please senior help me in contexual meaning also how I will attempt it in exam as, for example decade means 10 years so how it would be its meaning in context..


For [decade] and half after WWII , there was [optimism] in the world that we had solved, or that technology would help us solve, the old problems of hunger, disease, illiteracy-- even [intolerance] . But in 1970s two new realities have become all too clear: one, technological progress has created new problems like pollution, unequal distribution of the benefits pf modernity and an uneasiness about the world we have created; and two, this advance has affected only about a quarter of world's people . The other 75 percent is still involved in the old and [bitter] struggles; This is the world of underdeveloped nations.

The picture of this underdeveloped world is a [grim] one.The majority of its population lives without what are considered the [barest] essentials in the Western world. There is a [precarious] balance between the amount of food available and the number of mouths to be fed; disease usually results in early death or permanent [debilitation]. [Vagrant] children fight the flies for food in the streets of Tehran; in calcutta there are homeless masses whose only sleeping places are the city's streets and sidewalks. For a billion and three-quarter inhabitants of south Asia, the annual per capita income is only a little more than $100-- less then the increase in earnings.reported in 1969 by the north atlantic communities. In 1950, the lower two-third of the world's population earned only 13 percent of the total world income; by 1970 this share had fallen to below 11 percent. This situation in brief, grows worse,not better.

Most of the underdeveloped lies in the southern and eastern parts of globe, but it has not always been thus; for centuries Europe looked to the east for riches,and the [misery] and poverty now [epidemic] in Africa were not known 200 years ago. The reasons for this tragic [transition] are various, chief among them the population problem, the food crisis, and the [aftermath] of [colonialism].