UPSC Indian Forest Service (IFoS) Main Previous Year Question Paper 2024 GENERAL ENGLISH

UPSC Indian Forest Service (IFoS) Main Previous Year Question Paper 2024 GENERAL ENGLISH

Q1. Write an essay in about 800 - 1000 words on any one of the following : 100

(a) Decreasing Forest Cover and its Impact on the Human Race

(b) Need for Multidisciplinary in Higher Education

(c) Sports and Business

(d) Women's Safety at the Workplace

Q2. (a) Write a letter to the Minister of Education requesting him or her to make adequate facilities available for online education in universities. (Do not write your name or address or give any information revealing your identity. Use only ABC/XYZ for all proper nouns). 25

(b) Write a newspaper report on the rising incidents of poaching in wildlife sanctuaries in India. (Do not write your name or address or give any information revealing your identity. Use only ABC/XYZ for all proper nouns). 25

UPSC Indian Forest Service (IFoS) MAIN Previous Year Question Paper 2024 – GENERAL ENGLISH

3. Write a precis of the following passage in about 170 words, one-third of the original length. Do not give it any title.

Where do you draw the line between a drink and a snack? If you eat a serving of chocolate ice cream, it counts as dessert and gives you approximately two hundred calories. But if you take the same chocolate ice cream in the form of a large milkshake, the serving size may yield as much as one thousand calories. Yet because it's only a drink, you might have a burger and fries alongside.

Perhaps no single change to our diet has contributed more to unthinking excess energy intake than liquids, both soft and alcoholic. We have reached a state where many people can no longer recognize a simple thirst for water, because they have become so accustomed to liquids tasting of something else. Whether it's morning cappuccino or an evening craft beer or a green juice after a workout, the choice of calorific beverages available to us has become immense and varied. And then there are all the newfangled craft sodas infused with green tea or hibiscus that pretend to be healthy, even though they probably contain a lot of sugar. Many modern beverages are better thought of as food than drinks, judging by the number of calories they contain. Yet for reasons both cultural and biological, we don't categorize most liquids as food. It's a sign that times are good when you can afford to quench your thirst with something other than water. The drinks industry has conditioned us to believe that whatever the occasion, it will be improved with a drink in our hand. Studying? An energy drink will help you concentrate. Out with friends? You need a beverage to help you relax.

But our biology is not well adapted for this switch to high-calorie beverages. When we talk about what's wrong with modern drinks, we talk a lot about the problems with sugar, but what we don't talk about so much is our own hunger and fullness. It seems that our genes have not evolved to be satisfied by drinking clear liquids, even when those liquids contain as much energy as a three-course lunch. This is the liquid conundrum.

Numerous studies have shown that most people do not compensate for the energy they drink by eating less. When you drink water, it rapidly enters your intestine, quenching your thirst but doing little to dent your hunger. The same is true even when the water is laced with sugar. It's as if our bodies simply don't register the calories in the same way when they arrive from a glass, a cup, or a can. Clear fluids such as soft drinks are particularly bad at killing hunger, but milk-based drinks are also surprisingly unfilling for most people, despite the nutrients they contain. Scientific studies show that people have a weak satiety response to clear drinks regardless of how many calories they contain — meaning that they don't fill us up as much as the equivalent calories taken as food. And so, we end up consuming a lot more energy from drinks than we intended or even knew. (510 words)

4. Read the following passage and answer the questions given below in your own words : 10×5=50

There are not many wetlands like those at Bharatpur left in northern India. Throughout the world, wetlands have been among the least protected of natural ecosystems. There are several good reasons for this. Local populations often perceive wetlands as places of danger. They breed malarial mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, and larger dangerous animals. In India, this includes the aptly named "mugger" crocodiles, tigers, rhinoceroses, leopards, and elephants. One of India's most famous wetlands, the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, averages between 40 and 60 human fatalities a year from tiger attacks. Beyond dangerous wildlife, wetlands are difficult terrain to travel through and are prone to such catastrophic inconveniences as flooding.

But once they are drained, wetlands are among the most productive agricultural lands available. The hundreds of millions of people who live in North India are fed by the wheat, rice, and sugarcane grown on the former wetlands surrounding the Ganga and its many tributaries. Western style "development" continues to be experienced in many parts of the world in the attempts to control, regulate, and distribute water through damming rivers and draining wetlands.

The scarcity of wetlands in northern India has resulted in a much higher concentration of birds at Bharatpur than would be considered natural in a less-modified, fragmented landscape. But then, very little about the national park is "natural". There are no large predators in the park — a tiger had wandered into the park last year, but it is uncertain how long it will stay, and the last leopard was killed over twenty-five years ago. There is a very limited assortment of non-avian fauna in the park. It does not have a natural ecosystem. These wetlands now protected in Keoladeo Ghana National Park are not the result of erosion, plate tectonics, or drainage patterns, but are the product of dams and dykes constructed on the orders of the Maharaja of Bharatpur in the 1890s.

The Maharaja was not interested in bird conservation for its own sake. On the contrary, he ordered the construction of the wetlands when he had just returned from a trip to Great Britain where he had greatly enjoyed the waterfowl shooting excursions, and he was determined to have a shooting reserve for himself. He selected a small pre-existing marsh and expanded and deepened it to make it more attractive for wintering birds and year-round bird residents, using many canals and dykes to regulate the water level. He then criss-crossed the area with walking paths so that hunters could have access throughout the wetland. You can still walk on those paths, some still paved with bricks placed there one hundred years earlier, but now visitors to the national park shoot with cameras, not guns.

The Maharaja was successful beyond his wildest dreams. Bharatpur became famed for its bird hunting, and the Maharaja entertained hundreds of visiting British and Indian dignitaries. Stone plaques in the middle of the national park that remain from earlier, bloodier days record visitors — the listings include Lord Curzon (then Viceroy of India — the first of many Viceroys to visit Bharatpur), almost all of the local Maharajas of northern India, the Prince of Wales, the crown prince of Germany, and many others. Their daily kills were stupendous, with some hunts reaching above 4000 birds killed in a single day.

In spite of these hunts, there seemed to be a never-ending supply of birds for Bharatpur. Wetlands in the rest of northern India were being drained and converted to agricultural land, driving birds wintering in those places to the remaining wetlands. Within northern India the conversion of wetlands to agricultural land is not a recent process, but it was accelerated in the twentieth century and especially after India gained independence and embarked upon a national mission for agricultural self-sufficiency. In a country of dwindling wetlands, Bharatpur became increasingly unusual as a protected and stable habitat for waterfowl.

When India achieved independence in 1947, local Maharajas signed agreements with the central government transferring power from their states to the centre. When the Maharaja of Bharatpur negotiated his deed of transfer of power, he made sure that he retained ownership and the exclusive right of shooting in the Ghana wetlands for himself and his friends. Once the initial heady rush of independence had passed, local people who had been the Maharaja's former subjects began to protest his continued privilege in reserving land for his personal pleasure. They argued that this was a clear case of a royal shooting reserve serving no purpose other than the ego-gratification of a former ruler and his friends, and which denied poor landless farmers in surrounding villages, land and water. There were no actual rights among the surrounding villagers to the resources of the wetlands, although local cattle and buffalo were allowed into the reserve on a day-to-day basis for grazing. Bharatpur, local politicians argued in 1950, should be converted to agricultural land for landless labourers, and its canals should stop diverting water from other agricultural areas.

1) Why are wetlands the least protected natural ecosystems ?
(b) What is not 'natural' about the Bharatpur wetlands ?
(c) What was the motivation for the development of the Bharatpur wetlands ?
(d) Why was there a never-ending supply of birds at Bharatpur despite large-scale hunting ?
(e) Why did the local farmers launch a protest after independence ?

Q5. (a) Rewrite the following sentences after making the necessary corrections : 1×10=10

(i) What is the time on your watch ?
(ii) Sam and me completed our graduation in 2020.
(iii) I am preparing for competitive examinations for the last three years.
(iv) I even don't have a pink dress.
(v) A pair of scissors are lying on the table.
(vi) She walked home by foot.
(vii) I am having two brothers and a sister.
(viii) Does Sita speaks English ?
(ix) I cannot cope up with my studies.
(x) Please revert back as soon as possible.

(b) Write the adjective form of the following words : 1×5=5

(i) Independence
(ii) Anxiety
(iii) Frequency
(iv) Wind
(v) Promise

(c) Write the noun form of the following words : 1×5=5

(i) Wild
(ii) Appear
(iii) Tragic
(iv) Declare
(v) Realistic

(d) Make one sentence with each of the following words so that the meaning of each word is clear : 2×5=10

(i) site, cite
(ii) vantage, vintage
(iii) callus, callous
(iv) intimidate, intimate
(v) bellow, billow

(e) Make one sentence with each of the following idiomatic expressions bringing out their meaning clearly : 2×5=10

(i) The last straw
(ii) On cloud nine
(iii) A piece of cake
(iv) The best of both worlds
(v) Throw under the bus

(f) Do as directed : 2×5=10

(i) Remove the goggles before entering the tunnel.
(Change into Passive Voice)

(ii) Rakesh said, "I wish to master the art of public speaking this year."
(Change into Indirect Speech)

(iii) It is not raining now.
(Add a question tag)

(iv) Mango is the most delicious fruit.
(Rewrite using the Positive Degree of Comparison)

(v) Rohan is very ill. His family has given up the hope of his recovery.
(Combine the sentence using 'so...........that')

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