Question

As per Indian Planning Standards, a Medical College has to be provided for a planning unit with minimum population of

• A. 500000
• B. 1000000
• C. 10000000
• D. 2500000

Hint:

Medical colleges in India are planned in regions with a population of over 1 million to ensure adequate demand for medical services.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Indian planning norms tie every major institution to a minimum population size, and each size class in the options corresponds to a different tier of facility.
A population of 500000 supports smaller-scale facilities, well below what a medical college needs.
A population of 10000000 and 2500000 overshoot the standard, describing metropolitan-region scales rather than the specific single planning-unit norm asked about here.
The recognised norm sets a medical college against a planning unit of 1000000 people, the population base large enough to sustain patient load and staffing needs.
So the correct answer is 1000000.

Answer 2

Indian planning standards fix a minimum population for each tier of social infrastructure, from primary schools up to specialised hospitals and colleges, and higher-order facilities are pegged to larger populations. Working through the tiers this question tests helps confirm the right figure.

1. 500000: This size supports intermediate facilities such as a general/district hospital, but a full medical college, with its teaching hospital and specialist departments, needs a larger catchment population than this.
2. 1000000: At the one-million mark, a planning unit crosses into the tier where the norms call for a medical college, since this is large enough to guarantee the patient volume, staffing and infrastructure a teaching hospital requires.
3. 10000000: This figure belongs to the scale of a whole metropolitan agglomeration, several planning units combined, and is far above what the standard specifies for a single medical college.
4. 2500000: This lies between the correct threshold and the metropolitan scale, and while it would certainly support a medical college, it is not the minimum figure the standard actually specifies.

Placing the medical college in its correct tier of the population hierarchy confirms the minimum figure is one million.

Therefore, the correct answer is 1000000.