Q1. Yes, nobody wants to be Japan, the fallen angel that went from one of the fastest growing economies in the worth for more than three decades to none that has slowed to a crawl for the past 18 years. No one wants to live with the trauma of the deflation (falling prices) that Japan has repeatedly experienced. No one wants to navigate the precarious government-debt dynamic that Japan faces, with debt levels far above 100% of GDP – even if one factors in Japanese government’s vast holdings of foreign – exchange reserves. _______________.
(a) No one wants to go from being a world-beater to a poster child for economic stagnation.
(b) And yet, visitors to Tokyo today see prosperity everywhere.
(c) Although hardly in crisis yet, Japan’s fiscal situation grows more alarming by the day.
(d) Until now, the government has been able to finance its vast debts locally, despite paying paltry interest even on longer-term borrowings.
(e) Remarkably, Japanese savers soak up some 95% of their government’s debt.
Q2. On 1 March, Philip Morris, a tobacco giant, sued eight American retailers for selling counterfeit versions of its Marlboro cigarettes. Governments are also boosting their efforts to crack down on counterfeiting which deprives them of tax revenue in addition to harming legitimate businesses. Thanks to the rise of the internet and of extended international supply chains, and more recently, to the global economic downturn, counterfeit goods are every-where. Fake Porsches and Ferraris zoom along the streets of Bangkok. A German bank has discovered an ersatz gold ingot made of tungsten in its reserves, according to a German television channel investigating persistent reports that many of the world’s financial institutions have been similarly hoodwinked. _______________.
(a) Counterfeiting used to be a luxury goods problem, but now people are trying to traffic counterfeit items that have a wider effect on the economy.
(b) NASA, America’s space agency, has even bought suspect materials.
(c) Several factors have contributed to the growth of counterfeiting in recent years.
(d) Fake goods are proliferating, to the dismay of companies and governments.
(e) The recession in the rich world may also have given a boost to counterfeit goods.
Q3. The rate of conviction in SC and ST atrocity cases in the State has reached 22 percent from 10 percent last year due to the proper investigations done by the departments concerned and the increased awareness that enabled the aggrieved persons to get justice. The government has been appointing special public prosecutors in ‘most sensational’ and long-pending cases and has issued guidelines to increase people’s understanding of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. _______________.
(a) The people’s representatives should now acquaint people with the legal remedies available for them.
(b) The Act has been implemented in letter and spirit.
(c) The Police Department act swiftly on complaints of atrocities.
(d) These measures facilitated speedy disposal of SC and ST atrocity cases.
(e) Investigations have paved the way for speedy delivery of justice.
Q4. Make no mistake: the setting matters. There are many ways to listen to classical Indian music – in the private, somewhat sterile perfection of the CDs and DVDs we play at home; in the concert sabhas of Mylapore and T. Nagar; on the music channels on TV or on YouTube, which now carries a little or a lot of almost everything, often in choppy, byte-size pieces. But I happen to think that this music sounds best outside, on a hot spring or summer night, with the taste of pollen and dust on your tongue and mosquitoes circling around your feet. _______________.
(a) We tend to forget that much of the classical music of India, both Hindustani and Carnatic, was meant for intimate settings like the royal court.
(b) Taking classical music out of ‘sabhas’ into vibrant cultural spaces brings out its ethereal dimensions.
(c) Music is a tangible thing, to be felt in the pores of your skin no less than in the ear; you just can’t do that very well in the concert halls.
(d) In the course of its transition to the modern concert stage, Carnatic music in particular has sacrificed something of its delicacy.
(e) One of the important things about the settings is the recreation of a context for listening in which subtlety and intimacy can assume their natural role.
Q5. In 2009, China overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter. Exactly half the trade disputes that were filed at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year involved China. These facts are not unrelated. As Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s chief, pointed out in January, the scope for trade friction increases as countries trade more. _______________.
(a) Hence, China will test the WTO’s dispute-settlement system.
(b) Hence, disputes between China and other countries are only to be expected.
(c) Hence, China’s increasing propensity to bring disputes to the WTO is part of a broader shift.
(d) Hence, China has moved from learning-by-watching, to being an active participant in formal dispute settlement.
(e) Hence, more disputes may be inevitable; resolving them successfully is not.
Q6. Hundreds of farmers in long, faded cotton sarongs swarmed outside an auditorium at Bangalore University last February. They were waiting for India’s Environment Minister. This was the last of his public consultations on the commercial release of BtBrinjal, a genetically modified (GM) aubergine, created by Mahyco, an Indian hybrid-seed company, and Monsanto, an American biotech giant. Waving placards and appetizing images of aubergines, known in India as brinjal, they shouted themselves hoarse praising the transgenic vegetable. But most of these men, registered at the consultation as farmers, were in fact landless labourers with no aubergine experience. The Minister was the first to call their bluff. The companies, he said, without naming any, had bussed farmers from rural districts, to play the pro-GM crowd at the hearing that day._______________.
(a) The tactic failed miserably.
(b) The minister’s roadshow to canvas public views was unusual.
(c) Many were surprised at the Minister’s decision to snub the seed companies and powerful domestic and American biotech lobbies.
(d) The Minister felt obliged to be responsible to science and responsive to society.
(e) It was a setback for GM in India.
Q7. Indian’s industry going from strength to strength. Manufacturing grew by 14.3% in the fourth quarter, compared with the same period last year. Politicians celebrate the achievements of “India Inc”, applauding its acquisitions abroad and welcoming the foreign investment it attracts. They do not show anything like the same confidence in “Bharat Inc”, which is how India’s rural economy is sometimes described. Bharat, which means India in Hindi, is a different country. The rural heartland is courted for votes, smothered with regulations, and shielded from the global economy that corporate India is busy conquering. _______________.
(a) Indian agriculture has performed poorly because governments have treated it as a source of votes rather than as an engine of growth.
(b) But its policymakers should treat farms as a potential source of growth, not just of votes.
(c) Yet the government cannot achieve the growth it aspires to without robust progress in agriculture, which still employs about half of India’s workforce.
(d) This year, for the first time in the country’s history, India’s factories may contribute more to GDP than its farms, forests and fisheries.
(e) Indian agriculture can comfortably feed the country, but that remains the sum of its achievement.
Q8. Thirty years ago the bosses of America’s car industry were shocked to learn that Japan had overtaken America to become the world’s leading car producer. They were even more shocked when they visited Japan to find out what was going on. They found that the secret of Japan’s success did not lie in cheap labour or government subsidies – their preferred explanations – but in what was rapidly dubbed “lean manufacturing”. While Detroit slept, Japan had transformed itself from a low-wage economy into a hotbed of business innovation. _______________.
(a) Soon every factory around the world was lean – or a ruin.
(b) Management gurus are always glibly proclaiming revolutions.
(c) Now something comparable is taking place in the developing world.
(d) The rich world is losing its leadership in the sort of breakthrough ideas that transform industries.
(e) Western carmakers learned the techniques of lean production from their Japanese rivals.
Q9. When Parliament decided, in 1709, to create a law that would protect books from piracy, the London-based publishers and booksellers who had been pushing for such protection were overjoyed. When Queen Anne gave her assent on 10th April the following year – 300 years ago – to “An act for the encouragement of learning” they were less enthused. Parliament had given them rights, but it had set a time limit on the: 21 years for books already in print and 14 years for new ones, with an additional 14 years if the author was still alive when the first term ran out. After that, the material would enter the public domain so that anyone could reproduce it. _______________.
(a) The lawmakers helped channel the spate of inventiveness that writers had in the past.
(b) The lawmakers knew that authors do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen.
(c) The lawmakers did not bother about how such a deal can be made equitably.
(d) The lawmakers intended to balance the incentive to create with the interest that people have in free access to knowledge.
(e) However, none of this should get in the way of the enforcement of copyright, which remains a vital tool in the encouragement of learning.
Q10. Organ transplantation is one of the most impressive achievements of modern medicine. It has brought hope to millions of patients suffering from previously fatal organ failure. For many, it has made life longer and better. It has benefited many professionals and industries, too, by becoming a new source of pride, funding, and profit. Struggling to contain costs, health-care payers are also among its beneficiaries. _______________.
(a) Kidney transplantation, for example, has proved to be less costly than dialysis.
(b) Transplant medicine has been grappling with a rapidly increasing gap between the supply of organs and demand for them.
(c) If we are short of organs, then let us get more of them.
(d) Indeed, transplant ethics has been on a slippery slope almost since transplants began.
(e) Organ transplantation, like mosquito repellent, should be used sparingly, and only when there is no other choice.
Q11. How do you do it? Your colleagues, neighbours, family and friends, how do they all do it? “I follow my nose,” says Dan Rhodes, author of Gold, “I am always on the hunt for the next book that’s going to rock my world … my favourite thing is still going into a shop and coming out with something I’d never heard of.” But if you stand in any bookstore, you’re unlikely to see many people using their noses, they just head straight for the “new” Salman Rushdie or the “latest” Chetan Bhagat or the “most recent” Shobhaa De or the “new bestseller” from Paulo Coelho:
(a) because they believe that books can change life.
(b) maybe that is the Catcher effect – most of us had read Catcher in the Rye and Salinger’s other books in our late teens.
(c) It doesn’t seem to work that way now.
(d) It’s a matter of judging every book by its author.
(e) If it’s always been around you, you develop an instinct about it, else you are never sure.
Q12. Marie Antoinette told her people to eat cake when they needed bread. Our government encourages people to buy cars-from Rolls Royce to the Nano-when they need affordable public transport. And when people, especially women, want simple, basic health care-and clean water and sanitation - they are being urged to inject their daughters with a Rs. 9,000 vaccine against cervical cancer.
(a) If some of us do these things, we should not be blamed.
(b) It has brought into focus several ethical and gender-related issues in the arena of public health.
(c) The priorities of our decision makers are more than slightly skewed.
(d) What women need is basic healthcare, not costly medical experiments.
(e) The vaccine is supposed to protect them from cervical cancer.
Q13. A ride to Alappuzha, visiting the coir industries and boating in the backwaters was next on the agenda. As the boats sliced the green water of the VembanadKayal, we watched life on the backwaters of Kerala: women selling foodstuff wrapped in banana leaves from the canoes, the transport service, the boat stops as schools kids hopped from one boat to another to get home, the different National waterways that the signs indicated and the homes that had their families bathing, washing utensils and clothes.
(a) We were awestruck by the vast expanse of the lake.
(b) The backwaters were indeed the artery of this area.
(c) It was then we realized that this was India’s longest and largest lake.
(d) Life moves at a serene pace in the backwaters of Alappuzha.
(e) The VembanadKayal Wetlands is in the list of wetlands of international importance.
Q14. The tragedy about data collection in India is that by the time primary data is converted into useable information, it may be too late to aid policy intervention. This is true of data collected by not just government agencies such as the National Sample Survey Organization but also think tanks such as National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER). One of the criticisms of Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition of Maryland, US – is that it is based on data collected at least six years back.
(a) It brings out various dimensions of human development to understand social inequalities, based on survey of 41,554 households.
(b) Many of its findings are an eye-opener, while some others a reaffirmation of conclusion of other independent studies.
(c) Indicators used to measure development were household incomes and poverty rates, land ownership and agriculture incomes, health and education.
(d) It does not capture the impact of the changes of the following years when the economy grew at more than 8% on an average every year.
(e) Policymakers could draw inference from the findings to improve targeting of programs aimed at inclusive growth.
Q15. Almost a decade after the launch of SarvaShikshaAbhiyan, the achievement on universalizing elementary education is best described as maxed. Massive spending by the Centre and states on setting up new schools and hiring an army of teachers across the country has ensured enrolment of children in schools has risen across rural India. Just about 4% of children in the age group 6-14 are now estimated not to be attending school.
(a) However, on any given day, the average attendance rate seems to be around 74% at the all-India level.
(b) However, that is the only happier part of the story.
(c) However, nearly 50% of children in class V cannot read the text for class II without making a mistake.
(d) However, the poor quality of learning has ensured that the crores spent with the objective of creating an educated, employable workforce are fruitless.
(e) These children would possibly grow up to be the educated employable workforce in India.
Solutions
S1. Ans.(a)
Sol. The purpose of the paragraph is quite clear: no one wants to be an economy like Japan. The first sentence almost states it succinctly. Answer option (a) not only summarizes the paragraph also fulfils the purpose of the paragraph without deviating from this purpose. Option (b) and (c) may help continue the paragraph but bring it to a closure. The purpose of the paragraph is not the contrasting details of these options. Options (d) and (e) may also be related to the paragraph by stating how Japan is coping with the decline but are not related to the purpose. Hence they too may help continue the paragraph but not close it.
S2. Ans.(d)
Sol. The purpose of the paragraph is to point out how widespread counterfeiting has become. The example of Marlboro cigarettes and German bank are cited as examples. Government also has become aware (trying to crack down) of the menace. Without bringing in any new ideas and by summing up the ideas in the paragraph option (d) smoothly closes the paragraph. Option (a), though on the same topic of counterfeiting, is not related to the purpose of the paragraph – especially about ‘people try to counterfeit items of wider economic impact.’ Option (b) merely helps to continue the paragraph with one more example. Option (c) brings in ‘several factors’ which will not need to be explained. Option (d)
S3. Ans.(d)
Sol. The paragraph states the increased conviction rates and the factors that led to this increase. Option (a) takes off from this and states what peoples’ representatives should be doing. The writer’s purpose is not to communicate this – what people’s representatives should be doing. Option (b) goes beyond the scope of the details available in the paragraph – ‘in letter and spirit’ – the paragraph only states the increase in conviction and not anything else. Option (c) and (e) are merely details explaining the increase – do not help to close the paragraph. Option (d) closes the paragraph by stating that the measures adopted have contributed to achieving what is stated in the beginning of the paragraph – closing it without any loose ends.
S4. Ans.(e)
Sol. The key to finding the answer choice here is the first sentence, “the setting matters” and the second last sentence, “… But I happen to think that this music sounds best outside.” If this is understood as the purpose of the paragraph, the options that can be shortlisted are options (c) and (e). Options (c) is good only as long as one emphasizes the ‘outside’ – then, ‘outside’ vs. ‘concert hall’ may make sense. The major purpose of the paragraph is the ‘settings’ – and option (e) continues this idea and closes it in the paragraph. Option (e) includes whatever is contained in option (c) and adds to the ‘settings’ aspect of the paragraph.
S5. Ans.(b)
Sol. If the volume of trade (exports) and disputes “are not unrelated,” what can be expected is that China’s disputes will increase as in has become the no. 1 exporter. The word ‘hence’ (a constant in the options) is important. Hence or therefore signals an effect. The effect of the data presented in the paragraph is that china will have conflicts. The mildest way of stating this to say ‘conflicts are expected.’ Option (b) hence closes the paragraph smoothly. Option has irrelevant detail of settlement system. In option (c), ‘broader shift’ will require further explanation. Option (d) talks about China’s involvement in dispute settlement, which is not related to the purpose. Option (e) is almost right, but ‘resolving them successfully’ makes it unrelated.
S6. Ans.(a)
Sol. The paragraph narrates an incident. The purpose of the paragraph is nothing more than that, if you read it carefully. People shouting themselves hoarse supporting the issue were ‘planted’. The Minister merely called their bluff. The most neutral sentence that can close this paragraph is that “their tactic failed” – ‘the tactic’ is enough as there is no other tactic in the paragraph. Option (b) goes beyond the paragraph – we cannot decide that the show was unusual. Option (c) has unsustainable implications. Many were surprised would mean – the Minister might have supported the companies earlier; the option gets eliminated straightaway. Option (e) may be considered. However, what was a setback for GM in India will need further explanation.
S7. Ans.(c)
Sol. The answer is a direct take off from: “… the global economy that corporate India is busy conquering.” Yet it cannot do that without agriculture. The first sentence and the sentence, “they do not show anything like the same confidence in “Bharat Inc…”, set the purpose of the paragraph. These ideas need to be closed. Option (c) closes both. Option (a), (b) and (e) continue the paragraph. Option (e) closes the first part of the paragraph leaving a loose end about agriculture.
S8. Ans.(e)
Sol. Options (a) through (d) are generalizing or inferring from the given paragraph. The paragraph is just about car manufacturers in Japan and the Americans. The paragraph needs to be closes in relation to these aspects. Option (e) does just that.
S9. Ans.(d)
Sol. The lawmakers give copyright for 14 or 28 years and then the book goes into the public domain. This balances the creative urge to writer as well as the interest people have in getting free access. Option (d) thus well closes the paragraph. Option (a) is partial – does not conclude the public domain part. Option (b) seems to suggest that the lawmakers were against the writer – which is not the case in the paragraph. Option (c) too has the same shortcoming. Option (e) is contrary to the intent of the paragraph.
S10. Ans.(a)
Sol. The answer is immediately linked to the second last sentence. “Organ transplantation is one of the most impressive achievements… it has made life longer and better. … benefited many professionals and industries. Struggling to contain costs, health-care payers are also among its beneficiaries.” How they are beneficiaries needs to be stated to logically close the paragraph. Once this is understood, all the other options can be seen to be far cries.
S11. Ans.(d)
Sol. The sentence to complete this paragraph is a continuation of “But if you stand in any book-store, you’re unlikely to see many people using their noses, they just head straight for the “new” Salman Rushdie or the “latest” Chetan Bhagat or the “most recent” Shobhaa De or the “new bestseller” from Paulo Coelho… though the writer uses his nose to choose the book to read, other people do not do this; they choose by the name of the author.
S12. Ans.(c)
Sol. The beginning of the paragraph tells us the purpose of the paragraph through an example – lopsided priorities; trying to substitute for basic necessities. Then, examples of the misplaced priorities of our government are given. The paragraph is best concluded by stating the purpose, which otherwise might go unnoticed. Option (a) is quite vague. Option (b) changes the basic purpose of the paragraph. Option (d) and (e) merely states more about the last example, but do not help to complete the paragraph.
S13. Ans.(b)
Sol. Since the writer describes the life cantered on the Vembanad Lake (backwaters of Kerala), the best sentence to complete the paragraph is the one that fulfils this purpose of the paragraph. Option (a), and (c) say almost the same thing (the lake’s size and its importance) and is not purpose of the paragraph. Option (d) too is not purpose of the paragraph, though it is connected – but the serenity of the life is not the purpose of the description of the scene.
S14. Ans.(d)
Sol. This is a fairly straight forward choice. The paragraph states the problem with data collection in India. The reports are delayed and become almost irrelevant. The report on human development in India is based on data collected six years back – the natural outcome is stated in option (d). Options (a) and (b) cannot be criticisms, hence are not consistent with the paragraph. Option (c) tells more about the methodology and does not conclude the paragraph. Option (e) also does not justify the criticism mentioned in the paragraph.
S15. Ans.(d)
Sol. The purpose of the paragraph is defined by the first sentence itself, that the achievement is mixed. However, no example or idea exists in the paragraph to make it mixed. What is stated is positive. The last sentence, hence, needs to state something to the contrary to complete the paragraph. Option (b), (c), and (d) qualify for the answer options from this point of view. Option (b) does not help to complete the paragraph. Option (c) is correct – can even be the answer in the absence of option (d). Option (d) puts the whole scheme in perspective. Option (c) draws attention to a specific deficiency of the scheme. Hence option (d) scores.
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