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

There are three main groups of oils-animal, vegetable and mineral. Great quantities of animal oil come from whales, creatures of the sea, which are the largest of the animals remaining in the world. To protect the whales from the cold of the Artic seas, nature has provided them with a thick covering of fat, called blubber. When the whale is killed, the blubber is stripped off and boiled down. It produces a great quantity of oil which can be made into food for human consumption. A few other creatures yield oil, but none so much as the whale. The livers of the cod and halibut, two kinds of fish, yield nourishing oil. Both cod liver oil and halibut oil are given to sick children and other invalids who need certain vitamins. 
Vegetable oil has been known from very old times. No household can get on without it, for it is used in cooking. Perfumes may be made from the oils of certain flowers. Soaps are made from eatable and animal products and the oils of certain flowers. 

Vegetable oil is mainly used for –

Read the following given passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and appropriate in the answer sheet.

Suppose your son misbehaves towards you, or your father one day in his anger is unduly severe to you, it is not great virtue to forgive them. Suppose a brother of yours does you some harm and you say. “Never mind, you are my brother, I let you go,” there is no great virtue in that. The difficulty is when you have to forget the sin of your enemies. It your Dayady who has always hated you, does you some fresh injury and you forgive that, then it is a real act of forgiveness.
It is that which the Mahatma preaches. He says, “Forgive thine enemies,” which is one of the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is a mistake to think Christianity alone preaches the virtue. Other religions also teach it. Now Gandhi is pre-eminently a Hindu, and he says he is living the best part of Hinduism when he himself forgives the sin of enemies, and asks people to love them as their friends.

What is difficult to forget?

Direction: 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.

Princess Chandravati was very beautiful. She loved all kinds of ornaments and always wanted to wear the most precious and lovely jewels. Once, a jeweler came to the palace and gifted the King a wonderful diamond necklace. It glittered with big and small diamonds. It was certainly a very expensive necklace. The princess fell in love with it as soon as she saw it. So, the king presented it to her.
 From that day on, the princess always wore that necklace, wherever she went. One day before, going for a swim in the pond, she took the necklace off and put in the hands of her oldest and the most trustworthy servant. "Hold this and be careful. This is the most precious necklace in the whole world, " she said. The Servant was an old woman. She sat under tree, holding the ornament tightly and waited for the princess. It was a hot afternoon and the servant was very tired so she dozed off under the tree. Suddenly the servant felt that someone was tugging at the necklace and she woke up with a start. She looked around but it no one was there and the necklace was gone. Scared out of her wits, the old servant started screaming. On hearing her scream the royal guards rushed to her. She pointed towards the direction in which the thief may have gone and the guards ran off that way.
 There was a poor and dim-witted farmer walking on the same road. As soon as he saw the royal guards running towards him, he thought that they wanted to catch him and started running. But he was not a strong man and could not outrun the hefty guards. The royal guards caught him in no time. “Where is it? " they demanded. shaking him. “Where is what? " the poor farmer stammered back. The necklace you stole!" thundered one of the royal guards. The farmer had no idea what they were talking about. He only understood that some precious necklace was lost and he was supposed to have it. He quickly replied, " I don't know where it is now. I gave it to my landlord.”

The guards ran towards the landlord 's house. "Give us the necklace right now ! " the guards demanded of the at landlord. "Necklace? I don’t have any!" the stunned landlord replied. Then tell us quickly who “does demanded the soldiers. In order to get the royal guards off his back, the landlord pointed towards a priest who was walking by his house and said, "He does." The guards now caught hold of the priest who was walking towards the temple and thinking about the lunch he had just eaten. The priest was stunned when one of the burly guards jumped on him and asked about the necklace. He remembered that the minister, Bhupathi, was at the temple. He took the guards to the temple and pointed towards the praying minister, “I gave it to him, "he said. Bhupati too was caught and all four men were thrown in jail. The Chief Minister of the kingdom knew Bhupati well and was sure that Bhupati would never steal. He decided to find out who the culprit was. He hid near the jail where all four men were put and heard them talking First, Bhupati asked the priest, “Panditji, why did you say that you gave the necklace to me? I was quietly praying at the temple and now you have landed me in jail for no fault of mine.” The priest looked apologetic. He pointed towards the landlord and said, " I didn’t know what to say. He set the " guards on me. I was simply passing by his house and was on my way to the temple." The landlord looked at the priest sheepishly. Then he turned towards the poor farmer and yelled. “You lazy good-for-nothing man! Why did you say that I had the necklace? " The farmer, trembling under the angry gaze of all three men, said, " I was just walking home. The guards caught me and I did not know what to say." On hearing, this conversation, he Chief Minister understood that all the four men were innocent. He immediately ordered the royal guards to search thoroughly, near the pond. The guards searched high and low till they saw something clinging the tree. On the tree sat a monkey with the princess’ favorite necklace around his neck. It took a lot of coxing and bananas before the monkey threw the necklace on the ground. The’ king apologized to at the four men and gave them gold coins as compensation. He requested his daughter to wear the necklace only indoors.

Select the same meaningful word from the given paragraph.
Precious 

Directions: In the following questions, you have to passage with 5 questions following each passage. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
Some people say that man's desire for war is due to his fight for survival and that war is necessary to preserve his virility. Yet, war nowadays leaves a legacy of the weakest men and stimulates not the noble but the bestial qualities of mankind.
 A venture of some kind is necessary for man; he will inevitably deteriorate physically and mentally if his life is one of ease and luxury lived in an atmosphere of ‘Safety First.’ This is the real reason behind our love of sports in the open air. It is no use being a millionaire if one suffers from chronic in digestion; a tramp with good innards is far happier. Nothing that money can buy is worthwhile without good health. There is no better way to perfect health and physical fitness than to walk over or climb hills and mountains.
 But mountains give us much more than mere physical fitness; they exercise the mental faculties as well. Climbing a high and difficult peak is as much a mental exercise as a physical exercise. It calls for sense and judgement for planning and thinking ahead, for anticipating difficulty and danger, for responsibility towards one's companions, and best of all, it brings the mountaineer into touch with the beauties of the universe. 

If a man leads a life in an atmosphere of 'Safety First’ he will 

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.
Recent advances in science and technology have made it possible for geneticists to find out abnormalities in the unborn foetus and take remedial action to rectify some defects which would otherwise prove to be fatal to the child. Though genetic engineering is still at its infancy, scientists can now predict with greater accuracy a genetic disorder. It is not yet an exact science since they are not in a position to predict when exactly a genetic disorder will set in. While they have not yet been able to change the genetic order of the gene in germs, they are optimistic and are holding out that in the near future they might be successful in achieving this feat. They have, however, acquired the ability in manipulating tissue cells. However, genetic misinformation can sometimes be damaging for it may adversely affect people psychologically. Genetic information may lead to a tendency to brand some people as inferiors. Genetic information can therefore be abused and its application in deciding the sex of the foetus and its subsequent abortion is now hotly debated on ethical lines. But on this issue geneticists cannot be squarely blamed though this charge has often been levelled at them. It is mainly a societal problem. At present genetic engineering is a costly process of detecting disorders but scientists hope to reduce the costs when technology becomes more advanced. This is why much progress in this area has been possible in scientifically advanced and rich countries like the USA, UK and Japan. It remains to be seen if in the future this science will lead to the development of a race of supermen or will be able to obliterate disease from this world.

What is the tone of the author in the last sentence of the passage?

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct option.
Too much importance must not be attached to the wrong acts done by children, particularly if they happen to be of minor nature. Many boys and girls at a young age are likely to be in the habit of stealing, neglecting their studies, slipping out of their classes or using bad language. In nearly every case of root cause of the trouble is the fact that proper care of the child is not taken in the house or sufficient interest is not shown to him. But if the parents were wise, they would correct the faults of their children by paying more attention to them. Whatever the case, one thing should never be done. Bad things in the children should never be repressed, that is, they should not be compelled to change for the better under fear of the rod. Physical punishment does not improve them. It only makes them worse than before.

What is the synonym of the word ‘compelled to’ used in the passage? 

There are three main groups of oils-animal, vegetable and mineral. Great quantities of animal oil come from whales, creatures of the sea, which are the largest of the animals remaining in the world. To protect the whales from the cold of the Artic seas, nature has provided them with a thick covering of fat, called blubber. When the whale is killed, the blubber is stripped off and boiled down. It produces a great quantity of oil which can be made into food for human consumption. A few other creatures yield oil, but none so much as the whale. The livers of the cod and halibut, two kinds of fish, yield nourishing oil. Both cod liver oil and halibut oil are given to sick children and other invalids who need certain vitamins. 
Vegetable oil has been known from very old times. No household can get on without it, for it is used in cooking. Perfumes may be made from the oils of certain flowers. Soaps are made from eatable and animal products and the oils of certain flowers. 

Vegetable oil is mainly used for –