UPHESC Assistant Professor Economics 2025 PYQs

Concept: The Purple (Lavender) Revolution was launched in 2016 under CSIR's Aroma Mission, promoting lavender cultivation in Jammu & Kashmir (Doda, Bhaderwah).

1. Lavender's purple flowers give the name; its oil is used in perfumes and medicines.
2. Other colours: Green – foodgrains; White – milk; Blue – fish; Yellow – oilseeds; Pink – onion/prawns; Golden – horticulture/honey.

Short trick: Purple = Lavender (J&K, Aroma Mission).

Concept: Gross → Net: subtract depreciation (consumption of fixed capital). NNP_MP = GNP_MP − Depreciation.

1. National → Domestic: subtract net factor income from abroad (option B gives GDP_MP).
2. Market price → factor cost: subtract net indirect taxes (indirect taxes − subsidies).
3. Transfer payments are never part of national product.

Short trick: Gross − Dep = Net; National − NFIA = Domestic; MP − NIT = FC.

Concept: Devaluation = official reduction of the external value of a currency under a fixed exchange rate; it is used mainly to correct a BoP deficit.

1. Exports become cheaper abroad and imports dearer at home, so the trade gap narrows (if the Marshall–Lerner condition holds).
2. India devalued the rupee in 1949, 1966 and 1991 – all in BoP crises.
3. Devaluation raises import prices, so it would worsen inflation; a surplus calls for revaluation.

Short trick: BoP deficit → devalue; BoP surplus → revalue.

Concept: Capital receipts either create a liability or reduce an asset of the government: borrowings, recovery of loans, disinvestment.

1. Borrowing from the public (market loans, small savings) creates a liability → capital receipt.
2. Income tax = tax revenue; dividends/profits of PSUs and interest receipts = non-tax revenue – all revenue receipts.

Short trick: Liability ↑ or asset ↓ → capital receipt.

Concept: Indian agriculture mainly suffers from seasonal and disguised unemployment.

1. Seasonal: farm work is available only in sowing/harvesting seasons; workers are idle for 4–6 months.
2. Disguised: more family members work on a small plot than needed (MP ≈ 0).
3. Frictional and cyclical unemployment are features of industrial/urban economies.

Short trick: Farm = Seasonal + Disguised; Factory/city = Frictional + Cyclical.

Concept: Under the Targeted Public Distribution System (1997), yellow ration cards are issued to Below Poverty Line (BPL) families for subsidised food grains.

1. APL families usually get white/saffron cards; the poorest get Antyodaya (AAY) cards.
2. Colours vary slightly by state, but yellow is the usual BPL card.

Short trick: Yellow card = BPL ration card.

Concept: Human Development Report 2020 (UNDP) gave India an HDI value of 0.645 for 2019, rank 131 of 189 countries (medium human development).

1. Life expectancy 69.7 years; expected schooling 12.2 years; mean schooling 6.5 years; GNI per capita about 6,681 PPP dollars.
2. Medium HD band is 0.550–0.699, so 0.6451 fits; 0.7646 would be high HD.

Short trick: HDR 2020: India 0.645, rank 131.

Concept: Rupee depreciation means excess demand for dollars. RBI can sell dollars from its forex reserves to raise their supply and support the rupee.

1. Selling dollars absorbs rupees, increasing demand for the rupee → rupee appreciates/stabilises.
2. Buying dollars or printing money would weaken the rupee further.
3. Raising tariffs is a government trade-policy measure, not an RBI forex operation.

Short trick: Rupee falling → RBI sells $;rupeerisingtoofast\to RBIbuys$.

Concept: The current account records exports and imports of goods (merchandise/visible trade) and services (invisibles), plus primary income and transfers.

1. Goods trade balance + services + income + current transfers (remittances) = current account balance.
2. Capital account records FDI, FPI, loans, banking capital etc.

Short trick: Current = goods + services + income + transfers (both exports and imports).

Concept: The balance of payments is the systematic record of all economic transactions (payments and receipts) of a country with the rest of the world during a year.

1. Payments for imports and receipts from exports are both entered in it.
2. The foreign trade multiplier concerns income effects of exports/imports, not payments.

Short trick: International payments ↔ Balance of Payments.

Concept: Bharatmala Pariyojana (approved 2017, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways) is an umbrella programme for highway development – economic corridors, border and coastal roads, expressways.

1. Phase I targeted about 34,800 km of national highways.
2. Ports-led development is Sagarmala; telecom is BharatNet; railways have Dedicated Freight Corridors.

Short trick: Bharatmala = roads; Sagarmala = ports.

Concept: 'Swabhimaan' (launched February 2011) was a financial-inclusion campaign to provide banking facilities to habitations with population above 2,000, mainly through Business Correspondents (branchless banking).

1. It aimed to open no-frills accounts and route government benefits (EBT) through banks in rural areas.
2. It was later subsumed in the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (2014).

Short trick: Swabhimaan 2011 → rural banking; successor → Jan Dhan.

Concept: In 2023 Nokia partnered with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru to set up a Centre of Excellence in Networked Robotics.

1. The CoE works on robotics applications using 5G/6G and AI – e.g., disaster management, agriculture, industrial automation.
2. Nokia also runs a 6G lab and other tie-ups, but the networked-robotics CoE is with IISc.

Short trick: Nokia + IISc Bengaluru = Networked Robotics CoE.

Concept: The binomial distribution was developed by the Swiss mathematician James (Jacob) Bernoulli, published posthumously in Ars Conjectandi (1713).

1. P(X = r) = ⁿC_r p^r q^n−r, mean = np, variance = npq.
2. Option (C) 'Jacob' alone is incomplete; the standard textbook name is James Bernoulli (Jacob = James).
3. Poisson – Poisson distribution; Gauss/De Moivre – normal distribution.

Short trick: Bernoulli trials → Binomial (James Bernoulli, 1713).

Concept: Judgment sampling = purposive (deliberate) sampling: the investigator selects items he judges to be representative.

1. It is a non-probability method; results depend on the investigator's judgement and may be biased.
2. Convenience sampling picks easily available units; cluster sampling is a probability method using groups.

Short trick: Judgment = Purposive = Deliberate.

Concept: The median is a positional average: it depends only on the middle item, so it can be found even when the first/last classes are open-ended.

1. The mean needs the mid-values of all classes, which are unknown for open-end classes.
2. The median class is normally a middle class with definite limits, so Median = L + [(N/2 − cf)/f] × i works.
3. Mode can also often be found, but the standard measure recommended for open-end distributions is the median (it is never affected by extreme classes).

Short trick: Open-end classes → use Median (positional), not Mean.

Concept: Time reversal test (Fisher): the index for period 1 on base 0, multiplied by the index for period 0 on base 1, must equal 1 (without the factor 100): P₀₁ × P₁₀ = 1.

1. Fisher's ideal index √(L × P) satisfies both time reversal and factor reversal tests.
2. Laspeyres and Paasche indices fail the time reversal test.
3. Factor reversal test: P₀₁ × Q₀₁ = ΣP₁Q₁/ΣP₀Q₀.

Short trick: Time reversal: forward × backward = 1.

Concept: Karl Pearson's empirical relation for moderately skewed distributions: Mean − Mode = 3(Mean − Median).

1. Rearranging: Mode = 3 Median − 2 Mean.
2. Used when mode is ill-defined (e.g., bimodal) – 'empirical mode'.
3. In a symmetric distribution Mean = Median = Mode.

Short trick: Z = 3M − 2X̄ ('three medians minus two means').

Concept: CV = (σ / X̄) × 100 – it is inversely related to the mean when σ is fixed.

1. σ_A = σ_B and X̄_A > X̄_B.
2. So σ/X̄_A < σ/X̄_B → CV_A < CV_B.
3. e.g. σ = 10, X̄_A = 50 → 20%; X̄_B = 25 → 40%. Series A is more consistent.

Short trick: Same σ, bigger mean → smaller CV → more consistent.

Concept: Absolute measures (range, quartile deviation, mean deviation, standard deviation) are in the units of the data; relative measures (coefficients) are pure numbers.

1. CV = σ/X̄ × 100 – unit cancels (e.g., kg/kg), so it is unit-free.
2. That is why CV is used to compare variability of series in different units.

Short trick: 'Coefficient' of anything = ratio = no unit.