EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 116 of 120

Correct — B, (b) 2 only. Statement 1 is wrong on a single word and statement 2 is right on a single number, so the item is decided by knowing one sentence of official reporting. Statement 1 says that India ranked second in the world in milk production in 2021–22. India ranked first. The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, answering in Parliament and citing the production data of the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database, stated that India is the highest milk producer in the world, contributing twenty-four per cent of global milk production in the year 2021–22. There is no ambiguity in the ranking and no rival reading of the FAOSTAT data: India is the largest producing country by a wide margin, and the United States is second. Statement 2 says that India contributed twenty-four per cent of global milk production in 2021–22, and that is exactly the figure in the same official statement. So the second statement is correct, the first is not, and the code that says so is option (b). The scale behind the percentage is worth carrying alongside it. India's own milk production in 2021–22 was 221·06 million tonnes, a rise of about 5·3 per cent over the preceding year, and it has continued to grow since, reaching 230·58 million tonnes in 2022–23. Because the total keeps moving, a card like this one should be read as fixing the position the paper tested — the 2021–22 share of twenty-four per cent — while noting that later official statements put India's share at around a quarter of world output. The rank has not changed. How India came to hold that rank is the part of the topic most likely to be examined next. Indian milk is produced overwhelmingly on small and marginal holdings, a few animals at a time, and it reaches the market through a three-tier cooperative structure of village societies, district unions and state federations — the Anand pattern, named for the town in Gujarat where it was built. Operation Flood, launched in 1970 and run by the National Dairy Development Board under Verghese Kurien, extended that structure across the country and turned a milk-deficient economy into the largest producer in the world. This is the reason a milk statistic appears in a general studies paper at all: the figure stands for a particular model of rural development, built on cooperatives and smallholders rather than on large commercial farms.

• (a)1 only — This option reverses both verdicts, accepting the ranking and rejecting the share. The ranking cannot be accepted: India is the largest milk producer in the world, not the second, and the same official statement that supplies the twenty-four per cent figure says so in the same sentence. Rejecting statement 2 usually comes from a general suspicion of round numbers, since a quarter of world output from one country sounds implausibly large. It is not. India has the largest bovine population of any country, buffalo milk contributes a large share of the total alongside cow milk, and the sheer number of smallholders keeping one or two animals each adds up to a national total far above any other country's. Choosing this option therefore means getting the harder half of the question right and the easier half wrong, which is a common shape of error on two-statement items: the statement that looks like a bare fact is checked, and the statement that looks like a claim about rank is waved through.
• (c)Both 1 and 2 — Accepting both statements is the likeliest wrong answer here, and it is chosen by a candidate who knows the twenty-four per cent figure — which is widely quoted — and does not separately check the rank. The two clauses came from a single official sentence, and a candidate who half-remembers it recalls the number more readily than the superlative. Two further things make second place feel plausible. The European Union taken as a bloc does produce more milk than India, so anyone thinking of the Union as a single producer will put India second; but FAOSTAT ranks countries, and the European Union is not one. And the United States is the world's largest producer of several agricultural commodities, which invites the assumption that it leads in milk too — it is second. The lesson for statement-set questions is mechanical: a superlative and a statistic in the same item are two separate claims and each has to be verified on its own.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Rejecting both statements means denying the twenty-four per cent figure as well as the ranking, and the figure is not in doubt — it comes from the Government of India's own citation of FAOSTAT production data for 2021–22. The likely reasoning behind this option is that a candidate who has spotted the error in statement 1 concludes that the examiner has made the whole item false, which is a recognisable habit rather than an argument. Two-statement items are constructed in all four configurations, and finding one statement wrong is no evidence at all about the other. It is worth adding that the underlying quantity does move: India produced 221·06 million tonnes of milk in 2021–22 and 230·58 million tonnes in 2022–23, and the share of world output is quoted at around a quarter in more recent official statements. A candidate who remembers a slightly different percentage from a later year should still accept the statement, because it names the year it refers to.

FAOSTAT is the corporate statistical database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and it is the standard international source for production, trade, prices and land-use data across food and agriculture, compiled on a common definitional basis so that countries can be compared. When an Indian ministry cites a world ranking in agriculture, FAOSTAT is usually where the ranking comes from, and the comparison is between countries — which is why a bloc such as the European Union, whose combined output exceeds India's, does not displace India from first place. India's position in milk rests on a structure quite unlike the large commercial dairying of North America or Oceania. Production is dispersed across tens of millions of small and marginal holdings keeping a handful of animals each, cattle and buffalo together, and the milk is aggregated through a three-tier cooperative system: a village-level dairy cooperative society collects from members, a district-level union processes and markets, and a state-level federation handles brand and distribution. This is the Anand pattern, developed around the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union in Gujarat and carried nationwide by Operation Flood, launched in 1970 under the National Dairy Development Board and led by Verghese Kurien. The programme, often called the White Revolution, linked rural producers directly to urban markets, and it is the standard Indian example of a cooperative institution achieving what neither the market nor direct state production had managed. Milk is now the single largest agricultural commodity in India by value, which is why dairying figures in policy discussions about rural incomes far out of proportion to its share of cultivated land.

Current-affairs statistics appear near the end of these papers, and they are usually taken from a government press release or a parliamentary answer of the preceding year or two rather than from a textbook. That has two consequences for preparation. The first is that the sentence in the source usually contains several testable elements at once — here a ranking, a percentage and a year — and the examiner splits them so that a candidate who remembers the sentence loosely will get one right and one wrong. The second is that the number will have moved by the time anybody reads the card: India's milk output was 221·06 million tonnes in 2021–22 and 230·58 million tonnes the following year, and later official statements put the share of world production at around a quarter. The right way to hold such a fact is with its year attached, since the question names a year and is asking about that year's position. What does not move is the rank, and the rank is what the item turns on. The four-option code set used here is this booklet's most common, appearing on eleven of its questions, and it rewards the same routine every time: judge each statement separately and only then look at the codes. On a statistical item that routine matters more than usual, because a superlative and a number sitting side by side in one source sentence feel like a single fact and are not.

• Citing the production data of the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying has stated that India is the highest milk producer in the world, contributing twenty-four per cent of global milk production in the year 2021–22. India ranks first, not second, which is what makes statement 1 of this item incorrect.
• India's milk production was 221·06 million tonnes in 2021–22, an increase of about 5·3 per cent over the previous year, and 230·58 million tonnes in 2022–23. The absolute figure moves every year and the share is quoted at around a quarter in more recent statements, so a statistic of this kind should always be remembered with the year attached to it.
• FAOSTAT is the statistical database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and compares countries on a common definitional basis. The European Union taken as a bloc produces more milk than India, but it is not a country and does not enter the country ranking; the United States is the second largest producing country.
• Indian milk production is dispersed across a very large number of small and marginal holdings and is aggregated through a three-tier cooperative structure of village societies, district unions and state federations — the Anand pattern, developed around the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union in Gujarat.
• Operation Flood, launched in 1970 and implemented by the National Dairy Development Board under Verghese Kurien, extended the cooperative structure nationwide and is the programme usually meant by the White Revolution. It is the reason a milk statistic carries policy weight in a general studies paper: it stands for a smallholder cooperative model of rural development.

• Accepting a superlative and a statistic as one fact because they came from one sentence. The official statement contains both the rank and the percentage, and the examiner has split them, keeping the number right and corrupting the rank.
• Putting India second because the European Union produces more. FAOSTAT ranks countries and the European Union is a bloc of them; among countries India is first and the United States second.
• Rejecting the twenty-four per cent figure as implausibly large. India has the largest bovine population of any country and its output comes from a very large number of small producers, so a quarter of world production from one country is exactly what the data show.
• Assuming that finding one statement false makes the other false too. Two-statement items are set in all four configurations, and the truth of one statement is no evidence about the truth of the other.

Statistical current-affairs items in these papers are drawn from government press releases, parliamentary answers and the Economic Survey of the year or two before the examination, and they recur in three forms. The first, used here, splits one source sentence into two statements and corrupts one of them, usually the rank or the year rather than the number, because a candidate is more likely to have memorised the number. The second asks directly for a rank or a share — India's position in the production of a named commodity, or its percentage of world output. The third attaches an institution to a figure, asking which body publishes it or which programme produced the result. Preparation is a short list rather than wide reading: the commodities in which India ranks first or second, the approximate shares, the year each figure belongs to, and the flagship programme behind each. Because the numbers are revised annually, learn the figure with its year and expect the card to test the year that was current when the paper was set.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Operation Flood, the programme that transformed India into the world's largest milk producer, was implemented by which one of the following?

  • (a)Indian Council of Agricultural Research
  • (b)National Dairy Development Board
  • (c)Food Corporation of India
  • (d)National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development

  Answer(b) National Dairy Development Board — Operation Flood was launched in 1970 and run by the Board under Verghese Kurien, extending the three-tier cooperative structure across the country and linking rural producers to urban markets. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research conducts agricultural research and education, the Food Corporation of India handles foodgrain procurement and distribution, and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development is a refinancing institution.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The three-tier cooperative structure of village dairy cooperative societies, district milk unions and a state federation, on which Indian dairy cooperatives are modelled, is known as which one of the following?

  • (a)The Anand pattern
  • (b)The Nagpur pattern
  • (c)The Kerala model
  • (d)The Warana model

  Answer(a) The Anand pattern — the structure was developed around the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union at Anand in Gujarat, where the village society collects milk from its members, the district union processes and markets it and the state federation handles the brand and distribution. Operation Flood replicated this pattern across the country, which is why the term stands for the Indian model of cooperative dairying as a whole.