CLAT: Mock Test (New Pattern) - 13 - CLAT MCQ

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

According to neo-Malthusians, population problem (as it presently exists in underdeveloped countries) is an inevitable result of the reproductive behaviour of man. The theory of Demographic Transition, however, rejects this view and asserts that the population explosion implying a sudden spurt in the rate of population growth is a transitory phenomenon that occurs in the second stage of demographic transition due to a rapid fall in the mortality rate without a corresponding fall in the birth rate. According to the Theory of Demographic Transition, every country passes through three stages of demographic transition. These stages are empirically verifiable.
In the first stage, both birth and death rates are high. Hence the population remains more or less stable. Even if there is some increase in the population because birth rate is somewhat higher than death rate, it does not pose any serious problem. Generally in backward economies where agriculture is the main occupation of the people, per capita incomes are low. This inevitably results in a low level of standard of living. Mass of the population in these countries is deprived of even the basic necessities of life.
The second stage of demographic transition is characterised by rapid growth of population. With the beginning of the process of development, the living standards of the people improve, the education expands medical and health facilities increase and governments make special efforts to check small pox, malaria, cholera, plague etc. These developments generally bring down the death rate. But as long as society remains primarily agrarian and the education remains confined to a narrow section of the society, attitude of the people towards the size of family does not change radically and the birth rate remains high. In this situation population increases at an alarming rate. In the second stage of demographic transition, the birth rate generally stays around 35 to 40 per thousand, whereas the death rate comes down to roughly 15 per thousand. Consequently population increases at an annual rate of about 2 per cent or more. In a country where economy has not grown adequately for a long time and a sizable section of the population has remained below the poverty line, this is really a grave situation. Economists call it population explosion.
In the third stage of demographic transition the birth rate declines significantly and thus the rate of population growth remains low. A country can hope to overcome the problem of population explosion if the process of industrialisation accompanied by urbanisation is fast and education becomes widespread. Only in this situation birth rate shows a tendency to fall.

Q. Why does rapid increase in population take place during the second stage of demographic transition?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

According to neo-Malthusians, population problem (as it presently exists in underdeveloped countries) is an inevitable result of the reproductive behaviour of man. The theory of Demographic Transition, however, rejects this view and asserts that the population explosion implying a sudden spurt in the rate of population growth is a transitory phenomenon that occurs in the second stage of demographic transition due to a rapid fall in the mortality rate without a corresponding fall in the birth rate. According to the Theory of Demographic Transition, every country passes through three stages of demographic transition. These stages are empirically verifiable.
In the first stage, both birth and death rates are high. Hence the population remains more or less stable. Even if there is some increase in the population because birth rate is somewhat higher than death rate, it does not pose any serious problem. Generally in backward economies where agriculture is the main occupation of the people, per capita incomes are low. This inevitably results in a low level of standard of living. Mass of the population in these countries is deprived of even the basic necessities of life.
The second stage of demographic transition is characterised by rapid growth of population. With the beginning of the process of development, the living standards of the people improve, the education expands medical and health facilities increase and governments make special efforts to check small pox, malaria, cholera, plague etc. These developments generally bring down the death rate. But as long as society remains primarily agrarian and the education remains confined to a narrow section of the society, attitude of the people towards the size of family does not change radically and the birth rate remains high. In this situation population increases at an alarming rate. In the second stage of demographic transition, the birth rate generally stays around 35 to 40 per thousand, whereas the death rate comes down to roughly 15 per thousand. Consequently population increases at an annual rate of about 2 per cent or more. In a country where economy has not grown adequately for a long time and a sizable section of the population has remained below the poverty line, this is really a grave situation. Economists call it population explosion.
In the third stage of demographic transition the birth rate declines significantly and thus the rate of population growth remains low. A country can hope to overcome the problem of population explosion if the process of industrialisation accompanied by urbanisation is fast and education becomes widespread. Only in this situation birth rate shows a tendency to fall.

Q. According to the author, how can a nation hope to defeat population explosion?

Read the passage given below and answer the questions based on it.

Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and ideology. In the name or modernization in the West, of socialism in the Eastern bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of peoples as societies. However the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation state tries to repress their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all its citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go so far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.

As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers and isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In a reaction to this trend towards globalisation individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.

There are two ways to look at the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked up. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing - proclaiming that they are different, rediscovering the roots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity - may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and to make their cultural compartments even more watertight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self-absorption and isolation and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards idea of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.

Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognize themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. This distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works 'by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the groups has remained unchanged and talk, for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same ways of action and thinking, the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, form some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with the others in the world and society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said, people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “who we are”, where we come from and where we are going.

Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be a potent source of violence and disruption. How can these two contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with a view to eliminating all forms of identification - which would be unrealistic since identity is a cognitive necessity - but simply to remind ourselves that each of us has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognize that culture is constantly being recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our own country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modem elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by a continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking on a self-perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron called “peace through law.” That would guarantee justice both to the state as a whole and its parts and respect the claims of both reason and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with the exercise of democracy.

Q. According to the author, happiness of individuals was expected to be guaranteed in the name of:

Read the passage given below and answer the questions based on it.

Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and ideology. In the name or modernization in the West, of socialism in the Eastern bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of peoples as societies. However the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation state tries to repress their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all its citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go so far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.

As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers and isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In a reaction to this trend towards globalisation individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.

There are two ways to look at the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked up. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing - proclaiming that they are different, rediscovering the roots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity - may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and to make their cultural compartments even more watertight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self-absorption and isolation and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards idea of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.

Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognize themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. This distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works 'by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the groups has remained unchanged and talk, for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same ways of action and thinking, the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, form some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with the others in the world and society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said, people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “who we are”, where we come from and where we are going.

Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be a potent source of violence and disruption. How can these two contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with a view to eliminating all forms of identification - which would be unrealistic since identity is a cognitive necessity - but simply to remind ourselves that each of us has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognize that culture is constantly being recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our own country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modem elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by a continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking on a self-perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron called “peace through law.” That would guarantee justice both to the state as a whole and its parts and respect the claims of both reason and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with the exercise of democracy.

Q. Demands for recognition of identities can be viewed:

Read the passage given below and answer the questions based on it.

Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and ideology. In the name or modernization in the West, of socialism in the Eastern bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of peoples as societies. However the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation state tries to repress their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all its citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go so far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.

As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers and isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In a reaction to this trend towards globalisation individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.

There are two ways to look at the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked up. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing - proclaiming that they are different, rediscovering the roots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity - may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and to make their cultural compartments even more watertight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self-absorption and isolation and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards idea of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.

Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognize themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. This distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works 'by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the groups has remained unchanged and talk, for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same ways of action and thinking, the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, form some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with the others in the world and society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said, people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “who we are”, where we come from and where we are going.

Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be a potent source of violence and disruption. How can these two contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with a view to eliminating all forms of identification - which would be unrealistic since identity is a cognitive necessity - but simply to remind ourselves that each of us has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognize that culture is constantly being recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our own country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modem elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by a continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking on a self-perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron called “peace through law.” That would guarantee justice both to the state as a whole and its parts and respect the claims of both reason and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with the exercise of democracy.

Q. Going by the author’s exposition of the nature of identity, which of the following statement is untrue?

Read the passage given below and answer the questions based on it.

Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and ideology. In the name or modernization in the West, of socialism in the Eastern bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of peoples as societies. However the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation state tries to repress their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all its citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go so far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.

As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers and isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In a reaction to this trend towards globalisation individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.

There are two ways to look at the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked up. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing - proclaiming that they are different, rediscovering the roots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity - may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and to make their cultural compartments even more watertight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self-absorption and isolation and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards idea of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.

Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognize themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. This distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works 'by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the groups has remained unchanged and talk, for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same ways of action and thinking, the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, form some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with the others in the world and society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said, people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “who we are”, where we come from and where we are going.

Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be a potent source of violence and disruption. How can these two contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with a view to eliminating all forms of identification - which would be unrealistic since identity is a cognitive necessity - but simply to remind ourselves that each of us has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognize that culture is constantly being recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our own country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modem elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by a continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking on a self-perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron called “peace through law.” That would guarantee justice both to the state as a whole and its parts and respect the claims of both reason and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with the exercise of democracy.

Q. According to the author, the nation-state

Read the passage given below and answer the questions based on it.

Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and ideology. In the name or modernization in the West, of socialism in the Eastern bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of peoples as societies. However the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation state tries to repress their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all its citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go so far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.

As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers and isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In a reaction to this trend towards globalisation individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.

There are two ways to look at the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked up. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing - proclaiming that they are different, rediscovering the roots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity - may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and to make their cultural compartments even more watertight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self-absorption and isolation and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards idea of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.

Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognize themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. This distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works 'by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the groups has remained unchanged and talk, for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same ways of action and thinking, the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, form some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with the others in the world and society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said, people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “who we are”, where we come from and where we are going.

Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be a potent source of violence and disruption. How can these two contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with a view to eliminating all forms of identification - which would be unrealistic since identity is a cognitive necessity - but simply to remind ourselves that each of us has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognize that culture is constantly being recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our own country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modem elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by a continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking on a self-perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron called “peace through law.” That would guarantee justice both to the state as a whole and its parts and respect the claims of both reason and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with the exercise of democracy.

Q. Which of the following views of the nation-state cannot be attributed to the author?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

I decided at 10 years of age that I was going to be a teacher, because I wanted superpowers. There! I've said it. It's true. When I was in primary school I could clearly see that some of my teachers had extraordinary powers. My classmates went about their day with joyful abandon. Not me. I was the quietly observant one, noticing things.
There was our English-language teacher in fifth grade who could magically transport us to different worlds every day, simply by telling us stories and reading to us from books we would otherwise never pick up. This was our secret, because fifth graders were considered too old to have stories read out to them.

Then there was the founder–principal of the school, a teacher as well, who knew everything about every child, knew not just their parents but even their grandparents. You couldn't escape her superpowered laser-like eyes that could see right into you—through flesh, bones and all. That was a scary superpower. Her hawk-eyed scrutiny often left us feeling like there was no escape.

But, our class teacher in fourth standard could see the invisible. I was one of those who remained invisible, being rather quiet and shy as a child. Yet my teacher would notice me, even when I was unnoticeable. The unspoken message in her superpowered eyes told me: "I see you, I know you, I understand you." She knew, without needing to be told, the days I felt sad and lost and needed that extra pat. Being a dreamer, I found school a bit trying at times. She clearly had a superpower if, after four decades, I can still vividly remember her lessons about the great masters of art, expanding our horizons and kindling, at least in me, a lifelong interest in the subject. She did this even though her area of specialization wasn't art; it was geography. I don't remember much of the geography now, but I do remember how she made me feel. The lessons went beyond the textbook. As I learnt from her, the role of a primary school educator is to teach children, not subjects.
I knew I wanted to be such a teacher, one of those all-seeing ones with superpowers that made children feel safe and valued.

What seems amazing to me is that all those extraordinary men and women went about their business, calmly creating daily magic in their ordinary classrooms. No one noticed, no one gave them medals for bravery or Nobel prizes for creativity, although they were being the most creative anyone could be, in shaping and moulding young human beings.

Q. Why did the author believe that by becoming a teacher the author would receive superpowers?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

I decided at 10 years of age that I was going to be a teacher, because I wanted superpowers. There! I've said it. It's true. When I was in primary school I could clearly see that some of my teachers had extraordinary powers. My classmates went about their day with joyful abandon. Not me. I was the quietly observant one, noticing things.
There was our English-language teacher in fifth grade who could magically transport us to different worlds every day, simply by telling us stories and reading to us from books we would otherwise never pick up. This was our secret, because fifth graders were considered too old to have stories read out to them.

Then there was the founder–principal of the school, a teacher as well, who knew everything about every child, knew not just their parents but even their grandparents. You couldn't escape her superpowered laser-like eyes that could see right into you—through flesh, bones and all. That was a scary superpower. Her hawk-eyed scrutiny often left us feeling like there was no escape.

But, our class teacher in fourth standard could see the invisible. I was one of those who remained invisible, being rather quiet and shy as a child. Yet my teacher would notice me, even when I was unnoticeable. The unspoken message in her superpowered eyes told me: "I see you, I know you, I understand you." She knew, without needing to be told, the days I felt sad and lost and needed that extra pat. Being a dreamer, I found school a bit trying at times. She clearly had a superpower if, after four decades, I can still vividly remember her lessons about the great masters of art, expanding our horizons and kindling, at least in me, a lifelong interest in the subject. She did this even though her area of specialization wasn't art; it was geography. I don't remember much of the geography now, but I do remember how she made me feel. The lessons went beyond the textbook. As I learnt from her, the role of a primary school educator is to teach children, not subjects.
I knew I wanted to be such a teacher, one of those all-seeing ones with superpowers that made children feel safe and valued.

What seems amazing to me is that all those extraordinary men and women went about their business, calmly creating daily magic in their ordinary classrooms. No one noticed, no one gave them medals for bravery or Nobel prizes for creativity, although they were being the most creative anyone could be, in shaping and moulding young human beings.

Q. What, according to the author, was scary about the founder-principal?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

I decided at 10 years of age that I was going to be a teacher, because I wanted superpowers. There! I've said it. It's true. When I was in primary school I could clearly see that some of my teachers had extraordinary powers. My classmates went about their day with joyful abandon. Not me. I was the quietly observant one, noticing things.
There was our English-language teacher in fifth grade who could magically transport us to different worlds every day, simply by telling us stories and reading to us from books we would otherwise never pick up. This was our secret, because fifth graders were considered too old to have stories read out to them.

Then there was the founder–principal of the school, a teacher as well, who knew everything about every child, knew not just their parents but even their grandparents. You couldn't escape her superpowered laser-like eyes that could see right into you—through flesh, bones and all. That was a scary superpower. Her hawk-eyed scrutiny often left us feeling like there was no escape.

But, our class teacher in fourth standard could see the invisible. I was one of those who remained invisible, being rather quiet and shy as a child. Yet my teacher would notice me, even when I was unnoticeable. The unspoken message in her superpowered eyes told me: "I see you, I know you, I understand you." She knew, without needing to be told, the days I felt sad and lost and needed that extra pat. Being a dreamer, I found school a bit trying at times. She clearly had a superpower if, after four decades, I can still vividly remember her lessons about the great masters of art, expanding our horizons and kindling, at least in me, a lifelong interest in the subject. She did this even though her area of specialization wasn't art; it was geography. I don't remember much of the geography now, but I do remember how she made me feel. The lessons went beyond the textbook. As I learnt from her, the role of a primary school educator is to teach children, not subjects.
I knew I wanted to be such a teacher, one of those all-seeing ones with superpowers that made children feel safe and valued.

What seems amazing to me is that all those extraordinary men and women went about their business, calmly creating daily magic in their ordinary classrooms. No one noticed, no one gave them medals for bravery or Nobel prizes for creativity, although they were being the most creative anyone could be, in shaping and moulding young human beings.

Q. What does the phrase 'expanding our horizons' as used in the passage mean?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

I decided at 10 years of age that I was going to be a teacher, because I wanted superpowers. There! I've said it. It's true. When I was in primary school I could clearly see that some of my teachers had extraordinary powers. My classmates went about their day with joyful abandon. Not me. I was the quietly observant one, noticing things.
There was our English-language teacher in fifth grade who could magically transport us to different worlds every day, simply by telling us stories and reading to us from books we would otherwise never pick up. This was our secret, because fifth graders were considered too old to have stories read out to them.

Then there was the founder–principal of the school, a teacher as well, who knew everything about every child, knew not just their parents but even their grandparents. You couldn't escape her superpowered laser-like eyes that could see right into you—through flesh, bones and all. That was a scary superpower. Her hawk-eyed scrutiny often left us feeling like there was no escape.

But, our class teacher in fourth standard could see the invisible. I was one of those who remained invisible, being rather quiet and shy as a child. Yet my teacher would notice me, even when I was unnoticeable. The unspoken message in her superpowered eyes told me: "I see you, I know you, I understand you." She knew, without needing to be told, the days I felt sad and lost and needed that extra pat. Being a dreamer, I found school a bit trying at times. She clearly had a superpower if, after four decades, I can still vividly remember her lessons about the great masters of art, expanding our horizons and kindling, at least in me, a lifelong interest in the subject. She did this even though her area of specialization wasn't art; it was geography. I don't remember much of the geography now, but I do remember how she made me feel. The lessons went beyond the textbook. As I learnt from her, the role of a primary school educator is to teach children, not subjects.
I knew I wanted to be such a teacher, one of those all-seeing ones with superpowers that made children feel safe and valued.

What seems amazing to me is that all those extraordinary men and women went about their business, calmly creating daily magic in their ordinary classrooms. No one noticed, no one gave them medals for bravery or Nobel prizes for creativity, although they were being the most creative anyone could be, in shaping and moulding young human beings.

Q. As mentioned in the text, how did the author feel when he was in the fourth grade?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

I decided at 10 years of age that I was going to be a teacher, because I wanted superpowers. There! I've said it. It's true. When I was in primary school I could clearly see that some of my teachers had extraordinary powers. My classmates went about their day with joyful abandon. Not me. I was the quietly observant one, noticing things.
There was our English-language teacher in fifth grade who could magically transport us to different worlds every day, simply by telling us stories and reading to us from books we would otherwise never pick up. This was our secret, because fifth graders were considered too old to have stories read out to them.

Then there was the founder–principal of the school, a teacher as well, who knew everything about every child, knew not just their parents but even their grandparents. You couldn't escape her superpowered laser-like eyes that could see right into you—through flesh, bones and all. That was a scary superpower. Her hawk-eyed scrutiny often left us feeling like there was no escape.

But, our class teacher in fourth standard could see the invisible. I was one of those who remained invisible, being rather quiet and shy as a child. Yet my teacher would notice me, even when I was unnoticeable. The unspoken message in her superpowered eyes told me: "I see you, I know you, I understand you." She knew, without needing to be told, the days I felt sad and lost and needed that extra pat. Being a dreamer, I found school a bit trying at times. She clearly had a superpower if, after four decades, I can still vividly remember her lessons about the great masters of art, expanding our horizons and kindling, at least in me, a lifelong interest in the subject. She did this even though her area of specialization wasn't art; it was geography. I don't remember much of the geography now, but I do remember how she made me feel. The lessons went beyond the textbook. As I learnt from her, the role of a primary school educator is to teach children, not subjects.
I knew I wanted to be such a teacher, one of those all-seeing ones with superpowers that made children feel safe and valued.

What seems amazing to me is that all those extraordinary men and women went about their business, calmly creating daily magic in their ordinary classrooms. No one noticed, no one gave them medals for bravery or Nobel prizes for creativity, although they were being the most creative anyone could be, in shaping and moulding young human beings.

Q. According to the passage, what does the author find amazing about the extraordinary teachers?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of-subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a ‘logistical detail’, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modem form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence - the location of enemy units and their movements -was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. According to the author, the greatest military surprises in American history have been in Asia because

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of-subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a ‘logistical detail’, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modem form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence - the location of enemy units and their movements -was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. Which of the following statements does not describe the ‘Asian’ way of war?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of-subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a ‘logistical detail’, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modem form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence - the location of enemy units and their movements -was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. The difference in the concepts of war of Clausewitz and Sun-tzu is best characterized by

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of-subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a ‘logistical detail’, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modem form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence - the location of enemy units and their movements -was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. Which of the following is not .one of Sun-tzu’s ideas?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of-subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a ‘logistical detail’, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modem form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence - the location of enemy units and their movements -was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. To the Americans, the approach of the Viet Cong seemed devious because

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of-subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a ‘logistical detail’, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modem form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence - the location of enemy units and their movements -was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. According to the author, the main reason for the U.S. losing the Vietnam war was

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed summoned his secretary, K. Balachandran, at around 11:15 p.m. on 25 June 1975. Ten minutes later, Balachandran met the pyjama-clad president in the private sitting room of his official residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The president handed his secretary a one-page letter from Indira Gandhi marked 'Top Secret'. Referring to the prime minister's discussion with the president earlier that day, the letter said she was in receipt of information that internal disturbances posed an imminent threat to India's internal security. It requested a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352 (1) if the president was satisfied on this score. She would have preferred to have first consulted the cabinet, but there was no time to lose. Therefore, she was invoking a departure from the Transaction of Business Rules in exercise of her powers under Rule 12 thereof. The president asked for his aide's opinion on the letter, which did not have the proposed proclamation attached. Balachandran said that such a proclamation was constitutionally impermissible on more than one ground. At this, the president said that he wanted to consult the Indian Constitution. Balachandran retreated to his office to locate a copy. Meanwhile, the deputy secretary in the president's secretariat showed up. The two officials launched into a discussion about the constitutionality of the prime minister's proposal before they returned to President Ahmed with a copy of the Constitution. Balachandran explained that the president's personal satisfaction that internal disturbances posed a threat to internal security was constitutionally irrelevant. What the Constitution required was the advice of the council of ministers. Balachandran withdrew when the president said he wanted to speak to the prime minister. When he re-entered the room 10 minutes later, President Ahmed informed him that R. K. Dhawan had come over with a draft Emergency proclamation, which he had signed. Then the president swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed.
This late-night concern for constitutional propriety is revealing. What we see unfolding in the hunt for a copy of the Constitution, the leafing through of its pages to make sure that the draft proclamation met the letter of the law, is the meticulous process of the paradoxical suspension of the law by law. The substance of the discussion concerns the legality of the procedures to follow in issuing the Emergency proclamation. The political will behind the act goes unmentioned. This is because Article 352 (1) of the Constitution itself had left the judgement of the necessity for the Emergency proclamation outside the law. The doctrine of necessity regards the judgement of crisis conditions as something that the law itself cannot handle; it is a lacuna in the juridical order that the executive is obligated to remedy.

Q. What reason for declaring Emergency does Indira Gandhi provide in her letter to President Ahmed marked 'Top Secret'?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed summoned his secretary, K. Balachandran, at around 11:15 p.m. on 25 June 1975. Ten minutes later, Balachandran met the pyjama-clad president in the private sitting room of his official residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The president handed his secretary a one-page letter from Indira Gandhi marked 'Top Secret'. Referring to the prime minister's discussion with the president earlier that day, the letter said she was in receipt of information that internal disturbances posed an imminent threat to India's internal security. It requested a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352 (1) if the president was satisfied on this score. She would have preferred to have first consulted the cabinet, but there was no time to lose. Therefore, she was invoking a departure from the Transaction of Business Rules in exercise of her powers under Rule 12 thereof. The president asked for his aide's opinion on the letter, which did not have the proposed proclamation attached. Balachandran said that such a proclamation was constitutionally impermissible on more than one ground. At this, the president said that he wanted to consult the Indian Constitution. Balachandran retreated to his office to locate a copy. Meanwhile, the deputy secretary in the president's secretariat showed up. The two officials launched into a discussion about the constitutionality of the prime minister's proposal before they returned to President Ahmed with a copy of the Constitution. Balachandran explained that the president's personal satisfaction that internal disturbances posed a threat to internal security was constitutionally irrelevant. What the Constitution required was the advice of the council of ministers. Balachandran withdrew when the president said he wanted to speak to the prime minister. When he re-entered the room 10 minutes later, President Ahmed informed him that R. K. Dhawan had come over with a draft Emergency proclamation, which he had signed. Then the president swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed.
This late-night concern for constitutional propriety is revealing. What we see unfolding in the hunt for a copy of the Constitution, the leafing through of its pages to make sure that the draft proclamation met the letter of the law, is the meticulous process of the paradoxical suspension of the law by law. The substance of the discussion concerns the legality of the procedures to follow in issuing the Emergency proclamation. The political will behind the act goes unmentioned. This is because Article 352 (1) of the Constitution itself had left the judgement of the necessity for the Emergency proclamation outside the law. The doctrine of necessity regards the judgement of crisis conditions as something that the law itself cannot handle; it is a lacuna in the juridical order that the executive is obligated to remedy.

Q. According to the passage, why did Balachandran advise the President that Gandhi's request for a proclamation of Emergency was impermissible?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed summoned his secretary, K. Balachandran, at around 11:15 p.m. on 25 June 1975. Ten minutes later, Balachandran met the pyjama-clad president in the private sitting room of his official residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The president handed his secretary a one-page letter from Indira Gandhi marked 'Top Secret'. Referring to the prime minister's discussion with the president earlier that day, the letter said she was in receipt of information that internal disturbances posed an imminent threat to India's internal security. It requested a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352 (1) if the president was satisfied on this score. She would have preferred to have first consulted the cabinet, but there was no time to lose. Therefore, she was invoking a departure from the Transaction of Business Rules in exercise of her powers under Rule 12 thereof. The president asked for his aide's opinion on the letter, which did not have the proposed proclamation attached. Balachandran said that such a proclamation was constitutionally impermissible on more than one ground. At this, the president said that he wanted to consult the Indian Constitution. Balachandran retreated to his office to locate a copy. Meanwhile, the deputy secretary in the president's secretariat showed up. The two officials launched into a discussion about the constitutionality of the prime minister's proposal before they returned to President Ahmed with a copy of the Constitution. Balachandran explained that the president's personal satisfaction that internal disturbances posed a threat to internal security was constitutionally irrelevant. What the Constitution required was the advice of the council of ministers. Balachandran withdrew when the president said he wanted to speak to the prime minister. When he re-entered the room 10 minutes later, President Ahmed informed him that R. K. Dhawan had come over with a draft Emergency proclamation, which he had signed. Then the president swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed.
This late-night concern for constitutional propriety is revealing. What we see unfolding in the hunt for a copy of the Constitution, the leafing through of its pages to make sure that the draft proclamation met the letter of the law, is the meticulous process of the paradoxical suspension of the law by law. The substance of the discussion concerns the legality of the procedures to follow in issuing the Emergency proclamation. The political will behind the act goes unmentioned. This is because Article 352 (1) of the Constitution itself had left the judgement of the necessity for the Emergency proclamation outside the law. The doctrine of necessity regards the judgement of crisis conditions as something that the law itself cannot handle; it is a lacuna in the juridical order that the executive is obligated to remedy.

Q. What does the word 'propriety' as used in the passage mean?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed summoned his secretary, K. Balachandran, at around 11:15 p.m. on 25 June 1975. Ten minutes later, Balachandran met the pyjama-clad president in the private sitting room of his official residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The president handed his secretary a one-page letter from Indira Gandhi marked 'Top Secret'. Referring to the prime minister's discussion with the president earlier that day, the letter said she was in receipt of information that internal disturbances posed an imminent threat to India's internal security. It requested a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352 (1) if the president was satisfied on this score. She would have preferred to have first consulted the cabinet, but there was no time to lose. Therefore, she was invoking a departure from the Transaction of Business Rules in exercise of her powers under Rule 12 thereof. The president asked for his aide's opinion on the letter, which did not have the proposed proclamation attached. Balachandran said that such a proclamation was constitutionally impermissible on more than one ground. At this, the president said that he wanted to consult the Indian Constitution. Balachandran retreated to his office to locate a copy. Meanwhile, the deputy secretary in the president's secretariat showed up. The two officials launched into a discussion about the constitutionality of the prime minister's proposal before they returned to President Ahmed with a copy of the Constitution. Balachandran explained that the president's personal satisfaction that internal disturbances posed a threat to internal security was constitutionally irrelevant. What the Constitution required was the advice of the council of ministers. Balachandran withdrew when the president said he wanted to speak to the prime minister. When he re-entered the room 10 minutes later, President Ahmed informed him that R. K. Dhawan had come over with a draft Emergency proclamation, which he had signed. Then the president swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed.
This late-night concern for constitutional propriety is revealing. What we see unfolding in the hunt for a copy of the Constitution, the leafing through of its pages to make sure that the draft proclamation met the letter of the law, is the meticulous process of the paradoxical suspension of the law by law. The substance of the discussion concerns the legality of the procedures to follow in issuing the Emergency proclamation. The political will behind the act goes unmentioned. This is because Article 352 (1) of the Constitution itself had left the judgement of the necessity for the Emergency proclamation outside the law. The doctrine of necessity regards the judgement of crisis conditions as something that the law itself cannot handle; it is a lacuna in the juridical order that the executive is obligated to remedy.

Q. Why does the author state that the late-night concern for constitutional propriety is revealing?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed summoned his secretary, K. Balachandran, at around 11:15 p.m. on 25 June 1975. Ten minutes later, Balachandran met the pyjama-clad president in the private sitting room of his official residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The president handed his secretary a one-page letter from Indira Gandhi marked 'Top Secret'. Referring to the prime minister's discussion with the president earlier that day, the letter said she was in receipt of information that internal disturbances posed an imminent threat to India's internal security. It requested a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352 (1) if the president was satisfied on this score. She would have preferred to have first consulted the cabinet, but there was no time to lose. Therefore, she was invoking a departure from the Transaction of Business Rules in exercise of her powers under Rule 12 thereof. The president asked for his aide's opinion on the letter, which did not have the proposed proclamation attached. Balachandran said that such a proclamation was constitutionally impermissible on more than one ground. At this, the president said that he wanted to consult the Indian Constitution. Balachandran retreated to his office to locate a copy. Meanwhile, the deputy secretary in the president's secretariat showed up. The two officials launched into a discussion about the constitutionality of the prime minister's proposal before they returned to President Ahmed with a copy of the Constitution. Balachandran explained that the president's personal satisfaction that internal disturbances posed a threat to internal security was constitutionally irrelevant. What the Constitution required was the advice of the council of ministers. Balachandran withdrew when the president said he wanted to speak to the prime minister. When he re-entered the room 10 minutes later, President Ahmed informed him that R. K. Dhawan had come over with a draft Emergency proclamation, which he had signed. Then the president swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed.
This late-night concern for constitutional propriety is revealing. What we see unfolding in the hunt for a copy of the Constitution, the leafing through of its pages to make sure that the draft proclamation met the letter of the law, is the meticulous process of the paradoxical suspension of the law by law. The substance of the discussion concerns the legality of the procedures to follow in issuing the Emergency proclamation. The political will behind the act goes unmentioned. This is because Article 352 (1) of the Constitution itself had left the judgement of the necessity for the Emergency proclamation outside the law. The doctrine of necessity regards the judgement of crisis conditions as something that the law itself cannot handle; it is a lacuna in the juridical order that the executive is obligated to remedy.

Q. What can be inferred from the passage about the request for the Emergency proclamation?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

English Ivy betrays its poor reputation as a nuisance by its unparalleled ability to provide shade. By seamlessly covering the exterior of a building, it works as a natural insulator, blocking the sun and decreasing air conditioning costs. This means big savings for both building tenants and homeowners alike. And it can happen quickly, too. Under the proper conditions, established English Ivy can grow to cover an area of roughly 500 square feet per year. Given that most homes have a roof measuring roughly 2000 square feet, ivy-friendly homeowners can rest assured that their roofs will be completely covered in about four years. When considering growth rates of newly planted ivy, just remember the old adage: First year, it sleeps. Second year, it creeps. Third year, it leaps! For English Ivy, this is especially true.

Now, detractors may take this opportunity to remind readers about how invasive English Ivy can be. For what ivy enthusiast hasn't been cautioned about its ability to burrow holes, fracture windows, and even deteriorate brick? But be warned. Oftentimes, this suggestion is taken to the comical extreme. Naysayers take a strange pleasure in spinning yarns about a particularly malevolent strand of ivy—one that slips in through the cracks on a hot summer night, silently strangling homeowners in their sleep. Admittedly, this can be a funny story to tell. But are we to believe such a tale? The intelligent gardener will quickly dismiss such rubbish for what it is.

Q. The primary purpose of the passage is to

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

English Ivy betrays its poor reputation as a nuisance by its unparalleled ability to provide shade. By seamlessly covering the exterior of a building, it works as a natural insulator, blocking the sun and decreasing air conditioning costs. This means big savings for both building tenants and homeowners alike. And it can happen quickly, too. Under the proper conditions, established English Ivy can grow to cover an area of roughly 500 square feet per year. Given that most homes have a roof measuring roughly 2000 square feet, ivy-friendly homeowners can rest assured that their roofs will be completely covered in about four years. When considering growth rates of newly planted ivy, just remember the old adage: First year, it sleeps. Second year, it creeps. Third year, it leaps! For English Ivy, this is especially true.

Now, detractors may take this opportunity to remind readers about how invasive English Ivy can be. For what ivy enthusiast hasn't been cautioned about its ability to burrow holes, fracture windows, and even deteriorate brick? But be warned. Oftentimes, this suggestion is taken to the comical extreme. Naysayers take a strange pleasure in spinning yarns about a particularly malevolent strand of ivy—one that slips in through the cracks on a hot summer night, silently strangling homeowners in their sleep. Admittedly, this can be a funny story to tell. But are we to believe such a tale? The intelligent gardener will quickly dismiss such rubbish for what it is.

Q. As used in paragraph 1, which is the best definition for betrays?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

English Ivy betrays its poor reputation as a nuisance by its unparalleled ability to provide shade. By seamlessly covering the exterior of a building, it works as a natural insulator, blocking the sun and decreasing air conditioning costs. This means big savings for both building tenants and homeowners alike. And it can happen quickly, too. Under the proper conditions, established English Ivy can grow to cover an area of roughly 500 square feet per year. Given that most homes have a roof measuring roughly 2000 square feet, ivy-friendly homeowners can rest assured that their roofs will be completely covered in about four years. When considering growth rates of newly planted ivy, just remember the old adage: First year, it sleeps. Second year, it creeps. Third year, it leaps! For English Ivy, this is especially true.

Now, detractors may take this opportunity to remind readers about how invasive English Ivy can be. For what ivy enthusiast hasn't been cautioned about its ability to burrow holes, fracture windows, and even deteriorate brick? But be warned. Oftentimes, this suggestion is taken to the comical extreme. Naysayers take a strange pleasure in spinning yarns about a particularly malevolent strand of ivy—one that slips in through the cracks on a hot summer night, silently strangling homeowners in their sleep. Admittedly, this can be a funny story to tell. But are we to believe such a tale? The intelligent gardener will quickly dismiss such rubbish for what it is.

Q. In paragraph 1, the author states, “Given that most homes have a roof measuring roughly 2000 square feet, ivy-friendly homeowners can rest assured that their roofs will be completely covered in about four years.” Which of the following logical mistakes does the author make in drawing this conclusion?
I. English Ivy will not cover the area of most roofs in 4 years if it only grows 500 square feet per year.
II. Most homes may not have the proper conditions necessary for English Ivy to grow at the specified rate.
III. Newly planted ivy does not grow as fast as established ivy.

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

English Ivy betrays its poor reputation as a nuisance by its unparalleled ability to provide shade. By seamlessly covering the exterior of a building, it works as a natural insulator, blocking the sun and decreasing air conditioning costs. This means big savings for both building tenants and homeowners alike. And it can happen quickly, too. Under the proper conditions, established English Ivy can grow to cover an area of roughly 500 square feet per year. Given that most homes have a roof measuring roughly 2000 square feet, ivy-friendly homeowners can rest assured that their roofs will be completely covered in about four years. When considering growth rates of newly planted ivy, just remember the old adage: First year, it sleeps. Second year, it creeps. Third year, it leaps! For English Ivy, this is especially true.

Now, detractors may take this opportunity to remind readers about how invasive English Ivy can be. For what ivy enthusiast hasn't been cautioned about its ability to burrow holes, fracture windows, and even deteriorate brick? But be warned. Oftentimes, this suggestion is taken to the comical extreme. Naysayers take a strange pleasure in spinning yarns about a particularly malevolent strand of ivy—one that slips in through the cracks on a hot summer night, silently strangling homeowners in their sleep. Admittedly, this can be a funny story to tell. But are we to believe such a tale? The intelligent gardener will quickly dismiss such rubbish for what it is.

Q. As used in paragraph 2, which is the best definition for deteriorate?