Odisha Judicial Service Civil Judge – English – 2016
Odisha Judicial Service Civil Judge – English – 2016 Question Paper
Total marks – 100 Duration – 1 hour 30 minutes
1. Translate the following into English :
Click here for the question
2. Translate the following into Oriya:
I live in a new location now. I miss my earlier house and familiar surroundings and neighbours. But as usual given the requirements of this job, these changes cannot be helped. Luckily for me, I have always been a bit of a loner. I prefer it this way, for then one does not have to depend on short-term friends for comfort or company. Incidentally, my best friends are not from the Army, but go a long way back to the good old school days.
It was a fresh sunny morning with pansies and dahlias in full bloom in the lawn outside the gym. Yet, I was already a little bit (mentally) exhausted at being privy to the conversation between three young ladies, wives of Army officers, who supposedly come regularly to this ‘meeting point’ to maintain a certain standard of fitness, well, some physical and some mental.
3. Write a short essay in about 150 (one hundred and fifty) words on any one of the following :
(a) Noisy Neighbours
(b) Need for reforms in BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India)
(c) The Need for Value Education
(d) Effects of Domestic Violence on Children
(e) Creative Hobbies
4. Make a precis of the following passage in about 100 (one hundred) words:
The history of the debates between tradition and modernity in India is a story that has been told twice. The first fable centres around the archives of the national movement and the second springs from the debates on science and technology enacted during the grassroots struggles of the last two decades. These debates in India, both in the colonial and post-colonial eras, have been marked by three qualities. ,
Firstly, the notion of hospitality. The national movement sought to overthrow colonial rule yet was confident enough to invite the British to participate in the debates on modernity. Some of the most fascinating contributions to the understanding of traditional systems came from these dissenting Englishmen. “The other colonialisms,” one can call this genre of discourse, saw in India a set of possibilities that the West had lost out or rendered recessive. These Englishmen were particularly interested in creating a more humane transition to modem industrialism.
Socondly, the Indian national movement also saw the West as a possibility. We fought the West but the West, like the Orient, was not just out there but something within ourselves. It became an experimental site for the free play of the nationalist imagination which sought to liberate the other Wests that England had suppressed within itself.
Thirdly, while the concerns and experiments in science, technology, medicine, education were local, there was a feeling that the neighbourhood must reflect the interests of the cosmos. Furthermore, the debate did not reify the dualism of tradition and modernity, especially in the domain of knowledge, but sought an encounter that was both confrontational and dialogic. Tradition and modernity were not only self-critical sites but what might be called a complicity of opposites. Unfortunately the pluralist archives of the nationalist movement did not receive the attention they deserved and became partially submerged in the fifties and sixties.
5. Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow:
The last few years have seen a dramatic growth in the readership of regional language publications. Perhaps more than any other measure, this is a sign of the coming of the emerging consumer. For to begin reading a newspaper is to signal one’s inclusion in the larger world. It is to acknowledge that one’s existence is part of a larger network of relationships and that knowledge of the world is a pre-requisite in making one’s way forward. For India to realise its dreams of being an economic superpower, its next wave of consumers must come good.
The most striking thing about the emerging class is that it is not middle class. To be sure its dreams are influenced by the middle class but in many ways, the values it espouses are its own. This is a class that measures success more unapologetically in terms of consumption. Ambition is much more clearly arrayed along the axis of economic upgradation rather than moving up the social ladder. Even when the desire is of social recognition, it is usually expressed in terms of wanting to be someone with a lifestyle others envy. Education for children continues to be a very big driver, but here again the desire is for children to provide escape velocity out of their circumstances.
The consumption ethic too is often non-linear. Consumers think nothing of economising on shoes and clothes or using an expensive toothpaste. Desire is allowed free rein in a limited way; every family determines its own mosaic of demand in terms of what to scrimp on and where to splurge. Take the case of a family living in an illegal slum under threat of demolition using electricity illegally thinking about getting a computer for their child. At the same time, this is the segment where inflation is a dark cloud humid with foreboding; every small change in price rings heavily in the small space called home.
Ambition too is of two different kinds. One set of people seek escape from a sense of insecurity and crave some form of stability. And there is another growing segment that seeks urgent, discontinuous growth — the desire to vault over the next step and land quickly into one’s final distination. This often involves a pragmatic acceptance of the legitimacy of using all means available. It also involves an incredibly accommodating network of invisible community, which works noiselessly together. Skills are passed on in acts of informal apprenticeship where the young work for free, develop skills and then move on.
There is a strong undercurrent of pragmatism lacing the lives of the consumer next. They lead constrained lives that are often declared illegal; they live in unauthorised colonies, use illegal power, scrounge for water and work in places that are routinely raided. The footpath is often their factory and recycling of some kind is a fairly normal mode of manufacturing. In the midst of all this, there is a very strong sense of resilience and an immense faith in one’s own ability to survive, come what may. Pleasure is found in what they have even as they strive for more. The good is acknowledged, as in the case of women who experience a much higher order of practical freedom living at the margins of the city than they do in villages and the bad is accepted as a circumstance to try and skirt around or cope with.
(a) For the writer, what does the reading of a newspaper indicate ?
(b) How is consumption linked to the national economy ?
(c) What is the author’s view on consumption ethic ?
(d) Explain the two types of ambition outlined in the passage.
(e) How is the emerging class of consumers more pragmatic ?