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 observation that the worst-hit villages were ‘often those with nothing between them and the sea’ suggests that
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → a village’s place in relation to the forest could decide its fate as much as the strength of its houses
The writer compares two things that could explain the damage after Cyclone Sidr.
- One is how strong the houses were. The worst-hit villages were “not always those with the weakest houses”.
- The other is where the village stood. The worst-hit ones often had “nothing between them and the sea”. Where the forest stood in the way, the water “had arrived tired”.
- So a village’s place behind the forest could matter as much as how well its houses were built.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: the worst-hit villages had better-built houses than the villages behind the forest — Incorrect. Overstated: The passage only says the worst-hit villages were “not always” the ones with the weakest houses. It does not say their houses were better built than others.
Option 3: the poorest villages of Bangladesh had been built deep inside the mangrove forest — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage says nothing about poor villages or about anyone living inside the forest.
Option 4: the people surveying the damage were surprised that the forest itself had survived the storm — Incorrect. Misread: The “something odd” they noticed was about which villages were worst hit. It was not about the forest surviving.