Reading Comprehension -CSE UPSC IAS Prelims CSAT Paper 2: Questions 2021 (Testing Tuesdays) NTA NET

Passages available at - https://www.examrace.com/Updates/NEWS... Passage 1 Seeking to move towards a cashless economy, the government has proposed income tax benefits for people making payments through credit or debit cards, besides doing away with transaction charges on the purchase of petrol, gas and rail tickets with plastic money. This is the first serious effort to tackle the predominance of cash in India’s economy. India is a hugely cash-dependent economy. The RBI and commercial banks annually spend around Rs 21,000 crore in currency operations costs while the citizens of Delhi alone spend Rs 9.1 crore and 60 lakh hours in collecting cash. The scale of this burden is unique to India considering that it is among the most cash-intensive economies with a cash-to-GDP ratio of 12%, almost four times as much as other markets such as Brazil (3.93%), Mexico (5.3%) and South Africa (3.73%). Moreover, cash transactions and black money are directly linked, since a cash trail is nigh impossible to track. As such, electronic transactions and the ease of audit they afford should make the government’s job much easier in terms of curbing illegal transactions. What the switchover to payments by credit and debit cards means is that the payer must have money in the bank. This can be facilitated through a greater recourse to direct cash transfer of subsidies to banks. But those who avail of this may not belong to the section that pays income tax. Given that less than three per cent of our population pays income tax, transactions by plastic cards may not amount to much. But the scene is changing. For instance, payments by mobiles have grown from just 860 transactions in November 2010 to 4.4 million in August 2014. With the spread of Internet and expansion of e-commerce, online payments are fast catching on among the middle class. These are mostly cashless transactions. It is also necessary to remember that a move towards a cashless economy will eliminate the cost of printing and distributing cash. If to these expenses are added the cost of storage and maintaining the currencies in the over 60,000 ATMs, the outlay becomes prohibitive. The answer is a buoyant economy that will reduce the numbers of those who still regard cash as the only reliable legal tender. Passage 2 Invasions of exotic species into new geographic areas sometimes occur naturally and without human agency. However, human actions have increased this trickle to a flood. Human-caused introductions may occur either accidentally as a consequence of human transport, or intentionally but illegally to serve some private purpose or legitimately to procure some hoped-for public benefit by bringing a pest under control, producing new agricultural products or providing novel recreational opportunities. Many introduced species are assimilated into communities without much obvious effect. However, some have been responsible for dramatic changes to native species and natural communities. For example, the accidental introduction of the brown tree snake Boiga irregulars into Guam, an island in the Pacific, has through nest predation reduced 10 endemic forest bird species to the point of extinction. One of the major reasons for the world's great biodiversity is the occurrence of centers of endemism so that similar habitats in different parts of the world are occupied by different groups of species that happen to have evolved there. If every species naturally had access to everywhere on the globe, we might expect a relatively small number of successful species to become dominant in each biome. The extent to which this homogenization can happen naturally is restricted by the limited powers of dispersal of most species in the face of the physical barriers that exist to dispersal. By virtue of the transport opportunities offered by humans, these barriers have been breached by an everincreasing number of exotic species. The effects of introductions have been to convert a hugely diverse range of local community compositions into something much more homogeneous. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that introducing species to a region will inevitably cause a decline in species richness there. For example, there are numerous species of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates found in continental Europe but absent from the British Isles. Their introduction would belikely to augment British biodiversity. The significant detrimental effect noted above arises where aggressive species provide a novel challenge to endemic biotas illequipped to deal with them. Postal course - https://www.examrace.com/IAS/IAS-Flex... For complete solutions - https://www.doorsteptutor.com/Exams/I... For GS and Optional for Mains visit - https://www.doorsteptutor.com/Exams/I... Study material - https://www.examrace.com/IAS/IAS-Flex...