Which was the first integrated programme of rural development in independent India?

The correct answer is D, 100 days. Section 3 of the Act obliges the State Government to provide at least one hundred days of unskilled manual wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer for such work, and the guarantee belongs to the household, not to each member. A is wrong because 120 days is not the statutory figure, although the Central Government can allow extra days in areas hit by drought or natural calamity. B is wrong because 150 days has been proposed in debates on amending the Act but has never been the guarantee. C is wrong because 180 days would be half the year and no employment guarantee programme in the country promises that. Remember the three figures together: 100 days of work, 15 days to provide it or pay an allowance, and work within 5 kilometres of the village.

The correct answer is B, 2 February 2006, when the Act came into force in 200 of the poorest districts of the country, the first launch taking place at Bandlapalli in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. A is wrong because the Act was passed by Parliament in 2005 and notified in September of that year, but it was brought into operation only in February 2006. C is wrong because 1 April 2008 is the date from which the Act covered all the rural districts of India, after an intermediate extension to 130 more districts in 2007-08. D is wrong because 2 October 2009, Gandhi Jayanti, is the date on which the Act was renamed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. All four dates appear in the options of such questions, so learn the sequence rather than a single date.

The correct answer is C, 2 October 2009. The Act was renamed on Gandhi Jayanti in 2009, and from then it has been known as MGNREGA, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. A is wrong because 2 February 2006 is the date the original Act came into force in the first 200 districts. B is wrong because no step of the scheme is dated 15 August 2008; the expansion to the whole of rural India took effect from 1 April 2008, the start of a financial year. D is wrong because 2 October 2014 is the day the Swachh Bharat Mission was launched, and the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana was launched in the same month, on 11 October 2014. Keep the two Gandhi Jayanti dates apart: 2009 for the MGNREGA renaming and 2014 for Swachh Bharat.

The correct answer is B, 15 days. If employment is not provided within fifteen days of the application, or of the date from which work is sought, whichever is later, the applicant becomes entitled to an unemployment allowance, which the State Government pays from its own funds. This liability is what turns the scheme into a legal guarantee. A is wrong because seven days is not the statutory period, although panchayats are expected to act as quickly as possible. C is wrong because thirty days would defeat the purpose, since the demand for work usually arises in the lean season when a family cannot wait a month. D is wrong for the same reason. Note the symmetry that examiners test: fifteen days to give the work, and fifteen days from the closure of the muster roll to pay the wages.

The correct answer is B, 5 kilometres. The Act requires that work be provided ordinarily within five kilometres of the village of the applicant, and if the worksite is farther away, the worker is paid an extra ten per cent of the wage rate to meet the cost of travel and living. A is wrong because two kilometres is too narrow a radius to find works for all applicants and is not in the Act. C is wrong because ten kilometres is a distractor built from the ten per cent extra wage, a favourite trick of paper setters. D is wrong because leaving distance open would make the guarantee useless for a labourer with no transport. Along with the distance rule, remember the worksite facilities: drinking water, shade, a first aid box, and a creche where five or more children below the age of six are present.