Commprehension Exercise for CAT, CS, and GMAT–2- –

Comprehension exercise 2 …

 The Tsunami engulfs the Andaman and Nicober islands
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Despite the hundreds of kilometres of water that separate the Andamans from the Indian mainland, many of the relief camps in Port Blair, the islands’ capital city, have the appearance of miniaturized portraits of the nation. Only a small percentage of their inmates are indigenous to the islands; the others are settlers from different parts of the mainland: Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. If this comes as a surprise, it is only because the identity of the islands – and indeed the alibi for the present form of their rule – lies in an administrative conception of the ‘primitive’ that dates back to the British Raj. The idea that these islands are somehow synonymous with backwardness is energetically promoted in today’s Port Blair. Hoardings depicting naked ‘primitives’ line the streets, and I heard of a sign that instructs onlookers to ‘Love Your Primitive Tribe.’ In most parts of the mainland, these images would long since have been defaced or torn down, for the sheer offensiveness of their depictions: not so on these islands which are more a projection of India than a part of its body politic; as with many colonies, they represent a distended and compressed version of the mother country, in its weaknesses and strengths, its aspirations and failings. Over the last two weeks, both the fault lines that underlie the islands seem suddenly to have been set in motion: it is as if the deep time of geology had collided here with the hurried history of an emergent nation.

The mainland settlers in the camps are almost unanimous in describing themselves as having come to the islands in search of land and opportunity. Listening to their stories it is easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: here, in this far-flung chain of islands, tens of thousands of settlers were able to make their way out of poverty, into the ranks of the country’s expanding middle class. But on the morning of Dec 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle-class is to be kept afloat on a life-raft of paper: identity cards, licences, ration cards, school certificates, cheque books, certificates of life insurance and receipts for fixed deposits. It was the particular nature of this disaster that it targeted not just the physical being of the victims but also the proof of the survivors’ identities. An earthquake would have left remnants to rummage through; floods and hurricanes would have allowed time for survivors to safeguard their essential documents on their person. The tsunami, in the suddenness of its onslaught allowed for no preparations: not only did it destroy the survivors’ homes and decimate their families; it also robbed them of all the evidentiary traces of their place in the world.

On January 1 2005, I went to visit the Nirmala School Camp in Port Blair. The camp, like the school in which it is housed, is run by the Catholic Church and it is presided over by a mild-mannered young priest by the name of Father Johnson. On the morning of my visit Father Johnson was at the centre of an angry altercation. The refugees had spent the last three days waiting anxiously in the camp, and in that time no one had asked them where they wanted to go or when; none of them had any idea of what was to become of them and the sense of being adrift had brought them to the end of their tether. The issue was neither deprivation nor hardship – there was enough food and they had all the clothes they needed – it was the uncertainty that was intolerable. In the absence of any other figure of authority they had laid siege to Father Johnson: when would they be allowed to move on? Where would they be going?

[Acknowledgement .. The above passages are from The Tsunami of 2004 written by Amitav Ghose]
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Question 1 … The post-Tsunami relief camps the author refers to look like mini-India because

1. From the time of the colonial British rule, the Andaman and Nicobar islands have been the integral part of India.
2. The inmates in the camps are mostly from the mainland.
3. The visitors to the islands are implored to love the primitive tribes.

Answer …. 1. ‘a’ only
2. ‘b’ only
3. ‘a’ and ‘c’ only
4. All of the above
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Question 2 ….. The settlers from the mainland can be better described as

1. Economic migrants
2. Modern day colonizers who have replaced the British.
3. Those who have irreversibly altered the demography of the islands
   Answers …
   1. ‘a’ only
   2. ‘b’ only
   3. ‘a’ and ‘c’ only
   4. All of the above
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Question 3 … The inmates of thye Nirmala School camp had angrily surrounded Father Johnson, because

1. All their vital papers and documents had been swept away in the Tsunami.
2. They did not know how long they would need to stay in the camp and finally, where they would go.
3. Father Johnson appeared to be the only link with the official authorities.

              Answers …
1. ‘a’ only
2. ‘b’ only
3. ‘b’ and ‘c’ only
4. All of the above

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