Dr. Amit Shishodia Solutions for Exercise 1: Exercise

Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it.

As my train was not due to leave for another hour, I had plenty of time to spare. After buying some magazines to read on the journey, I made my way to the luggage office to collect the heavy suitcase I had left there three days before. There were only a few people waiting, and I took out my wallet to find the receipt for my case. The receipt did not seem to be where I had left it. I emptied the contents of the wallet, and the railway tickets, money, scraps of paper, and photographs tumbled out of it; but no matter how hard I searched, the receipt was nowhere to be found.

I explained the situation sorrowfully to the assistant. The man looked at me suspiciously as if to say he had heard this type of story many times and asked me to describe the case. I told him that it was an old, brown looking object no different from the many suitcases I could see on the shelves. The assistant then gave me form and told me to make a list of the contents of the case. If they were correct, he said, I could take the case away. I tried to remember all the articles I had hurriedly packed and wrote them down.

After I had done this, I went to look shelves. There were hundreds of cases there and for one dreadful moment, it occurred to me that if someone had picked the receipt up, he could easily have claimed the case already. Fortunately this had not happened, for after a time, I found the case lying on its side high up in the corner. After examining the articles inside, the assistant gave me the case. I took out my wallet to pay him. I pulled out a ten shilling note and out slipped my 'lost' receipt with it! I could not help blushing. The assistant nodded his head knowingly, as if to say that he had often seen this happen too.

In this passage 'situation' means

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 questions.
To tackle the steep increase in unclaimed money lying with insurers, the sector regulator has announced some key steps. Come May, a policyholder or his/her nominee can check online any unclaimed money pending with an insurance company. Further, for all new policies, the insured must mention bank account details in the proposal form itself to ensure faster maturity/claim settlement. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has said the rising amount of unclaimed money with insurers is a matter of concern. In fact, data with the regulator show between 2009-10 and 2012-13, there has been more than a three-fold rise in it. Delays in settlement of claims, lack of awareness and failure to intimate a change in address on the part of dependents are some of the reasons that have pushed up the amount from Rs 1,373 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 4,866 crore in 2012-13
In contrast, RBI data show that unclaimed money worth Rs 2,474 crore is lying in one crore bank savings accounts as on end-December 2012 For smooth transfer of policyholders' unclaimed money, IRDA has now advised companies to take bank account details of the insured at the time of filling out the proposal form. Insurers will also be required to collect proof of the bank account, such as a cancelled cheque, to ensure authenticity. The insured can change the bank account without any charge. In case of a death claim, the insurer will take the bank account details of the nominee. Insurers will remit claims, maturity payments and any other amount due to policyholders only through the electronic mode, such as NEFT, Real Time Gross Settlement, Interbank Mobile Payment service or any other e-mode approved by the RBI.
Insurance companies will have to display on their websites information about unclaimed amount beyond six months from the due date. IRDA, in a circular issued in 2010, had said that insurers cannot appropriate the unclaimed amount of policyholders and must disclose the amount separately as current liabilities in the balance sheet. Insurers now have to show age-wise analysis of the unclaimed amount.Analysts attribute the spurt in unclaimed amount to several sectors. First, claims settled by insurers may not have been paid to policyholders because of litigation. Second, the insurer might not have refunded, at the time of claim settlement or maturity payment, any excess premium collected from the policyholder. At times, even policyholders forget to encash cheques issued by the insurer, or these might misplace in transit. IRDA has now said that the policyholder protection committee of the board of insurance companies will have to ensure timely payouts of dues. The audit committee of the board will look into the unclaimed amount and oversee compliance. Every six months, the insurer will have to file with IRDA details of the action taken and status of the unclaimed amount. Policyholders, on their part, must notify the insurer about any change in address. Analysts say policyholders should convert all their life insurance policies into dematerialized format, which will be held with an insurance repository. At present, the facility is not available for general and health insurance. The repositories will enable policyholders to make changes in nominee or address details and also act as a single point for all policy related servicing. One of the major advantages of keeping insurance policies in the electronic form is safety, as there is no risk of loss or damage of the policy bond. As all policies can be electronically held under a single e-insurance account, the policyholder can access them from anywhere. A single change-of-address request made to the insurance repository can update policies issued by multiple insurers, thus reducing paperwork. Moreover, an e-insurance account holder will be spared the trouble of submitting know your customer (KYC) details each time a new policy is taken. Every year, the repository will send a statement of account to the e-insurance account holder with details. Single view of all policies will be made available to an authorized person in case of death of the e-insurance account holder, which will help in faster claim settlement.
Insurance firms will send an insurance information sheet with basic details of the policy when a new electronic policy is issued. Repositories will enable a platform where policyholders can get the facility of online premium payment and claim settlement. The e-insurance account holder will have an option to shift from one repository to another. IRDA has also made it clear that repositories will not sell or solicit policies and they will be authorized only to maintain policies in electronic form and provide service record. Each e-insurance account will have a unique account number and each account holder will be granted a login ID and password to access his policies online.

How would IRDA make sure that the insurers are complying to the guidelines regarding the unclaimed amount of insurance policies?

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.

The most logical and intelligent people seem to go berserk when talking about snakes. Recently a reputed scientist said with a wise look in his eyes that sand boas have two heads. The other day someone walked into my office and stated that in his village at least cobras mate with rat snakes. About other places he was not sure, he added modestly, but that was how it was in his village.

These stories about snakes are myths. Sand boas have only one head, vine snakes do not peck your eyes out, no snake will drink milk. But it is interesting to try and trace the origin of these untruths. The one about the sand boas two heads obviously exists because the short, stumpy tail of this snake looks remarkably like the head, an effective device to fool predators. Or take the one about vine snakes pecking at eyes. It was probably started by a vine snake that had a bad aim, as snakes when provoked, will bite the most prominent projection of the offender, which is usually the nose. But the most interesting one is about snakes coming to the scene of killing to take revenge. It so happens that when injured or under stress, a snake exudes a large quantity of musk. Musk is a powerful sex attractant, the snakes' equivalent of after-shave lotion. So after a snake is killed, the ground around still has this smell and naturally, a snake of the same species passing by will lick its lips and come to investigate. The killer of the snake, who is probably worried if the Pooja he performed was adequate to liquidate the killing of a snake, sees the second snake and is convinced that it was not.

The Irula tribals have a good answer to the query about whether cobras have jewels in their heads; If they did, we wouldn't be snake catchers, we would be rajas!'.

The phrase 'that it was not' means

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
Jazz had its beginnings in song. Its roots lie deep in the tradition of Negro folk singing that once flourished throughout the rural Southland of the United States before the Civil War. The Negro, in those days, owned only a few crude musical instruments which he made for himself from boxes, barrels and brooms. His voice was his principal means of musical expression. Songs of work and play, trouble and hope, rose on rich and rhythmic voices everywhere in the South- from peddlers crying their wares to the countryside, from work gangs on the railroads, farm families gathered at the day's end to sing away their weariness in their unpainted cottages overlooking the cotton fields, from the wayside churches singing with the sounds of Sabbath praise.These were the voices which the early Negro musicians imitated and transferred to their horns when they taught themselves to play the discarded band instruments that come into hands at the close of the Civil War in the eighteen sixties. As played by their proud Negro owners, the instruments became extensions of the human voice—singing horns which opened the way to Jazz. For this reason there has always been a strong, singing quality to Jazz.

The phase "sing away" in the passage means.

Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions.

The cyber-world is ultimately ungovernable. This is alarming as well as convenient; sometimes, convenient because alarming. Some Indian politicians use it to their great advantage. When there is an obvious failure in governance during a crisis they deflect attention from their own incompetence towards the ungovernable. So, having failed to prevent nervous citizens from fleeing their cities of work by assuring them of proper protection, some national leaders are now busy trying to prove to one another, and to panic-prone Indians, that a mischievous neighbour has been using the Internet and social networking sites to spread dangerous rumours. And the Centre's automatic reaction is to start blocking these sites and begin elaborate and potentially endless negotiations with Google, Twitter, and Facebook about access to information. If this is the official idea of prompt action at a time of crisis among communities, then Indians have more reason to fear their protectors than the nebulous mischief-makers of the cyber-world. Wasting time gathering proof, blocking vaguely suspicious websites, hurling accusations across the border, and worrying about bilateral relations are ways of keeping busy with inessentials because one does not quite know what to do about the essentials of a difficult situation. Besides, only a fifth of the 245 websites blocked by the Centre mentions the people of the Northeast or the violence in Assam. And if a few morphed images and spurious texts can unsettle an entire nation, then there is something deeply wrong with the nation and with how it is being governed. This is what its leaders should be addressing immediately, rather than making a wrongheaded display of their powers of censorship.

It is just as absurd, and part of the same syndrome, to try to ban Twitter accounts that parody dispatches from the Prime Minister€™s Office. To describe such forms of humour and dissent as €œmisrepresenting the PMO — as if Twitterers would take these parodies for genuine dispatches from the PMO — makes the PMO look more ridiculous than its parodists manage to. With the precedent for such action set recently by the chief minister of West Bengal, this is yet another proof that what Bengal thinks today India will think tomorrow. Using the cyber-world for flexing the wrong muscles is essentially not funny. It might even prove to be quite dangerously distracting.

What is the opposite of "wrong headed"?

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words in the passage have been printed in bold to help you locate them when answering some of the questions.

He was a funny-looking man with a high, bald, dome-shaped head, a face very small in comparison, and a long wavy beard. His unusual features were a standing joke among his friends. He was a poor man - an idler. He didn't work at his trade - a stonecutter, more than what was necessary to keep his wife and three boys alive. He preferred to talk but since his wife was an irate complaining woman, he loved to be away from home.

The whole city he lived in was seething with argumentation. The city was Athens and the man was Socrates, the Greek philosopher. He had funny ways and notions. And to the astonishment of all, the Oracle at Delphi, the priestess when asked, "Who is the wisest man in Athens ?" mentioned Socrates, Socrates was the evangelist of clear thinking: he would present people with questions pretending he didn't know the answers and get them to make astounding admissions. Socrates would go up to a prominent statesman coming to the end of a speech on 'courage', about the glory of dying for one's country and say, "Forgive my intrusion, but just what do you mean by courage ?"

"Courage is sticking to your post in danger" would be the reply. "But supposing good strategy demands that you retire ?", Socrates would ask. "You wouldn't stay in that case" the man would be forced to admit. Socrates would persist, "Then is courage sticking to your post or retiring ?". 'I'm afraid I don't know." 'I don't either", Socrates would say "but perhaps it is not different from just doing the reasonable thing regardless of the danger."

What was Socrates by profession?

Directions: Read the given comprehension carefully and answer the question that follows. Certain words in the passage have been printed in bold to help you locate them when answering the question.

He was a funny-looking man with a high, bald, dome-shaped head, a face very small in comparison and a long wavy beard. His unusual features were a standing joke among his friends. He was a poor man, an idler. He didn't work at his trade stonecutter, more than what was necessary to keep his wife and three boys alive. He preferred to talk but since his wife was an irate complaining woman, he loved to be away from home.

The whole city he lived in was seething with argumentation. The city was Athens and the man was Socrates, the Greek philosopher. He had funny ways and notions. And to the astonishment of all, the Oracle at Delphi, the priestess when asked, "Who is the wisest man in Athens?" mentioned Socrates, Socrates was the evangelist of clear thinking: he would present people with questions pretending he didn't know the answers and get them to make astounding admissions. Socrates would go up to a prominent statesman coming to the end of a speech on 'courage', about the glory of dying for one's country and say, "Forgive my intrusion, but just what do you mean by courage ?"

"Courage is sticking to your post in danger" would be the reply. "But supposing good strategy demands that you retire ?", Socrates would ask. "You wouldn't stay in that case" the man would be forced to admit. Socrates would persist, "Then is courage sticking to your post or retiring ?". "I'm afraid I don't know." "I don't either", Socrates would say "but perhaps it is not different from just doing the reasonable thing regardless of the danger."

The author's main objective in writing the passage is to:
(A) Describe the situation prevalent in Athens in Socrates' time.
(B) Describe Socrates' physical characteristics.
(C) Criticize Socrates' way of life.

In the question given below, you have two passages with questions in each passage. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of four alternatives and mark your answer.

Passage I
The World Health organisation is briefly called W.H.O. it is a specialized agency of the United Nations and was established in $1948$.
International health workers can be seen working in all kinds of surroundings: in deserts, jungles, mountains, coconut groves, and rice fields. They help the sick to attain health and healthy to maintain their health.
This global health team assists the local health workers in stopping the spread of what are called communicable diseases, like cholera. These diseases can spread from one country to another and so can be a threat to world health.
W.H.O. assists different national health authorities not only in controlling diseases but also in preventing them altogether. Total prevention of diseases is possible in a number of ways. Everyone knows how people particularly children, are vaccinated against one disease or another. Similarly, most people are familiar with the spraying of houses with poisonous substances which kill disease-carrying insects.
Passage II
Why don't I have a telephone? Not because I pretend to be wise or pose as unusual. There are two chief reasons, because I don't really like the telephone, and because I find I can still work and play, eat breathe, and sleep without it. Why don't I like the telephone? Because I think it is a pest and time waster. It may create unnecessary suspense and anxiety, as when you wait for an expected call, that doesn't come, or irritating delay, as when you keep ringing a number that is always engaged. As for speaking in a public telephone booth, it seems to be really horrible. You would not use it unless you were in a hurry and because you are in a hurry, you will find other people waiting before you. When you do get into the booth, you are half suffocated by the stale, unventilated air, flavoured with cheap face powder and chain-smoking, and by the time you have begun your conversation your back is chilled by the cold looks of somebody who is moving about restlessly to take your place.
If you have a telephone in your house you will admit that it tends to ring when you the least want it to ring when you are asleep or in the middle of a meal or conversation or when you are just going out, or when you are in your bath. Are you strong-minded enough to ignore it, to say to yourself? "Ah well, it will be all the same in a hundred years' time". You are not. You think there may be some important news or message for you. Have you never rushed dripping from the bath of chewing from the table, or dazed from bed, only to be told that you are a wrong number? You were told the truth. In my opinion, all telephone numbers are wrong numbers. If of course your telephone ring, and you decide not to answer it, then you will have to listen to an idiotic bell ringing and ringing in what is supposed to be the privacy of your own home. You might as well buy a bicycle bell and ring it yourself.

W.H.O. assists different national health authorities not only in controlling diseases but also in preventing them all together". The above sentence implies that: