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 The new regulation also carried the following warning: "permission shall be withdrawn if the colleges resort to commercialization".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. 

What is the idea behind the MCI putting in place the RFID-based smart card?
(1) To monitor and track faculty from MCI headquarters in the future.
(2) To put a stop to the practice of colleges of presenting fake faculty members.
(3) To verify the authenticity of faculty member qualifications.

Fill in the blanks by choosing an appropriate alternative. 

………………………….  poor can be trusted. 

The man took out a knife. He intended to frighten all of us.

What is the synonym of nasty?

Find the correctly spelt word.

Directions : In the following questions, a grammatically correct and meaningful sentence is given which is divided into five parts, where the first part is fixed and highlighted , in the remaining parts of the sentence namely (A),(B),(C) and (D) You have to arrange the four parts to make a contextually and grammatically meaningful sentence. If no such rearrangement is possible mark (e) as your answer i.e. 'No rearrangement required'.

(A) upcoming visit to India
 (B) the long-awaited trade agreement
 (C) during US President Donald Trump's
 (D) appears to be off the table

Direction: In the passage given below, there are blanks, each followed by a word given in bold. Every blank has four alternative words given in options (A), (B), (C) and (D). Find the word which best suits the place. If the given word suits the blank, mark ‘no correction/change required’ as the answer.

A trilateral transport corridor project, inked in Tehran this week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the leaders of Iran and Afghanistan, has the potential to dally (1) the geopolitical map of South and Central Asia. Mr. Modi’s visit also put an end to years of ambivalence on the development of Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, the focal point of the corridor project. New Delhi and Tehran had agreed in 2003 to develop the port, near the Iran-Pakistan border. But the project did not take off, mainly owing to international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, but also on account of inertia in Delhi. The removal of accolade (2) after Iran’s nuclear deal has provided New Delhi an opportunity to revitalize bilateral ties. The road, rail, and port development projects, once implemented (3), will change the way India, Afghanistan, and Iran do business. For India, the projects have specific economic and strategic significance. India and Afghanistan have failed to realize the full economic potential of their friendship owing to connectivity problems. The Pakistan link between India and landlocked Afghanistan has been a/an countenance (4), given Islamabad’s tense diplomatic ties with both New Delhi and Kabul, and sometimes with Tehran too. Once the Chabahar port is developed, Indian ships will get direct access to the Iranian coast; a rail line to the Afghan border town of Zaranj will allow India a route around Pakistan. This will surely boost trade with Iran and Afghanistan. Besides, the neglected (5) free trade zone in the Chabahar area offers Indian companies a new investment destination at a well-connected port city. India has already said its companies will set up “plants in sectors such as fertilizers, petrochemicals, and metallurgy.” in the zone. It will also supply $400 million worth of steel rails to Tehran to build the railway link.

Find out the appropriate word/phrase to fill blank 5.

Select the most appropriate synonym of the given word.

HANDY