2012 Prelims Paper 2 UPSC Question Paper

Directions for the following 15 (fifteen) items:
Read the following three passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only.
Passage - 1
Education, without a doubt, has an important functional, instrumental and utilitarian dimension. This is a revealed when one asks questions such as 'What is the purpose of education?'. The answers, too often, are 'to acquire qualifications for employment/upward mobility', wider/higher (in terms of income opportunities', and to meet the needs for trained human power in diverse fields for national development'. But in its deepest sense education is not instrumentalist. That is to say, it is not to be justified outside of itself because it leads to the acquisition of formal skills or of certain desired psychological - social attributes. It must be respected in itself. Education is thus not a commodity to be acquired or possessed and then used, but a process of inestimable importance to individuals and society, although it can and does have enormous use-value. Education then, is a process of expansion and conversion, not in the sense of converting or turning out of the mind - the creation, sustenance and development of self-critical awareness and independence of thought. It is an inner process of moral - intellectual development.

What do you understand by the 'instrumentalist' view of education?

Passage - 2
Chemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance. The evolution of pesticide resistance is simple natural selection in action. It is almost certain to occur when vast numbers of a genetically variable population are killed. One or a few individuals may be unusually resistant (perhaps because they possess an enzyme that can detoxify the pesticide). If the patricide is applied repeatedly, each successive generation of the pest will contain a larger proportion of resistant individuals. Pests typically have a high intrinsic rate of reproduction, and so a few individuals in one generation may give rise to hundreds or thousands in the next, and resistance spreads very rapidly in a population.

This problem was often ignored in the past, even though the first case of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) resistance was reported as early as 1946. There is exponential increase in the numbers of invertebrates that have evolved resistance and in the number of pesticides against which resistance has evolved. Resistance has been recorded in every family of arthropod pests (including dipterans such as mosquitoes and house files, as well as beetles, months, wasps, fleas, lance and mites) as well as in weeds and plant pathogens. Take the Alabama leafworm, a moth pest of cotton, as an Example. It has developed resistance in one or more regions of the world to aldrin, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, lindane and toxaphene.

If chemical pesticides brought nothing but problems, ______ if their use was intrinsically and acutely unsustainable _____ then they would already have fallen out of widespread use. This has not happened. Instead, their rate of production has increased rapidly. The ratio of cost to benefit for the individual agricultural producer has remained in favour of pesticide use. In the USA, insecticides have been estimated to benefit the agricultural products to the tune of around $1 spent.

Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic disease, are so frightening that the social and health costs of using pesticides have to be ignored. In general the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as 'live saved', 'economic efficiency of food production', and total food produced. In these very fundamental senses, their use may be described as sustainable. In practice, sustainability depends on continually developing new pesticides that keep at least one step ahead of the pests___pesticides that are less persistent, biodegradable and more accurately targeted at the pests. 

''The evolution of pesticide resistance is natural selection in action." What does it actually imply?

with reference to the passage, consider the following statements:
1. Use of chemical pesticides has become imperative in all the poor countries of the world.
2. Chemical pesticides should not have any role in sustainable agriculture.
3. One pest can develop resistance to many pesticides.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

According to the passage, How do pesticides act as agents for the selection of resistant individuals in any pest population?
1. It is possible that is a post population the individuals will behave differently due to their genetic makeup.
2. pests do possess the ability to detoxify the pesticides.
3. Evolution of pesticide resistance is equally distributed in pest population.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

According to the passage, Why is the use of chemical pesticides generally justified by giving the examples of poor and developing countries?
1. Developed countries can afford to do away 'with use of pesticides by adapting to organic farming, but it is imperative for poor and developing countries to use chemical pesticides.
2. In poor and developing countries, the pesticide address the problem of epidemic diseases of crops and eases the food problem.
3. The social and health costs of pesticide use are generally ignored in poor and developing countries.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Passage - 3
Today's developing economics use much less energy per capita than developed countries such as the United States did at similar incomes, showing the potential for lower-carbon growth. Adaptation and mitigation need to be integrated into a climate-smart development strategy that increases resilience, reduces the threat of further global warming, and improves development outcomes. Adaptation and mitigation measures can advance development, and prosperity can raise incomes and foster better institutions. A healthier population living in better-built houses and with access to bank loans and social security is better equipped to deal with a changing climate and its consequences. Advancing robust, resilient development policies that promote adaptation is needed today because changes in the climate, already begun, will increase even in the short therm.

The spread of economic prosperity has always been inter wined with adaptation to changing ecological conditions. But as growth has altered the environment and as environmental change has accelerated, sustaining growth and adaptability demands greater new adaptive technologies and practices, and diffuse them widely. As economic historians have explained, much of humankind's creative potential has been directed at adapting to the changing world. But adaptation cannot cope with all the impacts related to climate change, especially as larger changes unfold in the long term.

Countries cannot grow out of harm's way fast enough to match the changing climate. And some growth strategies, whether driven by the government or the market, can also add to vulnerability __particularly if they overexploit natural resources Under the Soviet development plan, irrigated cotton cultivation expanded in water-stressed Central Asia and led to the near disappearance of the Aral Sea, threatening the livelihoods of fishermen, borders and farmers. And clearing mangroves ___ the natural coastal buffers against storm surges ___ to make way for intensive farming or housing development, increases the physical vulnerability of coastal settlements, whether in Guinea or in Louisiana.

Which of the following conditions of growth can add to vulnerability?
1. When the growth occurs due to excessive exploitation of mineral resources and forests.
2. When the growth brings about a change in humankind's creative potential.
3. When the growth is envisaged only for providing houses and social security to the people.
4. When the growth occurs due to emphasis on farming only.
Select the correct answer using the codes given below: