(Download) UPSC: CPF (AC) Exam Paper 2009 - "Essay, Precis Writing & Comprehension"

Central Police Force (Assistant Commandant) Exam, 2009

Essay, Precis Writing & Comprehension Paper 2009

Q1. Write an essay on any one of the four topics below, in about 600 words :

(a) Should uniformed services personnel be allowed to form associations?
(b) 'Not reason (or facts) but attitude resolves problems,
(c) Should a developing country spend money on space research?
(d) Should corporal punishment of children be banned in our schools and homes ?

Q2. Attempt a précis of the following passage in your own words, reducing it to about a third of its present length and assigning a short appropriate title. The précis must be written only in the special précis sheet provided.

"Remember that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others. In feudal times, when one of the chief evils the citizen had to fear was the anger of his superiors, it was well that during childhood, parental vengeance should be a chief means of government. But now that the good or evil which he experiences is mainly that which in the order of things results from his own conduct, he should from his first years begin to learn, experimentally, the good or evil consequences which naturally follow this or that conduct. Aim, therefore, to diminish the parental government, as fast as you can substitute for it in your child's mind that self-government arising from a foresight of results, During infancy, a considerable amount of absolutism is necessary.

A three-year-old urchin playing with an open razor, cannot be allowed to learn by this discipline of consequences, for the consequences may be too serious. But as intelligence increases, the number of peremptory interferences may be, and should be, diminished with a view to gradually ending them as maturity is approached. All transitions are dangerous; and the most dangerous is the transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. Hence the importance of pursuing the policy we advocate which, by cultivating a boy's faculty of self-restraint, by continually increasing the degree in which he is left to his self-restraint, and by so bringing him step-by-step to a state of unaided self-restraint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous change from externally-governed youth to internally-governed maturity. Let the history of your domestic rule typify, in little, the history of our political rule at the outset, autocratic control where control is really needful; by and by, an incipient constitutionalism in which the liberty of the subject gains some express recognition; successive extensions of this liberty of the subject gradually ending in parental abdication.'

Q3. Summarise in your own words the following passage in about a third of its present length. It must be written only in the special précis sheet provided.

"The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority. It is very difficult in this modern world to find a place for the individual. He can subsist at the top as a dictator in a totalitarian state or a plutocratic magnate in a country of large industrial enterprises, but in the realm of the mind it is becoming more and more difficult to preserve independence of the great organized forces that control the livelihoods of men and women. If the world is not to lose the benefit to be derived from its best minds, it will have to find some method of allowing them scope and liberty in spite of organization.

This involves a deliberate restraint on the part of those who have power, and a conscious realization that there are men to whom free scope must be afforded. Renaissance Popes could feel in this way towards Renaissance artists, but the powerful men of our day seem to have more difficulty in feeling respect for exceptional genius. The turbulence of our times is inimical to the flowering of culture. The man in the street is full of fear, and therefore unwilling to tolerate freedoms for which he sees no need. Perhaps we must wait for quieter times before the claims of civilization can again override the claims of party spirit. Meanwhile, it is important that some at least should continue to realize the limitations of what can be done by organization. Every system should allow loopholes and exceptions, for if it does not, it will in the end, crush all that is best in man.'

Q4. Study the following passage, and then answer the questions given below :

The advances of the scientific age have not been fortuitous. They are the logical outcome of fearless thought, practised now unfortunately by only a few and even by the few only in limited fields, Imagine, however, the possibilities inherent in the application to the social and political questions of the day of the same style of thought pursued with the same energy and cooperation that went to the production of the atom bomb. Almost without exception, the major problems facing governments and peoples today are technical ones — full production and employment, social security, housing, race-relations, food supplies, agricultural policy, health, war, distribution. The solution of these problems is impossible except by the methods of science.

This complex civilization, rendered so by science, needs the scientific method in every aspect of the citizen's life. Science is no longer neutral. When the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico, it exploded with it all further possibility for science to stand aside. It can no longer be socially irresponsible but the main body of citizens cannot wish to see it become all-powerful. Through no wish of its own, science has been forced to assume a commanding position.

The future of politics is scientific. Only philosophers can now safely guide the destinies of men. This is not a new view. Even Plato, in spite of his insistence on the importance of the expedient, confessed, "I was forced to the condition that only the true philosophy can enable us to discern in all cases what is good for communities and individuals”; and that accordingly the human race will see better days if either those who rightly and genuinely follow philosophy acquire political power, or else the class who have political control become real philosophers.

Science is the learning of the democracies. It has always been so in Greece as in our times, and recent history has shown most clearly that other forms of government can only exist provided that the scientific spirit is eliminated even when its technology is retained. Only in a community where the citizens have freedom of action can science flourish and only when science flourishes can the citizens be free. Democracy and science go hand in hand. It is not a coincidence that the principles of citizenship were taught in Greece when science flourished and have come into their own again in modern times.

But even in a democracy there will always be forces in opposition to the spread of knowledge and liberty of thoughts among the citizens. The danger of the rising oligarchy is ever present and science is not the learning of the oligarchies – even scientific ones. Rhetoric and tradition are the remnants of oligarchies. The possibility of a scientific oligarchy is now the most imminent of the changes we may have to face.

Science has given to the citizen through technology the power of self-destruction, but has placed alongside it the basic philosophy that has vitalised science itself. On what use he makes of these twin gifts depends the world's future. If, as he has done in the past, he grasps avidly the former and neglects the latter, then Norman Collins is right, "Modern man is obsolete, a self-made anachronism becoming more incongruous by the minute. He has exalted change in everything but himself."

After three centuries, science is now supreme and as a result the world stands at the cross-roads. But if we recognise the need for change, break the chains of habit and indulge in the single-minded pursuit of truth, the new scientific age shall be bright with promise for citizenship and for the citizen on every plane of communal life.

Questions : (Answer in your own words)

(i) How does scientific knowledge affect the political system?
(ii) How has science rendered modern civilization complex ?
(i) In what way has science been given a commanding position ?
(iv) When will democracy be changed into oligarchy ?
(v) How do politics and philosophy complement each other?
(vi) What can man do to strike a balance between inventions and social development ?
(vii) Can a philosopher guide the destiny of man?
(viii) Explain the portions underlined in the passage, keeping in view the context in which they appear.

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