Direction : Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the question.
 Governments have traditionally equated economic progress with steel mills and cement factories. While urban centers thrive and city dwellers get rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remain mired in poverty. However fears of food shortages, a rethinking of anti-poverty priorities and the crushing recession in 2008 are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favour of greater support for agriculture.
 The last time when the world’s farmer felt such love was in the 1970s. At that time, as food prices spiked, there was real concern that the world was facing a crisis in which the planet was simply unable to produce enough grain and meat for an expanding population. Government across the developing world and international aid organisations plowed investment into agriculture in the early 1970s, while technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution and food production exploded. But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% by the late 1980s from their peak in the mid-1970s. Policy makers and aid workers turned their attention to the poor’s other pressing needs such as health care and education. Farming got starved of resources and investment. By 2004 aid directed at agriculture sank to 3.5 % and Agriculture lost its glitter. Also as consumer in high-growth giants such as China and India became wealthier they began eating more meat so grain once used for human consumption got diverted to beef up livestock. By early 2008 panicked buying by importing countries and restrictions slapped on grain exports by some big producers helped drive prices upto heights not seen for three decades. Making matters worse land and resources got reallocated to produce cash crops such as biofuels and the result was that voluminous reserves of grain evaporated. Protests broke out across the emerging world and fierce food riots toppled governments. This spurred global leaders into action. This made them aware that food security is one of the fundamental issues in the world that has to be dealt with in order to maintain administrative and political stability. This also spurred the US which traditionally provisioned food aid from American grain surpluses to help needy nations to move towards investing in farm sectors around the globe to boost productive for themselves and be in a better position to feed their own people.
 Africa, which missed out on the first Green Revolution due to poor policy and limited resources, also witnessed a 'change'. Swayed by the success of East Asia the primary poverty-fighting method favoured by many policy-makers in Africa was to get farmers off their farms and into modern jobs in factories and urban centers. But that strategy proved to be highly insufficient. Income levels in the countryside badly trailed those in cities while the FAO estimated that the number of poor going hungry in 2009 reached an all time high at more than one billion. In India on the other hand with only 40% of its farmland irrigated, entire economic boom currently underway is held hostage by the unpredictable monsoon. With much of India’s farming areas suffering from drought this year, the government will have a tough time meeting its economic growth targets. In a report Goldman Sachs, predicted that if this year, too receives weak rains it could cause agriculture to contract by 2 % this fiscal year making the government 7%GDP growth target look "a bit rich". Another green revolution is the need of the hour and to make it a reality, the global community still has much backbreaking farm work to do.

Which of the following had contributed to exorbitant food prices in 2008?

(A) Hoarding of food stocks by local wholesalers which inadvertently created a food shortage

(B) Export of foodgrains was reduced by large producers

(C) Diverting resources from cultivation of foodgrains to that of more profitable crops

Directions : In these questions , a part of the sentence is given in bold . Below are given alternatives to the bold part at (A) , (B) and (C) which may improve the sentence . Choose the correct alternative . In case no improvement is needed you answer is (D ) .

The term flora is use for denote plants of a particular region or period.

In each of the following questions, sentences are given with blanks to be filled in with an appropriate word (s). Four alternatives are suggested for each question. Choose the correct alternative out of the four and indicate your choice for the correct answer.

All the sugar ……………… been used up to bake the cake.

In the following question, a sentence has been given in Active/Passive voice. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Passive/Active voice.

She ate the sweets greedily.

Direction: In these questions, some of the sentences have errors and some are correct as they are. Find out which part of a sentence has an error. If a sentence is free from error, write (d) as the answer.

A free press is not a privilege (a) / but the organic necessity (b) / in a free society (c) / No error (d)

Directions (5): In the following passages, some of the words have been left out. First read the passage over and try to understand what it is about. Then fill in the blanks with the help of the alternatives given. Mark your answer in the Answer-Sheet.(Mark your answer 5)
Jawaharlal Nehru was probably the first important public leader to realise that if India were to (1) its problems, it would have to (2) the age of science. The Government of free India was one of the first in the world to set up a department of science and technology. The (3) the Government has attached to science is also clear (4) the fact that the portfolio of science and technology has always been (5) by the Prime Minister himself.

Identify the best way to improve the Bold part of the given sentence. If there is no improvement required, select ‘no improvement’-

She remained a receptionist until well in middle age.

Directions: Each sentence below has two blanks , each blank indicating that something has been omitted . Choose the set of words for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

This is the latest in a series of___________where forest departments have gone against the advice of conservation researchers; the fact that they were arm-twisted into doing so by animal-lovers makes it even more___________.