BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 113 of 144

Correct — C, Only 2 and 3. The Registrar General's own Sample Registration System Statistical Report for 2019 settles two of the four statements against the paper and one for it. Statement 1 fails on a single number. The report prints the formula as “Infant mortality rate (IMR) = Number of infant deaths during the year ÷ Number of live births during the year × 1000”, and paragraph 4.11 repeats it in words — “Infant Mortality Rate is defined as infant deaths (less than one year) per thousand live births”. The statement says per 10,000, which is wrong by a factor of ten; everything before that clause is the standard international phrasing, which is exactly why the error is easy to read past. Statement 3 is right: the report records that “The Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) has also registered 2-point decline to 30 in 2019 from 32 in 2018 at the National level”, with rural 34 and urban 20. Statement 4 fails on the state: the same report says “The maximum IMR has been observed in Madhya Pradesh (46) and the minimum in Kerala (6)”, and its Statement 46 table puts Uttar Pradesh at 41 — second among the bigger States, not first. That leaves statement 2, the 1950 figure of 189·6. It cannot be checked against this report at all, because the SRS series begins only in 1971, at an IMR of 129. It does not need to be: with statements 1 and 4 both false, options (a), (b) and (d) each carry a falsehood, and “Only 2 and 3” is the sole internally consistent answer. That is the honest basis for our answer here — two independent verifications against the SRS report, and elimination doing the rest.

• (a)1, 2 and 3 — The near miss. It correctly keeps statements 2 and 3 and then adds statement 1, whose only defect is the denominator — 10,000 where the Registrar General's formula says 1,000. Candidates who recognise the opening words as the textbook definition of IMR tend to tick it without reading to the end of the sentence.
• (b)2, 3 and 4 — Also keeps the two true statements and then adds the claim that Uttar Pradesh had the highest IMR in 2019. It is tempting because Uttar Pradesh's 41 really is among the worst figures in the country, and because UP is the reflex answer to any question about India's poorest health indicator — but Madhya Pradesh was higher, at 46.
• (d)1 and 4 — The exact inverse of the answer: it selects precisely the two statements the SRS report contradicts — the per-10,000 denominator and the Uttar Pradesh claim — and discards both statements that survive. Anyone who knows either the per-thousand rule or the Madhya Pradesh figure can eliminate it immediately.

The infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of children under one year of age in a calendar year, divided by the live births in that year, multiplied by 1,000. It is the most sensitive single indicator of a population's health, because infant survival depends on nutrition, sanitation, maternal health, immunisation and access to care all at once. It decomposes: the neo-natal mortality rate covers deaths under 29 days and splits further into early neo-natal (under seven days) and late neo-natal, while post neo-natal covers the rest of the first year. In India the numbers come from the Sample Registration System, run by the Office of the Registrar General under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which since 1971 has produced annual estimates of birth rate, death rate, infant mortality and fertility from a large sample of continuously enumerated units. That 1971 starting point matters for this question: any pre-1971 Indian figure is an estimate from some other source, not an SRS reading.

The efficient way through a four-statement set with these particular options is to look for falsifiers, because a single one collapses several options at once. Know that IMR is expressed per 1,000 live births and statement 1 dies, taking options (a) and (d) with it — half the paper gone on one remembered denominator. That leaves (b) and (c), which differ only on statement 4, so the whole question comes down to one fact: which State had the worst IMR in 2019. The SRS report answers it in a sentence — Madhya Pradesh 46, Kerala 6 — with Uttar Pradesh at 41. So (b) falls and (c) stands, and you never had to evaluate the 1950 figure in statement 2. That is fortunate, because statement 2 is the weakest link in the question: 189·6 for 1950 predates the SRS by two decades, and the earliest number the Registrar General publishes is 129 for 1971. The examiner has planted a figure that cannot be checked against the source the stem itself names, and the option set quietly rescues the question by making it irrelevant. Note the Bihar reading too, because BPSC will use it: Bihar's IMR in 2019 was 29, marginally better than the national 30.

• SRS Statistical Report 2019 formula: IMR = (infant deaths during the year ÷ live births during the year) × 1000. Per thousand, never per ten thousand — the maternal mortality ratio is the indicator expressed per 100,000 live births.
• India's IMR in 2019 was 30 — rural 34, urban 20 — down 2 points from 32 in 2018 and down from 39 in 2014, a fall of 9 points in five years averaging about 1.8 points a year.
• Among the bigger States in 2019 the range was Kerala 6 to Madhya Pradesh 46; Uttar Pradesh stood at 41, Assam and Chhattisgarh at 40, Odisha 38, Rajasthan 35, Tamil Nadu 15, Delhi 11.
• Bihar's IMR in 2019 was 29 (rural 29, urban 27), just below the all-India 30, and down from 42 in 2014. Statement 47 of the report shows Bihar's average IMR falling from 55.0 in 2007-09 to 32.2 in 2017-19, a decline of 41.5 per cent against India's 40.1 per cent.
• IMR is not the same as its neighbours: for India in 2019 the under-five mortality rate was 35, the neo-natal mortality rate 22, the early neo-natal rate 16 and the post neo-natal rate 8. Infant deaths were 9.9 per cent of all deaths, and 54.0 per cent of infant deaths occurred within the first week of life.
• The report's own way of putting the residual burden: “one in every 33 infants at the National level, one in every 29 infants in rural areas and one in every 50 infants in urban areas still die within one year of life”.
• The SRS series starts in 1971 with an IMR of 129, which is why the 1950 figure of 189·6 in statement 2 cannot be sourced to the Registrar General. The same 2019 report also records Bihar as having India's highest total fertility rate that year, 3.1 against a national 2.1.

• The denominator. IMR, neo-natal mortality and under-five mortality are per 1,000 live births; the maternal mortality ratio is per 100,000. A statement that changes the multiplier is the commonest single falsifier in this topic.
• Assuming Uttar Pradesh is worst on every health indicator. On 2019 IMR the worst of the bigger States was Madhya Pradesh at 46, with Uttar Pradesh at 41.
• Confusing IMR with under-five or neo-natal mortality. For India in 2019 these were 30, 35 and 22 respectively — three different numbers for three different age windows.
• Quoting a pre-1971 Indian IMR as an SRS figure. The SRS series opens in 1971 at 129; anything earlier comes from a different estimate.
• Mixing SRS with NFHS figures for the same year. They are separate instruments and do not have to agree.

BPSC builds these as four-statement sets in which one statement carries a wrong multiplier and another a wrong State, so the paper is really testing whether you read to the end of a sentence and whether you know one state-wise extreme. UPSC asks the same material as a clean definition question — what exactly is the total fertility rate, does IMR cover only the first month, is it per 100 or per 1,000 — and almost never asks you to recall a State's numeric value. Learn the definitions to the denominator and the two extremes, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, and both formats are covered.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the SRS Statistical Report 2019 of the Registrar General of India, which State recorded the highest infant mortality rate among the bigger States?

  • (a)Madhya Pradesh
  • (b)Uttar Pradesh
  • (c)Assam
  • (d)Odisha

  Answer(a) Madhya Pradesh — 46 per 1,000 live births in 2019, against Uttar Pradesh 41, Assam 40 and Odisha 38; the lowest was Kerala at 6.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The infant mortality rate published by the Sample Registration System is expressed per how many live births?

  • (a)100
  • (b)1,000
  • (c)10,000
  • (d)100,000

  Answer(b) 1,000 — the SRS formula multiplies the ratio of infant deaths to live births by 1,000; it is the maternal mortality ratio that is expressed per 100,000 live births.