Reading comprehension: practice set 6

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, or the JJ Act, 2015 allows for the possibility for trying adolescents above 16 as adults if they are accused of committing a heinous offence. A heinous offence is one with a minimum punishment of seven years. Offences such as culpable homicide and causing death by negligence, which are common in drunken driving cases, are not heinous offences because they do not have a prescribed minimum punishment. The JJ Act, amended in 2021, now categorises an offence that has no minimum sentence, but has a maximum sentence of seven years or more as a serious offence which nonetheless, in the opinion of activists, does not merit the transfer of a case to the adult criminal justice system.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, or the JJ Act, 2015 allows for the possibility for trying adolescents above 16 as adults if they are accused of committing a heinous offence. A heinous offence is one with a minimum punishment of seven years. Offences such as culpable homicide and causing death by negligence, which are common in drunken driving cases, are not heinous offences because they do not have a prescribed minimum punishment. The JJ Act, amended in 2021, now categorises an offence that has no minimum sentence, but has a maximum sentence of seven years or more as a serious offence which nonetheless, in the opinion of activists, does not merit the transfer of a case to the adult criminal justice system.

Over the next 30 years, many countries are promising to move to net-zero carbon, implying that household emissions will have to be cut to close to nothing. A leading climate scientist reckons that, at best, half the reduction might be achieved through demand-side measures, such as behavioural changes by individuals and households. And even that would require companies and governments to provide more incentives to change through supply-side investments to make low-carbon options cheaper and more widely available.

Over the next 30 years, many countries are promising to move to net-zero carbon, implying that household emissions will have to be cut to close to nothing. A leading climate scientist reckons that, at best, half the reduction might be achieved through demand-side measures, such as behavioural changes by individuals and households. And even that would require companies and governments to provide more incentives to change through supply-side investments to make low-carbon options cheaper and more widely available.

When an international team of scientists pumped a carbon dioxide and water mix into underground basalt rocks, basic chemistry took over. The acidic mixture dissolved rocks’ calcium and magnesium and formed limestone. Basically carbon dioxide is converted into stone, exclaimed the scientists.

More than half of Indian women and almost a quarter of Indian men of working age suffer from anaemia. According to studies, they are anywhere from 5 – 15% less productive than they could be, as a result thereof. India also has the largest tuberculosis burden in the world, costing 170 million workdays to the country annually. But what is just as important as lost productivity now is lost potential in the future. It is becoming increasingly clear that on many measures of cognitive ability, malnourished Indian children perform two or three times worse than their adequately nourished peers. For an economy that will be more dependent on highly skilled workers, this poses a significant challenge. And it is one that really should be addressed given India's demographic outlook.

While awareness on use/misuse and abuse of antibiotics is common knowledge, as is the impact of dosing poultry with antibiotics, the environmental impact of antibiotics-manufacturing companies not treating their waste has scarcely been discussed at any length or seriousness thus far. Pollution from antibiotics factories is fuelling the rise of drug-resistant infections. The occurrence of drug-resistant bacteria surrounding the pharma manufacturing plants is well known.

In some places in the world, the productivity of staples such as rice and wheat has reached a plateau. Neither new strains nor fancy agrochemicals are raising the yields. Nor is there much unfarmed land left that is suitable to be brought under the plough. If global temperature continues to rise, some places will become unsuitable for farming. Application of technology can help overcome these problems. Agricultural technology is changing fast. Much of this change is brought about by affluent farmers in the West/Americas. Techniques developed in the West are being adapted in some places to make tropical crops more productive. Technology is of little use if it is not adapted. In the developing world, that applies as much to existing farming techniques as it does to the latest advances in genetic modification. Extending to the smallholders and subsistence farmers of Africa and Asia the best of today’s agricultural practices, in such simple matters as how much fertilizers to apply and when, would lead to a greatly increased availability of food for humanity. So would things like better roads and storage facilities, to allow for the carriage of surpluses to markets and reduce wastage.

In some places in the world, the productivity of staples such as rice and wheat has reached a plateau. Neither new strains nor fancy agrochemicals are raising the yields. Nor is there much unfarmed land left that is suitable to be brought under the plough. If global temperature continues to rise, some places will become unsuitable for farming. Application of technology can help overcome these problems. Agricultural technology is changing fast. Much of this change is brought about by affluent farmers in the West/Americas. Techniques developed in the West are being adapted in some places to make tropical crops more productive. Technology is of little use if it is not adapted. In the developing world, that applies as much to existing farming techniques as it does to the latest advances in genetic modification. Extending to the smallholders and subsistence farmers of Africa and Asia the best of today’s agricultural practices, in such simple matters as how much fertilizers to apply and when, would lead to a greatly increased availability of food for humanity. So would things like better roads and storage facilities, to allow for the carriage of surpluses to markets and reduce wastage.

In some places in the world, the productivity of staples such as rice and wheat has reached a plateau. Neither new strains nor fancy agrochemicals are raising the yields. Nor is there much unfarmed land left that is suitable to be brought under the plough. If global temperature continues to rise, some places will become unsuitable for farming. Application of technology can help overcome these problems. Agricultural technology is changing fast. Much of this change is brought about by affluent farmers in the West/Americas. Techniques developed in the West are being adapted in some places to make tropical crops more productive. Technology is of little use if it is not adapted. In the developing world, that applies as much to existing farming techniques as it does to the latest advances in genetic modification. Extending to the smallholders and subsistence farmers of Africa and Asia the best of today’s agricultural practices, in such simple matters as how much fertilizers to apply and when, would lead to a greatly increased availability of food for humanity. So would things like better roads and storage facilities, to allow for the carriage of surpluses to markets and reduce wastage.

Can a democracy avoid being a welfare state for long? Why cannot mass welfare be left entirely to the markets? There is a built-in tension between markets and democracy. Markets do not work on a one-person-one-vote principle as democracies do. What one gets out of the market place depends on one’s endowments, skills, purchasing power and the forces of demand and supply. Markets reward individual initiative and skill, and may also lift many from the bottom rungs of society, but some people never get the opportunity to develop skills that markets demand; they are simply too poor and too handicapped; or skill formation takes too long. By creating jobs, markets may be able to help even unskilled people, but capitalism has always witnessed bursts of unemployment.

India is at once among the fastest growing global economies and home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world. There are regions where malnutrition is not the exception but the norm. And across the country, malnutrition is the cause of death for roughly half the 1.3 million children who die before their fifth birthday each year. Even those children who survive suffer permanently from the damage that has already been done to their bodies and minds from not getting enough of the right foods and nutrients. Around 44 million children under 5 are stunted. That makes it harder for them to learn in school and subsequently earn a living as adults. Their lifetime earnings potential is almost a quarter less than that of their healthy peers.

Soil, in which nearly all our food grows, is a living resource that takes years to form. Yet it can vanish in minutes. Each year 75 billion tonnes of fertile soil is lost to erosion. That is alarming — and not just for food producers. Soil can trap huge quantities of carbon dioxide in the form of organic carbon and prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere.

Most invasive species are neither terribly successful nor very harmful. Britain’s invasive plants are not widespread, not spreading especially quickly, and often less of a nuisance than vigorous natives such as bracken. The arrival of new species almost always increases biological diversity in a region; in many cases, a flood of newcomers drives no native species to extinction. One reason is that invaders tend to colonise disturbed habitats like polluted lakes and post-industrial wasteland, where little else lives. They are nature’s opportunists.

I am a scientist, privileged to be somebody who tries to understand nature using the tools of science. But it is also clear that there are some really important questions that science cannot really answer, such as: Why is there something instead of nothing? Why are we here? In those domains, I have found that faith provides a better path to answers. I find it oddly anachronistic that in today’s culture there seems to be a widespread presumption that scientific and spiritual views are incompatible.

The practice of dieting has become an epidemic; everyone is looking out for a way to attain that perfect body. We are all different with respect to our ethnicity, genetics, family history, gender, age, physical and mental and spiritual health status, lifestyles and preferences. Thereby we also differ in what foods we tolerate or are sensitive to. So we really cannot reduce so many complexities into one diet or diet book. This explains the failure of diets across the world in curbing obesity. Unless the reasons for weight gain are well understood and addressed and unless habits are changed permanently, no diet is likely to succeed.

An innovative India will be inclusive as well as technologically advanced, improving the lives of all Indians. Innovation and R&D can mitigate increases in social inequality and relieve the pressures created by rapid urbanization. The growing divergence in productivity between agriculture and knowledge-intensive manufacturing and services threatens to increase income inequality. By encouraging India’s R&D labs and universities to focus on the needs of poor people and by improving the ability of informal firms to absorb knowledge, an innovation and research agenda can counter this effect. Inclusive innovation can lower the costs of goods and services and create income-earning opportunities for the poor people.

By killing transparency and competition, crony capitalism is harmful to free enterprise, opportunity and economic growth. Crony capitalism, where rich and the influential are alleged to have received land and natural resources and various licences in return for payoffs to venal politicians, is now a major issue to be tackled. One of the greatest dangers to growth of developing economies like India is the middle-income trap where crony capitalism creates oligarchies that slow down the growth.

An increase in human-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could initiate a chain reaction between plants and microorganisms that would unsettle one of the largest carbon reservoirs on the planet – soil. In a study, it was found that the soil, which contains twice the amount of carbon present in all plants and Earth's atmosphere combined, could become increasingly volatile as people add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This is largely because of increased plant growth. Although a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, carbon dioxide also supports plant growth. As trees and other vegetation flourish in a carbon dioxide-rich future, their roots could stimulate microbial activity in soil that may in turn accelerate the decomposition of soil carbon and its release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.