Précis Writing

उत्तर :- Précis WritingTitle :- ..............................Précis :-.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. [Words :- 60]

And • But • Who • Which • That • Not only ... but also • Both ... and • As well as • Because • Since • Although

In everyday speech, we talk of having a good memory, of having a poor memory, of having a better memory for faces than for names, of having a memory that is failing, and so on. Such talk suggests that memory is an object, a thing which we possess in the same way as we possess a head or a big toe. Yet it is true, although alarming, to say that there is no such thing as memory. A big toe can be seen and touched, but not so memory. Should an acquaintance boast of having an excellent memory, we cannot confirm his claim in the same way as if he boasted the possession of a well- stocked. library. We cannot ask him to show us his memory. What we could do, how-ever, is to let him read the page of a book, then have him close the book and try to recite what he has just read. If he reels off the page verbatim, we conclude that his claim is, at the least, not without foundation. But we have not observed anything which could be called a memory. We have given him an opportunity to learn something and then to demonstrate how well he remembers it. We have not examined anything which he has, but have watched him doing something, namely, repeating or trying to repeat something he has read. In short, we have concerned ourselves, not with an object but with an activity, not with his memory but with his activity of remembering.

The thoughtless, the ignorant and the indolent seeing only the apparent effect of things and not the things themselves talk of luck of fortunes and chance. Seeing a man grow rich they say "How lucky he is!" Observing another becomes intellectual they exclaim, "How highly favoured he is!" And noting the saintly character and wide influence of someone else they remark, "How chance aids him at every turn!" They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience, have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable and realise the vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy; do not see the long and arduous journey but only behold the pleasant goal and call it "good fortune; do not understand the process but only perceive the results and call it "chance". In all human affairs there are efforts and there are results and the strength of effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort - they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.

Conversation is indeed the most easily teachable of all arts. All you need to do in order to become a good conversationalist is to find a subject that interests you and your listeners. There are, for example, numberless hobbies to talk about. But the important thing is that you must talk about the other fellow's hobby rather than your own. Therein lies the secret of your popularity. Talk to your friends about things that interest them and you will make your reputation for good fellowship, charming wit and a brilliant mind. There is nothing that pleases people more than your interest in their interest. It is as important to know what subject to avoid as what subjects to select for good conversation. If you don't want to be set down as a wet blanket or a bore, be careful to avoid unpleasant topics. Avoid talking about yourself, unless you are asked to do so. People are interested in their problems not in yours. Sickness and death bore everybody. The only one who willingly listens to such talk is a doctor, but he gets paid for it. To be a good conversationalist you must know not only what to say but how to say it. Be civil and modest. Don't ever emphasize your own happiness. Be mentally quick and witty, but don't hurt others with your wit. Finally try to avoid mannerisms in your conversation. Don't bite your lips, or click your tongue, or roll your eyes, or use hands excessively as you speak. Such gestures detract from the conversation.

Nature is our mother and if it is to be commanded, it must be obeyed. But man's ignorance of this is the main source of his unhappiness. Since the beginning, man has been using the priceless gifts of nature without restraint. He has rather taken them for granted. Seldom did he think that the supplies of air, water and food and the industrial raw materials that he extracted from the bowels of the earth might disappear one day. Nature has been suffering because of thoughtless human intervention in its recycling process for hundreds of years. They say it truly that we have not inherited this earth from our ancestors, but have borrowed it from our children. We are obliged to preserve Nature for the benefit of future generations. But what has man been doing to mother Nature? The forests have become concrete jungles. The marvellous creatures and plants dependent on the rich Nature are finding it difficult to survive in the face of man's cruelty. The ozone layer protecting the earth's atmosphere is gradually getting depleted. So desperate are we to enjoy our today that tomorrow does not seem all that important. It is now that man has started realizing that he has to work with Nature and cannot allow its destruction. Man has begun to understand that Nature and its resources are vast but limited. Nature's gifts are to be conserved. Let's all make a joint venture to make nature as pure as before and try to maintain the immortal relationship of mother and son between Nature and man.

Sleep is essential for a person's health and well-being. Yet millions of people do not get enough sleep and many suffer from lack of sleep. Most of those with these problems go undiagnosed and untreated. In addition, more than 40 per cent of adults experience daytime sleepiness severe enough to interfere with their daily activities at least a few days each month - with 20 per cent reporting problems of sleepiness a few days a week or more. Furthermore, 69 per cent of children experience one or more sleep problems a few nights or more during a week. If a sleep-deprived person doesn't sleep after the initial signs, the person may then start to experience apathy, slowed speech and flattened emotional responses, impaired memory and an inability to be novel or multitask. As a person gets to the point of falling asleep, he or she will fall into micro sleeps (5-10 seconds) that cause lapses in attention, nod off while doing an activity like driving or reading and then finally experience hallucinations. Everyone's individual sleep needs vary. In general, most healthy adults are built for 16 hours of wakefulness and need an average of eight hours of sleep a night. However, some individuals are able to function without sleepiness or drowsiness after as little as six hours of sleep. Others can't perform at their peak unless they've slept ten hours. And contrary to common myth, the need for sleep doesn't decline with age but the ability to sleep for six to eight hours at one time may be reduced. It is a good idea to talk to a physician, or mental health provider about any sleeping problem that recurs or persists for longer than a few weeks.

Mountaineering is now looked upon as the king of sports. But men have lived amongst the mountains since prehistoric times and in some parts of the world, as in the Andes and Himalayas, difficult mountain journeys have inevitably been part of their everyday life. However, some of the peaks there were easily accessible from most of the cities of Europe. It is quite interesting that while modern mountaineers prefer difficult routes for the greater enjoyment of sport, the early climbers looked for the easiest ones, for the summit was the prize they all set their eyes on. Popular interest in mountaineering increased considerably after the ascent of the Alpine peak of Matterhorn in 1865 and Edward Whymper’s dramatic account of the climb and fatal accident which occurred during the descent. In the risky sport of mountaineering the element of competition between either individuals or teams is totally absent. Rather one can say that the competition is between the team and the peaks themselves. The individuals making up a party must climb together as a team, for they depend upon one another for their safety. Mountaineering can be dangerous unless reasonable precautions are taken. However, the majority of fatal accidents happen to parties which are inexperienced or not properly equipped. Since many accidents are caused due to bad weather, the safe climber is the man who knows when it is time to turn back, however tempting it may be to press on and try to reach the summit.

Many of us believe that 'small' means 'insignificant'. We believe that small actions and choices do not have much impact on our lives. We think that it is only the big things, the big actions and the big decisions that really count. But when you look at the lives of all great people, you will see that they built their character through small decisions, small choices and small actions that they performed every day. They transformed their lives through step-by-step or day-by- day approaches. They nurtured and nourished their good habits and chipped away their bad habits, one by one. It was their small day-to-day decisions that added up to make tremendous difference in the long run. Indeed, in matters of personal growth and character building, there is no such thing as an overnight success. Growth always occurs through a sequential series of stages. There is an organic process to growth. When we look at children growing up, we can see this process at work: the child first learns to crawl, then to stand and walk and then finally to run. The same is true in the natural world. The soil must first be tilled and then the seed must be sown. Next, it must be nurtured with enough water and sunlight and only then will it grow into trees laden with ripe fruits. Gandhi understood this organic process and used this universal law of nature to his benefit. GANDHI GREW IN SMALL WAYS, in his day-to-day affairs. He did not wake up one day and found himself to be the 'Mahatma'. In fact, there was nothing much in his early life that showed signs of greatness. But from his mid-twenties onwards, he deliberately and consistently attempted to change himself, reformed himself and grew in some small ways every day. Day by day, hour by hour, he risked failure, experimented and learnt from mistakes. In small as well as large situations, he took up the responsibility rather than avoiding it. This is a common factor in the lives of all great people: they exercise their freedoms and choices in small ways that make a great impact on their lives and their environment. Each of their small decisions and actions add up to have a profound impact in the long run. By understanding this principle, we can move forward, with confidence, in the direction of our dreams. Often when our 'ideal goal' looks too far from us, we become easily discouraged, disheartened and pessimistic. However, when we choose to grow in small ways, by taking small steps one at a time, our achievement becomes easy.

Nations are built by the imagination and untiring enthusiastic efforts of generations. One generation transfers the fruits of its toil to another, which then takes forward the mission. As the coming generation also has its dreams and aspirations for the nation's future, it therefore adds something from its side to the national vision, which the next generation strives hard to achieve. This process goes on and the nation climbs steps of glory and gains higher strength. Any organisation, society, or even a nation without a vision is like a ship cruising on the high seas without any aim or direction. It is the clarity of national vision, which constantly drives the people towards the goal. Our last generation, the glorious generation of freedom fighters led by Mahatma Gandhi and many others, set for the nation a vision of Free India. This was the first vision, set by the people for the nation. It, therefore, went deep into the minds and hearts of the masses and soon became the great inspiring and driving force for the people to collectively plunge into the struggle for freedom movement. The unified dedicated efforts of the people from every walk of life won freedom for the country. The next generation has put India strongly on the path of economic, agricultural and technological development. But, India has stood too long in the line of developing nations. Let us, collectively, set the second national vision of Developed India. It means the major transformation of our national economy to make it one of the largest economies in the world; where the countrymen live well above the poverty line, their education and health is of a high standard, national security is reasonably assured, and the core competence in certain major areas gets enhanced significantly so that the production of quality goods, including export, rises and brings all-round prosperity for the countrymen.

"The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately, if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority. It is very difficult in this modern world to find a place for the individual. He can subsist at the top as a dictator in a totalitarian state or a plutocratic magnate in a country of large industrial enterprises, but in the realm of the mind it is becoming more and more difficult to preserve independence of the great organized forces that control the livelihoods of men and women. If the world is not to lose the benefit to be derived from its best minds, it will have to find some method of allowing them scope and liberty in spite of organization. This involves a deliberate restraint on the part of those who have power, and a conscious realization that there are men to whom free scope must be afforded. Renaissance Popes could feel this way towards Renaissance artists, but the powerful men of our day seem to have more difficulty in feeling respect for exceptional genius. The turbulence of our times is inimical to the flowering of culture. The man in the street is full of fear, and therefore unwilling to tolerate freedoms for which he sees no need. Perhaps, we must wait for quieter times before the claims of civilization can again override the claims of party spirit. Meanwhile, it is important that some at least continue to realize the limitations of what can be done by organization. Every system should allow loopholes and exceptions, for if it does not, it will in the end, crush all that is best in man.

Science is about unravelling nature, and creating a foundation for technology to make life better for humankind. The higher the quality of university education is in a country, the more prosperous and competitive the people. As countries move up the ladder of development, the contributions of hi-tech manufacturing and high value-added services to the GDP become higher and higher. Consequently, today, the comparative advantage of a country is increasingly determined by how well it uses knowledge and innovation. Success in leveraging knowledge and innovation is only possible with a sound infrastructure of higher education. The writer Clark Kerr has said, O' n a global scale, wealth and prosperity have become more dependent on the access to knowledge than the access to natural resources.' The role of education has, thus, become central to the development and competitiveness of an economy. The USA is the finest example of this thesis, since it has built a vibrant educational system which is the second largest in the world. Seventeen of the world's top twenty universities are American. Not only do US universities produce workers to drive economic growth, but they are also world-class incubators of innovation and knowledge creation. American universities currently employ 70 per cent of the world's Nobel Prize winners. They produce about 30 per cent of the entire world's output of articles in science and engineering, and 44 per cent of the most frequently- cited articles. The American education system has helped seed the growth of key “new technology” industries in the USA-the semiconductor, information technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries-through the early discoveries of university researchers. In fact, the growth of Silicon Valley was initially driven by electronics and high technology companies around Stanford University which accessed the university's technology expertise and skills. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alone incubates around 200 companies every year. The result is the enhancement of prosperity and competitiveness of the US economy year after year.

Rajasthan, one of the driest states of India, has for centuries taught the world a valuable lesson in water conservation. Long before pipelines and government schemes existed, the people of this arid land had developed remarkable methods of harvesting every drop of rain that fell upon its sandy soil. Structures such as johads, tankas, and baoris were built not by engineers with modern machines, but by ordinary villagers who understood that survival in the desert depended on storing water during the short monsoon for use through the long dry months. A tanka, for instance, is an underground tank built beneath a courtyard to collect rainwater from rooftops, keeping it clean and cool for months. A johad, on the other hand, is a small earthen check-dam that captures rainwater and allows it to seep slowly into the ground, recharging the water table for the entire village. These systems, developed through generations of trial and observation, were remarkably suited to the local climate and required no external energy to operate. In recent decades, as groundwater levels fell due to over-extraction and changing rainfall patterns, many villages returned to reviving these traditional structures instead of relying solely on borewells. Social organisations, working alongside local communities, have restored hundreds of johads and tankas, turning several dry villages green again and reversing large-scale migration in some regions. The revival of these age-old techniques proves an important truth: sustainable solutions to modern environmental problems often already exist in traditional wisdom; they only need to be recognised, respected, and restored rather than replaced entirely by imported technology.