Types of Questions in Reading Comprehension

Directions: Read the passages carefully then answer the following questions which are based on what is stated or implied in the passage.

In modern times, Abraham Lincoln stands as the model of a compassionate statesman. He showed this quality not only in striving for the emancipation of the American blacks but in the dignity with which he conducted the American Civil War.
Lincoln did not fancy himself as a liberator. He thought it would be better for all if emancipation was a gradual process spread over many years. He proposed compensation for slave-owners in the US, grants for the rehabilitation of blacks freed from colonization as they called it. But fate was to deem otherwise. The haste with which the South wanted to break away from the Union with the North, compelled him to move faster than he expected, perhaps more than most men of his time he had thought through the issue of slavery. We must free the slaves, he said, or be ourselves subdued. Before reading the first draft of the proclamation of emancipation, he told his colleagues. In giving freedom to the slaves, we assure freedom to the free.
On September 22, 1862, Lincoln set his hand on the Proclamation of Emancipation declaring that on the first day of January 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state shall be then, and forever free.
Lincoln's revolution for slavery left him without any moral indignation or passion against the slave-owners. The guilt of the slave-owners, he felt, should be shared by the whole country the North and the South, for it seemed to him that everyone in the nation was an accomplice in perpetuating that system. To have whipped up any hatred against slave-owners would, to him, have been an act of malice.
I shall do nothing in malice, he wrote, 'what I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing'. As the Civil War was coming to a successful conclusion, a Northerner demanded of Lincoln: Mr. President, how are you going to treat the Southerners when the war is over? Lincoln
replied: 'As if they never went to war ?'
When the news came of the Victory of the Northern against the Confederate forces, someone suggested that the head of the confederation Administration, Jefferson Davies, really ought to be hanged. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged', Lincoln replied, as to the demand for the prosecution of rebels, Lincoln replied: We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union. This was his last recorded utterance.

Lincoln's reply to the Northerner's question regarding the treatment to Southerners proves that:

Study the following information and answer the question given below:

Twelve friends A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K and L were born in different months of the same year. A was born in the month of April and G was born in the month of August. J was born the month immediately preceding the month in which K was born and immediately succeeding the month in which C was born. J was not born in the month of October nor in February. There is a gap of two months between the birthdays of L and B. There were $30$ Days in the month in which L was born. D was born in the month immediately after the month in which I was born. There were $31$ Days in the month in which D was born. There is a gap of one month between the birthdays of B and F. E and H were born in that months which had $31$ Days each.

In which of the following months B was born ?

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given below.

The public distribution system, which provides food at low prices, is a subject of vital concern. There is a growing realisation 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 a good standard of living is the ultimate objective of public policy. However, till then, there is a need to provide an assured supply of food through a restructured, more efficient and decentralized public distribution system (PDS).

Although the PDS is extensive—it is one of the largest such systems in the world, it has yet to reach the rural poor and the far off places. It remains an urban phenomenon, with the majority of the rural poor still out of its reach due to a 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 foodgrains production combined with food subsidy on one hand and the continuing slow starvation and dismal poverty of the rural population on the other, there is a strong case for making PDS target group oriented. The growing salaried class is provided job security, regular income, and social security. It enjoys almost hundred percent insulation against inflation. These gains of development have not percolated down to the vast majority of our working population. If one compares only the dearness allowance to the employees in the public and private sector and looks at its growth in the past few years, the rising food subsidy is insignificant to the point of inequity. The food subsidy is a kind of D.A. to the poor, the self-employed, and those in the unorganized sector of the economy. However, what is most unfortunate is that out of the large budget of the so-called food subsidy, the major part of it is administrative cost and wastages. A small portion of the above budget goes to the real consumer and an even lesser portion to the poor who are in real need.
It is true that subsidies should not become a permanent feature, except for the destitute, disabled widows, and the old. It is also true that subsidies often create a psychology of dependence and hence are habit-forming, killing the general initiative of the people. By making PDS target group-oriented, not only the poorest and neediest would be reached without additional cost, but it will actually cut overall costs incurred on large cities and for better off localities. When the food and food subsidies are limited, the rural and urban poor should have priority in the PDS supplies. The PDS should be closely linked with programmes of employment generation and nutrition improvement.

Food subsidy leads to which of the following?

Directions: Read the given comprehension carefully and answer the question that follows.

Amnesty International's charge that 'tens of thousands of political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, are languishing in Indian jails and that prisoners are routinely tortured in this country has to be seen in a much wider context than the organization's annual report cares to-do. In its overall appraisal of 151 countries, Amnesty has accused 112 of torturing prisoners, 63 of harboring prisoners of conscience, 61 of resorting to political killings and 53 of detaining people without a trial. Of these apparently overlapping categories, India seems to have been excluded from the list of the 61 which undertake political killings. The report has, however, pointed out that scores of people in India die of torture in police and military custody and that many also simply disappear. Clearly, only a thin line separates the 61 charged with political murder from the rest. Before coming to such conclusions, however, it may also be necessary to classify the various countries according to their political systems. Torture by the security forces and killings at the behest of the government make no difference to the victims whether they are in a democratic country or a totalitarian one. It is also nobody's case that a democratic country is less culpable than a dictatorship in the event of human rights violations. But the point perhaps still needs to be made that torture 'disappearances' represent a failure of the system in a democracy in contrast to being an integral part of state policy in a country ruled by an autocrat who is answerable to no one. India may be guilty of keeping 'tens of thousands' behind bars and of the other human rights abuses mentioned by Amnesty, but it still remains a qualitatively different place from totalitarian country. It is in this that Amnesty has been less than fair. It has chosen to ignore the distinctions between the good, the bad and the ugly, The openness of Indian society will be evident to anyone who spends half an hour in one of its chaotic market-places or visit; the law courts or watches a political rally or reads a newspaper or strikes up a conversation with any person on the roads, There is no sense of fear in India, as in a dictatorship. There is also scope for securing relief from the heavy-handed behaviour of the authorities, even if the human rights commission has not yet lived up to expectations. Unless such points are recognised, Amnesty's assessment will seem to be a dry recital of statistics which may pillory India simply because of its larger population. Mercifully, Amnesty nowadays at least notes that the terrorists also indulge in human rights violations and that India has to cope with several insurgencies fomented by a country where the military does not always seem to be under the control of the elected government. True, there is much that is wrong in India's prison system and with the way the terrorist challenge is sometimes met, but the stress should be on activating the self-correcting mechanism within a democracy and not merely on painting a grim, even biased, picture.

In the report, India has been excluded from which of the following categories of violating human rights?

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

The prisoner awaited his chance. For three solid years, he had schemed for this opportunity. Now that escape seemed so near at hand, those three years lost some of their monotony. But he would never forget the lashes, the close confinement, low diet, and worse still the mental strain of those black days. Suddenly the warden did what he had hoped. He stopped to unlock the lower padlock. With a dull thud, he slumped forward with keys in his hands. Swiftly the prisoner seized his keys, unlocked the cell and ran into the courtyard. It took him four seconds to reach the rope ladder secretly placed there by his accomplices, five more to clamber over the wall, and three more to jump into the waiting car to be whisked away to freedom. Even though he was guilty, the prisoner felt he had paid for his crime, for the man he had robbed three years ago was still a millionaire

In the question given below choose the word most opposite in meaning to the given word and mark it in the Answer-Sheet.

Clandestine

Consider the following text by Katherine Hayles :
"Nicolas S. Tzannes pointed out that whereas Shannon and Weiner define information in terms of what it is, MacKay defines it in terms of what it does. The formulation emphasizes the reification that information undergoes in the Shannon-Wiener theory. Stripped of context, it becomes a mathematical quantity weightless as sunshine, moving in a rarefied realm of pure probability, not tied down to bodies or material instantiations. When information is made representational, as in Mackay's model, it is conceptualized as an action rather than a thing. Verb-like, it becomes a process that someone enacts, and thus it necessarily implied context and embodiment. The price it pays for embodiment is difficulty of quantification and loss of universality".

Based on the above text, which of the following statements is/are TRUE?

"The right way to formulate epistemic pluralism has actually already been provided for us from within the pluralist cosmopolis of Sanskrit. The remarkable Jaina philosophers make a distinction of fundamental epistemological significance when they say that as well as and in addition to epistemic principles (pramana), there are also nayas, epistemic standpoints or stances, and that both are essential constituents in an epistemic culture. A naya is not a proposition but a practical attitude, a strategy or policy that guides enquiry: it is an approach to the problem of producing knowledge, not a proposition about the sources of justification. One such policy might be to attend only to what is immediately present in experience, another might be to enumerate everything one encounters without making any categorical distinctions, another to attend to stasis rather than flux, or to causal interconnections rather than to essential attributes. The philosopher Anjan Chakravartty at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana stresses that 'One does not believe a stance in the way that one believes a fact. Rather, one commits to a stance, or adopts it.' "

Based on the above text, which of the following statements is/are TRUE?

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

The old workman gave the younger workman the use of his shop: Andrei Tarkovsky came to Sweden to shoot a movie on the island of Faro, the same island where Ingmar Bergman lives and makes most of his films.Tarkovsky's film was produced by the Swedish Film Institute, it was photographed by Sven Nykvist, Bergman's cinematographer, and it starred Erland Josephson who has acted in many Bergman films.There are moments when the resulting film, "The Sacrifice," looks uncannily like a work by Bergman, and I think that is intentional: Tarkovsky, the visitor, an exile from Russia, was working with Bergman's materials and subjects in much the same way that an itinerant Renaissance painter might briefly stop and submerge himself in the school of a master.

Yet Tarkovsky is a master, too. With Bergman, he is one of the five living filmmakers who have concerned themselves primarily with ultimate issues of human morality (the others are Akira Kurosawa, Satyaijit Ray and Robert Bresson). He is the greatest Russian filmmaker since Sergei Eisenstein, and yet he stands outside the Soviet tradition of materialism and dares to say that he is spiritual, that he can "still be summoned by an Inner Voice." These days, it takes more courage for an artist to admit his spiritual beliefs than to deny them.When Tarkovsky made "The Sacrifice," he knew that he was gravely ill. Now he lies dying in a Paris hospital with a brain tumour. He did not choose a small subject for his final statement. His film is about a man who learns, or dreams, that the bombers have gone on their way to unleash World War III. He offers his own life as a sacrifice, if only his family can be spared.The movie is not easy to watch, and it is long to sit through. Yet a certain joy shines through the difficulty. Tarkovsky has obviously cut loose from any thought of entertaining the audience and has determined, in his last testament, to say exactly what he wants, in exactly the style he wants.

He uses a great many long shots - both long in duration, and with great distances between the camera and the subjects. Long shots inspire thoughtfulness from the audience. We are not so close that we are required to identify with a character. We stand back, and see everything, and have time to think about it. The movie doesn't hurtle headlong towards its conclusion, taking our agreement for granted. There are spaces between events that are large enough for us to ask ourselves if we would do what the man in the movie is doing.It is his birthday. He plants a tree, carefully, methodically.There is a belief that it is impossible to plant a tree without thinking of your own lifespan, because in all certainty the tree will be there long after you have gone. As he plants the tree, his small son watches him and then toddles thoughtlessly about on the surface of the planet he does not yet know is a planet.

Some people came to the birthday party: the man's wife, his daughters, some friends and a mailman who apparently is the island's mystic. There is a sense in which he delivers the cosmic mail, bringing news of inner realities. During the party, the news comes that the war has broken out. All of this is told slowly, in elegantly composed shots, with silences in between. When the characters speak, it is rarely to engage in small talk; the hero has a long monologue about the quality of our lives and the ways we are heedlessly throwing away the futures of our children. When the man begs to make his sacrifice, he does so not by ranting and raving to heaven, but by choosing one of his own maids - a humble working woman - as a sort of saintly person who might be able to intervene.

"The Sacrifice" is not the sort of movie most people will choose to see, but those with the imagination to risk it may find it rewarding. Everything depends on the ability to empathise with the man in the movie, and Tarkovsky refuses to reach out with narrative tricks in order to involve us. Some movies work their magic in the minds of the audience; this one stays resolutely on the screen, going about its urgent business and leaving us free to participate only if we want to.That is the meaning of a sacrifice, isn't it - that it is offered willingly?

$2-$ What is not correctly said about the long shots in the passage?

Directions: In the following question, a short passage with one of the lines in the passage missing is given The missing line is represented by a blank. Select the best out of the five answer choices given, to make the passage complete and coherent.

Issue of money, in the form of banknotes and current accounts subject to cheque or payment at the customer's order. These claims on banks can act as money because they are negotiable and/or repayable on demand and hence valued at par and effectively transferable by mere delivery in the case of banknotes or by drawing a cheque that the payee may bank or cash. Banks act as both collection and paying agents for customers, participating in interbank clearing and settlement systems to collect, present, and be presented with and pay payment instruments. This enables banks to economise on reserves held for settlement of payments since inward and outward payments offset each other. It also enables _____.

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

With markets nearing saturation and brand promiscuity increasing, managing a brand identity in today's chaotic conditions had become a Herculean task. A brand identity is what imparts a human element to a brand. It is the marketer's perspective of how to project a brand publicly. It defines the brand truth. This can be a name, theme, location, personality or jingle, among other things. It has to bring human qualities to the brand.

If we think branding tells a story to customers then core identity is it's moral. It forms the brand's unique selling proposition (USP). It is an idea that differentiates a brand from others. The basic premise hinges on a few Questions. They are: What is the one thing you do best? What is your main strength? As branding is a dynamic exercise, core identity can't be static. As has become apparent over the years, it is advisable not to violate your differentiating idea. Only a few cosmetic changes can be done over time. Ultimately it is the core identity that helps achieve maximum brand equity. Yet in all this, honesty to the brand assumes paramount importance.

Supporting core identity is the concept of extended identity. It generates credibility, a sense of reality and infuses a thrill in the marketplace. Extended identity refreshes and brings vitality to core identity. It is, in fact, the successful outcome of core identity.

Now comes the most vulnerable issue in branding brand image. This is the public perception of a brand. This is the customers' response to brand identity. Any experience with the brand can change the public perception, thereby impacting brand image either favourably or unfavourably. There is no constant here. It is the final experience with a brand that sets the tenor of a brand image. Naturally, it cannot be overly associated with persons, celebrity or others. The panacea is to give clarity, not face, to your brand identity.

Every brand has its culture. A brand plays the role of an ambassador of its culture. Culture can be a powerful differentiating idea if nurtured properly. It is the brand's flag. Respect it. Explore brand culture to win customer mindshare.

A brand is a relationship. Like any other, it has to be a two-way interaction. It has two facets relationship with customers (emotional link) and relationship with other brands (strategic link) within the entire brand system.

A brand is a reflection. By reflection, we mean the type of user that the brand appears to aspire for. It is the brand's image-building exercise that clings on in the minds of people. Brand communication should show the sort of person that the user would like to be or aspires to be.

A brand plays the role of a mirror. The brands we buy represent our view of ourselves. A Mercedes owner can state boldly, “Look, I'm a successful person. I have achieved what I aspired for. My brand helps me to differentiate myself from others”. A diehard Pepsi believer can express his attitude towards the brand by saying, 'Hey guys, I belong to the Generation Next community'. To sum up, the rewards of having a strong brand identity are clear. To make a brand click, brand managers must pay more attention to developing a detailed identity for the brand. Ensure that it is coherent across all facets and holistically communicate the identity.

Choose the word which is most similar in meaning to the phrase printed in bold as used in the passage.
BRAND PROMISCUITY

Read the following passage and answer the given question.

The advertising industry, particularly those firms which are engaged in digital advertising are not very keen on the new budget for 2014. This is because of the levying of service tax to both internet and mobile advertising. When presenting the nation's budget for 2014, finance minister Arun Jaitley made the proposal to levy service tax on all online and mobile advertisements. According to Jaitley, this is necessary to broaden the country's tax base and shore up tax revenues. This proposal is of great concern for industry insiders because this is not just a fledgling industry, but its value in terms of money is at this time at a small scale as compared to much larger industries. Currently, the estimates for this industry stand at 2900 crores according to the Internet and Mobile Associate of India.

This proposal changes the landscape for online and mobile advertising as this has been included in the list of services where taxation was required. However, according to Jaitley, it is necessary to reduce the list of services which enjoy tax free status to the greatest extent possible. The list of services has been reviewed and service tax can be levied based on the sale of space or time for advertisements in broadcast media. The plan is to extend this to cover such sales on other segments including online and mobile advertising. What is surprising, however is that advertisements for print media will remain excluded from service tax. What makes this surprising is that print advertising is 10 times larger in scope and value as compared to digital advertising.

The impact of this, according to Siddarth Rao, the founder and CEO of digital advertiser Webchutney, is that it's clear either the client or the publisher will have to take the hit. This will result in increased prices for this service which will only be passed on, as suggested by Rao, to the client or publisher of the website. As a result, this could result in cutback in spending which will lead to decrease in sales, thus having a negative affect. Rao also states that the industry will need to take measures to ensure that billing of past and current activity is finished in order to avoid any disputes or claims which could be made by authorities. This in and of itself would suggest the potential need to spend extra revenue on fulfilling this need, thereby increasing costs.

While this poses concern for many in the industry, there is another side of the coin. For instance, according to B. Sanjit Shastri, CEO of Publicis Beehive, holds the opinion that the service tax that will be imposed will not affect the industry at all and believes this will be a positive move for the industry. He states, online advertising is not more than 10% of the total advertising budget for many clients, so in effect, this will at best add another 1% to their advertising costs, which is negligible." He asserts that this is negligible because the industry experiences considerable growth annually at the rate of 25 to 30%. He concludes by saying this is just a pebble on the digital highway".

Choose the word/group of words that is most opposite in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.

Fledgling

Cotyledons are also called-