Consider the following statements :
Statement-I : As per projection on 1st March 2026, the total projected population of Maharashtra is about 12.93 crore.
Statement-II : During the same period, the ur

Question

Consider the following statements :
Statement-I : As per projection on 1st March 2026, the total projected population of Maharashtra is about 12.93 crore.
Statement-II : During the same period, the urban population of Maharashtra is higher than its rural population.
Which of the statement/s given above is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), 'Statement-I is correct, but Statement-II is incorrect.' Statement-I gives the projected population of Maharashtra as on 1 March 2026 as about 12.93 crore, and that is the figure carried by the Economic Survey of Maharashtra for 2025-26. It represents a rise from the 11.24 crore actually enumerated in the Census of 2011, and it is a projection rather than a count — no census has been taken since 2011, so every current population figure for the state is an estimate carried forward from that base. Statement-I is correct. Statement-II claims that the urban population of Maharashtra now exceeds its rural population. On the same projection it does not: of the 12.93 crore, about 6.55 crore is rural and about 6.38 crore urban, so the rural population still leads by roughly 17 lakh and the urban share works out at a little over 49 per cent. Statement-II is therefore incorrect, and option (1) is the answer. What makes this a good question rather than a mere number check is how narrow the margin is. Maharashtra is one of the most urbanised of the large Indian states — 45.2 per cent of its population was urban at the 2011 Census, well above the national figure — and it is close enough to the halfway mark that a candidate reasoning from Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik and Thane will assume the crossover has already happened. It has not, on this projection, and the reason is that Maharashtra contains, alongside its metropolitan corridor, large and populous rural districts across Marathwada, Vidarbha and the Khandesh belt. The lesson for the exam is to distinguish 'highly urbanised' from 'majority urban': the first is a comparison with other states, the second is a comparison within the state, and a statement can be true on one and false on the other.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Inverts both judgements. It rejects the projected total of 12.93 crore, which is the figure the Economic Survey of Maharashtra for 2025-26 itself carries, and accepts the claim of an urban majority, which the same projection contradicts — about 6.55 crore rural against about 6.38 crore urban. A candidate arrives here by reasoning from the state's metropolitan image rather than from its figures, and by assuming that a total population figure quoted in a question paper must be the altered element.  (c) Accepts the correct total but also accepts the urban majority. The crossover has not occurred on this projection: the urban share stands a little over 49 per cent, so the rural population remains the larger by roughly 17 lakh. This is the most attractive wrong option in the set, because Maharashtra genuinely is among the most urbanised large states and the gap is small enough to be invisible to intuition. It is a reminder that 'more urbanised than most states' and 'more urban than rural' are two different propositions.  (d) Rejects the projected total as well as the urban-majority claim. The rejection of Statement-II is right, but the rejection of Statement-I is not: 12.93 crore is the projection for 1 March 2026 published in the state's own Economic Survey. A candidate who reaches this option has probably anchored on the 11.24 crore of the 2011 Census and judged 12.93 crore too large, which underestimates fifteen years of growth — the projection also raises population density from 365 persons per square kilometre in 2011 to about 420.

Concept: Between two censuses, every population figure in circulation is a projection. A projection takes the last enumerated base — for India, the Census of 2011 — and carries it forward using assumptions about fertility, mortality and migration, which is why projected figures are always quoted with a reference date, here 1 March 2026, and why they are revised as new survey evidence arrives. Reading a projection properly means reading its components, not just its total. Maharashtra's projection for 2026 records a population of about 12.93 crore against 11.24 crore in 2011, a density rising from 365 to about 420 persons per square kilometre, and about 6.73 crore males against 6.20 crore females. It also records a demographic transition in progress: the share of children aged 0-14 falls from 26.7 per cent in 2011 to about 19.6 per cent in 2026, while the working-age group of 15-59 rises from 63.3 per cent to about 67.3 per cent. That combination — a shrinking child population, an expanding working-age population and a slowly rising elderly share — is the demographic dividend phase, and it is time-limited: the same falling fertility that produces it will, in due course, produce an ageing population.

State PCS 2026 Q40 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q40 — Geography PYQ with Answer