2021 Prelims Paper 2 UPSC Question Paper

Directions for the following 4 (four) items:
Read the following four passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Passage-1
Fig trees (genus Ficus) are considered sacred in India, East Asia and Africa and are common in agricultural and urban landscapes where other large trees are absent. In natural forests, fig trees provide food for wildlife when other resources are scarce and support a high density and diversity of frugivores (fruit-eating animals). If frugivorous birds and bats continue to visit fig trees located in sites with high human disturbance, sacred fig trees may promote frugivore abundance. Under favourable microclimate, plenty of seedlings of other tree species would grow around fig trees.

On the basis of the passage given above, the following assumptions have been made:
1. Fig trees can often be keystone species in natural forests.
2. Fig trees can grow where other large woody species cannot grow.
3. Sacred trees can have a role in biodiversity conservation.
4. Fig trees have a role in the seed dispersal of other tree species.
Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?

Passage-2
At the heart of agroecology is the idea that agroecosystems should mimic the biodiversity levels and functioning of natural ecosystems. Such agricultural mimics, like their natural models, can be productive, pest-resistant, nutrient conserving, and resilient to shocks and stresses. In ecosystems there is no "waste", nutrients are recycled indefinitely. Agroecology aims at closing nutrient loops, Le, returning all nutrients that come out of the soil back to the soil such as through application of farmyard manure. It also harnesses natural processes to control pests and build soil fertility Le.. through intercropping. Agroecological practices include integrating trees with Irvestock and crops.

Consider the following:
1. Cover rope.
2. Fertigation
3. Hydroponics
4. Mixed farming
5. Polyculture
6. Vertical farming
Which of the above farming practices can be compatible with agroecology, as implied by the passage?

Passage-3
Computers increasingly deal not just with abstract data like credit card details and databases, but also with the real world of physical objects and vulnerable human bodies. A modern car is a computer on wheels, an aeroplane is a computer on wings. The arrival of the "Internet of Things" will see computers baked into everything from road signs and MRI scanners to prosthetics and insulin pumps. There is little evidence that these gadgets will be any more trustworthy than their desktop counterparts. Hackers have already proved that they can take remote control of internet connected cars and pacemakers.

Which one of the following statements best reflects the most critical inference that can be made from the passage given above?

Passage-4
A social and physical environment riddled with poverty, inequities, unhygienic and insanitary conditions generates the risk of infectious diseases. Hygiene has different levels: personal, domestic and community hygiene. There is no doubt that personal cleanliness brings down the rate of infectious diseases. But the entry of the market into this domain has created a false sense of security that gets conditioned and reinforced by the onslaught of advertisements. Experience in Western Europe shows that along with personal hygiene, general improvements in environmental conditions and components like clean water, sanitation and food security have brought down infant/child death/infection rates considerably. The obsession with hand hygiene also brings in the persisting influence of the market on personal health, overriding or marginalising the negative impact on ecology and the emergence of resistant germs.

On the basis of the passage given above, the following assumptions have been made:
1. People who are obsessed with personal hygiene tend to ignore the community hygiene.
2. Emergence of multi-drug resistant germs can be prevented by personal cleanliness
3. Entry of the market in the domain of hygiene increases the risk of infectious diseases.
4. Scientific and micro-level interventions are not sufficient to bring down the burden of infectious diseases.
5. It is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against infectious diseases. Which of the above assumptions are valid?

A Statement followed by Conclusion-I and Conclusion-II is given below. You have to take the Statement to be true even if it seems to be at variance from the commonly known facts. Read all Conclusions and then decide which of the given Conclusion(s) logically follows/follow from the Statement, disregarding the commonly known facts.

Statement: Some cata are almirahs. Some shortest distance between her bank and her almirahs are chairs. All chairs are tables.
Conclusion-I: Certainly some almirahs are tables,
Conclusion-II: Some cate may not be chairs.
Which one of the following is correct?