Note Making for Practice- Worksheet

Date: 17.1.23

Passage 1

An era, a culture is eventually determined by its news. What is missed out by those who
track the news of that time is lost forever. We know nothing about Shakespeare’s
contemporaries even though some of them may have been better playwrights. We know
nothing about those who came in with Babar, or around the same time, to loot India and
stayed back as rulers. Or the many soldiers of fortune who landed here during the time
of the East India Company. We know of a few and, apart from avid historians, no one
knows who led the Portuguese, Dutch or French into India or ran their empires here till
they were dismantled. Why is that? Simple. The media of that time, known as historians,
did not mention them.
We who consume news today see it as a fleeting experience. We observe a powerful
image on TV, are moved by its impact or repelled by its horror, and move on. We read a
headline today and can’t even recall it tomorrow. Current news always drives out the old
(often with ruthless cunning) and It’s only when the media goes back in time to recall a
particular (7 story that we suddenly remember that, yes, there was something called
HDW or Bofors that once shook up the entire nation and held it in thrall for a decade. We
are suddenly reminded that Congress treasurer LN Mishra was mysteriously killed in a
bomb blast on a train and no one ever knew who killed him or where his secret millions
vanished.
Since I’m a journalist I can tell you many such stories. There are others too, full of
stories.
But, like news, the stories die with them. History only remembers what it chooses to, or
what is indelibly stamped on its pages. The rest is occasionally recalled as gossip. But
is it gossip? Or is it truth that we are trying to forget so that we can move on and make
space in our hearts and minds for more recent news? Our memory, collective as well as
individual, has limited storage and however many data cards we may insert, there’s
simply too much to absorb and retain. The information surge that hits us every morning
is so i large, so intimidating that we remember only a tiny fraction of it. It’s that fraction
which actually scares us by the possibility of impacting our lives.
The gap between news and entertainment was always sacrosanct. News was about
facts. Entertainment was about imagination, ergo fiction. To see them occupy the same
media platforms today is scary for those like me who have spent a lifetime pursuing
facts in the search for news. Even the dividing line has blurred. What we once shunned
as preposterous lies slip in so casually today into our news menu. It’s no one’s fault. It’s
just that the fault lines have shifted. News has become just another consumable,
another platform to commercially (and cynically) exploit. No, don’t blame our journalists
and media owners. They are only following a global model that, for better or for worse,
is making our times an entirely forgettable chapter of history.

Passage-2

Early automobiles were sometimes only “horseless carriages’ powered by gasoline or

steam engines. Some of them were so noisy that cities often made laws forbidding their
use because they frightened horses.
Many countries helped to develop the automobile. The internal-combustion engine was
invented in Austria and France was an early leader in automobile manufacturing. But it
was in the United States after 1900 that the automobile was improved most rapidly. As
a large and growing country, the United States needed cars and trucks to provide
transportation in places not served by trains.
Two brilliant ideas made possible the mass production of automobiles. An American
inventor named Eli Whitney thought of one of them, which is known as ‘standardisation
of parts’. In an effort to speed up production in his gun factory Whitney decided that
each part of a gun could be made by machines so that it would be exactly like all the
others of its kind.
Another American, Henry Ford, developed the idea of the assembly line. Before Ford
introduced the assembly line, each car was built by hand. Such a process was, of
course, very slow. As a result, automobiles were so expensive that only rich people
could afford them. Ford proposed a system in which each worker would have only a
portion of the wheels. Another would place the wheels on the car. And still another
would insert the bolts that held the wheels to the car. Each worker needed to learn only
one or two routine tasks.
But the really important part of Ford’s idea was to bring the work to the worker. An
automobile frame, which looks like a steel skeleton, was put on a moving platform.
When the car reached the end of the line, it was completely assembled. Oil, gasoline and
water were added and the car was ready to be driven away. With the increased
production made possible by the assembly line, automobiles became much cheaper
and more and more people were able to afford them. Today, it can be said that wheels
run America. The four rubber tyres of the automobile move America through work and
play.
Even though the majority of Americans would find it hard to imagine what life could be
without a car, some have begun to realise that the automobile is a mixed blessing.
Traffic accidents are increasing steadily and large cities are plagued by traffic
congestion. Worst of all, perhaps, is the air pollution caused by the internal combustion
engine. Every car engine bums hundreds of gallons of fuel each year and pumps
hundreds pounds of carbon monoxide and other gases into the air. These gases are one
source of the smog that hangs over large cities. Some of these gases are poisonous
and dangerous to health, especially for someone with a weak heart or a respiratory
disease.
One answer to the problem of air pollution is to build a car that does not pollute. That’s
what several major automobile manufacturers are trying to do. But building a clean car
is easier said than done. So far progress has been slow. Another solution is to eliminate
car fumes altogether by getting rid of the internal-combustion engine. Inventors are now
working on turbine-powered cars, as well as on cars powered by steam and electricity.
But most of us won’t be driving cars that run on batteries or boiling water for a while yet.
Many auto-makers believe that it will take years to develop practical models that are
powered by electricity or steam.
To rid the world of pollution—pollution caused not just by cars, but by all of modern
industrial life—many people believe we must make some fundamental changes in the
way many of us live. Americans may, for example, have to cut down on the number of
privately owned cars and depend more on public mass transit systems. Certainly the
extensive use of new transit systems could cut down on traffic congestion and air
pollution. But these changes sometimes clash head on with other urgent problems. For
example, if a factory closes down because it cannot meet government pollution
standards, a large number of workers suddenly find themselves without jobs.
Questioning the quality of the air they breathe becomes less important than worrying
about the next paycheck. Drastic action must be taken if we are to reduce traffic
accidents, traffic congestion and air pollution. While wheels have brought better and
more convenient transportation, they have also brought new and unforeseen problems.
Progress, it turns out, has more than one face.