EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 12 of 120

Correct — C, (c) 'there has been shift towards growing more profitable crops'. This is the second item on the millet-project passage printed over item 11, and under the Directions the answer must come from that passage alone. The passage settles it in a single sentence: it reports that there had been a rapid decline in minor millet cultivation, and, joined to it by 'and', a shift in land use towards more profitable crops such as cassava (tapioca), pineapple, coffee and pepper. The decline and the shift are presented as one movement — land that grew minor millets began growing something that paid better. The author then explains why that shift happened, and the explanation is a chain: yields from millets were low, processing them was a time-consuming and laborious task carried out by women, very little was marketed, and only a tiny share of the grain was turned into value-added products. Those are the reasons behind the shift; the shift itself is the reason behind the decline, and the shift is what this item asks for, because the stem names the decline as the thing to be explained. Choosing the nearest link in the passage's own causal chain, rather than the most fundamental one, is what a 'because' item wants. Note the option as printed: the booklet sets it 'there has been shift towards growing more profitable crops', with no article before 'shift'. The card reproduces the booklet exactly and the missing article does not affect the sense.

• (a)the millet crop requires special manures to grow — Manures, fertilisers and soil inputs of any kind are never mentioned in the passage. What the author lists as the burdens of minor millets is quite different — low yields, laborious processing done by women, almost no marketing and very little value addition — and the interventions described later are seeds, agronomic practices, seed banks and milling machinery, not soil amendments. Under Directions restricting the answer to the content of the passage, an explanation the author never offers cannot be the answer, however reasonable it might sound as agronomy.
• (b)the land of Namakkal district is not suitable for growing millet — Contradicted by the passage as a whole. The Kolli Hills block of Namakkal district is presented as a place where minor millets were traditionally grown and where the project set out to conserve local millet varieties; and the passage closes by reporting that yields there have risen as a result of improved seeds, agronomic practices and intercropping. Land unsuited to a crop does not respond to better seed and better practice with higher yields. The option also mistakes a decision about profitability for a fact about soil: the passage's cultivators moved to other crops because those paid more, not because millets would not grow.
• (d)the land is declared as not climate-resilient for the production of millet — Introduces two things the passage never contains: an official declaration, and the vocabulary of climate resilience. No authority in the passage declares anything about this land; the only external body cited is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and it is cited for a national figure on the area under nutri-cereals, not for any finding about the Kolli Hills. The option is written to sound like current policy language, which is exactly why it is dangerous — it reads as the sort of thing that would be true, and the Directions ask only what the passage says.

A comprehension item that ends in 'because' is asking you to find a causal link the passage has already made, and the discipline it demands is to pick the link at the right distance from the effect. Passages of this kind usually contain a chain: a set of underlying conditions produces a decision, and the decision produces the outcome. Here the underlying conditions are low yields, laborious processing and the absence of marketing and value addition; the decision is the shift in land use to more profitable crops; the outcome is the decline in minor millet cultivation. An item asking why cultivation declined wants the decision, not the conditions behind it, and an item asking why the shift occurred would want the conditions. Reading for the author's own connective words is what makes this quick — 'the reasons for a shift in land use include', 'as a result of', a simple 'and' joining two clauses that describe one movement. The second discipline is negative: three of the four options in an item like this will typically be statements the passage does not make, and the test to apply is whether you could point to the line that supports the option, not whether the option sounds like sensible agriculture.

The comprehension set on this paper, items 11 to 15, is built on a development-project passage, and its items are pitched at accurate reading rather than at inference. That makes the distractors, not the stems, the place where the marks are lost. All three wrong options here are plausible propositions about millet farming in the abstract, and a candidate who has read about millets — a subject much discussed in 2023 — is more exposed to them than one who has not, because outside knowledge supplies exactly the sort of reasons the passage does not give. The Directions are the defence: they confine the answer to the content of the passage and the opinion of the author, so the only question worth asking of an option is which line supports it. Marking makes the habit worth building, since each item carries 2·5 marks and a third of that is deducted for a wrong answer, and a comprehension set answered from memory rather than from the page is the most efficient way to convert a readable passage into a negative score.

• The passage links the decline directly to the change in land use, reporting in one sentence that there had been a rapid decline in minor millet cultivation and a shift in land use towards more profitable crops such as cassava (tapioca), pineapple, coffee and pepper.
• The author gives the reasons for that shift separately and in order: low yields; processing that is a time-consuming and laborious task undertaken by women; very little of the grain marketed; and only a tiny share processed into value-added products. These explain the shift, which in turn explains the decline.
• For the national backdrop the passage cites the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which it says has pointed out that the area under nutri-cereals in India declined steeply from 41 million hectares in the 1980s to 24 million hectares in 2017–18.
• The project area is the Kolli Hills block of Namakkal district, described in the passage as a distinct geographic and agroecological region of the Eastern Ghats populated by income-poor Scheduled Tribe households; the same passage reports that yields there later rose with improved seeds, agronomic practices and intercropping.
• Option (c) is printed in the booklet as 'there has been shift towards growing more profitable crops', without an article before 'shift'. It is transcribed verbatim rather than corrected, in keeping with the rule that the stem and options are reproduced as the Commission printed them.

• Answering from what you know about the crop rather than from the passage. All three wrong options are reasonable-sounding agricultural propositions and none of them appears anywhere in the text.
• Accepting an option that policy language makes familiar. 'Declared as not climate-resilient' sounds official, and the passage contains neither a declaration nor any discussion of climate resilience.
• Choosing a cause from the wrong link in the chain. Low yields explain the shift in land use, and the shift explains the decline; an item that names the decline wants the link nearest to it.

APFC comprehension sets normally include at least one item whose stem trails off in 'because' or 'as', requiring the candidate to complete a causal statement from the passage. The examiner builds the distractors from the topic rather than from the text, so they read like general knowledge about the subject and can be eliminated only by looking for the supporting line. Expect one distractor to be flatly contradicted elsewhere in the passage, as the claim about unsuitable land is here, and expect the key to be a near-quotation of a clause the author has already written.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A passage states: 'Weaving households left the trade through the 1990s, and looms moved to powerloom clusters where output per day was four times higher. Handloom weavers earned little because buyers paid by the piece and the piece rates had not moved in a decade.' Handloom households left the trade because

  • (a)the government withdrew recognition from handloom cooperatives
  • (b)work moved to powerlooms, where output and therefore earnings were far higher
  • (c)the quality of handloom cloth had declined steadily
  • (d)buyers stopped purchasing handloom cloth altogether

  Answer(b) work moved to powerlooms, where output and therefore earnings were far higher — the passage joins the departure of weaving households to the movement of looms into powerloom clusters with four times the daily output, and explains the low handloom earnings by stagnant piece rates. Withdrawal of recognition, declining quality and a collapse in purchases are not statements the passage makes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In a comprehension passage, an item asks why an outcome occurred and the passage presents a chain in which conditions lead to a decision and the decision leads to the outcome. Which link should the answer name?

  • (a)The underlying conditions, since they are the ultimate cause
  • (b)The link the passage attaches directly to the outcome named in the stem
  • (c)Whichever link the candidate finds most convincing
  • (d)All the links together, since the passage presents them as one explanation

  Answer(b) The link the passage attaches directly to the outcome named in the stem — comprehension items reward matching the stem to the author's own connective, so an item about the outcome wants the immediate cause and an item about the decision wants the conditions behind it. The other approaches substitute the candidate's judgement or a summary of the whole passage for the specific link the stem asks about.