UPSC PRELIMS GS PAPER-2 2012

Direction: Read the following passages and answer the items that follow passage. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only Passage Education, without a doubt, has an important functional, instrumental and utilitarian dimension. This is revealed when one asks question 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 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 he 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 at expansion and conversion, not in the sense of converting or turning students into doctors or engineers, but the widening and turning out of the mind-the creation, sustenance and development of self-critical awareness independence of thought. It is an inner process of moral-intellectual development.
What you understand by the instrumentalist view of education?

Direction: Read the following passages and answer the items that follow passage. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only Passage Education, without a doubt, has an important functional, instrumental and utilitarian dimension. This is revealed when one asks question 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 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 he 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 at expansion and conversion, not in the sense of converting or turning students into doctors or engineers, but the widening and turning out of the mind-the creation, sustenance and development of self-critical awareness independence of thought. It is an inner process of moral-intellectual development.
According to the author, why should education be respected in itself?

Direction: Read the following passages and answer the items that follow passage. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only Passage Education, without a doubt, has an important functional, instrumental and utilitarian dimension. This is revealed when one asks question 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 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 he 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 at expansion and conversion, not in the sense of converting or turning students into doctors or engineers, but the widening and turning out of the mind-the creation, sustenance and development of self-critical awareness independence of thought. It is an inner process of moral-intellectual development.
Which of the following best completes the given line:'Education is a process which______________. '

Direction: Read the following passages and answer the items that follow passage. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only Chemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance. The evolution of pesticide resistance is simply 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 pesticide 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 few individual 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 early as 1946. There is exponential increase in the numbers of vertebrates 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 flies, as well as beetles, moths, wasps, fleas, Lice and mites) as well as well as in weeds and plant pathogens, Take the Alabama leaf-worm, 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, problem-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 of 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 $5 for every $1 spent. Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic diseases, are so frightening that the social and health cost of using pesticides have to be ignored. In general the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as lives 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?

Direction: Read the following passages and answer the items that follow passage. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only Chemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance. The evolution of pesticide resistance is simply 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 pesticide 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 few individual 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 early as 1946. There is exponential increase in the numbers of vertebrates 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 flies, as well as beetles, moths, wasps, fleas, Lice and mites) as well as well as in weeds and plant pathogens, Take the Alabama leaf-worm, 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, problem-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 of 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 $5 for every $1 spent. Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic diseases, are so frightening that the social and health cost of using pesticides have to be ignored. In general the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as lives 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,
With reference to the passage, consider the following statement. 1) Use of chemical pesticides has become imperative in all the poor countries of the world. 2) Chemical pesticides should not have a role in sustainable agriculture. 3) One pest can develop resistance to many pesticides. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Direction: Read the following passages and answer the items that follow passage. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only Chemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance. The evolution of pesticide resistance is simply 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 pesticide 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 few individual 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 early as 1946. There is exponential increase in the numbers of vertebrates 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 flies, as well as beetles, moths, wasps, fleas, Lice and mites) as well as well as in weeds and plant pathogens, Take the Alabama leaf-worm, 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, problem-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 of 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 $5 for every $1 spent. Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic diseases, are so frightening that the social and health cost of using pesticides have to be ignored. In general the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as lives 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,
Though the problems associated with the use of chemical pesticides is known for a long time, their widespread use has not waned. Why?