DIRECTIONS: Each question consists of four sentences on a topic. Some sentences are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate. Select the option that indicates the grammatically correct and appropriate sentences.
A. The balance of power will shift to the East as China and India evolve.
B. Rarely the economic ascent of two still relatively poor nations have been watched with such a mixture of awe, opportunism and trepidation.
C. Postwar era witnessed economic miracles in Japan and South Korea, but neither was populous enough to power world side growth or change the game in a complete spectrum of industries.
D. China and India, by contrast, possess the weight and dynamism to transform the 21st-centrury global economy.
DIRECTIONS: Each question consists of four sentences on a topic. Some sentences are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate. Select the option that indicates the grammatically correct and appropriate sentences.
(A) Large reductions in the ozone layer, which sits about 15-30 km above the Earth, take place each winter over the polar regions, especially the Antarctic, as low temperatures allow the formation of stratospheric clouds that assist chemical reactions breaking down ozone.
(B) Industrial chemicals containing chlorine and bromine have been blamed for thinning the layer because they attack the ozone molecules, making them to break apart.
(C) Many an offending chemicals have now been banned.
(D) It will still take several decades before these substances have disappeared from the atmosphere.
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DIRECTIONS: Choose the best option.
Q. The Christmas tree was ……… with stars and other decorative items.
DIRECTIONS: Choose the best option.
Q. The committee was in favour of the proposal but the president ……… it.
DIRECTIONS: Choose the best option.
Q. The two sides in the civil war signed a peace ……..
DIRECTIONS: Choose the best option.
Q. The only …….. with the proposal is that it is a little expensive.
DIRECTIONS: Four alternative summaries are given below each text. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text.
Q. It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.
DIRECTIONS: Four alternative summaries are given below each text. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text.
Q. The human race is spread all over the world, from the polar regions to the tropics. The people of whom it is made up eat different kinds of food, partly according to the climate in which they live, and partly according to the kind of food which their country produces. In hot climates, meat and fat are not much needed; but in the Arctic regions they seem to be very necessary for keeping up the heat of the body. Thus, in India, people live chiefly on different kinds of grains, eggs, milk, or sometimes fish and meat. In Europe, people eat more meat and less grain. In the Arctic regions, where no grains and fruits are produced, the Eskimo and other races live almost entirely on meat and fish.
DIRECTIONS: In each of the following sentences, a part of the sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence, four different ways of phrasing the underlined part are indicated. Choose the best alternative among the four.
Q. It was us who had left before he arrived.
DIRECTIONS: In each of the following sentences, a part of the sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence, four different ways of phrasing the underlined part are indicated. Choose the best alternative among the four.
Q. The MP rose up to say that in her opinion, she thought the Women’s Reservation Bill should be passed on unanimously.
DIRECTION: The sentences given in each of the following questions, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. From among the four choices given below each question, choose the most logical order of sentences that constructs a coherent paragraph.
(A) Maintaining and monitoring financial stability has always been a key objective of monetary policy.
(B) Accordingly, the RBI set up a Financial Stability Unit in August-2009 and started presenting periodical reports since March 2010.
(C) The first report found the banking system to be broadly healthy and well-capitalized, but noted that global economic shocks, inflation, the slow pace of fiscal consolidation and the unsettlingly large capital inflows posed significant risks to financial mobility.
(D) However, it was only from the middle of 2009 that the government and the RBI sought to institutionalize the process making financial stability "an integral driver of the policy frame work".
(E) The Reserve Bank of India's second financial stability report is generally positive.
DIRECTION: The sentences given in each of the following questions, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. From among the four choices given below each question, choose the most logical order of sentences that constructs a coherent paragraph.
(A) The basic dilemma of the nuclear age has been with us since Hiroshima; how to bring the destructiveness of modern weapons into some moral or political relationship with the objectives that are pursued.
(B) More than 200 years ago, the philosopher Immanuel Kant defined the ultimate choice before mankind; if world history was to culminate in universal peace, would it be through moral insight or through catastrophe of a magnitude that allowed no outcome?
(C) We are approaching a point where that choice may be imposed on us.
(D) Efforts to develop a more nuanced application have never succeeded, from the doctrine of a geographically limited nuclear war in the 1950 and 1960s to the "mutual assured destruction" theory of general nuclear war in the 1970s.
(E) Any use of nuclear weapons is certain to involve a level of casualities and devastation out of proportion to foreseeable foreign-policy objections,
DIRECTIONS: In each question, there are five sentences. Each sentence has pairs of words/phrases that are underline. From the underline words/phrases, select the most appropriate words/phrases to form correct sentences. Then, from the options given, choose the best one.
Q. The participants waited with baited [A] / bated [B] breath while the names of the winners were announced. The initial diagnosis [A] /prognosis [B] made by the general physician was confirmed by a specialist.
Ten years of city life has transformed the uncouth country lad into an urbane [A] / urban [B] gentleman.
The balmy [A] / barmy [B] weather of the hill station helped her to recuperate fast.
I didn't have the courage to broach [A] / brooch [B] the delicate subject with him.
DIRECTIONS: In each question, there are five sentences. Each sentence has pairs of words/phrases that are underline. From the underline words/phrases, select the most appropriate words/phrases to form correct sentences. Then, from the options given, choose the best one.
Q. The mother-in-law never missed an opportunity to deprecate[A]/depreciate[B] her daughter-in-law's achievements.
All the students were asked to confirm[A] /conform[B] to the rules laid down by the school management. Temperance and tolerance are some of the crucial[A] /cardinal[B] virtues advocated by all religions.
Students pursuing civil services exams should keep themselves abreast of currant[A] / current[B] events. All nations of the world should make a conscience[A] / conscious[B] effort to cut-down the emissions of poisonous gases in order to save the planet
In each of the questions below, four different ways of writing a sentence are given. Choose the best way of writing the sentence.
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign—including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-third majority. Mr Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough—and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives—in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration.
The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism—which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentration slager were both first used by the German colonial regime in South-West Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century: tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order—and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubt about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
Q. Among all the apprehensions that Mr Goran Lindblao expresses against communism, which one gets admitted, although indirectly, by the author?
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign—including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-third majority. Mr Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough—and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives—in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration.
The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism—which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentration slager were both first used by the German colonial regime in South-West Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century: tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order—and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubt about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
Q. What, according to the author, is the real reason for a renewed attack against communism?
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign—including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-third majority. Mr Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough—and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives—in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration.
The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism—which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentration slager were both first used by the German colonial regime in South-West Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century: tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order—and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubt about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
Q. The author cites examples of atrocities perpetrated by European colonial regimes in order to
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign—including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-third majority. Mr Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough—and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives—in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration.
The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism—which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentration slager were both first used by the German colonial regime in South-West Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century: tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order—and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubt about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
Q. Why, according to the author, is Nazism closer to colonialism than it is to communism?
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign—including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-third majority. Mr Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough—and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives—in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration.
The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism—which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentration slager were both first used by the German colonial regime in South-West Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century: tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order—and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubt about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
Q. Which of the following cannot be inferred as a compelling reason for the silence of the Council of Europe on colonial atrocities?
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign—including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-third majority. Mr Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough—and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives—in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration.
The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism—which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentration slager were both first used by the German colonial regime in South-West Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century: tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order—and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubt about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
Q. Which of the following words appearing in the passage means ‘legacy’?
In each of the questions below only one among the given alternatives is correctly spelt. Find out the word with correct spelling.
DIRECTIONS: Choose the correct meaning of the idiom.
Q. So far as hazards of pollution are concerned, the traffic policeman bear the brunt.
DIRECTIONS: Choose the correct meaning of the idiom.
Q. My boss is, in fact, a live wire he works for twelve hours a day.
In each of the questions below only one among the given alternatives is correctly spelt. Find out the word with correct spelling.
In each of the questions below only one among the given alternatives is correctly spelt. Find out the word with correct spelling.
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Shark Research Institute (SRI) is a multi-disciplinary non-profit scientific research organization that sponsors and conducts research on sharks and promotes the conservation of sharks. Founded in 1991 at Princeton, New Jersey, USA, SRI has field offices in Canada, the Galapagos Islands, Honduras, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan and the Seychelles. The SRI works to correct misperceptions about sharks and stop the slaughter of 100 million sharks annually.
The shark has been a magnificent creation—perfectly adapted for a life of hunting food in the world’s oceans. It is almost certain that man first encountered the shark not long after he first began using the sea for food-gathering. The fact that sharks are absent from Egyptian and biblical records is no mystery. Given that, even today, much remains to be discovered about the shark, it is not surprising that the Greek word ketos, and the Hebrew word tannin were used to describe any great fish in these times. The earliest known writings specifically about sharks are to be found in Greek records. Herodotus described shark attacks in 492 BC, and Aristotle was able to distinguish between species by 355 BC. It was only when Europeans first entered the Indian and Pacific oceans that they began to encounter the shark on a regular basis. Until the 1560s the shark was generally known as tiburon—a Spanish word.
The English word 'shark', which appeared at about this time, may have come from the German word schurke, meaning Villain. It was in the South Pacific islands where the shark gained its god-like status. The Polynesian people lived on and from the sea, and had plenty of opportunity for gaining fairly intimate knowledge of the creature’s habits. Tales of the shark began to be told. The most well-known is that of Kamo-hoa-lii, the shark-god who lived under the island of Hawaii in great submarine caverns. He occasionally liked to swim in a secluded pool in the Waipo valley. Here he first saw the human girl, Kalei. She was the most beautiful human girl he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her.
Summoning all his magical powers, he transformed himself into a handsome young man. He successfully courted and wed her. Just before the birth of their son he warned her that the child must never be fed meat. The boy, named Nanaue, was born healthy and normal—except for a shark’s mouth on his back between his shoulder blades. This his mother disguised with a cloak which he wore at all times. When he grew old enough to have to eat with the men, he accidentally ate some roast pork, and developed a craving for meat. He also found that he could turn himself into a shark at will. This helped him hunt fish whose bodies assuaged his craving for fresh flesh. And so he grew to be a man. He was talked about behind his back.
People found the fact that he was reclusive and never removed his strange cloak, but they never attributed the occasional disappearance of a villager from their favourite bathing pool to him. It was only when he was conscripted to work on one of the royal plantations that his secret was discovered. Some young men began teasing him about wearing the cloak even when working hard in the hot, tropical sun. One thing led to another and the cloak was torn from his back revealing the snapping shark jaws between his shoulder-blades. He managed to escape the horrified villagers, leapt into the sea where he turned into a great shark and swam away, never to be seen again.
The tale exists in many forms. In one version he is captured, bound and dragged up Kain-alu hill where he was incinerated on a pyre made of bamboo from the sacred grove.
The bamboo in the sacred grove had always made the sharpest knives. But the god Mohoalii was so angered by the desecration of the bamboo that he took away its hardness. To this day the bamboo on Kain-alu hill, now known as Puumano or Shark Hill, on Molokai is the softest and weakest in the Hawaiian Islands.
By the early nineteenth-century, shark worship was well established in the Hawaiian Islands. Each island worshipped a certain species of shark and inter-island wars often broke out if islanders mistakenly killed another island's god-shark species. There were even shark-human gladiatorial contests.
Q. According to the passage, which of the following best represents tale of sharks?
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Shark Research Institute (SRI) is a multi-disciplinary non-profit scientific research organization that sponsors and conducts research on sharks and promotes the conservation of sharks. Founded in 1991 at Princeton, New Jersey, USA, SRI has field offices in Canada, the Galapagos Islands, Honduras, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan and the Seychelles. The SRI works to correct misperceptions about sharks and stop the slaughter of 100 million sharks annually.
The shark has been a magnificent creation—perfectly adapted for a life of hunting food in the world’s oceans. It is almost certain that man first encountered the shark not long after he first began using the sea for food-gathering. The fact that sharks are absent from Egyptian and biblical records is no mystery. Given that, even today, much remains to be discovered about the shark, it is not surprising that the Greek word ketos, and the Hebrew word tannin were used to describe any great fish in these times. The earliest known writings specifically about sharks are to be found in Greek records. Herodotus described shark attacks in 492 BC, and Aristotle was able to distinguish between species by 355 BC. It was only when Europeans first entered the Indian and Pacific oceans that they began to encounter the shark on a regular basis. Until the 1560s the shark was generally known as tiburon—a Spanish word.
The English word 'shark', which appeared at about this time, may have come from the German word schurke, meaning Villain. It was in the South Pacific islands where the shark gained its god-like status. The Polynesian people lived on and from the sea, and had plenty of opportunity for gaining fairly intimate knowledge of the creature’s habits. Tales of the shark began to be told. The most well-known is that of Kamo-hoa-lii, the shark-god who lived under the island of Hawaii in great submarine caverns. He occasionally liked to swim in a secluded pool in the Waipo valley. Here he first saw the human girl, Kalei. She was the most beautiful human girl he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her.
Summoning all his magical powers, he transformed himself into a handsome young man. He successfully courted and wed her. Just before the birth of their son he warned her that the child must never be fed meat. The boy, named Nanaue, was born healthy and normal—except for a shark’s mouth on his back between his shoulder blades. This his mother disguised with a cloak which he wore at all times. When he grew old enough to have to eat with the men, he accidentally ate some roast pork, and developed a craving for meat. He also found that he could turn himself into a shark at will. This helped him hunt fish whose bodies assuaged his craving for fresh flesh. And so he grew to be a man. He was talked about behind his back.
People found the fact that he was reclusive and never removed his strange cloak, but they never attributed the occasional disappearance of a villager from their favourite bathing pool to him. It was only when he was conscripted to work on one of the royal plantations that his secret was discovered. Some young men began teasing him about wearing the cloak even when working hard in the hot, tropical sun. One thing led to another and the cloak was torn from his back revealing the snapping shark jaws between his shoulder-blades. He managed to escape the horrified villagers, leapt into the sea where he turned into a great shark and swam away, never to be seen again.
The tale exists in many forms. In one version he is captured, bound and dragged up Kain-alu hill where he was incinerated on a pyre made of bamboo from the sacred grove.
The bamboo in the sacred grove had always made the sharpest knives. But the god Mohoalii was so angered by the desecration of the bamboo that he took away its hardness. To this day the bamboo on Kain-alu hill, now known as Puumano or Shark Hill, on Molokai is the softest and weakest in the Hawaiian Islands.
By the early nineteenth-century, shark worship was well established in the Hawaiian Islands. Each island worshipped a certain species of shark and inter-island wars often broke out if islanders mistakenly killed another island's god-shark species. There were even shark-human gladiatorial contests.
Q. Which of the following support the author’ s claim "It was in the South Pacific islands where the shark gained its god-like status"?
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Shark Research Institute (SRI) is a multi-disciplinary non-profit scientific research organization that sponsors and conducts research on sharks and promotes the conservation of sharks. Founded in 1991 at Princeton, New Jersey, USA, SRI has field offices in Canada, the Galapagos Islands, Honduras, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan and the Seychelles. The SRI works to correct misperceptions about sharks and stop the slaughter of 100 million sharks annually.
The shark has been a magnificent creation—perfectly adapted for a life of hunting food in the world’s oceans. It is almost certain that man first encountered the shark not long after he first began using the sea for food-gathering. The fact that sharks are absent from Egyptian and biblical records is no mystery. Given that, even today, much remains to be discovered about the shark, it is not surprising that the Greek word ketos, and the Hebrew word tannin were used to describe any great fish in these times. The earliest known writings specifically about sharks are to be found in Greek records. Herodotus described shark attacks in 492 BC, and Aristotle was able to distinguish between species by 355 BC. It was only when Europeans first entered the Indian and Pacific oceans that they began to encounter the shark on a regular basis. Until the 1560s the shark was generally known as tiburon—a Spanish word.
The English word 'shark', which appeared at about this time, may have come from the German word schurke, meaning Villain. It was in the South Pacific islands where the shark gained its god-like status. The Polynesian people lived on and from the sea, and had plenty of opportunity for gaining fairly intimate knowledge of the creature’s habits. Tales of the shark began to be told. The most well-known is that of Kamo-hoa-lii, the shark-god who lived under the island of Hawaii in great submarine caverns. He occasionally liked to swim in a secluded pool in the Waipo valley. Here he first saw the human girl, Kalei. She was the most beautiful human girl he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her.
Summoning all his magical powers, he transformed himself into a handsome young man. He successfully courted and wed her. Just before the birth of their son he warned her that the child must never be fed meat. The boy, named Nanaue, was born healthy and normal—except for a shark’s mouth on his back between his shoulder blades. This his mother disguised with a cloak which he wore at all times. When he grew old enough to have to eat with the men, he accidentally ate some roast pork, and developed a craving for meat. He also found that he could turn himself into a shark at will. This helped him hunt fish whose bodies assuaged his craving for fresh flesh. And so he grew to be a man. He was talked about behind his back.
People found the fact that he was reclusive and never removed his strange cloak, but they never attributed the occasional disappearance of a villager from their favourite bathing pool to him. It was only when he was conscripted to work on one of the royal plantations that his secret was discovered. Some young men began teasing him about wearing the cloak even when working hard in the hot, tropical sun. One thing led to another and the cloak was torn from his back revealing the snapping shark jaws between his shoulder-blades. He managed to escape the horrified villagers, leapt into the sea where he turned into a great shark and swam away, never to be seen again.
The tale exists in many forms. In one version he is captured, bound and dragged up Kain-alu hill where he was incinerated on a pyre made of bamboo from the sacred grove.
The bamboo in the sacred grove had always made the sharpest knives. But the god Mohoalii was so angered by the desecration of the bamboo that he took away its hardness. To this day the bamboo on Kain-alu hill, now known as Puumano or Shark Hill, on Molokai is the softest and weakest in the Hawaiian Islands.
By the early nineteenth-century, shark worship was well established in the Hawaiian Islands. Each island worshipped a certain species of shark and inter-island wars often broke out if islanders mistakenly killed another island's god-shark species. There were even shark-human gladiatorial contests.
Q. According to the passage, which of the following is true in the context of sharks:
DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Shark Research Institute (SRI) is a multi-disciplinary non-profit scientific research organization that sponsors and conducts research on sharks and promotes the conservation of sharks. Founded in 1991 at Princeton, New Jersey, USA, SRI has field offices in Canada, the Galapagos Islands, Honduras, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan and the Seychelles. The SRI works to correct misperceptions about sharks and stop the slaughter of 100 million sharks annually.
The shark has been a magnificent creation—perfectly adapted for a life of hunting food in the world’s oceans. It is almost certain that man first encountered the shark not long after he first began using the sea for food-gathering. The fact that sharks are absent from Egyptian and biblical records is no mystery. Given that, even today, much remains to be discovered about the shark, it is not surprising that the Greek word ketos, and the Hebrew word tannin were used to describe any great fish in these times. The earliest known writings specifically about sharks are to be found in Greek records. Herodotus described shark attacks in 492 BC, and Aristotle was able to distinguish between species by 355 BC. It was only when Europeans first entered the Indian and Pacific oceans that they began to encounter the shark on a regular basis. Until the 1560s the shark was generally known as tiburon—a Spanish word.
The English word 'shark', which appeared at about this time, may have come from the German word schurke, meaning Villain. It was in the South Pacific islands where the shark gained its god-like status. The Polynesian people lived on and from the sea, and had plenty of opportunity for gaining fairly intimate knowledge of the creature’s habits. Tales of the shark began to be told. The most well-known is that of Kamo-hoa-lii, the shark-god who lived under the island of Hawaii in great submarine caverns. He occasionally liked to swim in a secluded pool in the Waipo valley. Here he first saw the human girl, Kalei. She was the most beautiful human girl he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her.
Summoning all his magical powers, he transformed himself into a handsome young man. He successfully courted and wed her. Just before the birth of their son he warned her that the child must never be fed meat. The boy, named Nanaue, was born healthy and normal—except for a shark’s mouth on his back between his shoulder blades. This his mother disguised with a cloak which he wore at all times. When he grew old enough to have to eat with the men, he accidentally ate some roast pork, and developed a craving for meat. He also found that he could turn himself into a shark at will. This helped him hunt fish whose bodies assuaged his craving for fresh flesh. And so he grew to be a man. He was talked about behind his back.
People found the fact that he was reclusive and never removed his strange cloak, but they never attributed the occasional disappearance of a villager from their favourite bathing pool to him. It was only when he was conscripted to work on one of the royal plantations that his secret was discovered. Some young men began teasing him about wearing the cloak even when working hard in the hot, tropical sun. One thing led to another and the cloak was torn from his back revealing the snapping shark jaws between his shoulder-blades. He managed to escape the horrified villagers, leapt into the sea where he turned into a great shark and swam away, never to be seen again.
The tale exists in many forms. In one version he is captured, bound and dragged up Kain-alu hill where he was incinerated on a pyre made of bamboo from the sacred grove.
The bamboo in the sacred grove had always made the sharpest knives. But the god Mohoalii was so angered by the desecration of the bamboo that he took away its hardness. To this day the bamboo on Kain-alu hill, now known as Puumano or Shark Hill, on Molokai is the softest and weakest in the Hawaiian Islands.
By the early nineteenth-century, shark worship was well established in the Hawaiian Islands. Each island worshipped a certain species of shark and inter-island wars often broke out if islanders mistakenly killed another island's god-shark species. There were even shark-human gladiatorial contests.
Q. According to the passage, which of the following is not true in the context of sharks:
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