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 writer’s remark that a thin fringe of mangroves ‘looks green from a boat’ implies that
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → a strip of forest can look healthy from outside while being too narrow to give much protection
The remark is about the thin fringe of trees left after the rest of the forest is cleared.
- The writer says such a fringe “does far less” against a surge than a deep belt.
- Yet it “looks green from a boat”. So it is easy to be sanguine about it, which means to feel cheerful and sure that all is well.
- So a strip of forest can look fine from outside and still give little protection.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: the boatmen of the delta do not care how much of the forest has been cut down — Incorrect. Wrong focus: “From a boat” only tells us where the fringe is seen from. The remark says nothing about boatmen or what they care about.
Option 3: a thin fringe of trees protects as well as a deep forest as long as it stays green — Incorrect. Contradicted: The writer says a thin fringe “does far less”. Its green look is what makes people wrongly feel safe.
Option 4: the mangroves along riverbanks are healthier than those deep inside the forest — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage compares a thin fringe with a deep belt only for protection. It says nothing about which trees are healthier.