UPSC CSAT : Reading comprehension home Exercise- 09, PASSAGE A

Monday 16 March 2015

Reading comprehension home Exercise- 09, PASSAGE A



The greens’ success has clear policy implications, especially on issue of nuclear power, ecological tax reform, and citizenship rights. But success also has implications for green parties’ themselves. Greens have always faced a unique ‘strategic conundrum’ arising from their radical alternative politics with participation in most green parties shed their radical cloth in an attempt to recapture votes, even at the expense of green arty unity and purity. Most were rewarded with electoral success well beyond what had been imaginable in the 1980 s. the price to pay has been tortured internal debates about strategy, and now questions about green party identity and purpose. 

Today the key questions facing green parties revolve around not whether to embrace power, but what to do with it. More specifically, green parties face three new challenges in the new millennium: first how to carve out a policy niche as established parties and governments become wiser to green demands, and as green concerns themselves appear more mainstream. Second, how to take green ideas beyond the confines of rich industrialized states into Eastern Europe and the developing world where green parties remain marginal and environmental problems acute. 

Third, how to ensure that the broader role of green parties – as consciousness raisers, agitators, conscience of parliament and politics- is not sacrificed on the altar of electoral success. Green parties have come a long way since their emergence and development in the 1970 s and 1980s. They have become established players able to shape party competition, government formation, and government policy. But this very ‘establishment’ carries risks for a party whose core values and identities depend mightily on their ability to challenge the conventional order, to agitate and to annoy. For most green parties, the greatest fear is not electoral decline so much as the prospect of becoming a party with parliamentary platform, ministerial voice, but nothing new to say.

1.       Which out of the following is closest in meaning to the first of three challenges mentioned in the paragraph?

A.      Niche of green parties is being eroded by mainstream parties.
B.      Green parties are finding it difficult to find new strategy.
C.      Green parties have become stronger over a period of time.
D.      Some green parties are becoming grey.

2.       Which of the following is the important point that the author highlights?
A.      Challenges before green parties to change their strategy from green activism to green governance
B.      How should green parties win confidence and support of governments?
C.      Transformation of green parties in recent decades,
D.      Green movement is not strong in developing countries.

3.       How best cam mainstream political parties, in India, keep green parties at bay?
A.      By imposing green tax
B.      By allow carbon trading
C.      By including green agenda in their governance
D.      By hiring Al Gore, the Nobel prize winner, as an ambassador.

Answer:

1.        A    The first challenge for the green parties is spelt out in lines 11-12 ‘how to carve out a policy niche as established parties and governments become wiser to green demands.’ Option A is closest in meaning to this.

2.       A      Option A is the right answer. It is backed by line 1 (the greens’ success has clear policy implications…) line 10 (… not whether to embrace power, but what to do with it) and the concluding lines.

3.       C     the passage says’.  Established parties and governments becomes wiser to green demands, ‘green concerns… appear more mainstream’ and  of green parties having ‘nothing new to say’ in view of this, option C is the best answer


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