Q.Read the source and answer the question : Urban luxury manufactures like the high quality silks and cottons of Dacca or Murshidabad must have been hit first by the almost simultaneous collapse of indigeneous court demand and the external market on which these had largely depended. Village crafts in the interior and particularly, in regions other than eastern India where British penetration was earliest and deepest, probably survived much longer, coming to be seriously affected only with the spread of railways. (Sarkar : 1983 : 29) When British took over states and towns of India, some of them lost their courts, artisans and court gentry. Give any one reason.

The assertion is straightforward: as part of India’s economic reforms since 1991, the government has indeed sold its shares in many public sector undertakings (PSUs). This is the core of disinvestment — reducing the government’s equity stake in state-owned companies, sometimes to a minority holding, sometimes to zero. The stated objectives have been to raise revenue for the exchequer, reduce the fiscal burden of loss-making PSUs, bring in private-sector efficiency, and widen public ownership. So Assertion (A) is clearly true.

The reason is also true, but in a different sense. Many government workers — employees of PSUs — have genuinely feared job losses after disinvestment. When a PSU is partially or fully privatised, the new private management often restructures operations, which can lead to voluntary retirement schemes, downsizing, or changes in service conditions. This fear has been real and has sometimes led to political opposition and strikes. So Reason (R) is factually correct.

Now, does the reason explain the assertion? That is, does the government sell its shares because workers are scared of losing their jobs? No. The government’s motives for disinvestment are fiscal (raising money to meet budget deficits), ideological (reducing the state’s role in production), and efficiency-driven (improving PSU performance). Workers’ fears are a consequence of disinvestment, not its cause. The two statements are related — both are true — but the reason is not the explanation for the assertion.

India’s identity as a largely agricultural country is not a matter of opinion — it is a structural fact. More than half of the country’s workforce is still engaged in agriculture, and the sector contributes a significant share to the national income, though its share has been declining over decades. The assertion, therefore, is correct.

Now, the reason given is that very few people in India have access to secure jobs. This too is true. A large majority of Indian workers are in the informal or unorganised sector — casual labourers, self-employed farmers, small traders, and daily-wage earners — with no job security, no written contracts, and no social security benefits. Formal, secure employment (with regular wages, provident fund, and other protections) is indeed limited to a small fraction of the workforce.

But does the lack of secure jobs explain why India is still largely agricultural? Not directly. The two facts are connected, but the causal link runs the other way. India remains agricultural not because secure jobs are scarce, but because the economy has not been able to shift enough workers from farming to more productive, non-agricultural employment. The scarcity of secure jobs is a consequence of this slow structural transformation, not its cause. People stay in agriculture often because they have no better alternative — but the reason they have no better alternative is that industry and services have not created enough good-quality jobs, not simply that secure jobs are few.

The question asks us to identify the true statement about the complex, contradictory role English has played in India since colonial times and into the present. Each option presents a claim; our task is to evaluate which reflects reality.

Start with option (A): the assertion that English is not widely used simply does not hold. English functions as an associate official language of the Union, appears on currency and official documents, dominates higher education in science and technology, and serves as the lingua franca in business, law, and administration. Millions of Indians use it daily, even if they represent a minority of the total population. The statement is false.

Option (B) claims we lack an impressive body of Indian writing in English. This is demonstrably incorrect. Indian English literature has produced globally recognised voices—R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao in the early decades after independence, followed by Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others. Indian writers in English have won the Booker Prize multiple times and shaped world literature. The body of work is not only impressive but internationally celebrated.

Now consider option (C): the knowledge of English has given Indians an edge in the global market. This is true and observable across sectors. India's information technology and business process outsourcing industries grew explosively in part because of a large English-speaking workforce. Call centres, software development firms, and multinational corporations have located operations in India precisely because educated Indians can communicate effectively in English. In diplomacy, international trade, and academia, English proficiency has allowed Indian professionals to compete on a global stage. The statement captures a real advantage.

Option (D) asserts that for traditionally marginalised groups like Dalits, English did not open doors of opportunity. This contradicts historical evidence. For many Dalit intellectuals and activists—most notably B.R. Ambedkar himself—English was a tool of liberation. It provided access to modern education, legal and constitutional discourse, and employment in government and private sectors that caste-based traditional education systems had denied them. English allowed a bypass of Sanskrit and vernacular hierarchies controlled by upper castes. While access to English education has been unequal and many Dalits remain excluded, for those who did gain it, English was often transformative. The statement is false.

When India embarked on economic liberalisation in 1991, the central aim was to integrate the domestic economy with the global market. Liberalisation meant dismantling the elaborate system of controls—import quotas, high tariffs, licensing requirements—that had insulated Indian industry for decades. The philosophy shifted from protectionism to openness, from self-reliance at any cost to competitive participation in world trade.

This outward turn required a framework, a set of rules that would govern how nations trade with one another. That framework is provided by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which came into being in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). India was a founding member. The WTO's mandate is straightforward: to create a more predictable, transparent international trading system by negotiating the reduction of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, ensuring that trade flows as freely as possible. It also provides a dispute-settlement mechanism, so countries can resolve trade conflicts without resorting to unilateral retaliation.

Liberalisation and WTO membership go hand in hand. By joining and adhering to WTO agreements, a country commits to lowering trade barriers, opening markets to foreign goods and services, and treating foreign and domestic firms more equally. In return, it gains access to other countries' markets under the same rules. The WTO thus embodies the principle of multilateralism—many nations negotiating together rather than in a patchwork of bilateral deals.

For a liberalising economy, WTO participation signals credibility. It tells investors and trading partners that the country is serious about reform, that it will play by internationally accepted rules. It also locks in reforms—once commitments are made at the WTO, reversing them becomes diplomatically and economically costly. This is why liberalisation policy is so closely associated with the WTO: the organisation is both the platform and the enforcer of the open trading system that liberalisation seeks to join.

When the British took over Indian states and towns, the courts of local rulers — the nawabs, rajas, and other princely figures — were either abolished or stripped of their power. These courts had been the primary patrons of luxury artisans: weavers of fine silks, embroiderers, jewellers, and makers of exquisite cottons. Without the steady flow of royal commissions and the lavish spending of court nobles, these craftsmen lost their most reliable source of income.

At the same time, the external market that had absorbed much of this high-quality output — buyers in Persia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe — also collapsed. British trade policies redirected commerce toward raw materials and away from finished Indian goods. The result was a double blow: the local patron vanished, and the foreign buyer disappeared.

Village crafts in the interior survived longer because they served local, everyday needs — pots, coarse cloth, iron tools — and were not dependent on royal courts or distant markets. Their turn came later, with the spread of railways, which brought cheap machine-made goods from Britain into even remote villages.