IES ISS 2018 General English Question Paper PDF | UPSC Exam

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

(a) Accountability, not mere stability, essential for good governance

(b) Pros and Cons of online education and examinations

(c) Rural Sector's potential to contribute to the Indian economy

(d) Social Media attains credibility with objectivity and humanity

(e) Effective Centralised Enforcement Agency necessary to prevent harassment and violence against women

Q2. Make a précis of the following passage in about one-third of the original length, using your own words :

(passage) Education has not been of the kind that can help you towards happiness. It has not been of the kind that can make you capable of freedom. The aim of education in a democracy must be the same for all the people. Education must aim at making them all capable of freedom, for they are all to be free. Whatever education will achieve, this aim must be given to every person in proportion to his capacity to receive it. If education is necessary for one, it must be necessary for all. Only in this way can we hope to prevent the exploitation of one group by another. Only in this way can we develop a true community. The citizens must be able to understand one another. They must have a common culture. They must have the intellectual training needed to comprehend it and to communicate with those who share it. Education for freedom consists in transmitting to the rising generation the civilization they have inherited, together with the techniques by which it may be understood. No man or woman is equipped to be a ruler without this education. As liberal education helps us to establish a free community, so does it to preserve it. As Thomas F. Woodlock has said in the Wall Street Journal, "Democracy rests ultimately upon 'public opinion' as its base. Public opinion follows upon free speech, free interchange of ideas, of judgements, of opinions; it is generated by these things. Men interchange these things by words..... Sound logic it was that put grammar, logic, and rhetoric as preliminary to geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy in the scheme of the seven liberal arts in an age which was notable for the clearness of its thinking and the exactitude of its expression. Both these things are absolutely necessary for the functioning of democracy as the best form of government. If we are going to 'educate for democracy', we had better find the right way to teach them." And the ability to read and write is the best defence against anti-democratic propaganda. Under the name of 'indoctrination of democracy' a host of lies is being propagated. When a person equipped with the liberal arts has critically studied the basic theoretical questions, he is proof against the seductions of the New Order. The reason why we may justly fear such propaganda today is that we are uneducated.