UPSC Mains 2016 GS2 Q9 — Social Sector
Professor Amartya Sen has advocated important reforms in the realms of primary education and primary health care. What are your suggestions to improve their status and performance ? (Answer in 200 words)
Question Decoded — examiner's intent
- Directive verbs
- advocatedWhat are your suggestions
- Scope keywords
- Professor Amartya Senimportant reformsprimary educationprimary health carestatus and performance
- Implicit sub-parts
- Briefly outline Sen's 'Capability Approach' and his critique of the current service delivery in India.
- Evaluate the current status/performance gaps in both sectors that necessitate these reforms.
- Propose actionable and innovative suggestions (policy, administrative, and grassroots) for education.
- Propose actionable and innovative suggestions for healthcare, focusing on decentralization and accessibility.
- Common pitfalls
- Spending too much time on Sen's biography or general welfare theories instead of specific reforms.
- Focusing only on higher education or tertiary healthcare (specialty hospitals) which are outside the scope.
- Giving generic 'increase funding' suggestions without addressing systemic issues like teacher absenteeism or primary health center (PHC) staffing.
- Treating education and health as isolated silos rather than interconnected components of human capital.
- Dimensions required
- Human Development (Capability Approach)Public Policy and GovernanceSocio-economic (Social Infrastructure)Administrative (Accountability and Monitoring)Budgetary and Fiscal
- Marks allocation hint
Dedicate approximately 40-50 words to Sen's core philosophy on human capabilities as the foundation. Use the remaining 150 words to provide balanced, specific suggestions for education and health, ensuring you address 'status' (the what) and 'performance' (the how) for both.
Unlock the full analysis for this question
You've seen the question and its examiner-intent decoding. Subscribers also get:
- 🔗 Similar Previous Year Questions — cross-year, cross-paper matches so you study the topic, not the question
- 📚 Source Map — verified citations from Laxmikanth, NCERT, PRS, Yojana, Economic Survey, Spectrum
- 🌱 How this topic is evolving — current-affairs bridge anchored to live TARS news clustering
- 🧭 Examiner's Pattern — how the topic has been framed across every year UPSC has tested it
- ✍️ Answer Skeleton — a structured outline (intro → body → conclusion) you can flesh out
- 🎯 AI evaluation — write your answer, get rubric-based scoring from gs-eval
Or browse 132+ free preview questions across all years and papers — the first 3 questions of every paper are unlocked.
Ready to practice?
Subscribers can attempt this question in 200 words and get an instant, rubric-based evaluation showing where they stand.
Subscribe to evaluate your answer →