Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
There are five basic features of services. These features distinguish them from goods. The first is that services are intangible. They are experiential in nature. One cannot taste a doctor’s treatment, or touch entertainment. One can only experience it. An important implication of this is that quality of the offer can often not be determined before consumption or before purchase. It is, therefore, important for the service providers that they consciously work on creating a desired service so that the customer undergoes a favourable experience. The second important characteristic of services is inconsistency. Since there is no standard tangible product, services have to be performed exclusively each time. Different customers have different demands and expectations. Service providers need to have an opportunity to alter their offer to closely meet the requirements of the customers. Another important characteristic of services is the simultaneous activity of production and consumption being performed. This makes the production and consumption of services inseparable. While we can manufacture a car today and sell it after, say, a month; this is often not possible with services that have to be consumed as and when they are produced. For example, the services of a teacher, doctor or lawyer. Service providers may design a substitute for the person by using appropriate technology but the interaction with the customer remains a key feature of services. Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) may replace the banking clerk for the front office activities like cash withdrawal and cheque deposit. But, at the same time, the presence of the customer, is required and his/her interaction with the process has to be managed. Services have little or no tangible components and, therefore, cannot be stored for a future use. That is, services are perishable and providers can, at best, store some associated goods but not the service itself. This means that the demand and supply needs to be managed as the service has to be performed as and when the customer asks for it. They cannot be performed earlier to be consumed at a later date. For example, a railway ticket can be stored but the railway journey will be experienced by a traveller only when the railways provide it.

Entertainment is an intangible service because it can only be:

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. 

The public distribution system, which provides food at_______is a subject of vital concern. 

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
 It is generally acknowledged that children learn a lot from their parents. It is not so commonly admitted that parents learn a great deal from their children. As adults, it is easy to assume that we are always right, but the laugh was on me one beautiful day.
 My daughter Kashmira knew how much I loved flowers. One day when she was of nine years, she picked some branches from our neighbour's blossoming fruit tree. Realising she intended to please me, I didn't scold her, but chose a different approach. "These are lovely, dear, but do you realise that if you had left them on the tree, each of these blossoms would have become a cherry?" "No, they wouldn't have", she said firmly.
"Oh, yes they would have. Each of these blossoms would have grown into a cherry". "Well okay, mother, if you insist", she finally conceded, "but they were plums last year".

What the daughter picked from the neighbour's garden were- 

Direction : Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the question.
 Governments have traditionally equated economic progress with steel mills and cement factories. While urban centers thrive and city dwellers get rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remain mired in poverty. However fears of food shortages, a rethinking of anti-poverty priorities and the crushing recession in 2008 are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favour of greater support for agriculture.
 The last time when the world’s farmer felt such love was in the 1970s. 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. Government across the developing world and international aid organisations plowed investment into agriculture in the early 1970s, while technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution and food production exploded. But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% by the late 1980s from their peak in the mid-1970s. 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 aid directed at agriculture sank to 3.5 % and Agriculture lost its glitter. Also as consumer 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 upto heights not seen for three decades. Making matters worse land and resources got reallocated to produce cash crops such as biofuels and the result was that voluminous reserves of grain evaporated. Protests broke out across the emerging world and fierce food riots toppled governments. This spurred global leaders into action. This made them aware that food security is one of the fundamental issues in the world that has to be dealt with in order to maintain administrative and political stability. This also spurred the US which traditionally provisioned food aid from American grain surpluses to help needy nations to move towards investing in farm sectors around the globe to boost productive for themselves and be in a better position to feed their own people.
 Africa, which missed out on the first Green Revolution due to poor policy and limited resources, also witnessed a 'change'. Swayed by the success of East Asia the primary poverty-fighting method favoured by many policy-makers in Africa was to get farmers off their farms and into modern jobs in factories and urban centers. But that strategy proved to be highly insufficient. Income levels in the countryside badly trailed those in cities while the FAO estimated that the number of poor going hungry in 2009 reached an all time high at more than one billion. In India on the other hand with only 40% of its farmland irrigated, entire economic boom currently underway is held hostage by the unpredictable monsoon. With much of India’s farming areas suffering from drought this year, the government will have a tough time meeting its economic growth targets. In a report Goldman Sachs, predicted that if this year, too receives weak rains it could cause agriculture to contract by 2 % this fiscal year making the government 7%GDP growth target look "a bit rich". Another green revolution is the need of the hour and to make it a reality, the global community still has much backbreaking farm work to do.           

What impact did economic recession of 2008 have on agriculture?

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

Can the last fifteen years be called the most successful decade and a half in Indian history and will the next fifteen be equally successful? Consider a culture where independent thinking is not encouraged. Or take the example of traditional family run business with vast resistance to change or a whole nation who believes that breakthrough ideas can be generated abroad but never at home. Partly responsible is socialization from early years we are taught not to question our elders but at workplaces this creates a hurdle for new thinking. Being unable to change radically gives rise to a culture where even the smallest change is heralded as a break through. Indian corporate leaders have done well standing up to global giants as their companies have grown in size and market share. To be successful in international markets they need to be distinct distinct products, processes, technologies, business models and organisations. The bottom line will be Innovation. Creativity workshops are organized to channel people to think differently. There are fantastic ideas being generated all the time but no Industry. breakthrough. Simply because of gravity regressive force exerted by a mindset. Thinking has therefore to happen at three, levels idea, frame and paradigm. From a narrow focus on either product or process innovation organizations need to look at innovating the whole ecosystem of the organization. Many a time waiting for a hundred percent solution before going to the market the organization forgets that it could end up waiting forever. Moreover, sometimes organizations are too focused on today to see tomorrow. Since management mandates are short-term, sowing the seed for a revenue stream today and leaving Its benefits to be reaped by a successor doesn’t appeal to today’s business leader. This is a serious hurdle to into Ovation. Establishing a function called innovation management or training employees through creativity workshops will have few benefits unless each frontline employee is empowered to Share his innovative ideas with the management. What happens to this system when the person driving the change leaves the organization? The approach to innovation hence needs to be system driven rather than people driven. In thirty years, India can be the largest world economy save China and the US. However, as companies grow there exists a resemblance in their products, services, promotions, processes and pricing and so on. There remains only one escape from this trap. 

 Which of the following discourages innovation in India? 

Read the passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.

Looking back on those days Isee 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

Study the following passage and given answer the questions.

Modern living has programmed our lives to a hectic, monotonous schedule that we have forgotten the gentle smile that once fleeted the human face. Smile has she power dissolve all worries. It has the all-pervasive ability us from abysmal depth of gloominess. We should not be cowed down by work pressure that constant frown imprisons our face.
 In built confidence and positive attitude help a smile to blossom. A face bereft of smile makes us unarmed for it is the smile is a pleasant weapon which resists all hurdles and problems that depress us. If we learn to smile in a crisis it shows that we have the forbearance and courage to face the crisis. A smile, after all helps us preserve our perfect present unmindful of our past or future.

Which of the following statements is not true in the context 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.

What did HH Dalai Lama said to his followers which came as a blow to them?