GENERAL ENGLISH – 2003 1 to 3

                    Time Allowed: Three Hours     maximum Marks: 300

Candidates should attempt ALL questions

Note: Your identity must not be disclosed in any of your answer in any way.

1.       Write an essay in about 800 to 1000 words on any one of the following topics:

(a)    The Prospects of Genetic Engineering

(b)   Empowerment of Women in India

(c)    Man never is but Always to Be Blest

(d)   The working of the Indian Constitution

(e)   Increasing Politicization of Civil Service in India.

2.       Write a report on the menace of stray cattle on the streets in our cities.

OR

Write a letter (signing yourself as ‘X’) to the Minister for information and Broadcasting protesting against ever-increasing Science of sex and violence in films and TV serials.

3.       Attempt a précis of the following passage in your own words, using no less than 215 and no more than 235 words. The exact number of words used must be mentioned. If the précis is not written on the special précis sheet, it shall be marked down.

If democracy is to preserve the representative quality in the principle of majority-quantity, it follows that it must not only permit, but must encourage diversity of opinion and individuality. Unanimity of opinion, even if it possessed any merit in itself, is manifestly impossible among any assembly of sentient human beings. A State often has to act unanimously, but the democratic state does so not on the basis that everybody is in perfect accord, but that everybody has agreed to differ, and differing to act in the interests of the whole .All totalitarian States, on the other hand, proceed on the assumption either that everybody thinks unanimously, or that if anybody differs, he is automatically wrong and shall not be suffered to express his error in word or deed. The one assumption is palpably false and the other, to the democratic mind, demonstrably pernicious. Either may succeed for a time but to believe that it can succeed for ever to abandon all faith in human ignite and destiny.

Another corollary of the majority- Principle, Properly Interpreted, is that those who have agreed to differ shall be entitled to respect and consideration from those whose opinion has prevailed. We call this the doctrine of the ‘rights of minorities’ The term ‘rights’ is here to be taken cautiously. The minority has no right to refuse action or duty which the majority has clearly willed. To admit this would be to negate the whole agreement to differ. The minority is entitled to maintain its dissent and to enjoy such exceptions and concessions as the majority can permit it without endangering the general policy which has been adopted. Above all, the minority can continue to express its disagreement and advocate its views, in the hope of converting itself from a minority into a majority; for it is of the essence of democracy that the minorities of today are the majorities of tomorrow, just as it is a common place of history that the revolutions are nearly always the work of active minorities. What limits democracy can legitimately set to nonconformity of opinion, as well as of conduct, will be considered presently.

Throughout this discussion I am conscious that it is all easy to speak of majorities and minorities; but are we quite clear what is a majority or a minority in democracy? Each has its dangers and its contractions. If the majority opinion is to prevail, its justification must be that it is real opinion ‘freely willed,’ after due consideration of all the diversities of opinion. But majority opinion has a dangerous tendency towards auto-suggestion. It can inflate itself with its own breath and flow up its brain into a bladder of wind.

With all the compliments that we may pay to the Common man, we must not overrate his power of thinking for himself. That is a task which none of us finds easy- indeed; in many matters it is impossible. If we have not personal knowledge or experience – and in an enormous variety of matters we cannot possible have them- we must accept them from others; we are ‘a part of all that we have me; ‘but also a part of all that we have heard and learned and read, and only a very small fraction of our equipment is really ‘first-hand’. If a thousand people are saying the same thing at the same time, we cannot fail to be impressed by it, it slips imperceptibly into our consciousness and it is only a rare individual who will question ‘what I tell you three time times’ and think it all out for him from the beginning. Even if he does, he is greatly reinforced in his own opinion by finding it supported and applauded. To think with the majority is the line of least resistance and to dissent from it requires not only independence of mind, but courage above the average. Our Common Man tends very easily to become the Man of the crowd, to whom there is no grater bug-bear than to be heterodox.