Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.
 The essence of Gandhiji’s teaching was meant not for his country or his people alone but for all mankind and is valid not only for today but for all the time. He wanted all men to be free so that they could grow unhampered into full self-realization. He wanted to abolish the exploitation of man by man in any shape or form because both exploitation and submission to it are sin not only against society but against the moral law, the law of our being. The means to be compatible with this end therefore, he said have to be purely moral, namely unadulterated truth and non-violence. He had been invited by many foreigners to visit their countries and deliver his message to them directly but he declined to accept such invitations as, he said, he must make good what he claimed for; Truth and Ahimsa in his own country before he could launch on the gigantic task of winning or rather converting the world. With the attainment of freedom by India, by following his method, though in a limited way and in spite of all the imperfections in its practice, the condition precedent for taking his message to other countries was to a certain extent fulfilled. And although the partition has caused wounds and raised problems which claimed all his time and energy, he might have been able to turn his attention to this larger question even in the midst of his distractions. But Providence had ordained otherwise. May some individual or nation arise and carry forward the effort launched by him till the experiment is completed, the work finished and the objective achieved.

Which of the following statements is TRUE in the context of the passage? 

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain parts are given in bold to answer some of the questions based on the passage.
 Sometimes to upend entrenched power structures, a revolution is required. Naming and shaming powerful men in the #Metoo campaign is in many ways a revolutionary act. The truth about most was known, spoken in whispers, but not to their face. But now that omerta has been broken by some intrepid women , there’s a palpable sense of power and possibility. 

Revolutions are by definition anarchic, as they are aimed against those who make and enforce the rules. So it has been with #MeToo. Men are named, sometimes anonymously, and the naming itself requires punitive action to be taken against them. There isn’t really any room for discussion on context or degree of culpability. Some have raised questions about due process, and the response has been, somewhat reasonably, that due process has failed. And it is true, arguing for due process when due process has failed feels a bit like batting for status quo. So let it be said, #MeToo despite its limitations is unreservedly a good development. However, the question is, what next? The #MeToo movement is more than just outing powerful men, it is about shifting the balance of power between men and women, transferring the punitive aspects — shame, denial of work opportunities — from the victim to the perpetrator. It is about ending impunity embedded in our social construct by shaping new social mores. This is and has to be a collective effort, and it is important for the #MeToo movement to have these discussions.

Let the burden of shame now be shifted to where it is supposed to- the perpetrators and not the women; the victims. It’s the woman who has to hide from the world. And by and large, due to this very fact prevailing in Indian society that many women ultimately choose to leave their jobs, or seek employment elsewhere, when they confront inappropriate behaviour from their colleagues.

Another very important aspect which should be taken care of is that of equality, where there’s no inhibitions, no sense of caution. Women need healthy camaraderie in place of needless caution. Respect, not condescension. They would like colleagues to engage with them, not be patronising. And the fact that they are still having to demand these is telling.

What kind of environment does the writer advocate for women in conclusion of the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
   
Indeed the western recession is really the beginning of good news for India! But to understand that we will have to move away for a while from the topic of western recession . . . . . . . to the Japanese recession! For years the Japanese style of management has been admired. However, over the last decade or so, one key question has sprung up ‘if Japanese management style is as wonderful as described then why has Japan been in a recession for more than a decade?'
The answer to this question is very simple. Culture plays a very important part in shaping up economies. What succeeds in one culture fails in another. Japanese are basically nonmaterialistic. And however rich they become, unlike others, they cannot just keep throwing and buying endlessly. And once they have everything they need; there is a saturation point. It was only when companies like Toyota realized that they cannot keep selling cars endlessly to their home market that they went really aggressive in the western markets-and the rest is history. Japanese companies grew bigger by catering to the world markets when their home markets shrunk.

served equally well. They were lured through advertising and marketing techniques of ‘dustbinisation' of the customer; and then finally, once they became ready customers, they were given loans and credits to help them buy more and more. When all the creditworthy people were given loans to a logical limit, they ceased to be a part of the market. Even this would have been understandable if it could work as an eye-opener. Instead of taking the 'Right Step' as Toyota did, they preferred to take a 'shortcut'. Now banks went to the noncredit worthy people and gave them loans. The people expectedly defaulted and the entire system collapsed.

Now like Toyota western companies will learn to find new markets. They will now lean towards India because of its common man! The billion-plus population in the next 25 years will become, a consuming middle-class. Finally, there will be a real surge in income of these people and in the next fifty odd years, one can really hope to see an equal world in terms of material plenty, with poverty being almost nonexistent! And this will happen not by selling more cars to Americans and Europeans. It will happen by creating markets in India, China, Latin America and Africa, by giving their people purchasing power and by making products for them.
The recession has made us realize that it is not because of worse management techniques, but because of limits to growth. And they will realize that it is great for planet earth. After all, how many cars and houses must the rich own before calling it enough? It's time for them to look at others as well. Many years back, to increase his own profits, Henry Ford had started paying his workers more, so that they could buy his cars. In similar fashion, now the developed world will pay the developing world people so that they can buy their cars and washing machines.
The recession will kick - start the process of making the entire world more prosperous, and lay the foundation of limits to growth in the west and the foundation of real globalization in the world - of the globalization of prosperity. And one of its first beneficiaries will be India. 

Why according to the author is the current recession great for ‘Planet Earth’?
(A) It will make people non-materialistic like the Japanese.
(B) The unlimited market growth which caused hazards to the environment would be checked to a certain extent.
(C) Banks will now provide loan only to the creditworthy people.
(D) Developing countries will also be benefited by shifted markets.

Read the passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.

Looking back on those days I see myself as a kind of centaur, half boy, half bike, forever wheeling down suburban streets under the poincianas, on my way to football practice or the library or to a meeting of the little group of us, girls and boys, that came together on someone's verandah in the evenings after tea.
I might come across the Professor then on his after dinner stroll; and as often as not, he would be accompanied by my father, who would stop me and demand (partly, I thought, to impress the Professor) where I was off to or where I had been; insisting, with more than his usual force, that I come home right away, with no argument I spent long hours cycling back and forth between our house and Ross McDowell or Jimmy Larwood's, my friends from school, and the Professor's house was always on the route, I was always aboard and waiting for something significant to occur, for life somehow to declare it self and catch me up I rode my bike in slow circles or figures-of-eight, took it for sprints across the gravel of the park, or simply hung motionless in the saddle, balanced and waiting.

The narrator described himself as 'a kind of centaur" because

Read the passage carefully and give answer the following question.

We should preserve Nature to preserve life and beauty. A beautiful landscape, full of green vegetation, will not just attract our attention but will fill us with infinite satisfaction. Unfortunately, because of modernization, much of nature is now yielding to towns, roads and industrial areas. In a few places some natural reserves are now being carved out to avert the danger of destroying nature completely. Man will perish without nature, so modern man should continue this struggle to save plants, which give us oxygen. Moreover, Nature is essential to man’s health.

Why a beautiful landscape ‘will fill us with infinite satisfaction’ ?

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.

What prompted leaders throughout the world to take action to boost the agriculture sector in 2008?

Read the following passage carefully and give answer the question.
Great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who write them. They are the affluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors. And literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it has been translated into the actual life of him who reads. It is the vast reservoir of true ideas and emotions. In a world deprived of literature, the broad, the noble, the generous would tend to disappear and life would be correspondingly degraded because the wrong idea and the petty emotion would never feel the upward pull of the ideas and emotions of genius. Only by conceiving a society without literature can it be clearly realized that the function of literature is to raise the plain towards the top level of the peaks. Literature exists so that where a man has lived finely, ten thousand may afterward live finely. it is a means of life, it concerns the living essence.

How have great books been written?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions as directed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage these days. A recent article noted that ‘robots’ — shorthand for AI in the tabloids — will be able to write a fiction bestseller within 50 years. I suppose that would be shocking to me as a novelist if most fiction bestsellers were not already being written by ‘robots’. Or so one feels, keeping publishing and other vogues in mind: a bit of this, a bit of that, a dash of something else, and voila you have a bestseller! In that sense, perhaps the rise of AI will make us reconsider what we mean by human intelligence. This discussion has been neglected for far too long. Take my field: literature. The Chinese company, Cheers Publishing, lately offered a collection of poems written by a computer program. So, are poets, generally considered to be suicidal in any case, jumping off the cliffs in droves as a consequence?
 Well, this is a selection from one of the AI poems I found online: “The rain is blowing through the sea / A

bird in the sky / A night of light and calm / Sunlight / Now in the sky / Cool heart / The savage north wind

/ When I found a new world.”
 Yes, there are aspiring poets — and sometimes established ones — who write like this, connecting words centripetally or centrifugally to create an effect. I think they should have been pushed off literary cliffs a long time ago. Because this is not poetry; this is just the technique of assembling words like poetry. There is a difference between the intelligence required to write poetry and the skills required to write it. That poetic intelligence is lost without the required poetic skills, but the skills on their own do not (A)suffice either. The fact that lines like this, written by AI, can be considered poetry does not reflect on the intelligence of AI. It reflects on the intelligence of those readers, writers, critics, editors, publishers and academics who have not yet distinguished between gimmickry and mimicry on the one side and the actual freshness of a chiselled line on the other. But this is a small example. Surely, AI might also make (B)_____________, including that of considering something like IQ to be a sufficient index of human mental capacity! Because if we think that AI can replace human intelligence, then we are simply not thinking hard enough. (C) One of the major (1) activity here is that of considering (2) intelligence to be something (3) different from and raised above the (4) failures of living. This leads to the misconception that intelligence can be (D)___ to something else — say, a robot — without becoming something else. Human intelligence cannot be passed on to something else: What is “passed on” is always a different kind of ‘intelligence’. Even the arguments that AI — or, as in the past, robots — can enable human beings to lead a gloriously workless existence is based on a similar misconception. Because human intelligence is embedded in human existence, ‘work’ as human activity in the world is not something human beings can do without.

Out of the following options which option does support the statement “There is a difference between the intelligence required to write poetry and the skills required to write it,” made by the author in the paragraph?