Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
Long before places had numbers, a letter in India travelled on foot. Under the Mughals, and in kingdoms before them, runners carried the dak in relays. Each man ran his own stretch and handed the bag on. Many carried a spear, and bells that jangled as they ran. No runner needed to know where a letter would end up. He needed only the road to the next village.
That small fact explains a good deal about the post. It has never needed one person to understand the whole map, only each person to know the next step. For most of its history, the hard part was the last step. Indian addresses were descriptions rather than coordinates: the house behind the Hanuman temple, the second lane after the flour mill. A letter addressed like that arrived because some postman remembered which Gupta family had moved and which lane had been renamed.
The PIN code, introduced on 15 August 1972, tried to take some of that memory out of human heads. Its six digits narrow a destination in stages, from a broad region of the country down to a single delivery post office. A sorter in a distant city no longer had to know the town. He had only to read a number. There is nothing glamorous about this workaday invention, though it quietly moves mail across one of the largest postal networks in the world.
Yet the number did not finish the job. It brings the letter to the right post office, and there its work stops. From that counter to the door, India still writes “near the old water tank”, and the post still sends someone who knows where the tank used to be.
The writer’s attitude towards the PIN code can best be described as:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Quiet respect for a plain invention, along with a clear sense of where it stops
The writer values the PIN code but is honest about what it cannot do.
- The writer calls it a “workaday invention” that “quietly moves mail” across a very large network. This is respect for a plain thing that works.
- The writer also says that “the number did not finish the job”. Its work stops at the post office. This is the clear sense of where it stops.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Unqualified admiration for a reform that finally solved the problem of Indian addresses — Incorrect. Overstated: Unqualified means with no limits or doubts at all. The writer says the number “did not finish the job”.
Option 3: Mild disappointment that a well-known reform has achieved so little in practice — Incorrect. Contradicted: The writer shows the code doing real work. A sorter in a distant city no longer has to know the town.
Option 4: Detached neutrality, setting out facts about the code without passing any judgement — Incorrect. Contradicted: Detached neutrality means not taking any side. The writer does judge the code, calling it “workaday” and saying it “did not finish the job”.