BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 47 of 150

Correct — A, There is greater increase in Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of rural females as compared to urban females since 2021-22. Read the option carefully: it claims a bigger *increase*, not a bigger level, and the Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report for July 2023 – June 2024 settles it in one table. In usual status (principal plus subsidiary) for persons aged 15 years and above, rural female LFPR moved 36.6% in 2021-22 to 41.5% in 2022-23 to 47.6% in 2023-24 — a rise of 11.0 percentage points in two years, or almost a third above where it started. Urban female LFPR over exactly the same two years moved 23.8% to 25.4% to 28.0%, a rise of 4.2 percentage points. The rural female gain is therefore about two and a half times the urban female gain in percentage-point terms, and still the larger of the two when expressed as a proportional increase. The claim in option (a) is true on both readings, which is why no reasonable objection to it survived. Disposing of candidate objections on 31 October 2025 the Commission made the same point from a different table, quoting rural female LFPR at 35.5% against urban female 22.3% — figures on the report's all-ages base rather than the 15-and-above base of the headline table, but pointing the same way — and stating that the other two options are not correct. The economics behind the number is worth knowing: the rural surge is overwhelmingly a rise in self-employment, with women entering as own-account workers and as unpaid helpers in household enterprises, most of them in agriculture. That is also the fact that quietly destroys option (c).

• (b)Among the 36 states and union territories, 90% states have a Workforce Participation Rate (WPR) (for all ages) below the national average of 43.7 percent — This is the best-engineered trap on the question because two of its three components are exactly right and only the third is wrong. The report's State/UT table for Worker Population Ratio in usual status on the all-ages base does list exactly 36 States and Union Territories, and the all-India figure really is 43.7%. But 90% of 36 would mean about 32 units below the line, whereas only 12 are: Bihar 33.5, Delhi 35.2, Goa 36.5, Haryana 36.1, Kerala 42.1, Manipur 41.7, Mizoram 39.5, Punjab 41.3, Uttar Pradesh 39.2, Chandigarh 40.4, Lakshadweep 33.8 and Puducherry 41.1. That is a third of the list, not nine-tenths. A national average is a population-weighted figure, so it is normal for roughly half the units — and here rather fewer, because the units below it include the most populous States — to sit on either side of it.
• (c)The share of female workers in agriculture has decreased significantly from 2017-18 to 2023-24 — The direction is the wrong way round. The same report's distribution of usual-status workers by broad industry shows the share of women workers engaged in agriculture rising, not falling: 62.9% in 2021-22, 64.3% in 2022-23 and 64.4% in 2023-24. Well over three in five working women in India remain in agriculture, and the share has been drifting up. This is the mirror image of option (a) rather than an independent claim — the very rural-female entry into the labour force that makes (a) true is concentrated in farm work, so it pushes the agricultural share of women workers up. Anyone who marks (a) true and (c) true simultaneously has contradicted themselves, and the Commission recorded plainly that this option is not correct.
• (d)More than one of the above — This needs at least two of the three printed statements to hold independently, and only the first does. The second misstates the count of States below the national all-ages WPR by a factor of nearly three; the third reverses the observed trend in women's agricultural employment. It is worth pausing on this option rather than dismissing it, because BPSC does make 'More than one of the above' the key elsewhere on this paper — but here the arithmetic in (b) and the direction of change in (c) both fail against the report, so (a) stands alone.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey is the National Statistical Office's employment survey and, since it began in April 2017, the official source for India's labour-market numbers — it replaced the old quinquennial NSSO employment-unemployment rounds, whose five-year gaps left the country without recent employment data for long stretches. Its annual round runs July to June, so 'PLFS 2023-24' means July 2023 to June 2024, and the annual report for that round was released on 23 September 2024. Three headline indicators carry almost every question ever set on it. Labour Force Participation Rate is the share of the population working or seeking or available for work. Worker Population Ratio, also written Workforce Participation Rate, is the share of the population actually employed. Unemployment Rate is the share of the labour force — not of the population — that is unemployed, which is why a low unemployment rate can coexist with a low LFPR and tell you very little on its own. Each indicator is published in two activity concepts, usual status with a 365-day reference period and current weekly status with a 7-day reference period, and on two age bases, 'all ages' and '15 years and above'. Four numbers therefore exist for the same indicator in the same year, and BPSC's option (b) is built entirely on that fact.

The first defence against a question like this is to identify which base each number belongs to before you judge it. The famous 2023-24 headlines — LFPR 60.1%, WPR 58.2%, unemployment 3.2% — are all usual status for age 15 and above. The 43.7% quoted in option (b) is the all-ages WPR, a much lower figure simply because the denominator now includes children, and the option is careful to say '(for all ages)'. Read past that qualifier and you will judge 43.7% against the wrong table. The second move is to test the three statements against each other rather than one by one, because two of them are linked. The standout finding of the 2023-24 round is the eleven-point jump in rural female participation, and the survey itself attributes that entry to self-employment and unpaid family work concentrated in agriculture. If that is true, then the share of women workers in agriculture must have gone up, so (a) and (c) cannot both be right — and since (a) is the better-documented of the two, (c) must fall. That single insight also disposes of (d). Option (b) then needs only arithmetic: 90% of 36 is about 32, and no one who has glanced at the State table believes 32 of 36 units sit below the national average. The single discriminating fact to carry into the exam hall is the pair 36.6% to 47.6% for rural women against 23.8% to 28.0% for urban women.

• PLFS 2023-24 covers July 2023 to June 2024; the annual report was released by the National Statistical Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, on 23 September 2024. The survey has run since April 2017 and replaced the quinquennial NSSO employment-unemployment rounds.
• All-India headline rates for 2023-24, usual status (ps+ss), age 15 and above: LFPR 60.1% (male 78.8%, female 41.7%); Worker Population Ratio 58.2% (male 76.3%, female 40.3%); unemployment rate 3.2%.
• The numbers this question turns on: rural female LFPR (15+) rose 36.6% (2021-22) to 41.5% (2022-23) to 47.6% (2023-24), a gain of 11.0 percentage points; urban female LFPR rose 23.8% to 25.4% to 28.0%, a gain of 4.2 percentage points.
• The all-ages Worker Population Ratio for India in 2023-24 is 43.7%, and the report's State/UT table lists exactly 36 units, of which only 12 fall below that line — including Bihar at 33.5%, the lowest band in the country, with a male WPR of 46.3% and a female WPR of 20.1%.
• Women workers in agriculture (usual status, rural and urban together) were 62.9% of all women workers in 2021-22, 64.3% in 2022-23 and 64.4% in 2023-24 — rising. In Bihar the pattern is starker still: 83.5% of women workers are self-employed, of which 44.9 percentage points are unpaid helpers in a household enterprise, against 67.4% self-employed for Indian women as a whole.

• Mixing up the 'all ages' and '15 years and above' bases. The same indicator carries two very different values in the same report — WPR is 43.7% on the all-ages base and 58.2% at 15 and above.
• Assuming that rising female participation means women moving into modern non-farm jobs. In 2023-24 the increase was concentrated in self-employment and in agriculture, which is why the farm share of women workers rose.
• Judging a statement on its plausible half. Option (b) gets the count of States (36) and the national average (43.7%) exactly right and only the '90%' is false — check every number in a statement, not the first two.

BPSC sets official-survey questions as three free-standing claims with 'More than one of the above' as the escape hatch, and it builds its distractors by keeping most of a true sentence and corrupting one figure inside it — so the discipline is to test each number in a statement separately rather than accept the sentence as a unit. UPSC very rarely quotes a current rate; it prefers to ask what an indicator means, or to set claims from an older, settled survey round whose findings will not be revised, and it will happily ask you to compare two directions of change rather than recall a level. Learn the definition and the direction for UPSC, and the exact headline number plus its base for BPSC.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the Worker Population Ratio (WPR) is defined as

  • (a)the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force
  • (b)the percentage of employed persons in the population
  • (c)the percentage of persons working or seeking or available for work in the population
  • (d)the percentage of the labour force employed in the organised sector

  Answer(b) the percentage of employed persons in the population — LFPR is choice (c) and the Unemployment Rate is choice (a). Note that the unemployment rate alone has the labour force, not the population, in its denominator.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following statements about the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) is correct?

  • (a)It is conducted by the Ministry of Labour and Employment
  • (b)It was launched in April 2017 and its annual round covers July to June
  • (c)It reports indicators only in the current weekly status
  • (d)It covers urban areas only

  Answer(b) It was launched in April 2017 and its annual round covers July to June — PLFS is conducted by the National Statistical Office under MoSPI, not the Ministry of Labour and Employment; the annual report covers both rural and urban areas and publishes usual status as well as current weekly status.