Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow : Every now…
2024
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow :
Every now and then we would speed through a village lined with waving Tibetan children. Their villages looked wonderful and so inviting that Dorje was not showing any signs of slowing down. Small clusters of single and double storey buildings with walk-in courtyards jostled together in the foothills to gain maximum exposure to the sun. The houses looked solid, built for the harsh environment. Walls are made up of stone to waist height and finished off with mud bricks to the roof. Tin cans lined the window ledges, with the bright orange of marigolds in full bloom livening up the black-and-white of the houses.
Branches of trees adorned with colourful prayer flags stood high into the wind from the top of the flat roofs. The auspicious blue, white, red, green and yellow colours of the fabrics stood out against the rich blue of the Tibetan sky. Each prayer flag carries a picture of Lungta, the jewelled dragon horse, who carries the owner’s prayers up to the divine every time the flag flaps in the wind.
The larger villages have healthy trees, usually willows or poplars which look quite out of place in the generally treeless landscape. Wood is a precious commodity in the highland areas of Tibet and is never wasted. The few shrubs which grow wild on the hillsides are harvested for use as brushwood and each courtyard wall is piled high with sticks gathered from the mountains to get a fire started. The lack of solid fuel in the shape of wood is not a problem for the Tibetans, who have an ingenious wood substitute : yak dung.
Read the following two statements :Assertion (A) : Wood and sticks are piled high against the courtyard walls in the houses
Reasoning (R) : Wood is found in abundance across Tibet
- A.
(A) is incorrect, but (R) is correct
- B.
(A) is correct and (R) is not the reason for it
- C.
(A) and (R) are both incorrect
- D.
(A) is correct and (R) is the reason for it.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept
In an Assertion–Reason question, the Assertion (A) and the Reasoning (R) are checked independently against the source passage. Each is first judged true or false purely on whether the passage supports it. Only when BOTH are independently true does it make sense to ask whether R is the correct explanation of A; if either statement conflicts with the passage, that statement is false regardless of what the other one says.
Application
Check Assertion (A): "Wood and sticks are piled high against the courtyard walls." The passage states "each courtyard wall is piled high with sticks gathered from the mountains to get a fire started." This directly matches the assertion, so (A) is TRUE.
Check Reasoning (R): "Wood is found in abundance across Tibet." The passage instead says wood "is a precious commodity in the highland areas of Tibet and is never wasted," and that the lack of wood fuel is exactly why Tibetans rely on yak dung as a substitute. This directly contradicts the claim of abundance, so (R) is FALSE.
Since (R) is false, it cannot correctly explain why the walls are piled with wood — a false statement cannot serve as a valid reason, regardless of whether (A) itself is true.
Cross-check
"(A) is incorrect, but (R) is correct" — reverses both established facts; fails.
"(A) and (R) are both incorrect" — wrongly dismisses (A), which the passage confirms directly; fails.
"(A) is correct and (R) is the reason for it" — correctly accepts (A) but wrongly treats the false claim of abundance as valid support; fails.
"(A) is correct and (R) is not the reason for it" — matches both established facts: (A) holds, and the false (R) cannot be the reason; holds up.
Result: (A) is correct and (R) is not the reason for it.