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UPSC 2019 GS-I · 10 marks · 150 words

‘Empowering women is the key to control population growth.’ Discuss.

What “Discuss” demands

present several distinct facets of the issue and connect them into an argument, giving the competing views real weight rather than one line each.

The characteristic failure: a list of points with no argument running through them.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this question — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

  • Mechanism: female education raises age at marriage, lowers desired family size, improves contraceptive use — the demographic-transition literature
  • Indian evidence: Kerala's TFR ~1.8 with high female literacy against Bihar's ~3.0; NFHS-5 shows national TFR at 2.0, below replacement
  • Female labour-force participation and autonomy in household decisions as the second channel
  • Amartya Sen on women's agency versus coercive population control; the 1975-77 sterilisation episode as the counter-example
  • Policy: Mission Parivar Vikas, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, and why coercive two-child norms are counter-productive

The band thresholds and the pre-scored sample answers behind this standard stay private — they are the calibration your copy is placed against.

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