Directions: Read the following passage and answer the following questions. Some words are highlighted to help you answer some of the questions.

A golden age for Western schools in China may be coming to an end in the face of a new government clampdown. China has been a happy hunting ground for Western schools in recent years, as a burgeoning middle class looks to equip their children with the qualifications to get into a Western university, as well as the skills to join a global workforce. The last five years has seen a 64% increase in the number of students enrolled in international schools in China, which now account for 372,000 children in 857 schools.

But from next year, schools will have to select their students via a lottery, rather than being able to pick and choose from among the applicants. The crackdown has been prompted by fears that foreign-owned schools are poaching the brightest children, according to Richard Gaskell, director of international education analysts ISC Research. The move follows changes introduced last year’s requiring   international schools to teach the Chinese curriculum alongside other national programs.

There is a backlash against the rapid increase in international schools in China, where it’s perceived that they have been simply creaming off the best students. International schools should put expansion plans on hold until the full effect of the changes becomes apparent next spring, he told the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference of leading fee-paying schools in the U.K.

The international schools market has exploded in China in recent years, after the authorities relaxed regulations Chinese children attending foreign-owned schools. Until then, international schools almost entirely served the children of foreign nationals, but opening them up to Chinese children revealed a massive and previously untapped demand.

For the growing Chinese middle class, the schools provided a more reliable route that Chinese national schools for getting into highly-regarded universities in the West, particularly those in the U.S. and U.K. These students, in turn, represent a lucrative source of income, for both the schools themselves and for Western universities. The annual fee for a leading international school is around 280,000 yuan, or $39,000.

China is the largest source of international students at U.K. universities, _________________ for more than one in five at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Some of the most prestigious private schools have sought to capitalise on their brand by opening branches in China in recent years. A record 14 British international schools have opened or are due to open in China this year, including outposts of the King’s School, Canterbury, and Shrewsbury School, which counts Charles Darwin among its alumni.

But despite the increased scrutiny, there are still opportunities for international schools to open in China, given the "massive demand" among Chinese families. There is a deep desire amongst the wealthy, middle class and young Chinese parents for a Western style of education. Parents want an international education but also want their children to retain their culture and identity, he added, as well as excellent exam results and "places at the top universities."

Which of the following words can fit in “____________”, as given in the passage?

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.

What encouraged Africa policy maker to focus on urban jobs? 

Read the passage carefully and answer the question accordingly.

The saddest part of life lies not in the act of dying, but in failing to truly live while we are alive. Too many of us play small with our lives, never letting the fullness of our humanity see the light of day. I’ve learned that what really counts in life, in the end, is not how many toys we have collected or how much money we’ve accumulated, but how many of our talents we have liberated and used for a purpose that adds value to this world. What truly matters most are the lives we have touched and the legacy that we have left. Tolstoy put it so well when he wrote: “We live for ourselves only when we live for others.” It took me forty years to discover this simple point of wisdom.

Forty long years to discover that success cannot really be pursued. Success ensues and flows into your life as the unintended yet inevitable byproduct of a life spent enriching the lives of other people. When you shift your daily focus from a compulsion to survive towards a lifelong commitment to serve, your existence cannot help but explode into success. I still can’t believe that I had to wait until the “half-time” of my life to figure out that true fulfillment as a human being comes not from achieving those grand gestures that put us on the front pages of the newspapers and business magazines, but instead from those basic and incremental acts of decency that each one of us has the privilege to practice each and every day if we simply make the choice to do so. Mother Teresa, a great leader of human hearts if ever there was one, said it best: “There are no great acts, only small acts done with great love.” I learned this the hard way in my life. Until recently, I had been so busy striving, I had missed out on living. I was so busy chasing life’s big pleasures that I had missed out on the little ones, those micro joys that weave themselves in and out of our lives on a daily basis but often go unnoticed. My days were overscheduled, my mind was overworked and my spirit was underfed.

According to the passage, what does ''failing to truly live while we are alive means.''?

Among Nature’s most intriguing phenomena are the partnerships formed by any different species. The name used for these relationships, Symbiosis, comes from Greek meaning "living together". Not all symbiotic relationships are the same. There are some called commensal relationships, in which one partner gains a benefit while the other gains little or none but is not harmed. One example is the relationship between two types of fish remoras and sharks. The remora, which is long and often striped, attaches itself to a shark (sometimes to another type of fish or a whale), using a sucker on its head. When the shark makes a kill, the hitchhiker briefly detaches itself to feed on the scraps. Another type of symbiotic relationship is parasitism, in which one partner benefits at the expense of others. Ticks and tapeworms are among familiar parasites. 

The third type of symbiotic relationship, called mutualism, is a true partnership in which both partners benefit. The relationship may be limited as when zebras and wild best graze together on the vast African grasslands. Each species can survive on its own, but together their chances of detecting predators are improved because each contributes a specially keen sense. (Zebras have the better eyesight;  wild beast, hearing and sense of smell). In a few cases partners are so interdependent that one cannot survive without the other. Most mutualistic relationships probably lie some where in between

Remora feeds 

Directions: 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 of the questions.
Among those suffering from the global recession are millions of workers who are not even included in the official statistics : urban recyclers – the trash pickers, sorters, traders and reprocesses who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse. Their work is both unrecorded and largely unrecognized, even though in some parts of the World they handle as much as 20% of all waste.
The World’s 15 million informal recyclers clean up cities, prevent some trash from ending in landfills and thus, reduce climate change by saving energy on waste disposal techniques like incineration. In the developed countries they are the preferred ones since they recycle waste much more cheaply and efficiently than governments or private corporations can. In the developing World, on the other hand, they provide the only recycling services except for a few big cities. But as recession hits the markets Worldwide, the price of scrap metal, paper and plastic has also fallen. Recyclers throughout the World are experiencing a sharp drop in income. Trash pickers and scrap dealers saw a decline of as much as 80% in the price of scrap from October 2007 to October 2009. In some countries scrap dealers have shuttered so quickly that researchers at the Solid Waste Management Association didn’t have a chance to record their losses. In Delhi, some 80% of families in the informal recycling business surveyed by an organization said they had cut back on “luxury foods,” which they defined as fruit, milk and meat. About 41% had stopped buying milk for their children. By this summer, most of those children, already malnourished, hadn’t had a glass of milk in nine months. Many of these children have also cut down on hours spent in school to work alongside their parents. Families have liquidated their most valuable assets – primarily copper from electrical wires – and have stopped sending remittances back to their rural villages. Many have also sold their emergency stores of grain. Their misery is not as familiar as that of the laid-off workers of big name but imploding, service sector corporation, but it is often more tragic. Few countries have adopted emergency measures to help trash pickers. Brazil, for one, is  providing recyclers, or “catadores,” with cheaper food, both through arrangements with local farmers and by offering food subsidies. Other countries, with the support of non-governmental organizations  and donor agencies are following Brazil’s example. Unfortunately, most trash pickers operate outside official notice and end up falling through the cracks of programmes like these. In the long run,  though, these invisible workers will remain especially vulnerable to economic slowdowns unless they are integrated into the formal business sector, where they can have insurance and reliable wages. This is not hard to accomplish. Informal junk shops should have to apply for licences, and governments should create or expand doorstep waste collection programmes to employ trash pickers. Instead of sorting through haphazard trash heaps and landfills, the pickers would have access to the cleaner scrap that comes from households.

The need of the hour, however, is a more immediate solution. An efficient but temporary solution would be for governments where they’d have to pay a small subsidy to waste dealers so they could purchase scrap from trash pickers at about 20% above the current price. This increase, if well advertised and broadky utilized, would bring recyclers a higher price and eventually bring them back from the brink. Trash pickers make our cities healthier and more liveable. We all stand to gain by making sure that the work of recycling remains sustainable for years to come.

Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
Cracks

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?

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

What is mean by 'Programmed our lives’?
 
 

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?