MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 50 of 100

Correct — option (4), statements (c) and (d). The National Population Policy 2000 sets out fourteen 'National Socio-Demographic Goals', each to be achieved by 2010, in a box in the policy document, and this question prints four sentences against that box. Two of them reproduce the policy and two of them alter its numbers. Statement (c) is exact. The policy reads: 'Reduce maternal mortality ratio to below 100 per 100,000 live births.' The paper prints the same figure in the Indian style as 1,00,000, which is the same number written differently, and nothing else in the sentence has moved. Statement (d) is exact too: 'Achieve 100 per cent registration of births, deaths, marriage and pregnancy' — one of the fourteen goals word for word, and a goal about the civil registration system rather than about health outcomes, which is why it is easy to forget it belongs to a population policy at all. Now the two that fail, and they fail in a way that is worth seeing whole, because they have exchanged their numbers with each other. Statement (a) puts the dropout target at below 30 per cent. The policy's goal reads: 'Make school education up to age 14 free and compulsory, and reduce drop outs at primary and secondary school levels to below 20 per cent for both boys and girls.' The figure is 20, not 30. Statement (b) puts the infant mortality target at below 20 per 1,000 live births. The policy's goal reads: 'Reduce infant mortality rate to below 30 per 1000 live births.' The figure is 30, not 20. So 20 belongs to the schools and 30 belongs to the infants, and the paper has printed each number against the other's goal. That is a single, symmetrical error running through both false statements, and a candidate who holds the two figures together — 20 for dropouts, 30 for infant deaths — settles both statements at once. With (a) and (b) rejected and (c) and (d) accepted, the row that names the pair is option (4).

• (1)(a) and (c) — This option is right about the maternal mortality goal and wrong about the school dropout goal. The policy's target for dropouts at the primary and secondary levels is below 20 per cent for both boys and girls, printed alongside the commitment to make school education up to age 14 free and compulsory — a commitment that was eventually given constitutional force by the Eighty-sixth Amendment and statutory form by the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. The statement's 30 is not a random invention: it is the policy's infant mortality figure, lifted out of one goal and printed in another. That is what makes this option attractive, since 30 is genuinely a National Population Policy number and a candidate who recognises it as such may accept the sentence that carries it. Recognising a number is not the same as checking that it sits in the right sentence, and this question is built entirely on the difference.
• (2)(b) and (d) — This option is right about the registration goal and wrong about infant mortality. The policy's goal is to reduce the infant mortality rate to below 30 per 1,000 live births by 2010, not below 20. The statement's 20 is once again a real figure from the same box, borrowed from the dropout goal, so the option pairs a genuine goal with a genuine number that belongs somewhere else. There is a second reason candidates accept the sentence: 20 is a plausible-sounding target to a reader who knows India's infant mortality rate has since fallen a long way — the Sample Registration System reported a national IMR of 30 for 2019, with urban India already at 20 and Kerala far below both. A target that the country would eventually approach reads as though it must have been the target set. It was not; the policy of 2000 was written against an IMR then around 70, and it set 30 as the goal for 2010.
• (3)(b) only — This option accepts the one statement that carries a transposed figure and rejects both of the statements that reproduce the policy exactly. Its appeal is structural rather than factual: in a four-statement item a candidate who is unsure will often retreat to the narrowest row on the reasoning that claiming less risks less. Here claiming less costs more, because it means rejecting the maternal mortality goal, which is quoted verbatim, and the registration goal, which is also quoted verbatim. The registration goal is the one most often rejected out of unfamiliarity, because a target about recording births, deaths, marriages and pregnancies sounds administrative rather than demographic. It is central all the same: a population policy cannot measure its own progress without a working civil registration system, which is why complete registration sits among the fourteen goals alongside immunisation, institutional delivery and delayed marriage.

The National Population Policy 2000 was India's second full population policy after the statement of 1976 and the revision of 1977, and it broke with the target-and-incentive approach that had preceded it. Its objectives are stated in three horizons: the immediate objective of addressing unmet needs for contraception, health infrastructure and health personnel and of providing integrated basic reproductive and child health care; the medium-term objective of bringing the total fertility rate down to replacement level by 2010; and the long-term objective of achieving a stable population by 2045, at a level consistent with sustainable economic growth, social development and environmental protection. Beneath those sit fourteen national socio-demographic goals for 2010, of which the four best known are free and compulsory school education to age 14 with dropouts below 20 per cent, an infant mortality rate below 30 per 1,000 live births, a maternal mortality ratio below 100 per 1,00,000 live births, and 100 per cent registration of births, deaths, marriage and pregnancy. The others cover unmet needs for reproductive and child health services, universal immunisation, delayed marriage for girls to no earlier than 18 and preferably after 20, 80 per cent institutional deliveries with all deliveries attended by trained persons, universal access to contraception with a wide basket of choices, containment of AIDS with integration of reproductive tract and sexually transmitted infection management, control of communicable diseases, integration of Indian Systems of Medicine, vigorous promotion of the small family norm, and convergence across the related social sector programmes. For implementation the policy provided for a National Commission on Population presided over by the Prime Minister. On the record since, India's total fertility rate reached about 2.0 by the fifth National Family Health Survey, so the medium-term objective was met roughly a decade behind its 2010 date.

The National Population Policy 2000 is a standing favourite in MPSC's economy and social-issues sections, for the reason that makes any policy document examinable: it contains a short list of numbered goals with hard figures attached, so an examiner can build a question by changing one digit. This item does exactly that, twice, and it does it elegantly by swapping two of the policy's own numbers rather than inventing new ones. That design is worth naming, because it defeats the usual defence of recognising a figure — both 20 and 30 are real National Population Policy figures, and both appear in the same box, so familiarity alone accepts a false sentence. The defence that works is to hold each figure with the noun it belongs to, as a pair, and to check the pairing rather than the number. Note the printed page as well. The stem asks which statements are correct, with 'correct' in bold in the English column and 'योग्य' in the Marathi, so this is a positive item on a paper that contains several negative ones and the bold word is not a warning here. And note that the policy is a document of 2000 with goals dated 2010, which means every figure in it is a target of its time rather than a current statistic; treating a policy target as a present-day number is a separate and common error.

• The National Population Policy 2000 lists fourteen National Socio-Demographic Goals to be achieved by 2010, printed in a box in the policy document.
• Two of those goals are reproduced exactly in this question: 'Reduce maternal mortality ratio to below 100 per 100,000 live births' and 'Achieve 100 per cent registration of births, deaths, marriage and pregnancy'.
• The policy's school goal reads 'Make school education up to age 14 free and compulsory, and reduce drop outs at primary and secondary school levels to below 20 percent for both boys and girls' — the figure is 20 per cent, not 30.
• The policy's infant mortality goal reads 'Reduce infant mortality rate to below 30 per 1000 live births' — the figure is 30, not 20; the two false statements in this question have exchanged these numbers with each other.
• The policy's objectives run in three horizons — unmet needs for contraception and reproductive and child health care immediately, the total fertility rate down to replacement level by 2010, and a stable population by 2045 — and it provided for a National Commission on Population presided over by the Prime Minister.

• Recognising a figure as belonging to the policy and accepting the sentence that carries it, when the question has moved that figure into a different goal
• Swapping 20 and 30 between the dropout goal and the infant mortality goal, which is precisely the error this item is built on
• Rejecting the registration goal as too administrative to belong in a population policy, when complete civil registration is what allows the policy to be measured at all
• Reading a policy target of 2000 as a present-day statistic, so that a figure India has since achieved is assumed to have been the target
• Confusing the maternal mortality ratio, expressed per 1,00,000 live births, with the infant mortality rate, expressed per 1,000, and comparing the two numbers directly

Policy documents with numbered goals reach MPSC papers in three shapes. The commonest is a statement-verification item like this one, in which two or three of the printed goals are reproduced accurately and the others have a figure or a date altered; the alteration is usually a number borrowed from elsewhere in the same document, which is why recognition is not a defence. The second is a direct recall item — the year of the policy, its long-term horizon, the body it created, the target it set for a named indicator. The third pairs the policy against outcomes, asking whether a target was met and by when, which requires holding the current Sample Registration System and National Family Health Survey figures beside the policy's targets. Preparing the fourteen goals as figure-and-noun pairs, and keeping one line of current mortality and fertility data beside them, answers all three.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the National Population Policy 2000, the infant mortality rate was to be reduced by 2010 to below which level ?

  • (a)Below 20 per 1,000 live births
  • (b)Below 30 per 1,000 live births
  • (c)Below 50 per 1,000 live births
  • (d)Below 100 per 1,00,000 live births

  Answer(b) Below 30 per 1,000 live births — that is the goal as printed among the fourteen national socio-demographic goals of the policy. The figure of 20 in the first option belongs to a different goal in the same box, the reduction of school dropouts at the primary and secondary levels to below 20 per cent for both boys and girls, and the figure of 100 per 1,00,000 live births in the last option is the maternal mortality target, which is expressed per hundred thousand rather than per thousand.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The long-term objective of the National Population Policy 2000 was to achieve a stable population by which year ?

  • (a)2010
  • (b)2020
  • (c)2045
  • (d)2050

  Answer(c) 2045 — the policy states the long-term objective as achieving a stable population by 2045, at a level consistent with the requirements of sustainable economic growth, social development and environmental protection. The year 2010 in the option set is the policy's medium-term horizon, by which the total fertility rate was to reach replacement level and by which the fourteen socio-demographic goals were to be met; the total fertility rate in fact reached about 2.0 roughly a decade later.