Economic and Social Development · UPSC Civil Services

What the official syllabus says

UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, General Studies Paper I:
Economic and Social Development-Sustainable Development, Poverty, Inclusion, Demographics, Social Sector Initiatives, etc.

Topics in detail

Basic concepts

Growth and development; sectors of the economy (primary, secondary, tertiary)
National income: GDP, GNP, NNP, GVA; at market prices and at factor cost; nominal and real; base year; per capita income
Measures of development: Human Development Index, Multidimensional Poverty Index

Sustainable development

The idea of sustainable development (Brundtland Report, 1987)
The 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (2015); India's SDG monitoring
Green growth, circular economy, natural resource accounting

Poverty, unemployment and inclusion

Poverty lines and their estimation (Tendulkar and Rangarajan committees); multidimensional poverty
Types of unemployment: disguised, seasonal, structural, frictional; the Periodic Labour Force Survey
Employment programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005
Financial inclusion: banking access, payments banks, small finance banks, microfinance, self-help groups, priority sector lending
Social inclusion of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, women, minorities and persons with disabilities

Demographics

Census and population trends; demographic transition and demographic dividend
Sex ratio, child sex ratio, dependency ratio, total fertility rate, infant and maternal mortality
National Family Health Survey indicators; migration and urbanisation

Social sector initiatives

Health: the National Health Mission, health insurance and public health programmes
Education: the National Education Policy 2020, Right to Education, skill development
Food and nutrition security: the National Food Security Act, 2013, the public distribution system, nutrition programmes
Housing, drinking water, sanitation, social security and pensions

Money, banking and inflation

Money supply measures; functions of the Reserve Bank of India
Monetary policy tools: repo and reverse repo rates, CRR, SLR, open market operations; the Monetary Policy Committee and the inflation target (4%, with a band of 2% either side)
Inflation: CPI and WPI, types and causes
Banking sector: commercial, cooperative and regional rural banks, non-performing assets, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (2016)
Capital markets and regulators: SEBI, stock exchanges, insurance and pension regulators

Public finance

Budget: revenue and capital accounts; fiscal, revenue and primary deficits; the FRBM Act (2003)
Taxation: direct and indirect taxes; Goods and Services Tax (101st Amendment, 2016; in force from 1 July 2017)
Finance Commission and Centre-State fiscal transfers

External sector

Balance of payments: current and capital accounts; foreign exchange reserves
Exchange rate systems, rupee convertibility, FDI and FPI
International economic organisations: IMF, World Bank group, WTO, Asian Development Bank, New Development Bank

Sectors and reforms

Agriculture: land reforms, minimum support price, procurement, agricultural credit and marketing
Industry: industrial policy, the 1991 reforms (liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation), MSMEs
Infrastructure: energy, transport, communication and their financing
Services sector: its share in output and employment, IT and IT-enabled services

Planning and economic data

Mixed economy and the role of the public sector
The Planning Commission (1950), Five-Year Plans and their focus; NITI Aayog (2015) and cooperative federalism
Official data and who publishes it: national accounts, Index of Industrial Production, consumer and wholesale price indices, labour force surveys

Overlaps

The Indian economy, inclusive growth, the budget and agriculture are part of Mains General Studies III; poverty, welfare schemes and the social sector belong to Mains General Studies II. Population and urbanisation also appear in Mains General Studies I (society).