Which religious group in India has its highest urban population ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Jain. At the 2011 Census the Jain community was the most urbanised religious group in India by a wide margin: 79.7 per cent of Jains lived in urban areas — of roughly 44.5 lakh Jains counted in 2011, about 35.5 lakh were town or city dwellers. Set that against 31.1 per cent for India as a whole and 29.2 per cent for Hindus and the gap is not marginal, it is a different order of magnitude. Read the stem carefully, because it is loosely worded: 'highest urban population' taken literally as a head count would point to Hindus, who are about four-fifths of all Indians and therefore supply the largest absolute number of urban residents. The commission's key marks Jain, which tells you the examiner means the highest urban SHARE — the proportion of the community itself that is urban. That is the standard textbook fact about Jains, and it follows from their historic concentration in trade, banking and commerce, occupations that are city-based by nature.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Buddhists are more urbanised than Hindus, but not close to four-fifths. A large part of the community counted in 2011 was rural and semi-rural, and no reading of the Census religion tables puts Buddhists ahead of Jains on urban share.  (c) This is the intended trap. Hindus supply by far the largest absolute urban head count simply because they are the largest community — but only 29.2 per cent of Hindus were urban in 2011, which is BELOW the all-India figure of 31.1 per cent. On the proportion the examiner is asking about, Hindus are near the bottom, not the top.  (d) Christians are more urbanised than Hindus, but their urban share is well short of the Jain figure. Large Christian populations in Kerala, the North-East and tribal central India are substantially rural, which holds the community's overall urban proportion far below 79.7 per cent.

Concept: The Census of India records religion and rural/urban residence separately, so every community has both an absolute urban head count and an urban SHARE (the percentage of that community living in towns and cities). These two measures rank communities in almost opposite orders. Hindus dominate every absolute count because they are about 79.8 per cent of the population; Jains, who are under half a per cent of Indians, dominate the share tables. The 2011 religion tables were released by the Registrar General of India in August 2015.

State PCS 2022 Q11 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q11 — Geography PYQ with Answer