CAT 2023 Slot 3 VARC Question Paper with Solutions: PDF Download

DIRECTIONS for the question: The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The biggest challenge [The Nutmeg's Curse by Ghosh] throws down is to the prevailing understanding of when the climate crisis started. Most of us have accepted . . . that it started with the widespread use of coal at the beginning of the Industrial Age in the 18th century and worsened with the mass adoption of oil and natural gas in the 20th . Ghosh takes this history at least three centuries back, to the start of European colonialism in the 15 th century. He [starts] the book with a 1621 massacre by Dutch invaders determined to impose a monopoly on nutmeg cultivation and trade in the Banda islands in today's Indonesia. Not only do the Dutch systematically depopulate the islands through genocide, they also try their best to bring nutmeg cultivation into plantation mode. These are the two points to which Ghosh returns through examples from around the world. One, how European colonialists decimated not only indigenous populations but also indigenous understanding of the relationship between humans and Earth. Two, how this was an invasion not only of humans but of the Earth itself, and how this continues to the present day by looking at nature as a 'resource' to exploit. . . .

We know we are facing more frequent and more severe heatwaves, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires due to climate change. We know our expansion through deforestation, dam building, canal cutting - in short, terraforming, the word Ghosh uses - has brought us repeated disasters . . . Are these the responses of an angry Gaia who has finally had enough? By using the word 'curse' in the title, the author makes it clear that he thinks so. I use the pronoun 'who' knowingly, because Ghosh has quoted many non-European sources to enquire into the relationship between humans and the world around them so that he can question the prevalent way of looking at Earth as an inert object to be exploited to the maximum.

 As Ghosh's text, notes and bibliography show once more, none of this is new. There have always been challenges to the way European colonialists looked at other civilisations and at Earth. It is just that the invaders and their myriad backers in the fields of economics, politics, anthropology, philosophy, literature, technology, physics, chemistry, biology have dominated global intellectual discourse. . . .

There are other points of view that we can hear today if we listen hard enough. Those observing global climate negotiations know about the Latin American way of looking at Earth as Pachamama (Earth Mother). They also know how such a framing is just provided lip service and is ignored in the substantive portions of the negotiations. In The Nutmeg's Curse, Ghosh explains why. He shows the extent of the vested interest in the oil economy - not only for oil-exporting countries, but also for a superpower like the US that controls oil drilling, oil prices and oil movement around the world. Many of us know power utilities are sabotaging decentralised solar power generation today because it hits their revenues and control. And how the other points of view are so often drowned out.

Q.1) On the basis of information in the passage, which one of the following is NOT a reason for the failure of policies seeking to address climate change? 

a. The greed of organisations benefiting from non-renewable energy resources. 

b. The marginalised status of non-European ways of looking at nature and the environment.

c. The decentralised characteristic of renewable energy resources like solar power.

d. The global dominance of oil economies and international politics built around it. 

Correct Answer: c

Q.2) Which one of the following best explains the primary purpose of the discussion of the colonisation of the Banda Islands in The Nutmeg's Curse?

a. To illustrate how systemic violence against the colonised constituted the cornerstone of colonialism.

b. To illustrate the first instance in history when the processes responsible for climate change were initiated.

c. To illustrate the role played by the cultivation of certain crops in the plantation mode in contributing to climate change.

d. To illustrate how colonialism represented and perpetuated the mindset that has led to climate change. 

Correct Answer: d

Q.3) All of the following can be inferred from the reviewer's discussion of The Nutmeg's Curse, EXCEPT:

a. academic discourses have always served the function of raising awareness about environmental preservation.

b. environmental preservation policy makers can learn a lot from non-European and/or precolonial societies.

c. the contemporary dominant perception of nature and the environment was put in place by processes of colonialism.

d. the history of climate change is deeply intertwined with the history of colonialism. 

Correct Answer: a

Q.4) Which one of the following, if true, would make the reviewer's choice of the pronoun "who" for Gaia inappropriate?

a. Modern western science discovers new evidence for the Earth being an inanimate object.

b. The Nutmeg's Curse has a different title: "The Nutmeg's Revenge".

c. Non-European societies have perceived the Earth as a non-living source of all resources.

d. There is a direct cause-effect relationship between human activities and global climate change.

Correct Answer: c

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