EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 15 of 120

Correct — A, (a) 'sustainable farming practices are being followed'. This is the last of the five items on the millet-project passage printed over item 11, and the passage answers it in a single explicit sentence: yields have risen as a result of improved seeds, agronomic practices and intercropping. Those three causes are what the option gathers under one heading. The passage has already described where each came from — the project's first line of intervention was yield enhancement through participatory varietal trials for improved seeds, new agronomic practices and new technology, supported by community seed banks designed and constructed to conserve, restore, revive, strengthen and improve local seed systems. Seed conserved and improved within the locality, new agronomic practice, and intercropping — the growing of more than one crop together in the same field — are the practices the author has been presenting throughout as farming that works with the local system rather than replacing it, which is what the option calls sustainable farming practices. Notice what kind of answer this is. It is not a quotation from the passage; it is an umbrella term covering three causes the passage names separately. A candidate hunting for a verbatim match will not find one, and may reject the key for that reason. The test to apply is not whether the words appear but whether every element of the option is supported and no element is added, and here nothing has been added.

• (b)farmers are exporting millet — Fails twice over. Export is never mentioned in the passage; the marketing it describes is local and domestic — ready-to-cook products branded under the Kolli Hills Natural Foods label, with market links established for them. And even if exports had been mentioned, selling a crop further away does not raise the yield of the crop, so the option answers a question about production with a fact about sale. Where an option is both absent from the passage and causally unconnected to what the stem asks, it can be eliminated without rereading.
• (c)more labour is employed for farming — Runs against the passage's own account of labour. The author reports the opposite movement — that the shift from hand-pounding to milling reduced the drudgery for women — and nowhere gives additional labour as a reason for higher yields. The three causes are stated plainly and none of them is labour. The option is attractive because more effort producing more output is intuitive, and intuition is precisely what Directions confining the answer to the passage are designed to exclude.
• (d)easy bank loans are available now — Credit appears nowhere in the passage. The bodies the author names are the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, which ran the project, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, cited for a national figure, the self-help groups that operate the mills, the Kolli Hills Agrobiodiversity Conservers' Federation and the Krishi Vigyan Kendras to which the milling technology was marketed — no bank and no lending programme. The option is written in the register of rural development policy, which makes it sound like something the passage would say, and that is exactly what makes it a trap in a set whose Directions restrict the answer to the text.

This item is the easy half of a hard lesson. The easy half is that when a passage states a cause outright — 'as a result of', 'because', 'owing to' — the answer is that stated cause, and the search is over as soon as the clause is found. The hard half is recognising the stated cause when the option paraphrases it upwards. The passage names three specific things; the option names the category they belong to. That is a legitimate and very common form of correct answer in comprehension, and it has to be judged by two questions rather than by word matching. Does every part of the option have support in the passage? And does the option add anything the passage does not contain? Here the answer to the first is yes — locally conserved and improved seed, new agronomic practice and intercropping are all farming practices, and all are practices the passage presents as working with the local ecology — and the answer to the second is no, since the option introduces no new agent, no new mechanism and no new claim. Contrast the three wrong options, each of which introduces something absent: an export market, additional labour, a lending programme.

The comprehension set closes with an item whose answer is stated in the passage's penultimate paragraph, which makes it the most straightforward of the five for a candidate who has read to the end. Passages of this shape put their outcomes last, so an item asking why something improved will nearly always be answered in the final paragraphs, and a candidate short of time is better served by reading the whole passage once than by hunting through it separately for each item. The set as a whole illustrates what the APFC English section does with comprehension: no item requires inference beyond the text, every distractor is a statement that would be unremarkable in a newspaper article on the same subject, and the Directions carry the weight by insisting that the passage and the author's opinion are the only authority. Each item is worth 2·5 marks with a third deducted for a wrong response, so the five together are worth 12·5 marks that can be secured by reading discipline alone, with no outside knowledge required at any point.

• The passage states the cause explicitly: yields have risen as a result of improved seeds, agronomic practices and intercropping. The keyed option is the category these three belong to rather than a quotation of them, which is why word-matching fails on this item.
• The project's first intervention was yield enhancement through a combination of participatory varietal trials for improved seeds, new agronomic practices and new technology, with community seed banks designed and constructed to conserve, restore, revive, strengthen and improve local seed systems.
• Intercropping means growing two or more crops together in the same field during a season. The passage lists it as one of the three causes of the rise in yields, alongside the improved seed and the new agronomic practices.
• On labour the passage says the opposite of the distractor: the shift from hand-pounding to milling reduced the drudgery for women and encouraged millet consumption. Additional labour is never offered as a cause of anything in the text.
• The bodies named anywhere in the passage are the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, self-help groups, the Kolli Hills Agrobiodiversity Conservers' Federation and Krishi Vigyan Kendras. No bank, lender or export agency appears.

• Rejecting the key because its words do not appear in the passage. The answer here is an umbrella term for three causes the author lists separately, and that is a normal shape for a comprehension key.
• Supplying an intuitive cause the passage does not give. More labour producing more output is a natural assumption and the passage reports labour being reduced, not increased.
• Accepting an option because it sounds like development policy. Easy credit is the kind of thing such passages often mention, and this one never does — the register of an option is not evidence.

APFC comprehension sets close with an item that can be answered from the passage's final paragraphs, usually one asking why an outcome occurred, and the passage states the cause outright. The examiner's difficulty is placed in the gap between the passage's specific wording and the option's general wording, and in three distractors drawn from the standard vocabulary of the subject — export, credit, employment — none of which the author uses. Expect to confirm a key by checking that every element of it has support and that nothing has been added, rather than by matching phrases.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A passage states: 'Attendance in the block's primary schools rose after 2018. The rise followed the appointment of local teachers, a midday meal cooked on the premises, and a school calendar redrawn around the harvest.' Attendance rose because

  • (a)the school buildings were rebuilt in brick
  • (b)arrangements were adapted to the community's own circumstances
  • (c)the block was declared educationally backward
  • (d)private schools in the block closed

  Answer(b) arrangements were adapted to the community's own circumstances — local teachers, meals cooked on site and a calendar built around the harvest are three particulars, and the option names the category they share, adding nothing. Rebuilt buildings, an official declaration and the closure of private schools are all absent from the passage.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A comprehension option states a general category covering three specific causes that the passage lists. How should such an option be tested?

  • (a)Rejected, because its wording does not appear in the passage
  • (b)Accepted only if the passage uses the same general term somewhere
  • (c)Checked for whether every part of it is supported and nothing has been added
  • (d)Accepted, because a general statement can always be read into a specific one

  Answer(c) Checked for whether every part of it is supported and nothing has been added — generalisation is a normal form for a correct comprehension answer, so the test is coverage and absence of new content rather than word matching. Rejecting on wording loses legitimate keys, and accepting any generalisation admits options that smuggle in claims the passage never makes.