Authored CAPF Paper II precis exercise on the environment versus development debate, with an original passage and a one-third model precis
Authored practice. The passage below is original, written for this wiki, not a verbatim previous-year question. Reduce it to about one-third of its length in your own words, third person, neutral, one connected paragraph, with a title and a stated word count.
The debate between environment and development is too often staged as a war in which one side must lose. On one side stand those who would halt every project to protect a forest or a river; on the other, those who would clear any forest and dam any river in the name of progress. Both extremes are mistaken, and both, in the long run, defeat themselves. A development that poisons the air, exhausts the soil and dries the rivers eventually starves the very economy it was meant to enrich, for no factory runs without water and no city thrives in foul air. Yet a conservation so absolute that it forbids all use would condemn the poor to permanent want, and a hungry population is a poor guardian of any forest. The way out is the principle of sustainable development: meeting the needs of the present without robbing the future of the means to meet its own. This is not a compromise that pleases neither side but a recognition that, over time, the environment and the economy are not rivals but partners.
Reduce the passage to roughly one-third (about 58 to 62 words), in your own words, in one connected paragraph, in the third person and a neutral tone, with a title and a word count at the end.
Title: Sustainable Development as the Way Out
The clash between environment and development is wrongly seen as a war with a loser. Development that ruins air, soil and water finally starves the economy, while absolute conservation condemns the poor to want. The answer is sustainable development, meeting present needs without robbing the future, recognising that over time the environment and the economy are partners rather than rivals. (58 words)