Previous Year Question
Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A): There is a positive relationship between Human Development Index (HDI) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ranking of Indian States.
Reason (R): The underlying dimensions of SDG targets are closely related to education and health aspects.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below:
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
(A) is false, but (R) is true.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
(A) is true, but (R) is false.
Correct Answer: C
Detailed Solution
Assertion (A) is correct. The human-development performance and SDG performance of Indian States generally tend to move in a similar direction because the two frameworks capture several common dimensions of human well-being.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is based on three basic dimensions—
Health → A long and healthy life
Education → Knowledge
Standard of Living → A decent standard of living
Health is measured through Life Expectancy at Birth, education through Expected Years of Schooling and Mean Years of Schooling, and living standards through GNI per capita.
Reason (R) is also correct. The Sustainable Development Goals framework gives a central place to human-development dimensions such as health and education.
For example—
SDG 3 → Good Health and Well-being
SDG 4 → Quality Education
In addition, several other SDGs relating to poverty, hunger, gender equality, clean water, decent work and inequality are directly or indirectly connected with health and education outcomes. NITI Aayog's SDG framework similarly includes these social-development goals in assessing State performance.
This overlap is the key concept in the question.
If a State has—
better health outcomes,
higher educational attainment, and
better living conditions,
its HDI performance will generally be stronger. The same improvements can also strengthen performance on SDG 3, SDG 4 and several interconnected SDGs.
Thus—
Better Health + Education outcomes
↓
Better HDI performance and simultaneously
a tendency towards better SDG performance
Therefore, Reason (R) logically explains the positive relationship described in Assertion (A).
The question does not require an exact statistical correlation coefficient; it tests the relationship between the two development frameworks arising from their shared underlying dimensions.