MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 32 of 100

Correct — option (1), Only (b) and (c). Three statements are printed, labelled (a) to (c), and the key accepts the second and third while rejecting the first. Statement (a) claims that India achieved poverty reduction in an even manner, and that is where the question turns. India's own assessment of its Millennium Development Goals record, prepared by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, concluded that the income poverty target had been met — the proportion of the population below the poverty line was brought down to less than half its 1990 level ahead of the deadline — but it was equally clear that the achievement was distributed very unevenly. Poverty became increasingly concentrated in the poorer states rather than falling proportionately across the country, the incidence in rural India remained about twice that in urban India, and it stayed markedly higher among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and among households headed by women. An aggregate that falls while its distribution across states and social groups widens has not been achieved evenly, and statement (a) fails on that word alone. Note carefully what is not being said: the statement is rejected not because India missed the poverty target but because it describes the manner of the achievement wrongly, and a candidate who reads the statement as a claim about whether the target was met will reason himself into the wrong answer. Statement (b) says India was on track to achieve the hunger target after the 2015 deadline, and the phrasing repays a slow reading: it is not a claim that India met the hunger target on time but the opposite, that the trajectory would carry India to the target only at some point beyond 2015. That matches the assessment of the time. The hunger target required the 1990 proportion of undernourished people to be halved by 2015, and India's progress on the child undernutrition indicator used to track it, though real, was too slow to close the gap by the deadline, so the achievement was projected for a later date. Statement (c) says that empowering women remains a major development challenge, and that too was the settled conclusion. India had substantially closed the gender gap in school enrolment, which was the education part of the third Millennium Development Goal, but the other two indicators attached to that goal — the share of women in wage employment outside agriculture and the proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament — remained low, and women's economic participation in particular was moving in the wrong direction. Statements (b) and (c) standing and statement (a) failing, option (1) is the answer.

• (2)All of the above — This option accepts all three statements and is wrong because statement (a) is not correct. It is the natural choice for a candidate who reads statement (a) as saying that India achieved the poverty reduction target, since that much is true, and who does not register the qualification in an even manner. The qualification is the whole content of the statement. India's poverty headcount fell below half its 1990 level ahead of the deadline, but the fall was concentrated and not general: rural poverty stayed at roughly twice the urban level, the poorer states retained a disproportionate share of the poor, and Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and female-headed households continued to record higher incidence than the population as a whole. This is the standard way a collective option is made wrong — by inserting a single adverbial phrase into an otherwise true sentence — and it is why every statement must be read to its last word before being accepted.
• (3)Only (a) and (b) — This option accepts (a) and (b) and rejects (c), which reverses the position on both of the statements it touches. Statement (a) fails, for the reasons given, because the poverty reduction was uneven across states, between rural and urban areas and across social groups. Statement (c), which this option discards, is among the least controversial assertions that could be made about India's Millennium Development Goals record: the third goal covered gender equality and women's empowerment, and while the enrolment parity indicator was largely met, the indicators on women's share of non-agricultural wage employment and on women's representation in the national parliament remained weak throughout the period. A candidate reaching this option has usually accepted statement (a) on the strength of the poverty target being met and then, having accepted two statements, felt obliged to reject one.
• (4)Only (a) and (c) — This option accepts (a) and (c) and rejects (b), so it correctly identifies women's empowerment as a continuing challenge but goes wrong at both ends. Statement (a) fails on the evenness claim. Statement (b), which this option rejects, is more likely to be misread than genuinely doubted, because its wording is unusual: to say that India was on track to achieve the hunger target after the 2015 deadline is to say that the target would be reached late, not that it was reached on time. A reader who takes the sentence as a claim of success will reject it, knowing that India did not meet the hunger target by 2015, and will have rejected it for a reason the sentence never asserted. Where a statement places a date after a verb of achievement, read the whole clause before judging it; several statements in this paper depend on such a construction.

The Millennium Development Goals were the first global development framework with numbers attached to it. They grew out of the Millennium Declaration adopted at the United Nations in September 2000 and consisted of eight goals — on extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality and women's empowerment, child mortality, maternal health, HIV and other diseases, environmental sustainability, and a global partnership for development — broken into targets and tracked by a set of indicators, with 1990 as the baseline year and 2015 as the deadline. India monitored its own progress through the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, which published a series of country reports mapping the global indicators onto Indian data sources. The record that emerged by 2015 was mixed in a characteristic way. On income poverty India did well, bringing the headcount below half its 1990 level before the deadline, but the gains were unevenly spread across states, between rural and urban areas and across social groups, so that poverty became more concentrated even as it fell. On hunger and child undernutrition progress was real but too slow to meet the target on time. On primary education and on gender parity in enrolment India did well, while on maternal mortality, on sanitation and on women's economic and political participation it fell short. That pattern — aggregate progress with wide internal disparity and weak human development outcomes — is what shaped the Indian contribution to the design of the successor framework. The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015 and running to 2030, differ from the Millennium Development Goals in ways that answer these criticisms directly: there are seventeen goals rather than eight, they apply to every country rather than mainly to developing ones, they were negotiated through an open intergovernmental process rather than drafted within the United Nations Secretariat, and they place an explicit emphasis on reducing inequality and on leaving no one behind, which is the very defect that statement (a) in this question misdescribes.

The Commission sets the Millennium Development Goals as a topic in its own right and as the necessary background to the Sustainable Development Goals, and this question shows its preferred method: three plausible-sounding sentences about India's record, of which one has been made false by the insertion of a single qualifying phrase. That is the most economical way to build a hard statement question, and it is defeated only by reading each statement to its end and asking what exactly it asserts. Here the whole item turns on four words — in an even manner — and a candidate who reads statement (a) as being about whether the poverty target was met will answer the wrong question with the right fact. Two further reading points belong to this paper specifically. Statement lists are often shorter than four items and this one prints three, so the options are combinations of (a), (b) and (c) only. And the options are not printed in the order a reader expects: all of the above sits at position (2), between two only-type options, rather than at the end where such an option usually appears. A candidate scanning for a collective option at the bottom of the list may not notice it at all, or may assume the option at (2) is another pair. Read the option text, never its position.

• The Millennium Development Goals were eight goals adopted following the Millennium Declaration of September 2000, measured against a 1990 baseline with a 2015 deadline; India's progress was monitored and reported by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
• India met the income poverty target, bringing the poverty headcount below half its 1990 level before the deadline, but the reduction was uneven — concentrated in some states, with rural incidence about twice the urban level and higher incidence among Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and female-headed households.
• The hunger target required the 1990 proportion of the undernourished to be halved by 2015; India's progress on child undernutrition was too slow to close the gap by the deadline, so achievement was projected for a date after 2015.
• On the third goal, India substantially closed the gender gap in school enrolment, but the indicators on women's share of wage employment outside agriculture and on women's representation in the national parliament remained weak, so empowering women remained a major development challenge.
• The Sustainable Development Goals that replaced this framework in 2015 answer several of these criticisms: seventeen goals rather than eight, universal application rather than a focus on developing countries, an open intergovernmental negotiation, and an explicit emphasis on inequality and on leaving no one behind.

• Reading statement (a) as a claim that India met the poverty target, when what it actually claims is that the reduction was even, and rejecting or accepting it on the wrong question
• Misreading a clause that places a date after a verb of achievement, so that on track to achieve the target after the 2015 deadline is taken as a claim of success rather than of delay
• Assuming that a collective option is printed last, when this question places all of the above at position (2) between two pair options
• Confusing the Millennium Development Goals with the Sustainable Development Goals in number, period or scope — eight goals to 2015 against seventeen goals to 2030, and a developing-country focus against universal application

The two generations of global goals are examined in three shapes. The first is structural — how many goals, over what period, adopted by which process, and how the later framework differs from the earlier. The second is performance — what India achieved and where it fell short, usually set as a list of statements of the kind used here. The third is institutional — which ministry monitors the goals, which body publishes the index, and how state-level performance is measured. The performance questions are the hardest, because they require a candidate to hold not just whether a target was met but with what qualifications, and examiners build their false statements precisely out of the qualifications. The efficient preparation is a short table of the eight goals against a one-line Indian verdict for each — met, met late, missed, or met unevenly — since almost every statement an examiner can write is a distortion of one of those verdicts.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following best describes India's record on income poverty under the Millennium Development Goals framework ?

  • (a)The target was missed outright, with poverty rising over the period
  • (b)The target was met, but the reduction was uneven across states, between rural and urban areas and across social groups
  • (c)The target was met evenly, with all states reducing poverty in the same proportion
  • (d)No poverty target was included in the Millennium Development Goals

  Answer(b) The target was met, but the reduction was uneven across states, between rural and urban areas and across social groups. India brought its poverty headcount below half the 1990 level before the deadline, which satisfied the target, while poverty became more concentrated in the poorer states and remained about twice as prevalent in rural as in urban areas and higher among Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and female-headed households. The distinction between meeting a target and meeting it evenly is exactly what examiners build statements on.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  How do the Sustainable Development Goals differ from the Millennium Development Goals that preceded them ?

  • (a)They are fewer in number and apply only to developing countries
  • (b)They are seventeen in number, apply to all countries, were negotiated through an open intergovernmental process, and emphasise reducing inequality
  • (c)They are legally binding on all member states of the United Nations
  • (d)They cover only environmental subjects, poverty having been addressed by the earlier framework

  Answer(b) They are seventeen in number, apply to all countries, were negotiated through an open intergovernmental process, and emphasise reducing inequality. Each of those differences answers a criticism of the earlier framework: eight goals were thought too narrow, a focus on developing countries was thought to misplace responsibility, drafting inside the Secretariat was thought to weaken ownership, and aggregate targets were thought to conceal widening disparities. Like their predecessors, the Sustainable Development Goals are politically agreed rather than legally binding.