Reading Comprehension (51-60) | CSAT Preparation - UPSC PDF Download

Passage - 1

Though top leaders of the nationalist movement were the policy makers, the immediate day-to-day leadership was provided by the middle-class intellectuals. The rural origin of the industrial labour force together with rampant illiteracy and their simplistic docility attracted social workers, mainly drawn from the middle-class intellectuals. They had an obvious advantage. Not being employees, the leaders were free from fear of victimisation and immune towards the risks of leadership. Being generally well educated, they had a better perspective and sense of organisation. They could see the issue in a broader context. They belonged to a higher social plane than the workers and with good education and intellectual development comparable to the best among the employers they could meet the employers on their own plane and carry on negotiations on an equal footing. According to the Royal Commission on Labour in India, ‘the effect of this surge was enhanced by the political turmoil which added to the prevailing feelings of unrest and assured to provide willing leaders of a trade union movement’. But outside leadership had led to the politicisation of the movement.

Passage - 2

No superhuman brain is required to avoid the various foolish opinions that many of us hold. A few simple rules will keep you away not from all errors, but from silly errors. If the matter is one which can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple method of counting the teeth of Mrs. Aristotle. Thinking that you know, when in fact, you do not know, is a bad mistake to which many of us are prone.

Passage - 3

Global population was around 1.6 billion in 1990- today it is around 7.2 billion and growing. Recent estimates on population growth predict a glocal population of 9.6 billion in 2050 and 10. 9 billion in 2100. Unlike Europe and North America, where only three to four percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, around 47 percent of India’s population is dependent upon agriculture. Even if India continues to do well in the service sector and the manufacturing sector picks up, it is expected that around 2030 when India overtakes China as the world’s most populous country, nearly 42 percent of India's population will still be predominantly dependent on agriculture.

Passage - 4

Inequality is visible, even statistically measurable in many instances, but the economic power that drives it is invisible and not measurable. Like the force of gravity, power is the organising principle of inequality, be it of income, or wealth, gender, race, religion and region. Its effects are seen in a pervasive manner in all spheres, but the ways in which economic power pulls and tilts visible economic variables remain invisibly obscure.

Passage - 5

Read the following three passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Congo was named by Europeans. Congo’s dictator Mobutu later changed the name of the country and the river to Zaire with the objective of Africanising names of persons and spaces. However, the name Zaire was a Portuguese alteration of ‘Nzadi O Nzere’, a local African term meaning ‘River that swallows Rivers’. Zaire was a Portuguese name for the Congo river in the 16th or 17th centuries

Passage - 6

The world map of inequalities reveals that national average income levels are poor predictors of inequality — among high-income countries, some are very unequal (such as the US), while others are relatively equal (Sweden). "The same is true among low- and middle-income countries, with some exhibiting extreme inequality (Brazil and India), somewhat high levels (China) and moderate to relatively low levels (Malaysia, Uruguay)," stated the World Inequality Report. The report noted that income and wealth inequalities have been on the rise nearly everywhere since the 1980s, following a series of deregulation and liberalisation programmes which took different forms in different countries. "The rise has not been uniform: certain countries have experienced spectacular increases in inequality (including the US, Russia and India) while others (European countries and China) have experienced relatively smaller rises," it said.

The report pointed out that in 2021, after three decades of trade and financial globalisation, global inequalities remain extremely pronounced. "They are about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century," it said. Lucas Chancel, lead author of the report, said the COVID crisis has exacerbated inequalities between the very wealthy and the rest of the population. "Yet, in rich countries, government intervention prevented a massive rise in poverty, this was not the case in poor countries. This shows the importance of social states in the fight against poverty," he said.

Passage - 7

All actions to address climate change ultimately involve costs. Funding is vital in order for countries like India to design and implement adaptation and mitigation plans and projects. The problem is more severe for developing countries like India, which would be one of the hardest hit by climate change, given its need to finance development. Most countries do indeed treat climate change as a real threat and are striving to address it in a more comprehensive and integrated manner with the limited resources at their disposal.

Passage - 8

An award-winning study by a group of researchers suggests that men are as prone to buying on impulse as women but women feel more guilty about shopping.

Passage - 9

The concept of sustainability has often been distorted, co-opted, and even trivialised by being used without the ecological context that gives it its proper meaning. What is sustained in a sustainable community is not economic growth, competitive advantage, or any other measure used by economists, but the entire web of life on which our long-term survival depends. The first step toward a sustainable community, naturally, must be to understand how nature sustains life. This involves a new ecological understanding of life, or “ecoliteracy”, as well as a new kind of systemic thinking - thinking in terms of relationships, patterns and context.

Passage - 10

A majority of the TB infected in India are poor and lack sufficient nutrition, suitable housing and have little understanding of prevention. TB then devastates families, makes the poor poorer, particularly affects women and children, and leads to ostracization and loss of employment. The truth is that even if TB does not kill them, hunger and poverty will. Another truth is that deep-sealed stigma, lack of counselling, expensive treatment and lack of adequate support from providers and family, couples with torturous side-effects demotivate patients to continue treatment- with disastrous health consequences.