Consider the following statements and choose the correct option. Statement…
2024
Consider the following statements and choose the correct option.
Statement (A): Investment in non-farm activities in rural areas can reduce the rural-urban migration.
Statement (R): Migration increases during particular season when there are no agricultural activities in rural areas.
Answer: A. Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A) — Concept: An assertion-reason item is settled by three separate judgements — whether the assertion is true on its own, whether the reason is true on its own,…
- A.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
- B.
Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
- C.
(A) is true but (R) is false
- D.
Both (A) and (R) are false
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Concept: An assertion-reason item is settled by three separate judgements — whether the assertion is true on its own, whether the reason is true on its own, and whether the reason states the cause on which the assertion depends. Two independently true sentences do not by themselves form a valid explanation; the reason must supply the mechanism the assertion relies on. The second idea in play is that rural out-migration in India is largely push-driven and seasonal: households leave when local work disappears, not because urban life is preferred.
Application to this item:
Statement A stands. Rural non-farm activity — agro-processing, dairying, handicrafts, rural construction, transport and local services — creates wage work that does not follow the crop calendar, and expanding it is the standard policy lever for retaining workers inside the village economy.
Statement R stands. Indian agriculture is seasonal, so between the sowing and harvest peaks there is a slack or lean period with no field work, and seasonal or circular out-migration rises in exactly those months.
The link holds. The reason names the cause of the movement, namely the disappearance of work during the agricultural slack period, and the remedy in the assertion works precisely because non-farm activity fills that same lean-season employment gap.
Alternative-cause check: ask what else could be driving the movement. If migration were mainly a pull from permanently higher urban wages, independent of the farm season, then adding local lean-season work would leave most of it untouched and the remedy would not follow from the reason given. Because the observed surge is concentrated in the agricultural slack months, the seasonal work gap is the mechanism actually doing the explanatory work here.
Result: both statements are true, and the seasonal work gap named in the reason is exactly why the non-farm investment remedy in the assertion reduces rural-urban migration.