Consider the following cities of Uttar Pradesh and arrange them in descending order in terms of their population.
I. Ghaziabad
II. Kanpur
III. Agra
IV. Lucknow
Select the correct answer from the code

Question

Consider the following cities of Uttar Pradesh and arrange them in descending order in terms of their population.
I. Ghaziabad
II. Kanpur
III. Agra
IV. Lucknow
Select the correct answer from the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, II, IV, I, III, that is Kanpur, then Lucknow, then Ghaziabad, then Agra. This is the order on the Census 2011 URBAN AGGLOMERATION figures: Kanpur about 29.20 lakh, Lucknow about 29.03 lakh, Ghaziabad about 23.76 lakh and Agra about 17.60 lakh. Note how the question is decided in two stages. Agra is comfortably the smallest of the four, which alone kills options (b) and (c). That leaves (a) and (d), which differ only in whether Ghaziabad or Lucknow takes second place — and Lucknow's agglomeration is more than five lakh larger than Ghaziabad's, so (d) is the answer. ONE HONEST CAVEAT a candidate should carry away: the top of this list depends on which unit is counted. Kanpur leads Lucknow by fewer than 18,000 people out of roughly 29 lakh on the agglomeration figures, but if the CITY proper — the municipal corporation area — is counted instead, Lucknow is returned slightly ahead of Kanpur and the first two positions swap. The commission's key uses the urban-agglomeration reading, which is the reading the Census itself uses when it ranks India's largest cities, and that is what makes (d) correct.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Agra — right at both ends, wrong in the middle. It promotes Ghaziabad above Lucknow. Ghaziabad's agglomeration stood at about 23.76 lakh against Lucknow's 29.03 lakh in 2011, a gap of more than five lakh. Ghaziabad is the fastest-growing of the four, being part of the National Capital Region, and that reputation for explosive growth is what tempts candidates to move it up the list — but growth rate is not size.  (b) This is simply the order in which the four cities are printed in the stem — I, II, III, IV — offered as a decoy for candidates who are guessing. It would make Ghaziabad the largest and Lucknow the smallest of the four, which reverses the truth at both ends: Lucknow's agglomeration is about 29.03 lakh and Ghaziabad's about 23.76 lakh.  (c) Agra, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Lucknow — it puts Agra first and Lucknow last, and both are wrong. Agra's agglomeration was about 17.60 lakh in 2011, the smallest of the four by a wide margin, and Lucknow's about 29.03 lakh, the largest or second largest depending on the unit counted. Agra's fame as a tourist and monument city has nothing to do with its population rank.

Concept: The Census of India reports urban population in two different units, and questions like this one live in the gap between them. A 'city' or 'town' in the statutory sense is the area of the municipal corporation or municipality. An 'urban agglomeration' is a continuous urban spread made up of a town together with its adjoining outgrowths, or of two or more physically contiguous towns and their outgrowths — the built-up reality rather than the administrative boundary. Because municipal limits are drawn politically and are often decades out of date, the agglomeration is the unit used when the Census ranks India's largest cities, and it is normally the larger of the two figures. On the 2011 agglomeration figures Kanpur ranked eleventh in India and Lucknow twelfth, with Ghaziabad fourteenth and Agra twenty-third.

State PCS 2022 Q57 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q57 — Geography PYQ with Answer