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?

Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions.
It is impossible for a well-educated, intellectual or brave man to make money the chief object of his thought, just as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthy-minded people like making money-ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it, but the main object of their life is not money, it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay, very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it - still his main notion of life is to win battles not to be paid for winning them. So of the doctor. They like fees, no doubt, ought to like them, yet if they are brave and well-educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick, and if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them, they would rather cure their patient, and lose the fees, than kill him and get it. And so with all other brave and rightly trained men, their work is first, their fees second - very important, no doubt, but still second. But in every nation, there are a vast number of people who are ill-educated, cowardly and stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first and work second, as with brave people the work is first and fee second.

Which of the following statements is true?

Direction :  passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold in the passage to help you locale them while answering some of the questions. 

Governments have traditionally equated economic progress with steel mills and cement factories. While urban centres thrive and city dwellers get rich, hundreds of millions of famers remain mired in poverty. However fears of food shortages, a rethinking of anti-poverty priorities and crushing recession in 2008 are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favour of greater support for agriculture.  last time when the world's farmers felt such love was in the 1970's. 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. Governments across the developing world and international aid organisations plowed investment agriculture in technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution and food production exploded. into the early 1970s, while But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% by the late 1980's from their peak in the mid- 1970's. 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's aid directed at agriculture sank to 3.5% and "agriculture lost its glitter", “Also, as consumers 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 up to heights not seen for three decades. Making matters worse, land and resources got reallocated to product cash crop such as bio fuels and the result was that voluminous reserves of grain evaporated. Protests broke out across the emerging world and fierce food riots toppled governments.

Direction: Choose the words/ group of the words which is MOST OPPOSITE in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
EVAPORATED 

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

Core competencies and focus are now the mantras of corporate strategists in Western economies. But while managers in the West have dismantled many conglomerates assembled in the 1960s and 1970s, the large, diversified business group remains the dominant form of enterprise throughout most emerging markets. Some groups operate as holding companies with full ownership in many enterprises, others are collections of publicly traded companies, but all have some degree of central control.

As emerging markets open up to global competition, consultants and foreign investors are increasingly pressuring these groups to conform to Western practice by scaling back the scope of their business activities. The conglomerate is the dinosaur of organizational design, they argue, too unwieldy and slow to compete in today's fast-paced markets. Already a number of executives have decided to break up their groups in order to show that they are focusing on only a few core businesses. 

There are reasons to worry about this trend. Focus is good advice in New York or London, but something important gets lost in translation when that advice is given to groups in emerging markets. Western companies take for granted a range of institutions that support their business activities, but many of these institutions are absent in other regions of the world. Without effective securities regulation and venture capital firms, for example, focused companies may be unable to raise adequate financing; and without strong educational institutions, they will struggle to hire skilled employees.

Communicating with customers is difficult when the local infrastructure is poor, and unpredictable government behavior can stymie any operation, although a focused strategy may enable a company to perform a few activities well, companies in emerging markets must take responsibility for a wide range of functions in order to do business effectively. 

In the case of product markets, buyers and sellers usually suffer from a severe dearth of information for three reasons. First, the communications infrastructure in emerging markets is often under-developed. Even as wireless communication spreads throughout the West, vast stretches in countries such as China and India remain without telephones. Power shortages often render the modes of communication that do exist ineffective. The postal service is typically inefficient, slow, or unreliable; and the private sector rarely provides efficient courier services. High rates of illiteracy make it difficult for marketers to communicate effectively with customers. 

Second, even when information about products does get around, there are no mechanisms to corroborate the claims made by sellers. Independent consumer - information organizations are rare, and government watchdog agencies are of little use. The few analysts who rate products are generally less sophisticated than their counterparts in advanced economies. 

Third, consumers have no redress mechanisms if a product does not deliver on its promise. Law enforcement is often capricious and so slow that few who assign any value to time would resort to it. Unlike in advanced markets, there are few extrajudicial arbitration mechanisms to which one can appeal. 

As a result of this lack of information, companies in emerging markets face much higher costs in building credible brands than their counterparts in advanced economies. In turn, established brands wield tremendous power. A conglomerate with a reputation for quality products and services can use its group name to enter new businesses, even if those businesses are completely unrelated to its current lines. Groups also have an advantage when they do try to build up a brand because they can spread the cost of maintaining it across multiple lines of business. Such groups then have a greater incentive not to damage brand quality in anyone business because they will pay the price in their other businesses as well.

Established brands can wield tremendous power in emerging markets 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’ ?

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Pollution befouls the air and poisons water. Pollution induces the release of toxicants into the biosphere which makes the air unsuitable for breathing, harms the quality of water and soil, and causes the emission of substances that may cause damage to humans, plants and animals.
To cater to the needs of an increasing population, agriculture has been intensified through the use of a wide spectrum of fertilizers and pesticides. Diverse industries have been set up to produce chemicals including those that pose a danger to all life forms.

Rapid industrialisation has led to deterioration in the quality of air. Widespread use of coal and fossil fuels in industries and petroleum fuel in motor vehicles has aggravated the air pollution problem. Our atmosphere seems to have become a waste basket into which dust, noxious fumes, toxic gases and other pollutants are callously thrown.

The intensity of air pollution in Indian cities is increasing primarily due to our vintage vehicles and their poor performance. Water pollution, too has increased with the growth of our population and also that of our industries. Water pollution has acquired dangerous dimensions ever since sewage and industrial effluents have started being disposed of into the rivers.

Once considered sacred, the rivers are now turning murky and stink. It is sad that almost three-fourths of our fellow citizens have no choice but to drink filthy water. The severely polluted rivers due to mindless dumping of sewage and industrial wastes are a cause for concern not only to us humans but also to myriads of life forms that exist in water.

On the French and Italian rivier as we can no longer see the sparkling blue waters. The Mediterranean Sea is reported to be turning grey. Rivers and canals pour sewage, detergents and industrial waste into the sea; tankers flush their contents near the river or sea; bottles, rotting garbage and oil slicks are washed into the beaches. The phosphates and nitrates applied to farmlands as inorganic fertilizers, concentrate in lakes and estuaries causing algal blooms due to which wide expanses of water get choked, plants rot, oxygen is used up and fish die.

Deterioration in the quality of air can mainly be attributed to

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.

Survival is the most essential factor for every living organism. People resort to different tricks to make both ends meet. One such live instances is mentioned here. Villagers of Makhrada village believed that a witch lived in the denseforest near Makhrada. The passers by were much harassed by the witch who used to frighten them and also took their belongings. In the village there lived a young man named Dhiru who was fond of adventures. When he heard about the witch, he did not believe that it was one of the witches who ate flesh. But there was something elseabout the witch, which made Dhiru curious. She did not eat flest but took away the belongings of the people. Therefore, he was keen to solve this mystery.

He set out with a bag of mangoes. He walked through the forest till it was midway. He took shelter under a shady tree and pretended to be fast asleep. However, after some time, he really fell as leep. After a while, he felt that someone was trying to snatch his bag of mangoes, Suddenly, he woke up and caught hold of the person. It was the witch who tried to frighten Dhiru and run away. But Dhiru was strong and bold enough to hold the withc fast. The witch finally surrendered. Dhiru forced has to tell him who she really was. The witch removed her mask and narrated her and story. She told that she was a poor old widow and she had nobody to look after her. Therefore, she used to live in the forest, wearing a fearful-looking mask. People passing through the forest got frightened due to her appearance and took her for a witch. She then robbed the people of their belongings to make both ends meet. Dhiru took pity on her and gave her the bag of ranages.

How was the ‘witch’ described in this passage different from other witches? 

Directions:- Read the following passage and answer the following questions based on the given passage. Some of the words are highlighted which would help you to answer some of the questions given.
For years, world-wide organisations have become increasingly excited about the prospect of a cloud-based future. As the dream becomes an ever closer reality for many kinds of business and, Forrester predicted that enterprise spending on cloud services is set to surge. IDC also predicted that global spending on public cloud services and infrastructure would reach $210bn in 2019, an increase of 24% from 2018. But one obstacle stands create friction and introduce risk: the process of migration.
 As all indications point to a massive shift in data deployments to the cloud, it is more important than ever that the transition from on-premises to Cloud is as risk free as possible. In today's climate any loss or disruption to data can have a huge business impact. It’s a complex process, is frequently underestimated and many organisations have found there’s lots that can go wrong that can impact the business. Organisations across the globe have found the cloud to be an ideal place to run modern data applications due to big data’s elastic resource requirements. Furthermore, with the lack of data talent an ever-looming issue for most companies today they have been determined to adopt a cloud-first strategy to ensure business operations are accessible for a range of employees.
 The cloud offers great promise for developers especially, as it can increase the speed at which they develop software features and increase the resilience of applications once they are deployed - along with enhanced security through the use of multiple server locations. With all this considered, it is no surprise that 42% of UK businesses leverage some kind of cloud service, according to Eurostat.
 However, all the perceived benefits of leveraging the cloud are redundant if organisations come up against barriers to accessing cloud services. Cloud-based data pipelines still suffer from complexity challenges at the moment, along with the lack of visibility into cost and resource usage at the application and user level. The answer to this is automation fueled by robust Machine learning training models and artificial intelligence. These concepts and the tools that enable them can determine the prerequisites of cloud infrastructure, application dependencies,the appropriate target cloud instance profiles, and provide troubleshooting in real-time
 To summarise, the promise of the cloud has created a sense of excitement amongst enterprises, however, they have proceeded to go full steam ahead into adopting a cloud service, without sufficient data to ensure performance service level agreements (SLAs).

Which of the following words is most similar to the word “ADOPT” as given in the passage?