It is observed that : (a) The objective of environmental sustainability often conflicts with growth objective. (b) There is a trade-off between development and Environmental sustainability. Which of the above statement/s is/are correct ?
- (1)(a)
- (2)(b)
- (3)both (a) and (b)
- (4)None of both
Correct — option (1), statement (a) alone. At first reading the two printed statements look like paraphrases of each other, and the whole question is that they are not. They turn on the difference between two words that ordinary speech treats as interchangeable and economics does not: growth and development. Growth means an increase in the real output of an economy, the thing measured by real GDP and reported as a percentage a year. Development is the wider idea — the standard of living people actually reach, which takes in incomes but also health, education, the distribution of what is produced, and the condition of the surroundings in which people live. Statement (a) sets environmental sustainability against the growth objective, and that conflict is real and familiar. An economy that raises output year after year draws more energy, more minerals, more water and more land into use and puts more waste and more emissions out at the other end, and the cheapest route to the next percentage point of output is very often the dirtiest one. Every government that has had to choose between a coal plant and its emissions, between a highway and a forest, or between a tannery's output and a river's oxygen has met that conflict directly, and the word the English column uses is 'often', which is exactly the right strength — a conflict that arises frequently rather than one that is logically necessary. (The मराठी column prints नेहमी, 'always', in both statements, so a मराठी-medium candidate cannot separate them on strength at all and has to work from the growth-versus-development distinction alone.) Statement (b) makes a different and stronger claim: that there is a trade-off between development and environmental sustainability. On the standard understanding of development that claim does not hold, because environmental quality is part of what development means rather than a price paid for it. The Brundtland Commission's report 'Our Common Future' in 1987 defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, and the whole force of that definition is that development which destroys its own resource base is not development at all — it is consumption borrowed from the people who come next. The same logic runs through the 2030 Agenda, in which clean water, clean energy, life on land and life below water sit alongside decent work and industry as goals of one project rather than as competitors. A population whose air is unbreathable, whose groundwater has failed and whose soil has gone saline has not developed however fast its output grew. So the conflict named in statement (a) stands and the trade-off asserted in statement (b) does not, and the option that accepts the first and rejects the second is option (1).
- (2)(b) — This option accepts the trade-off between development and environmental sustainability and rejects the conflict with growth, which inverts the distinction the question is built on. Environmental sustainability is a constituent of development rather than something surrendered to obtain it: on the Brundtland definition, development that exhausts the resource base it stands on is not sustainable development but consumption charged to the next generation. Meanwhile the conflict with the growth objective, which this option denies, is the one that is easiest to observe — it is why environmental clearances delay projects, why emission norms raise the cost of power, and why the phrase 'growth versus environment' exists at all. A candidate reaches this option by treating growth and development as synonyms and then choosing whichever of the two sentences sounds more academic. The remedy is to keep the two words separate in every sentence you read: growth is output, development is what output is for.
- (3)both (a) and (b) — This is the option a hurried reader chooses, because in ordinary English the two statements say the same thing twice, and a reader who has judged the first to be true will judge its apparent restatement true as well. The setter has printed the pair precisely to see whether the candidate notices the substitution of 'development' for 'growth' in the second sentence. Accepting both means asserting that environmental sustainability must be traded away for development, which contradicts the definition of sustainable development that the same syllabus teaches and that the 2030 Agenda is built on. There is a wider habit at stake here. In a two-statement item, the pair is frequently constructed so that one sentence is a slightly altered echo of the other, with the alteration carrying the whole question; the safe method is to underline the word that changed between them before deciding either.
- (4)None of both — This option rejects both statements, and it cannot stand because statement (a) is uncontroversially true — the conflict between environmental objectives and the growth objective is the reason environmental regulation is politically difficult everywhere, and no serious account of the subject denies it. Rejecting it would mean claiming that raising output has no environmental cost at all, which is a stronger and stranger proposition than anything the question offers. It is also worth noting how this choice is printed. The paper writes 'None of both', which is not standard English for the idea; MPSC spells its rejecting option many different ways across this paper, and the phrasing carries no information about whether the option is the answer. Read what such a row means logically rather than reacting to how oddly it is worded, and treat its wording as the paper's habit rather than as a signal.
The separation of growth from development is one of the foundations of development economics. Growth is the increase in real output, and it is measured by real GDP or real GDP per head. Development is the broader improvement in human well-being, and the standard measures of it were built precisely because output alone was found wanting — the Physical Quality of Life Index of the 1970s, built from infant mortality, life expectancy at age one and literacy with no income term at all, and then the Human Development Index from 1990, which combines a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living. Sustainable development is the further idea that development must be able to continue, and its canonical statement is the Brundtland Commission's in 1987: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is usually presented as resting on three pillars — economic, social and environmental — which have to be advanced together rather than traded off. Against that, the relationship between growth and environmental damage is genuinely contested. The environmental Kuznets curve is a hypothesis that pollution rises with income and then falls once a country is rich enough to demand and afford cleaner technology, giving an inverted-U shape; the evidence for it is mixed, holding better for local pollutants such as particulates and sulphur dioxide than for carbon dioxide, and it is a hypothesis rather than a settled law. What is not contested is that in the short run, and for a country still building its infrastructure, cheaper output and cleaner output frequently point in different directions.
MPSC's environment and economy sections meet in questions of this kind, and the Commission likes two-statement items here because the vocabulary of the subject is full of near-synonyms that are not synonyms — growth and development, conservation and preservation, sustainable and renewable, hazard and disaster. The skill being tested is close reading rather than recall: nothing in this question has to be looked up, and everything depends on noticing that the second sentence changed one word. The method that answers it is the one that answers every statement-verification item in this paper. Read statement (a), decide it on its own, mark it. Read statement (b), decide it on its own, mark it. Only then look at the four rows and pick the one matching the two marks. Reading the rows first is what makes 'both are correct' look attractive here. Two features of the printed page are worth carrying away as well. The word 'correct' is in bold in both the English and the Marathi columns, so the stem is asking which statements are right rather than which are wrong. And the last option is printed 'None of both', an unusual phrasing that a candidate should read for its logic and not for its style — this paper spells its rejecting options in several different ways and none of them is a hint.
- Economic growth is the increase in real output, measured by real GDP or real GDP per head; economic development is the wider improvement in living standards, taking in health, education, distribution and environmental quality as well as income.
- The Brundtland Commission's report 'Our Common Future' (1987) defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs — a definition in which environmental sustainability is part of development rather than a price paid for it.
- Sustainable development is conventionally described as resting on three pillars — economic, social and environmental — which the 2030 Agenda's seventeen goals treat as parts of one project rather than as competing objectives.
- The conflict named in the first statement is between environmental objectives and the growth objective: raising real output draws more energy, materials, water and land into use and releases more waste, and the cheapest route to additional output is frequently the most polluting one.
- The environmental Kuznets curve is a hypothesis that pollution rises with income and then falls, producing an inverted U; the evidence supports it better for local pollutants such as particulates and sulphur dioxide than for carbon dioxide, and it is a contested hypothesis rather than an established law.
Accept the first, reject the second, and the row that says so is option (1). The two sentences read as paraphrases of one another and the whole question is that they are not — ordinary speech treats growth and development as interchangeable and economics does not. Nothing here has to be looked up; it is a close-reading item, and the method is the mechanical one this paper rewards throughout: decide the first statement alone and mark it, decide the second alone and mark it, and only then look at the four rows. Reading the rows first is what makes the both-are-correct choice look attractive. Note that the last choice is printed 'None of both' — this paper spells its rejecting options several different ways and none of the spellings is a hint. Genuinely contested, and worth holding separately: the environmental Kuznets curve, the hypothesis that pollution rises with income and then falls, fits local pollutants such as particulates and sulphur dioxide better than carbon dioxide, and remains a hypothesis rather than a law.
- Treating growth and development as the same thing, which collapses the two statements into one and makes the option accepting both look obviously right
- Judging the second statement by the first because it reads as a restatement, instead of underlining the word that changed and deciding it independently
- Reading the option rows before deciding the statements, which is how a plausible-sounding row is chosen in place of a judgment
- Assuming that a strongly worded sentence must be the false one and a hedged sentence the true one — here the hedge 'often' is part of why the first statement stands
- Taking the environmental Kuznets curve as an established law rather than a contested hypothesis, and reasoning from it as though the conflict with growth disappears automatically with income
This theme reaches MPSC papers in three shapes. The first is a definition item asking for the Brundtland formulation, the year of a report or the conference that produced a document, and it is pure recall. The second is a two-statement or three-statement verification of the present kind, in which the sentences are near-paraphrases and the examiner is testing whether a candidate reads the difference between growth and development, or between conservation and preservation, or between renewable and sustainable. The third is applied and Indian — a question about a specific clearance regime, a National Green Tribunal ruling, a state's environmental policy, or India's position in climate negotiations on common but differentiated responsibilities. All three reward the same preparation: hold the vocabulary of the subject precisely, and never let two words that the syllabus distinguishes collapse into one in your reading.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The definition of sustainable development as 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' comes from which report ?
- (a)The Stockholm Declaration, 1972
- (b)'Our Common Future', the report of the Brundtland Commission, 1987
- (c)Agenda 21, adopted at Rio de Janeiro in 1992
- (d)'The Future We Want', adopted at Rio+20 in 2012
Answer(b) 'Our Common Future', the report of the Brundtland Commission, 1987 — formally the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, whose formulation became the standard definition of sustainable development. The Stockholm Conference of 1972 put the environment on the international agenda, Agenda 21 was one of the outputs of the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, and 'The Future We Want' was the outcome document of the Rio+20 conference of 2012 that set in motion the drafting of the Sustainable Development Goals.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following best states the difference between economic growth and economic development ?
- (a)Growth is measured annually while development is measured once a decade
- (b)Growth refers to an increase in real output, while development refers to the wider improvement in living standards including health, education, distribution and environmental quality
- (c)Growth applies to developing countries and development to developed ones
- (d)Growth is measured at factor cost and development at market prices
Answer(b) Growth refers to an increase in real output, while development refers to the wider improvement in living standards including health, education, distribution and environmental quality — which is why an economy can grow without developing, and why measures such as the Physical Quality of Life Index and later the Human Development Index were constructed with no income term or with income as only one component. The other three options describe differences of measurement frequency, of country classification and of valuation, none of which is the distinction the two terms carry.