's value before a decision is taken. A project spreads its costs and its returns over many years, and the two can be compared fairly only at a common date; the present is that date. This is why the standard appraisal tools, net present value and the internal rate of return, discount future inflows and outflows at a chosen rate, and a proposal is cleared only when the discounted inflows exceed the discounted outflows. A is wrong because future value shows what today's money grows into, which does not help in ranking projects of different lives. C is wrong because opportunity cost supplies the discount rate used in the exercise; it is an input, not the basis of the decision. D is wrong because option B is correct. Exam tip: discounting gives present value, compounding gives future value.

The correct answer is A, SMILE. SMILE stands for Support for Marginalised Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise, the central scheme that covers the welfare of transgender persons and of people engaged in begging. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment launched it in 2022, bringing both groups under one umbrella scheme with a separate sub-scheme for each. It provides scholarships, skill training and health cover, the shelter homes called Garima Greh for transgender persons, and survey, rehabilitation, education and livelihood support for those found begging, and the work is carried out through state governments, urban local bodies and voluntary organisations. B is wrong because SHINE is not the name under which this scheme was notified. C is wrong because SHRI is not a scheme of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for these two groups. D is wrong because RISE is not this scheme either; the three wrong options are built to look like the right one. Exam tip: SMILE, 2022, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, with Garima Greh as its shelter homes.

The correct answer is D, seasonal unemployment. Seasonal unemployment is the kind in which people find work only in certain months and sit idle in the rest. It is common in rural India because farming needs many hands at sowing, transplanting and harvest but very few in between, so labourers either stay without work or migrate to towns for part of the year. Sugar mills, brick kilns and the tourist trade show the same pattern. Programmes such as the rural employment guarantee scheme, which promises a hundred days of wage work to a rural household, were designed mainly for these slack months. Option A is wrong because educated unemployment means qualified young people not finding work that matches their degrees, largely an urban problem. Option B is wrong because disguised unemployment means more people working on a job than it needs, as on a family farm. Option C is wrong because frictional unemployment is the short gap while changing jobs. Exam tip: seasonal means idle months, disguised means surplus hands.