Geog Test 8

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GEOGRAPHY TEST SERIES 2022

TEST - 08
GEOGRAPHY
Time Allowed: 1 Hr. Max. Marks: 100
Instructions to Candidate
• There are Seven questions.
• Candidate has to attempt all questions.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in the medium authorized in the Admission Certificate which must be
stated clearly on the cover of this Question-cum-Answer (QCA) Booklet in the space provided.
No marks will be given for answers written in medium other than the authorized one.
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in chronological order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-Cum-Answer booklet must be clearly struck off.
Name _______________________________
Mobile No.___________________________
1. Invigilator’s Signature _______________ Date ________________________________
2. Invigilator’s Signature _______________ Signature ____________________________
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Roll No.____________
SECTION-A
Attempt all questions:
(A) On the outline map of India provided to you, mark the location of all of the following.
Write in your QCA booklet the significance of these locations, whether physical /
commercial /economic /ecological /environmental /cultural, in not more than 20 words for
each entry.
(i) Shyok River
(ii) Palghat
(iii) Duncan passage
(iv) Kali bein
(v) Mhow
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1. Discuss the concept of Optimum Population. (250 Words) (15)
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2. Discuss the major reasons of declining child sex ratio in last few decades. Also highlight
the Government initiatives to improve the child sex ratio. (250 Words) (15)
Remarks
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3. Ageing global population and contracting workforce have increased the possibilities of
emigration of human capital from young countries like India. Critically analyze.
(250 Words) (15)
Remarks
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4. How globalisation has affected Indian tribes? Discuss the issue with suitable examples.
(250 Words) (15)
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5. Discuss the important determinants of Mortality. (250 Words) (15)
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6. Compare Malthusian theory of population and Marxist theory of population. Discuss

their relevance in contemporary times. (250 Words) (15)
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Geog
Geogrr a phy Test Series 2022
Test
www.iasscore.in
GEOGRAPHY
Answer Hints: T
Answ est No
Test .8
No.8
1. Discuss the concept of Optimum Population.
The economists like Carr Saunders considered ‘optimum population’ as that which produces maximum
welfare. On the other hand, Prof. Cannan defined this theory in terms of ‘return to labour’. He
remarked, “Knowledge and circumstances remaining the same, there is what may be called maximum
return when the amount of labour is such that both an increase and decrease in it would diminish
proportionate return.” Similarly, Bounding has rightly observed, “Optimum population is that at
which standard of living is maximum.
1. Under Population: If the actual population in a country is less than the optimum or ideal
population, there will not be enough people to exploit all the resources of the country fully.
Thus, the population and the per capita income will be lower. In other words, if the per capita
income is low due to too few people, the population is then under population.
2. Over Population: If the actual population is above the level of optimum population, there will
be too many people to work efficiently and produce the maximum goods and the highest per
capita income. As a result, the per capita income becomes poorer than before. This is the stage
of over population. In other words, if the per capita income is low due to too many people, the
population under these circumstances would be over population.
Assumptions:
The optimum theory is based on two important assumptions:
1. The proportion of working population to total population remains constant as the population
of the country increases.
2. As the population of a country increases, the natural resources, the capital stock and state of
technology remain unchanged.
Diagrammatic Representation of the Theory
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In the given diagram volume of population is shown along OX axis and income per head along
OYaxis. OS is the income per head which gives only subsistence wage rate to the population. This
level of wages puts the minimum limit to the income per head.
The subsistence income per head can prevail with two levels of population:
1. When population is too small to exploit the country’s resources with maximum efficiency. This
is the level of OA population.
2. When population is too large and the efficiency falls to give only a subsistence income to the
labour force. This is the level of OC population.
OB shows optimum population which uses the available resources to give itself the maximum income
per head. For a population less than OB, income per head increases with the increase in population.
For a population higher than OB, income per head can increase with the decrease in population
through preventive checks.
The dotted curve in the diagram shows the level of income per head with an improvement in
technology or expansion of foreign trade. This will help to raise the income curve and generate
population growth until wages are once again equal to subsistence level.
2. Discuss the major reasons of declining child sex ratio in last few decades. Also highlight the
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Government initiatives to improve the child sex ratio.
As per the provisional data of Census 2011, while the overall sex ratio had gone up by seven points
to touch 940, against 933 in Census 2001, the child sex ratio plummeted to 919 from 927. The
increasing trend has been seen in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram
and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, while in all the remaining States and Union Territories, the
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ratio has shown a decline. This anomaly can be broadly attributed to biological and social reasons.
• The decline in child sex ratio is due to the preference for male child in our patriarchal society.
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• Pre natal diagnostic techniques lead to female foeticide, due to which the child sex ratio can be
said to be declining.
• Also, at such an age, children are mostly dependent on their parents for nutrition, where males
are again the preference
• As the industrialisation of India picked up in the early 1960s, the demand for labour increased,
supplementing the already high preference for male children.
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• This coupled with the dawn of development in medical facilities in India since early 1960s, the
child sex ratio has declined continually.
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3. Ageing global population and contracting workforce have increased the possibilities of emigration
of human capital from young countries like India. Critically analyze.
India with largest demographic dividend is the youngest country of the world and is expected to
surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2027 according to World Population report,
2019 published by United Nations.
Increasing demographic dividend and limited opportunities has created unemployment in India but
at the same time has created opportunities for it to export services to developed countries of the
world which are in fourth stage of demographic dividend with contracting work force.
Brain Drain from India and reasons behind it
Brain drain is a term indicating substantial emigration or migration of individuals. A brain drain
can result from turmoil within a nation, the existence of favorable professional opportunities in
other countries, or from a desire to seek a higher standard of living.
• As the developed countries are involved in research and development in various fields, they
need talented pool of human resources. Although, this will provide opportunities to Indian
workforce but will create problem of Brain Drain.
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• There’s this growing sense of dissatisfaction generally, among the students that the current
Indian education system is inept at preparing them for the challenges of the increasingly
globalised world. The lack of innovative courses is drawing a lot of young students to leave
Indian shores for better education overseas.
• A major reason why India’s young, skilled labour force leaves is in search of better rewards for
their effort and talent.
• Better facilities and remuneration provided by developed countries to talented pool of the country
attracts them.
• This leads to emigration of the top rung of human capital from the country such as Scientists,
Engineers and doctors leading to vacuum in innovative leadership of respective sectors.
Steps needed to check Brain Drain
• India should think the China’s way to check brain drain by providing facilities and remuneration
as par the developed countries of the world.
• India needs to invest more on skill development so that a larger chunk of young population
becomes so educated and skillful that brain drain in nullified by domestic talent pool.
Ease of doing business needs to be improved in a better pace so that Indian talents could be
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able to produce companies like Telsa and Microsoft.
• There are a number of measures which the Indian government is taking to plug brain drain,
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such as prioritising skill development through its National Skill Development Mission that aims
to train approximately 400 million people across the country by 2022.
Although India has the largest demographic dividend in the world and receives highest remittances
from abroad along with producing best talented doctors, engineers and scientist in the world but it
lacks skilled labour force to fulfill its domestic needs. It has also reduced India as a supplier of cheap
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labour force globally. There is a serious lack of R&D activities and initiatives in India which has
created a gap in innovative spheres of various initiatives while our own scientists are working for
global giants like Microsoft, Google, Telsa and organizations such as NASA and ESA. India must
take initiatives to check ‘Brain Drain’ to fulfill its domestic obligations regarding better R&D.
4. How globalisation has affected Indian tribes? Discuss the issue with suitable examples.
The tribal population of India (67.6 million) around 7 percent of the total population is larger than
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that of any other country in the world. The forest occupies a central position in tribal culture and
economy. The tribal way of life is very much dictated by the forest right from birth to death. It is
ironical that the poorest people of India are living in the areas of richest natural resources. Historically,
tribals have been pushed to corners owing to economic interests of various dominant groups. In
contemporary India, the need for land for development is still forcing them, albeit this time to integrate
with mainstream.
Impact of Globalization on Tribals
Displacement of Tribals: It is estimated that owing to construction of over 1500 major irrigation
development projects since independence, over 16 million people were displaced from their villages,
of which about 40 per cent belong to tribal population. The government and the planners are aware
of (a) the eroding resource base and sociocultural heritage of tribal population through a combination
of development interventions, commercial interest, and lack of effective legal protection to tribal
and (b) the disruption of life and environment of tribal population owing to unimaginative, insensitive
package of relief (Planning Commission, 1990). Still the development process continued unmindful
of displacement.
A common feature shared by most of the tribal people is their remoteness and marginal quality of
territorial resources. In the past, exploitation of such poor regions was found both difficult and
uneconomic. But, the recent rapid technological advancement and unrivalled economic and political
strength of world capitalism, and the rising power of neocolonialism through the G8 directly and
the IMF, WB, IBRD, etc., as agencies, have created favourable conditions for the evasion and
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extraction of natural resources from the ecologically fragile territories of tribal people. Thus, forced
evictions of tribals to make way for mammoth capitalintensive development projects have become a
distressing routine and everincreasing phenomenon.
There is a heavy concentration of industrial and mining activities in the central belt. All the massive
steel plants, BALCO, NALCO, heavy engineering concerns etc. are based here. Most river basin
development schemes and hydropower projects, a chain of forestbased and ancillary industries and
an increasing number of highly polluting industries are located in this region. Despite intense industrial
activity in the central Indian tribal belt, the tribal employment in modern enterprises is negligible.
Apart from the provisions of Apprenticeship Act, there is no stipulation for private or joint sector
enterprises to recruit certain percentage of dispossessed tribal workforce. The tribals are forced to
live in juxtaposition with alien capitalist relations and cultures, with traumatic results. They are
forced onto the ever-expanding low paid, insecure, transient and destitute labour market. About 40
per cent of the tribals of central India supplement their income by participating in this distorted and
over exploitative capitalist sector. Many more are slowly crushed into oblivion in their homeland or
in urban slums. This is nothing short of ethnocide. Their economic and cultural survival is at stake.
India happens to be the second most dammed country in the world. It has invested over Rs. 300
billion on dams and hydropower projects by 2000. The World Bank has directly funded as many as
87 largescale dam projects in India as against only 58 for the whole of the African continent and 59
for Latin America. Between 1981 and 1990, the World Bank provided $7 billion for such projects in
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India, i.e., onefifth of its total funding for 85 countries world over. Almost all major dam projects in
India are intrinsically linked to world capitalism. Nearly 60 per cent of these large dams are located
in central and western India where about 80 per cent of the tribals live.
There is no reliable and complete information on the number of tribals displaced in the country
since independence. The estimates range between 5 and 7 million mostly by the dams, followed by
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mines and industries or approximately one in every ten tribals has been displaced by different
developments projects. It is not only the magnitude of involuntary tribal displacement that should
attract the special concern but also the sacrifice of collective identity, historical and cultural heritage,
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and of course the survival support. Poverty, malnutrition, mortality, morbidity, illiteracy,
unemployment, debt bondage, and serfdom among the tribals are markedly higher.
5. Discuss the important determinants of Mortality.
To be discussed in class
6. Compare Malthusian theory of population and Marxist theory of population. Discuss their
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relevance in contemporary times.

Malthus argued that the population has a tendency to grow faster than the means of sustaining it,
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leading to human misery and obstructing progress in many ways. Malthus had hypothesized that
food is necessary for the existence of; and that passion between the sexes is necessary and will
remain nearly in its present state. With this assumption, Malthus went on to argue that while
population increases in a geometrical ratio, subsistence increases only in an arithmetic ratio. Thus,
he became the first person to quantify the ratios of both population growth and increase in agricultural
production.
He has made three propositions:
i) population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence
ii) population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase unless prevented by
some very powerful and obvious checks
iii) these checks which repress the increase in population and its effects on a level which the means
of subsistence, are resolvable into moral restraint, vice (failing or defect) and misery
Malthus recognized that there are powerful checks on population growth which he classified under
two headings as ‘preventive checks’, such as moral restraints like abstinence, delayed marriage and
restricting marriages of persons suffering from poverty or otherwise incapable of sustaining a faily
and ‘positive checks’ referred to all the factors which tended to shorten human lifespan, such as
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hazardous occupations excesses of all kinds, and common diseases and epidemics, wars, infanticide,
plague and famine.
Overall, Malthus was criticized on the following points:
• Malthus had assumed supply of land to be limited and the yield from land would also be
limited. It was already documented at that time, that people were clearing forests for their
living. The agricultural revolution of the nineteenth century was brought out by many
technological changes that increasing production manifold. Crop rotation, use of chemical
fertilizers and improvements in plant and animal breeding had revolutionized agriculture, which
Malthus could not visualize in his time
• Malthus had underestimated Industrial Development, especially the availability of faster and
more reliable modes of transport, expansion of land for agriculture and human settlements,
supply of raw material for manufacturing, and the development of new markets. Industrial
developments had made people less dependent on agriculture.
• Malthus’ religious beliefs prevented him from visualizing the possibility of the widespread use
of contraceptives. Malthus favoured only the postponement of marriage and even permanent
abstinence from sex as one of the preventive checks. He, however, unequivocally disapproved
of birth contro. Malthus presented himself as both scientist and moralist, a contradiction in
roles. He was entitled to his opinions against birth control. His role as a scientist, however, is
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vitiated by the fact that he attempts to justify his opposition to birth control on empirical grounds.
Karl Marx went one step further and argued that starvation was caused by the unequal distribution
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of the wealth and its accumulation by capitalists. It has nothing to do with the population. Population
is dependent on economic and social organization. The problems of overpopulation and limits to
resources, as enunciated by Malthus, are inherent and inevitable features associated with the capitalist
system of production.
At the most general theoretical level, Marx and Engels see in Malthus’ principle of population another
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instance of the way in which bourgeois economists consider social relations. Within Marxist theory,
to reify means to change concrete historical social relations and processes into universal categories
or eternal natural laws.
He views widespread poverty, hunger, unemployment, etc. and disregarding the concrete social
relations of exploitation and competition which had produced that hungry and unemployed
population as the outcome of the operation of inexorable natural laws. He reifies the specific relations
of exploitation which obtained at that time between wage workers and capitalists, and the antagonistic
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relations between the landed and the industrial interests, changing them into the operation of the
natural law of necessity that manifests itself through positive checks to population growth. Poverty,
unwholesome working conditions, hunger, disease, unemployment, etc. are depicted as the product
of the natural law of necessity.
The accumulation and expansion of capital constitutes the driving force of capitalism and it becomes
possible only as long as capitalists can operate with a profit. Profits originate in the appropriation,
by the capitalist, of the surplus value produced by the labor power he buys. Accumulation takes
place when capitalists convert a portion of their surplus value into capital; this allows them to
expand, to appropriate more surplus value which will lead to further accumulation and expansion.
While Marx rightly highlighted the underlying socio-economic and political structures as being
exploitative and more responsible for population growth his underlying alternatives were not feasible

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UPSCMATERIAL.

GEOGRAPHY TEST SERIES 2022

• There are Seven questions.

• Candidate has to attempt all questions.

• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.

• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.

Attempt all questions:

1. Discuss the concept of Optimum Population. (250 Words) (15)

5. Discuss the important determinants of Mortality. (250 Words) (15)

6. Compare Malthusian theory of population and Marxist theory of population. Discuss

[2] Hints: Geography

Hints: Geography [3]

relevance in contemporary times.

[4] Hints: Geography

Hints: Geography [5]

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