Question

Read the extract given below and answer the questions.

“Akaal or famine is a way of life here. In a good year, I get one crop of bajra. That cannot feed my family of five. We would starve without this job,” he says. And for each family which resides in this arid land, survival is partly dependent on money orders remitted by a relative.

(i) Complete the sentence given below with an appropriate reason.

One crop of bajra makes a little difference for people like Khetaram because ______.

(ii) Why did Khetaram term famine as ‘a way of life’?

(iii) Give one reason why Khetaram had to take up a job to help his family to survive.

(iv) Complete the analogy given below with a word from the extract.

Other families : Money orders : : Khetaram : ______

(v) What would ‘a good year’ signify?

Answer 1

(i) One crop of bajra makes a little difference for people like Khetaram because for a poor farmer the harvest of a single season is consumed by the family, and hardly anything is left to sell in the market and earn a profit for a good living.

(ii) Khetaram lives in a dry and arid part of Rajasthan, where farming is extremely difficult. He gets only one crop of bajra a year, which is not enough to feed his family of five. Because of this constant scarcity, he considers famine ‘a way of life’.

(iii) Khetaram had to take up a job because farming did not earn him enough to sustain a family of five. They were poor and needy.

(iv) Other families : Money orders : : Khetaram : job 

(v) A good year’ means a year when farmers get one crop of bajra.