Synonym of Degradation

Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow based on the information given in the passage.

IN GORILLA society, power belongs to silverback males. These splendid creatures have numerous status markers besides their back hair: they are bigger than the rest of their band, strike space-filling postures, produce deeper sounds, thump their chests lustily and, in general, exude an air of physical fitness. Things are not that different in the corporate world. The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair and, for his age, a fit body. Bosses spread themselves out behind their large desks. They stand tall when talking to subordinates. Their conversation is laden with prestige pauses and declarative statements. The big difference between gorillas and humans is, of course, that human society changes rapidly. The past few decades have seen a striking change in the distribution of power—between men and women, the West and the emerging world and geeks and non-geeks.

Women run some of America’s largest firms, such as General Motors (Mary Barra) and IBM (Virginia Rometty). More than half of the world’s biggest 2,500 public companies have their headquarters outside the West. Geeks barely out of short trousers run some of the world’s most dynamic businesses. Peter The, one of Silicon Valley’s leading investors, has introduced a blanket rule: never invest in a CEO who wears a suit. Yet it is remarkable, in this supposed age of diversity, how many bosses still conform to the stereotype. First, they are tall: in research for his 2005 book, “Blink”, Malcolm Gladwell found that 30% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are 6 feet 2 inches or taller, compared with 3.9% of the American population. People who “sound right” also have a marked advantage in the race for the top. Quantified Communications, a Texas-based company, asked people to evaluate speeches delivered by 120 executives. They found that voice quality accounted for 23% of listeners’ evaluations and the content of the speech only accounted for 11%.
 Academics from the business schools of the University of California, San Diego and Duke University listened to 792 male CEOs giving presentations to investors and found that those with the deepest voices earned $187,000 a year more than the average.
 Physical fitness seems to matter too: a study published this month, by Peter Limbach of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Florian Sonnenburg of the University of Cologne, found that companies in America’s S&P 1500 index whose CEOs had finished a marathon were worth 5% more on average than those whose bosses had not.

What is TRUE according to passage?
I. Good postures makes people happy
II. Physical fitness matters to become CEO
III.Women are incapable of controlling their weight

Direction: Use the verbs given in brackets either in Active or Passive according to sense of the given sentence.
The letters…….by pigeons even today. (carry)

Directions: In the passage given below there are blanks, each followed by a word given in the brackets. Every blank has five alternative words given in options. Find the word which best suits the respective blank. If the given word suits the blank, mark 'no correction required' as the answer.

The widespread consternation over the rupee hitting a 27-month low against the dollar is unwarranted, for the Indian currency has been among the better (Q11) [hiking] currencies over the last couple of years. While other (Q12) [trickling] market currencies.  such as the Russian rouble and the Brazilian real are down more than 20 per cent this year, the rupee is lower by just 6 per cent. This follows a strong performance in 2014, when the Indian currency lost just 1.2 per cent against the greenback. It is obvious that the rupee is in a sweet spot (Q13) [peculiar] to its emerging market peers, which have been hit hard by the (Q14) [ascent] in commodity prices. India, on the other hand, has benefited from this fall. The crash in crude prices combined with the checks on gold imports have helped (Q15) [recede] the current account deficit to just 1.27 per cent of GDP. Strong foreign inflows — from both portfolio and direct investments — have pushed India’s forex reserves to $351 billion; we are among the few countries that have (Q16) [considered] to increase forex reserves since the middle of last year. These reserves provide the Indian central bank with (Q17) [ammunition] to protect the rupee from short-term volatility that may arise once the Federal Reserve goes through with its long-anticipated rate hike. Since the Fed has given financial markets sufficient time to (Q18) [discern] the move, a 25 basis points move is not likely to cause too much turbulence. True, some short-term money will flow out of the equity markets; foreign portfolio investors have (Q19) [turned] net sellers since November. But long-term investors are likely to stay put due to the better growth (Q20) [contrariety] of Indian companies. The superior real yield, falling inflation and a stable rupee also make a strong case for staying invested in Indian debt instruments.

Choose the correct answer from the given options to fill the blanks which are numbered.

Directions: Read the following. passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. 

In February 2010 the Medical Council of India announced a major change in the regulation governing the establishment of medical colleges. With this change, corporate entities were permitted to open medical colleges. The new regulation also carried the following warning: "permission shall be withdrawn if the colleges resort to commercialization". Since the regulation does not elaborate on what constitutes "resorting to commercialisation", this will presumably be a matter left to the discretion of the Government. 

A basic requirement for a new medical college is a preexisting hospital that will serve as a teaching hospital. Corporate entities have hospitals in the major metros and that is where they will have to locate medical colleges.The earlier mandated land requirement for a medical college campus, minimum of 25 acres of contiguous land, cannot be fulfilled in the metros. Not surprisingly, yet another tweak has been made in the regulation, prescribing 10 acres as the new minimum campus size for 9 cities including the main metros. With this, the stage is set for corporate entities to enter the medical education market. 

Until now, medical education in India has been projected as a not-for- profit activity to be organised for the public good. While private bodies can run medical colleges, these can only be societies or trusts, legally non-profit organizations. In opening the door to corporate colleges, thus, a major policy change has been effected without changing the law or even a discussion in Parliament, but by simply getting a compliant MCI to change the regulation on establishment of medical colleges. This and other changes have been justified in the name of addressing the shortage of doctors. At the same time, over 50, existing medical colleges, including 15 run by the government, have been prohibited from ad- mitting students in 2010 for having failed to meet the basic standards prescribed. Ninety per cent of these colleges have come up in the last 5 years. Particularly shocking is the phenomenon of government colleges falling short of standards approved by the Government. Why are state government institutions not able to meet the requirements that have been approved by the central government? A severe problem faced by government-run in- situations is attracting and retaining teaching faculty, and this is likely to be among the major reasons for these colleges failing to satisfy the MCI norms. The crisis building up on the faculty front has been flagged by various commissions looking into problems of medical education over the years. 

An indicator of the crisis is the attempt to conjure up faculty when MCI carries out inspections of new colleges, one of its regulatory functions. Judging by news reports, the practice of presenting fake faculty-students or private medical practitioners hired for the day -during MCI inspections in private colleges is common. What is interesting is that even government colleges are adopting unscrupulous methods. Another indicator is the extraordinary scheme, verging on the ridiculous that is being put in place by the MCI to make inspections 'foolproof. Faculty in all medical colleges are to be issued an RFID based smart card by the MCI with a unique Faculty Number. The Card, it is argued, will eliminate the possibility of a teacher being shown on the faculty of more than one college and establish if the qualifications of a teacher are genuine. In the future it is projected that biometric RFID readers will be installed in the colleges that will enable a Faculty from within the college and even remotely from MCI headquarters.

The picture above does not even start to reveal the true and pathetic situation of medical care especially in rural India. Only a fraction of the doctors and nursing professionals serve rural areas where 70 per cent of our population lives. The Health Ministry, with the help of the MCI, has been active in proposing yet another 'innovative' solution to the problem of lack of doctors in the rural areas. The proposal is for a three-and-a-half year course to obtain the degree of Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS). Only rural candidates would be able to join this course. The study and training would happen at two different levels -Community Health Centers for 18 months, and sub-divisional hospitals for a further period of 2 years and be conducted by retired professors. After completion of training, they would only be able to serve in their own state in district hospitals, community health centers, and primary health centers.

The BRMS proposal has invited sharp criticism from some doctors' organisations on the grounds that it is discriminatory to have two different standards of health care -one for urban and the other for rural areas, and that the health care provided by such graduates will be compromised. At the other end is the opinion expressed by some that "something is better than nothing", that since doctors do not want to serve in rural areas, the government may as well create a new cadre of medics who will be obliged to serve there. The debate will surely pick up after the government formally lays out its plans. What is apparent is that neither this proposal nor the various stopgap measures adopted so far address the root of the problem of health care. The far larger issue is government policy, the low priority attached by the government to the social sector in particular, evidenced in the paltry allocations for maintaining and upgrading medical infrastructure and medical education and for looking after precious human resoureces. 

Choose the word which is most similar in meaning to the word printed in the bold as used in the passage.
FLAGGED

Direction: In the following questions, out of the four alternatives, choose the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word as your answer.

INSOLENT 

Directions: In question four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase underlined in the sentences. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the Idiom/Phrase and mark it is the Answer Sheet.

I enjoyed visiting Nainital but it was a far cry from the ideal hill station I expected.

Choose the word which is most nearly the same in meaning as the word given in capital letters:

ABANDON