The Backwater Passage: When the Chosen Option Has the Wrong Evidence
An unseen discursive passage of about 420 words, headed 'The Cost of the Backwater Boom', is set for timed practice. Its key sentences are: 'Kumarakom's boatmen earned about ₹4,200 a week from tourism in 2019 and about ₹2,600 in 2024; the houseboats that pay them also discharge untreated waste into the very channel the fish nursery depends on. The panchayat has banned new licences, but the ban is enforced only during the tourist season.' Question 4 asks for the writer's attitude to the ban: (a) approving, (b) sceptical, (c) indifferent, (d) hostile. Question 5 asks for two inferences about why the fish catch has fallen. Anjali chooses (b) for Question 4, offering the word 'banned' as her evidence, and writes for Question 5: 'The catch fell because tourists throw plastic into the backwaters and because the water is dirty.' She gets 1 of 2 for Question 5 and loses the mark for Question 4.
1. Is (b) the best choice for Question 4? Weigh all four options against the passage, and identify which words actually justify the answer.
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The right answer is (b), but not for Anjali's reason.
- (a) Approving is impossible: the passage never praises the ban. Its only comment on it is that enforcement is seasonal, which reads as a reservation, not an endorsement.
- (d) Hostile overstates. There is no condemnation, no emotive adjective, no demand for repeal. The writer reports.
- (c) Indifferent fails because an indifferent writer would not select the wage fall or the nursery damage; the choice of detail is sympathetic to the boatmen.
- (b) Sceptical fits the clause 'enforced only during the tourist season'. It implies the ban is partly symbolic - visible rather than effective.
Her evidence is the real weakness. 'Banned' on its own would support approval if it supported anything; the justification must be quoted from the enforcement clause, which undercuts the ban's usefulness. In any attitude question, test every option against a specific phrase, then quote that phrase.
2. Explain what the single mark was probably awarded for on Question 5, and rewrite Anjali's answer so that it earns 2 of 2.
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The one mark probably rewards recognising pollution as a cause. The second is withheld for two reasons: 'plastic' is not in the passage, so the point is imported rather than inferred, and 'the water is dirty' restates an effect instead of naming the cause the passage supplies.
A 2/2 answer:
- Untreated waste from the houseboats is discharged into the channel the fish nursery depends on, so the industry that raises boatmen's wages also damages the fishery they live on.
- The ban covers only new licences and is enforced only in season, so existing houseboats can keep discharging - which explains a continuing fall rather than a one-off one.
Notice what I did not add: I did not claim the nursery is damaged in a particular month, because the passage does not say so. In comprehension, an inference is a conclusion the text supports, not a guess the topic invites.
3. 'the very channel the fish nursery depends on' - what does 'very' contribute here, and why is this better than a plain statement?
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'Very' is doing precise work: it means 'the same one', not 'extremely'. The channel that pays the boatmen and the channel that receives their waste are not two channels but one.
- It compresses the passage's argument into a single clause: income and damage share one source.
- It creates irony without comment - the writer never needs to write 'tragically'.
- Position matters: 'the very channel' sits between the wage figures and the nursery, so the reader feels the contradiction before it is named.
A plain version ('also discharge waste into the channel') is grammatical but loses the identity claim; a reader may picture two different places. In a 2-mark language question, name the device only if you then state what it does - 'emphatic' alone earns nothing.