Subject: Political Science & International Relations

Exam Date: 2nd November 2011

Paper: II

File Type: PDF

The State of Uttarakhand came into existence on 09 th November, 2000 under the Reorganisation of Uttar Pradesh Act 2000. The Uttarakhand Public Service Commission was Constituted under the provisions of the Article 315 of the Constitution of India by the Governor of Uttarakhand vide Notification No. 247/1Karmik2001 dated 14 th March, 2001(Annexure1).

At present the strength of the Commission is the Chairman & the four Members(Annexure2). The working of Uttarakhand Public Service Commission is regulated by the Uttarakhand Public Service Commission Procedure and Conduct of Business Rule2007{ Framed by the Lok sewa Ayog Uttarakhand under section 11 of U.P. State Lok sewa Ayog(Prakriya ka viniyaman) Adhiniyam, 1985 Uttarakhand Anukulan awam Upantaran Adesh, 2002.}

India is one of the fastest growing economies of the world. Yet the 2010 Human Development Index ranks India as a middle level country in the bottom third at 119 of 169 countries on the human development index. The world hunger index for 2010 indicates that India is home to 42 percent of the world’s underweight children. Similarly is the case when we consider education. Voluntary Organizations have been active partners in the fight to improve the livelihood of India’s poor for many years.

The voluntary sector or non-governmental organizations have emerged as a new force contributing to social upliftment and economic development. India is estimated to have 3.3 million registered NGOs. They play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of participatory democracy, and their credibility lies in the responsible and constructive role they play in society. They work at grassroots level in the remotest of  areas and their reach is much wider. During the nineties the distinctive trend was the emergence of welfare oriented, non-profit and empowerment oriented organizations. NGOs emerged as important players in the development arena. The emerging NGO or voluntary sector is also known as the third sector.

While women have no less contribution in social and national development as compared with men, their contribution hitherto remains inadequately measured. Policy
makers and planners have long understood the need to engender the planning process and serious efforts are now being made in this direction. Gender statistics has a vital role to play in this process – facilitating the assessment of gender gaps in various aspects of development, understanding the present situation and charting the future course of action to achieve the decided milestones while having a concurrent assessment of the progress made. It is in this light that engendering statistics itself has become a focus area. It is important to note that while disaggregation of statistics by sex is a basic need to integrate gender perspective in statistics, there are several other factors that are particularly important. The definitions, concepts and measurements used should adequately reflect the status of women and men, gender roles and relations in the society. Methodology of data collection should be immune from the stereotypes and social and cultural norms that may bring in gender bias into the data. The analysis and presentation of data should reveal meaningful differences and similarities between women and men.

With a view to facilitating the availability of gender statistics at one place on a wide range of issues ‐ violence against women, economic empowerment, leadership & participation, health, education and human rights ‐ the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has been bringing out the publication “Women and Men in India” on a regular basis since 1995. CSO has endeavored to focus in this publication on such crucial statistical indicators of socio‐economic relevance as are deemed best in portraying gender inequality, gender bias and gender discrimination. I hope that the present issue of the publication, which is 13th in the series, would be extremely useful to planners, policy makers, research workers and academicians.Suggestions for improvement in the publication will be highly appreciated.

Important Constitutional And Legal Provisions For Women In India

The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles. The Constitution not only grants equality to women, but also empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women. Within the framework of a democratic polity, our laws, development policies, Plans and programmes have aimed at women’s advancement in different spheres. India has also ratified various international conventions and human rights instruments committing to secure equal rights of women. Key among them is the ratification of the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1993.

• Constitutional Provisions

• Legal Provisions

• Special Initiatives For Women

Population and Vital Statistics

• With 1176.74 million persons, India accounts for about 16% of world population in 2010. Seventy percent of the population lives in rural areas. Two important demographic goals of the National Population Policy (2000) are: achieving the population replacement level (Total Fertility Rate, TFR, 2.1) by 2010 and a stable population by 2045. TFR, which was 3.2 in 2000, has declined to 2.6 in 2008. Thus, India is moving towards its goal of replacement-level fertility of 2.1.

• The decadal growth of population during 1991-2001 was 21.5% which is projected to be 15.9% for 2001-2011.

• The average annual exponential growth rate for men during 1991-2001 was 1.92% as against 1.99% for women. The total annual exponential growth rate for
  2006-10 has been estimated at 1.95%.

• The sex-ratio (number of women per 1000 men) was 933 in 2001 and is projected to be 932 in 2010.

• Preference for son varies according to social groups and regions in India. 20% men and 22.3% women prefer to have more sons than daughters. (NFHS-III, 2005- 06).

• An increasing trend in mean age at marriage is observed for females in India. It has gone up from 19.8 years in 2000 to 20.7 years in 2008.

• The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is 2.6 for the year 2008, being 2.9 in the rural areas and 2.0 in the urban areas.

• The mortality rate among females across all ages is 6.8 and that among males is 8.0 for the year 2008. The female mortality rate in the age-group 0-4 years has declined to 16.1 in 2008 from 20.6 in 2000.

SCRA Exam is discontinued by UPSC

'Super-25' to coach poor UPSC aspirants

Now money will not come in the way of Bihar's meritorious, but poor students to crack country's toughest test, Civil Services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

In line with Bihar's famous Super 30 initiative where students are coached free of cost to crack IIT-JEE, a unique 'Super-25' initiative will be launched next month. Under 'Super-25', poor meritorious Bihari UPSC candidates will be given free quality coaching and lodging arrangements to help them crack UPSC.

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