Old Questions - 2073/12/30 - Extra Paper I - English Language - Section Officer - Gazetted Third Class

Paper: Extra Paper I

Subject: English Language

Time: 3 hours                                                  Full Marks: 100

Answer the following questions in separate answer sheets for each section.

Section [A]

1.       Write an essay in about 800 to 1000 words on any one of the following topics. The essay should be original and creative.         20

a. The impact of Internet on our youths. Discuss both its positive and negative aspects.

b. The popularity of mobile phone in our society. Discuss its use in the various strate of the society. Is it a boon or a curse?

c.  Nepal is rich in water resources. Discuss briefly how they can be best utilized for our benefit.

Section [B]

2.  Translate the following text into Nepali without losing the sense and spirit of the original. 15

The rise of totalitarian states in the twentieth century introduced new and disturbing problems into international relations. These states were ruthless dictatorships; they presented a fundamental challenge to human freedom everywhere by their subordination of the individual to the collective will-by their worldwide propaganda to disguise or hide aggressive policies, and by their contemptuous rejection of the traditions of the supposed by civilized world. They utilized modern techniques of military, political, and psychological power to expand their dominions, to gain control of other states, and to subvert other regimes. They invoked strange doctrines of racial superiority, mysticism, materialism and militarism in furtherance of their ends. They used diplomacy as an instrument of national policy, but in doing so they degraded its language and practice. Diplomats became agents of conquest, double dealing and espionage, whose business was not to work for peaceful international relations but to provoke dissension rather than understanding—to make the leaders and peoples of other nations weak and blind and divided in the face of the growing totalitarian menace.

Diplomatic representatives of totalitarian states used most of the established rules of procedure, but they conformed to the generally accepted standards of international conduct only when this is suited to the schemes of their masters. In fact, modern dictators openly boasted that treaties and other international obligations, whether bilateral or multilateral in nature would be broken at will.

3.  Translate the following text into English without losing the sense and spirit of the original. 15

नेपालबाट बार्षिक करिब एक अर्बको अदुवा भारत जान्छ । त्यसमध्ये चीनबाट आएको र नेपालमै उत्पादन भएको हिस्साको यकिन तथ्याङ्क कसैसँग उपलब्ध छैन । एउटा देशबाट खरिद गर्ने, मेड इन नेपालको ट्याग लगाउने र अर्को देश पठाउने नेपाली व्यवसायीको पुरानै धन्दा हो । चीन-नेपाल-भारत र भारत-नेपाल-चीन आउजाउ गराइन्छ त्यस्तासामान ।

नेपालमा उत्पादित सामानसंग मिसाएर निकासी गरिन्छ । उही देशको सामान नेपाल ल्याएर नेपाली ट्यागमा उतै पठाउने प्रविधि पनि छाडेका छैनन् व्यवसायीले । त्यसको एक उदाहरण हो, एक समयमा नेपालबाट भारतमा राम्रो परिमाणमा निर्यात भएको वनस्पति घ्यू । नेपाली वनस्पति घ्यू उद्योगले भारतबाट आयात गरेको घ्यूमा मेड इन नेपालको लेबल लगाउथे । नेपालमा प्याकिङ्ग र लेबल लाग्न थालेको थाहा पाएपछि भारतले सन् २००२ मा कोटा टोक्यो । उक्त सुविधा समेत दुरुपयोग भएको थाहा पाइएपछि कोटा नै हटायो भारतले । परिणाम नेपाली उद्योग धमाधम बन्द भए । नेपाली अलैंचीको प्रमुख बजार भारत हो, जसको बार्षिक निर्यात चार अर्ब एकसठ्ठी करोड रुपैयाँ बराबरको छ । गुणस्तरमाथि प्रश्न उठाउँदै यस वर्ष भारतले मूल्य आधा घटाएको छ । गत बर्ष एक लाख बीस हजार प्रतिमनमा बिकेको अलैंची यस बर्ष पचास हजारमा झरेको छ । भारत पठाउने प्रवृत्ति भने थामिएको छैन ।

बंगलादेशमा हुने मुसुरोको निर्यात पनि पछिल्ला बर्षमा घट्दै गएको छ । आ.व. २०६८/०६९ मा दुई अर्ब ६८ करोडको मुसुरो बंगलादेश गएको थियो । आ.व. २०७२/०७३ मा दलहन निर्यात एक अर्ब २९ करोडमा झरेको छ । भारतमा उत्पादित मुसुरो नेपाली ट्यागमा बंगलादेश जान थाल्यो । भारतले निर्यातमा कडाइ थालेपछि बंगलादेश निर्यात घट्नु स्वाभाविकै हो ।

 Section [C]

4.  Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below.

Of religion I will not speak. Admittedly in its highest forms it contains the purest and finest archetypes of human excellences, though it can be 'taught' (as it was to me at school) with almost no reference to these aspects of it. Its surprising neglect in much of education shows how little we are concerned to hold up to our pupils the noblest examples of living.

Of the other two, history and literature, the former is perhaps the less illuminating. It is not so personal as literature. Mainly it is the record of man as a social being, making societies which grow ever more complicated. It is the record of the fortunes of these societies, these success and failures, the storms which shattered them or which they rode out, the wisdom and folly, the virtues and vices of the officers and the crews of many ships of the state. But it becomes more personal in its biographical aspects, and there we may find light on human nature and its excellence.

If we are to find it, mere passive reading of a biography is not enough. We must go to it with questions, taking some famous man and asking what he owes to his heredity, to his environment and to the circumstances of this time, and to his education in the narrow sense of the world. (To the last I am afraid it will be found that in most cases the date is small). Note what are the decisive moments in his life, what opportunities he seized or missed, his difficulties, what he did and what he failed to do, his contribution to his age and his importance at the time – and afterwards, his qualities and defects, whether he had the long sight to view problems sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of all time and all existence, or only the short sight which suffices to deal with the immediate needs of the hour, whether he is significant for all ages or merely for his own. Then, in order that greatness may not be confused with goodness, ask whether or not, in Plato's words, he arrayed his soul in the jewels proper to its nature, justice and temperance and courage and truth.

If, however, we wish to see man, as I put it, full face, it is to literature that we must turn. There we hear him talking aloud to the world, but really talking to himself, putting on paper the feelings that come to him, so that in literature is recorded every thought, every vision, every fancy, every emotion, that has ever passed through the human mind. What a record! Is there any better way of learning what men are, so far as it can be learned from books and not from meeting human beings, and, however good our opportunities of meeting them, a lifetime of human contacts could not give us as wide an experience of human nature as literature can give.

Of course all literature does not give us a portrait of human excellence, it shows us human nature but not necessarily, or always, human nature at its best. And just as in history one must distinguish between greatness and goodness, and nto be dazzled by theh genius of a Napolean or a Bismarck, a Hitler or a Lenin, into ignoring the evil which they did and which lives after them; so in literature and art one must avoid a similar mistake and not allow the genius of a writer to blind us to what is unworthy or inadequate in his vision of life.

Questions: 5x3=15

a)      How can one attain human excellence?

b)      What does history tell you and how is it different from literature?

c)       What kinds of questions should one ask while reading a biography?

d)      What, according to the speaker, is recorded in literature? What does literature teach one?

e)      What are Napolean, Hitler and Lenin known for?

5.       Summarize the following passage into one-third of its total length.               15

Amartya Sen rejects 'the presumption that we must have a single—or at least a principal and dominant—identity'. Of Sen's own multiple identities, at least four are on display. First, there is cosmopolitanism, the product of an intellectual culture that, while deeply rooted in its language and region, has yet had the longest and most sustained exposure to the winds—not all noxious-blowing in from the West. Second, there is liberalism, his consciousness shaped by the transition from colonialism to nationhood, the first upholder of the freedom and integrity of an independent country, yet one who refuses to reduce the nation or nationhood to a single cultural or religious essence. Third, there is the left-leaning democrat, who deplores inequalities of all kinds—but of class and gender especially—yet believes that in shaping a more just world 'what is really needed is a more vigorous practice of democracY, rather than the absence of it.'

These four identities run right through Sen's work, shaping its concerns, driving its arguments, directing its quotes and illustrative examples. It is a work of a man of wide interests, with a searching, sharp intellect and an endlessly curious mind. While fairly heavily referenced for a book of essays, the narrative throughout is urbane, even-tempered, reasonable. The few personal anecdotes are well judged. The characterizations of thinkers can be telling (on Savarkar: 'A Hindu chauvinist leader of remarkable energy'; on Samuel Huntington:'An intellectual simplifier'). So, can the characterizations of thought processes (on postcolonial conspiracy theories: 'An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great more cunning than wise'; on the paranoid anti-globalizers: 'Some of the fears of globalization make it sound like an animal-analogous to the big shark in Jaws—the gobbles up unsuspecting innocents in a dark and mysterious way').

Among the charms of Sen's book is it capacious internationalism. Other intellectuals focus somewhat obsessively on our encounters with the West. Sen is mindful of what has come here from that part of the world, but he spends even more time on the exchanges (cultural or economic) down the millennia between the subcontinent on the one hand and China, Central Asia and the Arab world on the other.

The book can be read at two levels. First, as an elegant summary of what one deeply intellectual scholar has learnt about our history in sixty-plus years of living in and thinking about the land. Second, as a charter, distilling the lessons that one deeply concerned citizen thinks this history holds for life and politics in the present. The title of the book invites argument, as do some of the arguments themselves and most of all—the methods by which these arguments are presented.

Section [D]

6.       Answer the following questions:                                                         2x10=20

a)      Draft 'a congratulatory message' to President Donald Trump on the occasion of the assumption of the high office of the President of the United States of America on behalf of his Nepali counterpart.

b)      Draft 'a Press Statement' to be issued at the end of the visit of the President of India to Nepal.

<The End>