56. Reading Skills Comprehension: Traditional Way

TRADITIONAL WAY

(Hotel Management, 1993)

Read the Passage carefully and answers the following Questions:-

The village has customarily been very conservative in his attitude and approach. He is reluctant to change his traditional way of thinking and doing things. His attitude, in many respects, is: ‘home-made is best’. For instance, most cattle-farmers in the villages, prefer to feed their cows and buffaloes with a home-mix comprising of local oil-cakes like mustard or cottonseed, pulses, jaggery, salt etc. It takes numerous visits, hard-convincing, daily trials and experiments to convince the rural cattle farmer that compound feeds, scientifically formulated, improve the yields of milk, without any incremental costs.

 The age-old values and attitudes towards caste, creed, women, time and money take time to change. The village has traditionally been a believer in the philosophy of ‘Karma’ or fate. He has found it more convenient to blame his economic destitution, poor living conditions, and straitened social status on ‘baggy’, ‘Karma’ or Tate’. The security that the villagers find in the ‘status quo’, acts as an incentive to change and experiment, in the short run. Many of these antiquated attitudes, value-system and outlooks are changing, due to improved levels of awareness and education. However, the rate of change is sluggish. Attitudes that have fossilized over the centuries, do take time to change.

 1. When will you call a person conservative in his attitude and approach?

 (a) When he would like to try out every new idea before accepting it

(b) When he sticks to old ways of thinking and doing

(c) When he solves his problems through tried out methods

 (d) When he imputes motives to change-agents

 2. What does the phrase “home-made is best” imply?

(a) Whatever is being practised is better than what is new.

( b) The best should not be discarded.

 (c) Change for the sake of change is not good.

(d) People should go in for Swedish because it is home-made.

3. What is the best method to convince the average Indian villager about the superiority of a new cattle-feed?

 (a) Home-visits

(b) Field demonstration

(c) Discussion

(d) Distribution of related literature

 4. Which of the following is not the usual reason offered by an average Indian villager for his poverty?

(a) It is his destiny.

(b) It is because of his resistance to new ideas.

(c) It is God’s will.

 (d) It is a result of some of his bad deeds committed in this or the previous birth.

 5. Why does a villager feel secure in maintaining ‘status quo’?

 (a) Because change is seldom for the better

(b) Because of the imagined risk involved in trying a new approach

 (c) Because whatever is known should be the best

 (d) Because too many people go without advising him

ANSWERS:-

1. (c)

2. (a)

3. (b)

4. (d)

5. (c)

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