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ST. JOSEPH’S COLLEGE OF COMMERCE (AUTONOMOUS)
END SEMESTER EXAMINATION – OCTOBER 2013
B.COM – I SEMESTER
GENERAL ENGLISH
Time: 3 Hrs Max Marks: 100
Note: 1.Exceeding the paragraph limit will result in loss of marks.
2. Each paragraph should contain about six sentences.
SECTION – A
Below is an article from the magazine Tehelka written by Aradhana Wal. Read the article
and answer the questions that follow.
Fund Me, May be.
When Kannada filmmaker Pawan Kumar decided to make a no-star, no-masala feature film,
finding investors proved to be a herculean task. He had a brainwave. Why not turn to the
audience? The 30-year-old protégé of Kannada cinema stalwart Yograj Bhat reached out on
his blog, which, thanks to his debut Lifeu Ishtene, had a formidable following.
Project Lucia, as the campaign came to be called, raked in its target of Rs 50 lakh in 27 days.
“But people still wanted to give money,” recalls Kumar. The amount pledged crossed a
crore, but Kumar refused the excess. On 20 July, Lucia will be the first Kannada film to have
a world premiere at the London Indian film Festival — Europe’s venue for Indian
indie cinema.
Kumar’s is one of the best examples of a successful crowdfunding campaign in India.
Though by no means a novel idea — Shyam Benegal’s Manthan was funded with Rs 2 each
contributions from the 5,00,000 farmers of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Federation in the
wake of the White Revolution — getting money from anonymous cyber buddies is no mean
feat. “We don’t have much venture capitalist backing in India. Campaigners — filmmakers,
musicians, photographers — have to start with friends and family and constantly engage the
audiences online,” explains Priyanka Agarwal, CEO of Wishberry, India’s premier
crowdfunding website. Kumar reached out to a substantial audience that was disconnected
from regular Kannada cinema. Nearly 110 people backed him even though he revealed no
details of the script. Even now, the only thing known is that the film deals with an
insomniac’s drug-fueled adventures.
Publicity, like money, is crowd sourced. Kumar attests to the utility of word-of-mouth:
“Strangers worldwide circulated the trailer online, and the festival picked it up.”
However, cracking crowd funding is no cakewalk. A depressing number of promising
campaigns fall by the wayside. Filmmaker Abhay Kumar’s campaign for his undercover,
experimental documentary Placebo, backed by Anurag Kashyap, “failed spectacularly” on
Wishberry. This failure could be symptomatic of the strained relationship some campaigners
share with such platforms. Though Wishberry, launched in 2009, provides much logistic
support, it also charges 10 percent of the money earned from the campaign. “If your
campaign fails, they take 20 percent,” says Abhay.
Pawan Srivastava, whose offbeat film on migrant identity in Bihar, Naya Pata, was made on
a crowdfunded budget of Rs 8 lakh, says Wishberry would have made him work as much,
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used his own network and then taken a cut. “So, I reached out to my contacts online on my
own.”
Another way to crowdfund is more conventional: equity-based capital. But, filmmaker
Onir’s campaign for his film I Am ran into trouble because of the notorious tax component
slapped on equity funding. Most campaigns, such as Naya Pata, go for reward-based crowd
funding with no monetary returns, but tokens such as DVDs and invites to special
screenings. “In India, you cannot legally reach out to more than 50 people at once to sell
your product. There is tax on money received, on interest, on dividends,” says Agarwal.
Onir ended up paying nearly 47 percent of the Rs 1 crore he raised through crowdfunding
and equity funding in taxes.
Crowdfunding in India is complicated. Unpredictable crowd sentiment, taxes, a noninternet-
literate market, pose problems aplenty. But, there is one uncontested advantage —
creative freedom. Lucia and I Am would not be possible had their makers relied on industry
investors. Audiences connect emotionally with uncompromised content, explains Sridhar
Rangayan, director of Kashish, India’s largest LGBT film festival, which took to partial
crowdfunding last year, gaining overwhelming audience response. Kumar repeatedly told
his audience that “Lucia is your film”. That they are the co-producers. And producing is not
where audience involvement ends. They have to watch the movie too. The very farmers who
helped Benegal churn out his Manthanwent in droves to theatres, making it a hit and setting
a precedent.
I) Answer ALL the questions in three paragraphs. (3×10 = 30)
1. What do you understand by the term ‘crowdfunding’? Explain the whole process in
your own words.
2. What are the benefits and problems associated with crowdfunding?
3. The writer contends that with crowdfunding creative freedom is possible. What does
the writer mean by it? Give your opinion on the subject.
SECTION – B
II) Answer the following questions in about four paragraphs. ( 2×15 = 30)
4. Narrate the conversation between the Astrologer and the stranger in your own
words. What aspects of the story An Astrologer’s Day appealed to you very much?
Write about it briefly.
5. In the story The Last Leaf Behrman dies and Johnsy survives. How and why does this
happen? What does the story have to tell about the world of artists: their lives,
dreams and sorrows?
III) Read the following extract from the story The Bet by Anton Chekov and answer
ANY TWO questions. ( 2×10 = 20)
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and
remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There
had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among
other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among
whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They
considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian
States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by
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imprisonment for life. “I don’t agree with you,” said their host the banker. “I have not tried
either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death
penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment
kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the
more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the
course of many years?”
“Both are equally immoral,” observed one of the guests, “for they both have the same
object – to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it
cannot restore when it wants to.”
Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was
asked his opinion, he said:
“The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose
between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second.
To live anyhow is better than not at all.”
A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days,
was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at
the young man:
“It’s not true! I’ll bet you two million you wouldn’t stay in solitary confinement for five
years.”
“If you mean that in earnest,” said the young man, “I’ll take the bet, but I would stay not
five but fifteen years.”
“Fifteen? Done!” cried the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two million!”
“Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!” said the young man.
And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with
millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet. At supper he made fun of the
young man, and said:
“Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two million is a trifle, but
you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you
won’t stay longer. Don’t forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a
great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought that you have the right to step out in
liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison. I am sorry for you.”
And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked himself: “What
was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man’s losing fifteen years of his life and
my throwing away two million? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than
imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the
caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money …”
Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that the young man
should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest supervision in one of the lodges in
the banker’s garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the
threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters
and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was allowed
to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only
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relations he could have with the outer world were by a little window made purposely for
that object. He might have anything he wanted – books, music, wine, and so on – in any
quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them through the window.
The agreement provided for every detail and every trifle that would make his imprisonment
strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay there exactly fifteen years, beginning from
twelve o’clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve o’clock of November 14, 1885.
The slightest attempt on his part to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end,
released the banker from the obligation to pay him the two million.
6. What is the debate that is happening in the beginning of the story? What does the
debate then lead to?
7. Compare the beginning of the above story with the beginnings of An Astrologer’s Day
and The Last Leaf. How are they different or similar to each other?
8. Why do you think the young lawyer decided to take the challenge? What do you
think would have happened in the next half of the story?
SECTION – C
IV) Answer the following TWO questions in about three paragraphs. ( 2×10 = 20)
9. What does David Crystal have to say about English language? Comment on his
opinions.
10. In Kannada English Combat what is D R Nagaraj’s stand on teaching the English
language in India?
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