Read the following passage carefully and give answer the following questions.
Two hundred years after Malthus predicted that population growth would overtake food production by a margin of 256 to 9, the simple fact is that food production had always been ahead of the population growth. Malthus’ doomsday prediction simply did not come true due to two major reasons: first, population did not grow geometrically and birth rates in all Western countries fell during the 20- Century, resulting in very slow population growth. Over the past quarter century, birth rates have been falling in the developing countries too. Second, modern agricultural practices and better irrigation have resulted in tremendous growth in food production in almost all parts of the globe, with the notable exception of sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, at the global level, the Malthusian doomsday never befell on us.
India’s population grew by about two and a half times in the past 45 years — from 361 million in 1951 to an estimated 916 million in 1995. But during the same period, India’s food grain production grew by nearly four times — from 51 million tonnes in 1951 to 191 million tonnes in 1995. As a result, the per capita food grain availability in India has gone up considerably since the Independence. That is, the Malthusian prediction has not come true even in India.

Malthus doomsday prediction did not come true due to two major reasons. They are

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Parents all over Iceland’s capital Reykjavik embark on a two-hour evening walk around their neighbourhood every weekend, checking on youth hangouts as a 10 pm curfew approaches.The walk in Reykjavik is one step toward Iceland’s success into turning around a crisis in teenage drinking.Focusing on local participation and promoting more music and sports options for students, the island nation in the North Atlantic has dried up a teenage culture of drinking and smoking. Icelandic teenagers now have one of the lowest rates of substance abuse in Europe.The Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis, the institute pioneering the project for the past two decades, says it currently advises 100 communities in 23 countries, from Finland to Chile, on cutting teenage substance abuse. “The key to success is to create healthy communities and by that get healthy individuals, ” said Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, a sociology professor who founded the Youth of Iceland programme, which now has rebranded as Planet Youth.The secret, she says, is to keep young people busy and parents engaged without talking much about drugs or alcohol. That stands in sharp contrast to other anti-abuse programmes which try to sway teenagers with school lectures and scary, disgusting ads showing smokers’ rotten lungs or eggs in a frying pan to represent an intoxicated brain.
“Telling teenagers not to use drugs can backlash and actually get them curious to try them,” Ms Sigfusdottir said. In 1999, when thousands of teenagers would gather in Reykjavik every weekend, surveys showed 56% of Icelandic 16-year-olds drank alcohol and about as many had tried smoking.
Years later, Iceland has the lowest rates for drinking and smoking among the 35 countries measured in the 2015 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs. On average, 80% of European 16-year-olds have tasted alcohol at least once, compared with 35% in Iceland, the only country where more than half of those students completely abstains from alcohol.
Denmark, another wealthy Nordic country, has the highest rates of teenage drinking, along with Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic, where 92% to 96% have consumed alcohol. In the US, teen drinking is a significant health concern, because many US teenagers are driving cars and do not have access to good public transport like teenagers in Europe.
Reykjavik mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson said the Icelandic plan “is all about society giving better options” for teens than substance abuse. He believes the wide variety of opportunities that now keep students busy and inspired has dramatically altered the country’s youth culture. Local municipalities like Reykjavik have invested in sport halls, music schools and youth centres.To make the programmes widely available, parents are offered a 500 US dollar
annual voucher toward sports or music programmes for their children.

Researchers say the Planet Youth prevention model is evolving constantly because it is based on annual surveys to detect trends and measure policy effectiveness. By law, introduced when Icelandic police routinely dealt with alcohol-fuelled street gatherings, children under 12 are not allowed to be outside after 8pm without parents and those 13 to 16 not past 10pm. “We tell the kids if they are out too late, polite and nice, and then they go home,” said Heidar Atlason, a veteran member of the patrol. Over Iceland’s harsh winter, one parent admits, evenings sometimes pass without running into any students.

What is dramatic about the figures of teenage drinking in Iceland?

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

We expect individuals (I) to take charge of their lives, to assume responsibility for their decisions. But when individuals group together, a problem arises. Groups can’t take charge of themselves, nor can every member simultaneously take charge of the entire group. Someone from the group is invariably asked to show the way, to become the primary agent, to lead. Yet, not everyone who occupies high office is a leader. A person who merely (II) or has management skills is not a leader. Moreover, not everyone who assumes the role of a leader is able to play it well. What qualities then make for a leader? Which (A)virtues are required to provide ethical leadership? I suppose there is little new (III). But let me still give it a shot in the hope that it serves as a good reminder. And in the election year, why not focus on qualities necessary for political leadership?

If a person is chosen to lead the group, it is her responsibility to take care of the interest of each person of the entire group. This often (B)____ putting collective interest before her own interest or that of her

preferred group. For this to happen, she must first be able to identify the common good, to have a grasp of what is acceptable to all, to have an inclusive vision. This requires an infinite capacity to listen to others, to learn from them, to have the intellectual ability to critically examine and evaluate what everyone wants and needs, and then put them all together. Since this intellectual formulation can only be the first step, an estimate of the real quality of a decision is not known until it is implemented; ______(C) _______.
 This requires him to keep his ear to the ground, listen patiently to criticism to judge if his policies are working. He must not be defensive when criticised, or evade uncomfortable questions, but face criticism head on and be able to sift the wheat from the chaff. It also necessitates that a leader show flexibility and an ability for course correction by admitting mistakes. He should know that one’s stature is not diminished by accepting fallibility. A leader must be a good communicator, and that is greatly helped if he has a way with words. But all the rhetorical flourish is of no avail if the speech lacks sincerity and conviction. Finally, a good leader knows that nothing can be achieved without the collective expertise and wisdom of a support team.
 It is equally tempting to pick those one has taken a fancy to, who are personally loyal. But such people often lack spine. (D)Fearful people with poor ability can never offer good advice to their leader and could allow bad decisions to prevail that push the country down a ruinous path. Besides, they are often among the first to backstab the leader once out of power. Thus, personal likes and dislikes too must be set aside.

In the passage given, a sentence D is given in Italics. There may or may not be an error in one part of the sentence. Choose the part which has an error in it as your answer.

A passage is given with 5 Questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and click the button corresponding to it.

The public distribution system, which provides food at low prices, is a subject of vital concern. There is a growing realization that though India has enough food to feed its masses two square meals a day, the monster of starvation and food insecurity continues to haunt the poor in our country. Increasing the purchasing power of the poor through providing productive employment leading to rising income, and thus good standard of living, is the ultimate objective of public policy. However, till then, there is a need to provide assured supply of food through a restructured, more efficient and decentralized public distribution system (PDS). Although the PDS is extensive world – it hasn't reached the rural poor and the remote places. It remains an urban phenomenon, with the majority of the rural poor still out of its reach due to lack of economic and physical access. The poorest in the cities and the migrants are left out, for they generally do not possess ration cards. The allocation of PDS supplies in big cities is larger than in rural areas. In view of such deficiencies in the system, the PDS urgently needs to be streamlined. Also, considering the large it is one of the largest such systems in the food grains production combined with food subsidy on one hand and the continuing slow starvation and dismal poverty of rural population on the other, there is a strong case for making PDS target group oriented. By making PDS target group oriented, not only the poorest and the neediest would be reached without additional cost but we can also reduce the overall costs incurred. 

Which of the following is true of public distribution system? 

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.

Which of the following, according of genetics in becoming an exact science?
(A) Technicians will not be able to determine the time when genetic disorder will set in
(B) Technicians have not been able to manipulate germ cells.

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.

‘Was always aboard' in the passage means

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

The sage of science, Einstein, was sitting in a depressive and pensive mood one evening. His eyes were brimming with tears. The pain was evident on his face. He peeped out of the window of his room. The sun had set a few minutes back. The sky was filled with a reddish glow. At this sunset, he felt that it was humanity that had sunk into devilish darkness and the reddish glow in the sky was the blood of humanity spilling all over the sky from earth. With tired steps, he walked back to his chair and settled down. It was the 9th of August 1945. Three days back, he had felt the same agony as if someone had torn him apart. He was deeply hurt and depressed when he heard on the radio that America had dropped an atom bomb on the Japanese city, Hiroshima. Today, within three days another bomb was dropped on another city, Nagasaki and lakhs of people had been killed.

He had heard that the blast released so much energy that it had paled all past destructions in comparison and death had played out a pitiable dance of destruction. The flames that broke out of the bomb were burning, melting, and exploding buildings. Scared of the heat of the bomb, people had jumped into lakes and rivers, but the water was boiling and the people too were burnt and killed. The animals in the water were already boiled to death. Animals, trees, herbs, fragrant flowering plants were all turned into ashes. The atomic energy destruction had just not stopped there. It had entered the atmosphere there and had spread radiation that would affect people for generations to come and would also bring about destructive irreversible biological change in animals and plants.

As the news of the atomic attack reached Einstein, and he became aware of the glaring horror of the abuse of atomic energy, his distress and restlessness knew no bounds. He could not control himself and picked up his violin to turn his mind on to other things. While playing the violin, he tried to dissolve his distress in its sad notes, but couldn’t. He was burning on the embers of destruction; his heart was filled with an ocean of agony and tears just continued streaming uncontrollably out of his eyes. Night had fallen. His daughter came up and asked him to eat something as he had not taken anything for the last four days. His voice was restrained and he said, “I don’t feel like eating.”

He could not sleep that night. Lying down, he was thinking how he had drawn the attention of the then American President Roosevelt towards the destructive powers of an atomic bomb. He had thought that this would be used to scare Hitler and put an end to the barbarism that Hitler was up to. However, Roosevelt kept him in the dark and made false promises. Eventually, he had abused Einstein’s equation of E = mc2 that resulted in the destructive experiments. His actions had made science and scientists as murderers. Einstein kept on thinking for a long time. Eventually, he slipped into sleep. When he woke up at dawn, there was a new dawn in him too. The atomic threat had transformed his heart.

What is the central theme of the passage?

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

Teaching about compassion and empathy in schools can help deal with problems of climate change and environmental degradation,” says Barbara Maas, secretary, Standing Committee for Environment and Conservation, International Buddhist Confederation (IBC). She was in New Delhi to participate in the IBC’s governing council meeting, December 10-11, 2017. “We started an awareness campaign in the year 2005-2006 with H H The Dalai Lama when we learnt that tiger skins were being traded in China and Tibet. At that time, I was not a Buddhist; I wrote to the Dalai Lama asking him to say that ‘this is harmful’ and he wrote back to say, “We will stop this.” He used very strong words during the Kalachakra in 2006, when he said, ‘If he sees people wearing fur and skins, he doesn’t feel like living. ‘This sent huge shock waves in the Himalayan community. Within six months, in Lhasa, people ripped the fur trim of their tubba, the traditional Tibetan dress.
 The messenger was ideal and the audience was receptive,” says Maas who is a conservationist. She has studied the battered fox’s behavioral ecology in Serengeti, Africa. She heads the endangered species conservation at the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) International Foundation for Nature, Berlin. “I met Samdhong Rinpoche, The Karmapa, HH the Dalai Lama and Geshe Lhakdor and I thought, if by being a Buddhist, you become like this, I am going for it, “says Maas, who led the IBC initiative for including the Buddhist perspective to the global discourse on climate change by presenting the statement, ‘The Time to Act is Now: a Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change,’ at COP21 in Paris.
 “It was for the first time in the history of Buddhism that leaders of different sanghas came together to take a stand on anything! The statement lists a couple of important things: the first is that we amass things that we don’t need; there is overpopulation; we need to live with contentment and deal with each other and the environment with love and compassion,” elaborates Maas. She is an ardent advocate of a vegan diet because “consuming meat and milk globally contributes more to climate change than all "transport in the world.”
 Turning vegetarian or vegan usually requires complete change of perspective before one gives up eating their favorite food. What are the Buddhist ways to bring about this kind of change at the individual level? “To change our behavior, Buddhism is an ideal vehicle; it made me a more contented person,” says Maas, who grew up in Germany, as a sausage chomping, meat-loving individual. She says, “If I can change, so can anybody.

Why is Ms. Barbara an ardent follower of vegan diet?