MPSC Rajyaseva 2013 CSAT — Question 78

Situation : One major difference between the severe drought faced by the State in the year 1973 vis-a-vis year 2012-13 is, where as there was a food scarcity in 1973, the year 2012-13 reflects acute water scarcity. Thousands of villages do not have even adequate quantity, forget appropriate quality drinking water. Most Rabi crops could not simply be sown as the moisture in the soil is completely dried away. The chemical contamination like Nitrate, Fluoride is causing a grave concern even where water is available, which if consumed would lead to grave health hazards. Human survival till onset of the monsoon is the major concern. Question : Under such circumstances if you are entrusted with a responsibility to tackle the situation, which of the following options would you resort to, on priority to manage the immediate crisis. (a) Reserving all public and private water sources exclusively for drinking water purposes. (b) To strike a balance between farmers losing their income of Rabi Crops and also to ensure acute drinking water needs, 50-50 distribution plan for crop survival and drinking water. (c) As the poor farmers will be losing their only income source which may have severe economic consequences, crop production will be given priority and most of the water will be reserved for the agriculture purposes. (d) Even taking the risk of diseases people will be motivated to use chemically contaminated water for survival till onset of monsoon to save human life there being no alternative as diseases can be cured in due course.

The situation states that human survival till the monsoon is the major concern and that there is not even an adequate quantity of water in thousands of villages. MPSC's key gives full marks to (d): using even contaminated water for survival, since diseases can be treated later but lack of water cannot. The 50-50 plan (b) gets 2, reserving water only for drinking (a) gets 1.5, and prioritising crops over survival (c) gets zero.