MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 26 of 100

Correct — option (2), Maharashtra. In the 2011 Census the child sex ratio, which counts girls aged nought to six per thousand boys of the same ages, stood at 894 in Maharashtra, 918 in Madhya Pradesh, 948 in Karnataka and 964 in Kerala, so Maharashtra is the lowest of the four by a clear margin. The all-India figure that year was 914, an all-time low for the series since Independence, which places Maharashtra twenty points below the national average and Madhya Pradesh just above it. Two things about this question are worth more than the figures themselves. The first is the definition. The child sex ratio is not the same statistic as the overall sex ratio, which counts females per thousand males in the entire population and stood at 943 for India in 2011; nor is it the sex ratio at birth, which is measured from birth registration or survey data rather than from an enumeration of the living. The child sex ratio is taken from the population aged nought to six actually counted in the census, so it reflects both the sex ratio at birth and the differential survival of girls and boys through early childhood, and a fall in it can come from either. Because it covers a narrow and recent age band it is the census indicator that responds fastest to what is happening now, and that is why demographers watch it. The second point is that the ranking in this question runs against the intuition most candidates bring to it. It is natural to assume that a state which is richer, more urbanised and more literate will have a better child sex ratio, and the four options are chosen so that this assumption gives the wrong answer: Maharashtra is among the most urbanised and industrialised large states in India and has a child sex ratio well below that of Madhya Pradesh, which is poorer on almost every conventional measure. The same pattern holds nationally, where the lowest child sex ratios in 2011 were recorded in prosperous and agriculturally successful states of the north-west, Haryana at 834 being the lowest among the states. The explanation demographers give is that the decline in family size, the availability of prenatal sex determination and a persistent preference for sons combine most powerfully where households have both the means and the motive to act on that preference, so prosperity can worsen the ratio rather than improve it. That is precisely the point the Commission is testing, and Maharashtra, at 894, is the answer.

• (1)Karnataka — Karnataka recorded a child sex ratio of 948 in the 2011 Census, comfortably above the national figure of 914 and more than fifty points above Maharashtra's. It is a plausible-looking distractor because Karnataka resembles Maharashtra in the respects a candidate is likely to reason from — a large state with a major metropolitan economy, substantial urbanisation and a strong industrial and services sector — so anyone answering by a general impression of development rather than by the figures may treat the two as interchangeable. They are not, and the gap between them is one of the clearest illustrations available that the child sex ratio does not track a state's income or urbanisation. Karnataka's position also shows that the southern states as a group performed considerably better on this indicator in 2011 than the western and north-western states.
• (3)Kerala — Kerala recorded 964, the highest of the four options and among the better figures in the country, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking for the lowest. Kerala is in fact the easiest of the three wrong options to eliminate, because it is the state most candidates associate with favourable social indicators — the highest literacy, a long-standing lead in health outcomes, and an overall sex ratio above a thousand, the only major state where women outnumber men. The trap it sets is a different one: having eliminated Kerala quickly, a candidate may feel the question is largely settled and choose carelessly among the remaining three. It is also worth keeping the two statistics separate, since Kerala's overall sex ratio of more than a thousand is a different measure from its child sex ratio of 964, and the two need not move together.
• (4)Madhya Pradesh — Madhya Pradesh recorded 918 in 2011, above the all-India figure of 914 and twenty-four points above Maharashtra, so it is not the lowest of the four. This is the option that a candidate reasoning from development levels is most likely to choose, since Madhya Pradesh trails Maharashtra on income, urbanisation, literacy and most health indicators, and it feels natural that a state doing worse on those should also be doing worse on the child sex ratio. The inference fails, and understanding why it fails is the real content of this question: the child sex ratio is driven by son preference acting through smaller family sizes and access to sex determination, not by poverty, which is why the poorest states are not the worst performers and the prosperous north-western states are. Choosing Madhya Pradesh here is a reasoned error rather than a careless one, but it is still an error.

The census reports three ratios that are easily confused and that answer different questions. The overall sex ratio counts females per thousand males in the whole population; for India in 2011 it was 943, and it is affected by everything that has happened to a cohort over its entire life, including migration and the greater longevity of women at older ages. The sex ratio at birth counts female births per thousand male births and comes from registration or survey systems rather than from the census count. The child sex ratio counts girls per thousand boys in the age group nought to six as enumerated in the census, and it stood at 914 in 2011, its lowest level since Independence. Because its age band is narrow and recent, the child sex ratio is the most sensitive of the three to current behaviour, and because it is drawn from an actual head count it is not dependent on the completeness of birth registration. It carries an important ambiguity, however: a low child sex ratio can arise either because fewer girls are being born or because more of those born are dying before their seventh birthday through neglect in feeding and in health care, and the census number alone cannot separate the two. The geography of the indicator in 2011 is the part most worth remembering. The worst figures were not in the poorest states but in a belt running through the prosperous north-west, with Haryana lowest among the states at 834, while several of the poorer eastern and north-eastern states recorded ratios well above the national average. Maharashtra's 894 places it firmly in the group of states with a serious deficit despite its wealth. The legal and programmatic response has been of two kinds: prohibition, through the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994, which bans the determination and communication of the sex of a foetus, and persuasion, through the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative launched in January 2015, which pairs enforcement with campaigns on the value of girls' survival and schooling.

Census and demographic data are a dependable part of the MPSC paper, and questions are usually built in one of three ways: rank a set of states on an indicator, identify the highest or the lowest, or state a national figure. This item takes the second form and adds a deliberate twist by choosing four states whose ranking on the child sex ratio contradicts their ranking on development. That is characteristic of the Commission's better questions and it is a useful warning against answering demographic items by general impression. Two of the four options are states a Maharashtra candidate should know without hesitation, and Maharashtra's own figure is one of the few census numbers that a state paper can be relied upon to test in some form. The wider habit worth building is to hold a short table of 2011 Census headline figures — the national population, the decadal growth rate, density, literacy, the overall sex ratio and the child sex ratio — with Maharashtra's corresponding values beside each, since a very large share of the demography questions in a state paper can be answered from those two columns alone. When a question asks for the lowest, read all four options before deciding; the instinct to stop at the first state that looks bad on social indicators is exactly what an option set like this one is built to punish.

• In the 2011 Census the child sex ratio, girls aged nought to six per thousand boys, was 894 in Maharashtra, 918 in Madhya Pradesh, 948 in Karnataka and 964 in Kerala, making Maharashtra the lowest of the four.
• The all-India child sex ratio in 2011 was 914, the lowest recorded since Independence, while the overall sex ratio for all ages was 943 females per thousand males.
• The child sex ratio is distinct from the overall sex ratio and from the sex ratio at birth: it is enumerated from the census count of children aged nought to six and therefore reflects both the sex ratio at birth and the differential survival of girls in early childhood.
• The lowest child sex ratios in 2011 were recorded in prosperous north-western states rather than in the poorest states, Haryana being lowest among the states at 834, which shows that the indicator does not track income, urbanisation or literacy.
• The principal responses have been the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994, which prohibits the determination and communication of the sex of a foetus, and the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative launched in January 2015.

• Answering a child sex ratio question by ranking states on income, urbanisation or literacy, when the indicator does not follow those rankings and the option set is often built to exploit the assumption that it does
• Confusing the child sex ratio with the overall sex ratio, which for India in 2011 was 943 against the child figure of 914, or with the sex ratio at birth, which comes from a different data source altogether
• Eliminating Kerala quickly and then choosing carelessly among the remaining options, when the real discrimination in the question lies between Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh
• Assuming a low child sex ratio must mean sex selection before birth alone, when the census figure also reflects the neglect of girls in feeding and health care during the first six years of life

Demography reaches MPSC papers through the census far more often than through any other source, and the questions cluster around a small set of indicators: population and its decadal growth, density, literacy in total and by sex, the overall sex ratio, the child sex ratio, and the ranking of states on each. Two variants recur. One asks for a national or state figure directly and is pure recall. The other, used here, asks which state stands highest or lowest on an indicator among four named states, and it is set so that the answer cannot be reached by ranking the states on general development. Maharashtra's own figures are always fair game and should be memorised exactly rather than approximately. When the 2011 figures are the subject, remember that they remain the operative census numbers because the decennial census due in 2021 was postponed, so a question set years later still refers to them.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The child sex ratio reported by the Census of India differs from the overall sex ratio in which of the following respects ?

  • (a)It counts females per thousand males in the whole population rather than in a single age group
  • (b)It counts girls per thousand boys in the age group nought to six, and so responds faster to current behaviour than the all-ages figure
  • (c)It is estimated from birth registration data rather than from the census enumeration
  • (d)It counts only children enrolled in school and therefore excludes those who are not

  Answer(b) It counts girls per thousand boys in the age group nought to six, and so responds faster to current behaviour than the all-ages figure. Because the band is narrow and recent, the child sex ratio picks up changes in the sex ratio at birth and in the survival of young girls much sooner than the overall ratio, which carries the accumulated history of an entire population. It is enumerated in the census head count, which is what distinguishes it from the sex ratio at birth, a statistic drawn from registration and survey systems.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the 2011 Census, the lowest child sex ratios in India were recorded in which group of states, and what does that pattern suggest ?

  • (a)The poorest eastern states, suggesting that poverty is the main driver of the deficit
  • (b)The southern states, suggesting that high literacy has no bearing on the indicator
  • (c)The prosperous north-western states such as Haryana and Punjab, suggesting the deficit does not follow income or urbanisation
  • (d)The north-eastern states, suggesting that small populations distort the ratio

  Answer(c) The prosperous north-western states such as Haryana and Punjab, suggesting the deficit does not follow income or urbanisation. Haryana recorded the lowest figure among the states at 834 in 2011, well below the national 914, while several poorer states recorded ratios above the national average. The usual explanation is that a falling family size, access to prenatal sex determination and a persistent preference for sons combine most strongly where households have both the means and the motive to act, so rising prosperity can worsen the ratio.