Question:hard
Instructions: Read the following passage and answer the question based on it.
TRIPs agreement provides a comprehensive set of global trade rules for the protection of copyright, patents, trademarks, industrial designs, trade secrets, semiconductor layout designs, and geographical indications, that apply to all member countries irrespective of their levels of development, natural and human endowments and history. Every member country has been asked by the WTO to amend its national patent law to conform to that universal globalized format for legislation relating to pharmaceutical, agrochemical, food, alloys, etc. Under Article 65, the developed countries have been asked to change their laws within another five years, and the less developed countries within an additional five years. The least developed countries have been asked to make those changes by 2005 AD.
This attempt at global standardisation and uniformity by way of the TRIPs agreement is in conflict with the main thrust of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 that set out the conditions for sustainable development. These two reveal two contrasting types of international approaches and norms. While the 1992 Earth Summit and the 1993 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) focused on 'diversity' as being fundamental to sustain life and development, TRIPs and WTO are pushing for 'conformity' to international standardized norms on patents, services, labour, investment and what not, irrespective of their history, ecology, level of economic development, etc. But despite their diametrically opposed viewpoints, 170 countries signed CBD upholding the need for diversity, and 50 countries signed the TRIPs agreement in 1994 claiming the urgency of uniformity, with a very large element of common signatories (130) in both.
The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), in its Article 16.5, specifically asserts that intellectual property rights must not be in conflict with conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, a provision that has been totally ignored by those who composed the TRIPs agreement. While in the case of agriculture the higher yield of patented products induces farmers to switch from a more varied production pattern, the resulting narrowing of the genetic base makes the economy and society more vulnerable to plant disease and epidemics. It is true that the move towards cultivation of a smaller number of higher yielding varieties and the uniform spread of the same variety over a large space predates the present debate on patents, particularly since the introduction of green revolution technology in the mid-sixties, but there can be no doubt that the latter has brought about a qualitative change in the scenario and has created the possibility of a vast quantitative change too in that direction. So far no attempt has been made to reconcile the two conflicting approaches of CBD and TRIPs. If diversity is so important for sustaining life, how can WTO demand conformity to standardised global formats?
Which of the following has been said by the author in the passage?
Instructions: Read the following passage and answer the question based on it.
TRIPs agreement provides a comprehensive set of global trade rules for the protection of copyright, patents, trademarks, industrial designs, trade secrets, semiconductor layout designs, and geographical indications, that apply to all member countries irrespective of their levels of development, natural and human endowments and history. Every member country has been asked by the WTO to amend its national patent law to conform to that universal globalized format for legislation relating to pharmaceutical, agrochemical, food, alloys, etc. Under Article 65, the developed countries have been asked to change their laws within another five years, and the less developed countries within an additional five years. The least developed countries have been asked to make those changes by 2005 AD.
This attempt at global standardisation and uniformity by way of the TRIPs agreement is in conflict with the main thrust of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 that set out the conditions for sustainable development. These two reveal two contrasting types of international approaches and norms. While the 1992 Earth Summit and the 1993 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) focused on 'diversity' as being fundamental to sustain life and development, TRIPs and WTO are pushing for 'conformity' to international standardized norms on patents, services, labour, investment and what not, irrespective of their history, ecology, level of economic development, etc. But despite their diametrically opposed viewpoints, 170 countries signed CBD upholding the need for diversity, and 50 countries signed the TRIPs agreement in 1994 claiming the urgency of uniformity, with a very large element of common signatories (130) in both.
The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), in its Article 16.5, specifically asserts that intellectual property rights must not be in conflict with conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, a provision that has been totally ignored by those who composed the TRIPs agreement. While in the case of agriculture the higher yield of patented products induces farmers to switch from a more varied production pattern, the resulting narrowing of the genetic base makes the economy and society more vulnerable to plant disease and epidemics. It is true that the move towards cultivation of a smaller number of higher yielding varieties and the uniform spread of the same variety over a large space predates the present debate on patents, particularly since the introduction of green revolution technology in the mid-sixties, but there can be no doubt that the latter has brought about a qualitative change in the scenario and has created the possibility of a vast quantitative change too in that direction. So far no attempt has been made to reconcile the two conflicting approaches of CBD and TRIPs. If diversity is so important for sustaining life, how can WTO demand conformity to standardised global formats?
Which of the following has been said by the author in the passage?
Show Hint
Separate facts the passage mentions in passing from the author's overall stance across the whole passage.
Updated On: Jul 14, 2026
- A high number of countries have signed both CBD and TRIPs, two conflicting treaties.
- A narrow genetic base, if stuck to for long, is fraught with danger.
- Although a nondiscriminatory approach has been followed in the applicability of TRIPs, there has been a confessional attitude in prescribing a time frame for transition, as per needs of the respective countries.
- The author is supportive of international conventions and treaties such as TRIPs, CBD etc.
Show Solution
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
The question is checking whether we can separate a fact mentioned in a passage from the author's real, overall claim. Passages often contain several true details, but only one option reflects what the author is actually building toward.
Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Read every option against two tests: is it stated (or clearly implied) in the passage, and is it the author's central point rather than a supporting detail or an invented claim. Eliminate any option that fails either test.
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Option A repeats the numbers 170, 50, and 130 from the passage correctly, but this is only used by the author to introduce the bigger contrast between conformity and diversity, so it is a supporting fact, not the main claim.
Option B correctly reflects the agriculture example (narrow genetic base leads to disease risk), but again this is one illustration inside a larger argument, not the passage's overall statement.
Option C uses the phrase "confessional attitude," which never appears in the passage, and also wrongly claims TRIPs follows a nondiscriminatory approach, when the passage actually shows Article 65 giving different timelines to developed, developing, and least developed countries. This option is simply not supported.
Option D holds up because the author spends the whole passage engaging with both TRIPs and CBD as serious, real international frameworks worth comparing, discussing, and critiquing side by side. Treating both as worth this level of attention, even while flagging their conflict, reflects support for the broader idea of international conventions.
Step 4: Final Answer:
Since options A, B, and C either state a minor supporting fact or an unsupported claim, and only option D reflects the author's overall stance, the correct choice is option D. $\boxed{\text{Option D: The author is supportive of international conventions and treaties such as TRIPs, CBD etc.}}$
The question is checking whether we can separate a fact mentioned in a passage from the author's real, overall claim. Passages often contain several true details, but only one option reflects what the author is actually building toward.
Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Read every option against two tests: is it stated (or clearly implied) in the passage, and is it the author's central point rather than a supporting detail or an invented claim. Eliminate any option that fails either test.
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Option A repeats the numbers 170, 50, and 130 from the passage correctly, but this is only used by the author to introduce the bigger contrast between conformity and diversity, so it is a supporting fact, not the main claim.
Option B correctly reflects the agriculture example (narrow genetic base leads to disease risk), but again this is one illustration inside a larger argument, not the passage's overall statement.
Option C uses the phrase "confessional attitude," which never appears in the passage, and also wrongly claims TRIPs follows a nondiscriminatory approach, when the passage actually shows Article 65 giving different timelines to developed, developing, and least developed countries. This option is simply not supported.
Option D holds up because the author spends the whole passage engaging with both TRIPs and CBD as serious, real international frameworks worth comparing, discussing, and critiquing side by side. Treating both as worth this level of attention, even while flagging their conflict, reflects support for the broader idea of international conventions.
Step 4: Final Answer:
Since options A, B, and C either state a minor supporting fact or an unsupported claim, and only option D reflects the author's overall stance, the correct choice is option D. $\boxed{\text{Option D: The author is supportive of international conventions and treaties such as TRIPs, CBD etc.}}$
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Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
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For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward looking.
My new book "Writing Ocean Worlds" explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader's mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. ... The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia.
These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.- CAT - 2023
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Many human phenomena and characteristics - such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things - are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people.... [T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea ... cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] ... They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies ... At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding ... [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all nonnative (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism," or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" ... Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today. Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason. A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship ... Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.- CAT - 2023
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Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data-the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic-but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
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