Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
After Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in November 2007, those who surveyed the damage noticed something odd. The worst-hit villages were not always those with the weakest houses. They were often those with nothing between them and the sea. Where the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world, stood in the way, the water had arrived tired.
How a forest does this is less dramatic than the word ‘shield’ suggests. A mangrove does not block a storm surge, the hump of seawater a cyclone pushes ahead of it. It slows it down. Stilt roots arch out of the mud like the legs of a crouching insect, and thin breathing roots poke up in their thousands. Water forced through this tangle loses a little of its strength with every metre. The forest levies a toll on the water, and the toll is paid again and again. The surge that reaches the landward edge is lower and slower.
That is also the catch. The toll depends on distance. A belt of trees several kilometres deep can take the sting out of a surge. A thin fringe, the kind left when the rest is cleared for paddy fields or prawn ponds, does far less. Such a fringe looks green from a boat, which is why it is easy to be sanguine about it. When Cyclone Aila came in 2009, long stretches of the mud embankments around the islands gave way, and salt water lay on the fields for more than one season.
None of this makes the mangroves less valuable. It makes them harder to protect. An embankment can be raised in one dry season. A forest doing the same work takes decades to grow, and works only if it is left wide and whole.
The phrase ‘levies a toll on the water’, as used in the passage, refers to the way the forest
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → takes away a part of the surge’s strength at every step of the way
A toll is a small fee paid at each gate on a road. To levy a toll means to make people pay it. Here the writer uses the idea for the forest and the water.
- The line just before says the water “loses a little of its strength with every metre”. So the “fee” the water pays is a little of its strength.
- The toll “is paid again and again”. The water loses strength bit by bit, all the way through. That is why the surge reaches the landward edge “lower and slower”.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: charges the boats that use its channels a fee for passing through — Incorrect. Misread: This takes “toll” in its everyday sense. The passage speaks of water, not boats or money.
Option 2: stores the seawater in its mud and lets it out slowly later — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage never says the forest holds water in its mud. It says the roots slow the water as it passes.
Option 4: turns the surge back towards the sea at its outer edge — Incorrect. Contradicted: The writer says a mangrove “does not block a storm surge”. The water goes through the forest and comes out weaker.