Choose the correct option considering the following statements :
Statement (a) : According to the final census of 2011, Mumbai sub-urban district had the highest population density in Maharashtra.
Sta

Question

Choose the correct option considering the following statements :
Statement (a) : According to the final census of 2011, Mumbai sub-urban district had the highest population density in Maharashtra.
Statement (b) : According to the final census of 2011, Kolhapur district is the fifth most densely populated district in Maharashtra.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), both statements are correct. Statement (a) says that at the 2011 Census, Mumbai suburban district had the highest population density in Maharashtra, and it did: the district returned about 20,980 persons per square kilometre, the highest figure in the state and among the highest of any district in India. Statement (b) says Kolhapur district was the fifth most densely populated district in Maharashtra, and on the 2011 figures it was: the order at the top of the list runs Mumbai Suburban at roughly 20,980, Mumbai City at roughly 19,652, Thane at roughly 1,157, Pune at roughly 603 and Kolhapur at roughly 504 persons per square kilometre. Since neither statement is false, options (1), (2) and (3) all fail and only option (4) survives. Two features of this list are worth taking away rather than just the answer. First, the drop between ranks is enormous — the two Mumbai districts are an order of magnitude denser than Thane, and Thane is roughly double Pune — so the top of the list is not a smooth gradient but a cliff, which is what a single overwhelming metropolitan agglomeration does to a state's district table. Second, Mumbai suburban outranks Mumbai City, which surprises candidates who assume the older island city must be the denser of the two; the suburban district holds a far larger population, and although it also covers more ground, its density still comes out ahead. Kolhapur's appearance at fifth is the more instructive fact, because it is not a metropolitan district at all — it is a well-watered, intensively cultivated district in southern Maharashtra with a dense rural settlement pattern, and its ranking shows that high density in this state is produced both by urban concentration at the top and by fertile, closely settled countryside just below it.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option correctly accepts statement (a) but rejects statement (b), and statement (b) is in fact sound. Kolhapur did stand fifth among Maharashtra's districts by population density at the 2011 Census, behind Mumbai Suburban, Mumbai City, Thane and Pune. The option is attractive to a candidate who is confident about the Mumbai fact — which almost everyone is — and simply unsure about a rank as specific as fifth, and who therefore treats the unfamiliar half of the question as the false half. Uncertainty about a statement is not evidence against it.  (b) This option rejects statement (a), which is the better-established of the two. Mumbai suburban district did record the highest population density of any district in Maharashtra at the 2011 Census, at about 20,980 persons per square kilometre. The only reading on which a candidate might doubt it is the assumption that Mumbai City, the older island district, must be denser than the suburbs — but the 2011 figures put Mumbai City second, at about 19,652. Getting that pair the wrong way round is the single most likely route to this option.  (c) This requires both a well-documented fact about Mumbai suburban district and a correct district ranking for Kolhapur to be false at the same time, and neither is. On a two-statement question the 'both wrong' option is usually the least likely of the four, because a paper-setter who has taken the trouble to draft two specific, checkable claims rarely makes both of them false; but it still has to be rejected on the facts rather than on that reasoning, and here the 2011 Census figures reject it directly.

Concept: Population density is population divided by land area, expressed as persons per square kilometre, and it is the census indicator most sensitive to the boundary you draw. A district that is almost entirely built up returns a figure in the tens of thousands; a district of the same population spread over a large rural area returns a figure in the hundreds. Maharashtra's district table shows both effects at once. At the 2011 Census the state as a whole stood at 365 persons per square kilometre, below the all-India figure of 382, because the state contains large, thinly peopled tracts in the drought-prone interior and in the forested east alongside one of the world's densest urban agglomerations. Within that state average the range across districts spans more than two orders of magnitude, from the Mumbai districts at around twenty thousand down to sparsely settled districts in the hundreds. Reading a density figure therefore always means asking what the denominator is: an urban district's number reflects the built environment, a rural district's number reflects the productivity of the land and the settlement pattern it supports.

State PCS 2024 Q25 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q25 — Geography PYQ with Answer