Comprehension Practice — Short-Answer Questions
Unlike the MCQ-based comprehension found in SSC/banking exams or CBSE boards, UPSC Mains English comprehension is entirely open-ended: you write short, direct answers in your own words. 2 passages, 10 questions, with model answers for each.
How to answer open-ended comprehension
Answer in your own words wherever the question asks you to — copying a sentence verbatim from the passage earns partial credit at best. Keep answers concise: one to three sentences is usually sufficient unless the question explicitly asks for more detail. For inference questions, your answer must be supported by what the passage actually says, not merely plausible in general.
Decision Fatigue and the Architecture of Everyday Choices
By early evening, a person who has spent the day making a string of small decisions — what to eat, which email to answer first, whether to accept a meeting request — often reports feeling mentally depleted in a way that has little to do with physical tiredness. Psychologists call this phenomenon decision fatigue: the observation that the quality of a person's decisions tends to deteriorate after a long sequence of choices, regardless of how minor each individual decision was.
The effect has been studied in surprising settings. One frequently cited body of research examined parole board decisions and found that judges granted parole far more often early in the day or immediately after a food break than late in a decision-making session, suggesting that even trained professionals making consequential judgments are not immune to the cumulative cost of choosing.
The practical response many high-performing individuals have adopted is not greater willpower but deliberate simplification: reducing the number of trivial decisions in a day so that mental energy remains available for the decisions that matter. A well-known example is the practice of wearing a near-identical outfit each day, removing one recurring decision entirely rather than attempting to make it more efficiently.
This should not be mistaken for a claim that all decisions are equally fatiguing, or that choice itself is undesirable. Rather, the research suggests a more specific point: that decision-making draws on a finite daily resource, and that protecting this resource for genuinely important choices — by pre-deciding or eliminating the trivial ones — is a more reliable strategy than relying on willpower to perform equally well on the fiftieth decision of the day as on the first.
What is decision fatigue, according to the passage?
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Decision fatigue is the phenomenon in which the quality of a person's decisions deteriorates after making a long sequence of choices during the day, regardless of how minor each individual decision was.
What did the research on parole board decisions find?
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The research found that judges granted parole more often early in the day or immediately after a food break, and less often later in a decision-making session, suggesting that even trained professionals are affected by the cumulative cost of decision-making.
Explain, in your own words, what is meant by 'deliberate simplification' as used in the passage.
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‘Deliberate simplification’ refers to the conscious reduction of minor, everyday decisions — such as choosing what to wear — so that a person's limited mental energy is preserved for decisions of real importance, rather than exhausted on trivial ones.
Why does the author give the example of wearing a similar outfit daily?
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The example illustrates a practical way to eliminate a small, recurring decision entirely, showing how removing minor choices can help conserve mental energy for more significant decisions, rather than relying on willpower alone.
What does the author explicitly caution against in the final paragraph?
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The author cautions against concluding that all decisions are equally tiring or that choice itself is undesirable; the point is specifically that decision-making draws on a limited daily resource that should be protected for important choices.
The Return of Traditional Water-Harvesting Systems
In the semi-arid districts of Rajasthan, a network of small earthen check-dams known as johads once formed the backbone of local water security, capturing monsoon runoff and allowing it to percolate slowly into the groundwater table rather than draining away unused. Built and maintained through community labour rather than government engineering, these structures fell into disuse across much of the twentieth century, as centralised irrigation schemes and borewell technology promised more reliable, less labour-intensive alternatives.
By the 1980s, decades of neglect combined with falling water tables had left many villages in the region dependent on tankers for drinking water during the dry season, a stark reversal from a time when the same land had supported perennial streams. A grassroots effort, led initially by a small non-governmental organisation working with local communities, began reviving johads village by village, reintroducing the same low-cost, labour-intensive technique that centralised planning had displaced.
The results, documented over subsequent decades, were substantial: several seasonal rivers that had run dry decades earlier began flowing again for part of the year, and groundwater levels in the revived villages rose measurably compared to neighbouring areas that had not adopted the technique. The approach has since informed broader watershed-management policy in India, though scaling a method that depends on sustained community participation and local ownership has proven more difficult than scaling a centrally engineered infrastructure project.
The johad revival illustrates a broader pattern: solutions displaced by an assumption that centralised, technology-driven approaches are inherently superior to traditional, community-managed ones can sometimes outperform their replacements once genuinely restored, provided the social structures needed to sustain them are also rebuilt alongside the physical structures themselves.
What is the central theme of the passage?
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The passage describes how traditional, community-managed water-harvesting structures called johads, once displaced by centralised irrigation and borewell technology, were successfully revived in Rajasthan and restored local water security.
Why did johads fall into disuse during the twentieth century?
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Johads fell into disuse because centralised irrigation schemes and borewell technology were seen as more reliable and less labour-intensive alternatives, leading communities to abandon the traditional, community-maintained structures.
In your own words, explain what 'percolate slowly into the groundwater table' means in the context of the passage.
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It means that the rainwater captured by the johads gradually seeps down through the soil to recharge underground water reserves, rather than flowing away on the surface and being lost.
What can be inferred about the difficulty of scaling the johad-revival approach, according to the passage?
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It can be inferred that while the physical technique is inexpensive and effective, scaling it is difficult because it depends on sustained community participation and local ownership, which are harder to replicate at scale than a centrally engineered infrastructure project.
What broader lesson does the author draw from the johad revival in the final paragraph?
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The author suggests that traditional, community-managed solutions displaced by an assumption that centralised, technology-driven approaches are inherently superior can sometimes outperform their replacements once restored, provided the social structures needed to sustain them are rebuilt alongside the physical infrastructure.