SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 3 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

According to the Census of India 2001, which of the following is the main reason that Indian men migrate?

(a)Education
(b)Work and employment
(c)Business
(d)Marriage

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The Census records a reason for migration against every migrant, and the result splits sharply by sex.

For male migrants the leading recorded reason is work and employment. For female migrants it is marriage, which is why the two halves are almost always learnt as a pair.

Option (b) is the male half of that pair.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Education — Education is its own line in the Census reason list and it does move male migrants, but far fewer of them than work and employment does.
(c)
Business — Business is counted as its own category in the Census reason list, separate from work and employment, and it is much the smaller of the two.
(d)
Marriage — Marriage is the leading reason recorded for female migrants, not male. The option is the other half of the pair, offered to a reader who skims the stem.

Concept

Census migration data is cut three ways: by stream (rural to urban, urban to urban and so on), by distance (intra-district, inter-district, inter-state) and by reason. This question draws on the reason table.

The male-female asymmetry is the point of that table. Men move mainly for economic reasons and women mainly because of marriage, and that difference shows up later in the sex ratio of both the village they leave and the city they reach.

The stem pins the year to 2001, so read the year. But what is really being tested is the male-work and female-marriage contrast, which is the durable part of the finding.

Key facts

Census of India 2001: work and employment is the leading recorded reason for male migration.
Census of India 2001: marriage is the leading recorded reason for female migration.
The Census counts business separately from work and employment among reasons for migration.

Study next

The Census reasons-for-migration list and how the sexes divide across itMigration streams — rural-urban, urban-urban, rural-rural, urban-ruralEffects of male out-migration on the sex ratio of source regions

Common traps

Answering marriage because it is the largest single reason overall, when the stem says men.
Treating business as a synonym for work and employment when the Census keeps them apart.

Census items name the round and then ask for one headline result from it, so carry the year with the fact — 2001, men, work and employment — rather than a loose impression that men migrate for jobs.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.