CAT Practice Test - 10 - CAT MCQ

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

A man is hiking in the countryside when he suddenly sees a toddler about to fall into an abandoned well. What will he do? Many people will instinctively run toward the toddler to save him. However, some people will simply panic, freezing in the moment of crisis. A handful of people might start to move toward the child, but then stop, because they realise that the crumbling old well could collapse under their weight. Their initial impulse to save the child competes with their desire for self-preservation.

This thought experiment was formulated by the ancient Confucian Mengzi, who uses it to argue that, contrary to egoists, and to those who believe that human psychology is a tabula rasa, human nature is hard-wired with an incipient tendency toward compassion for the suffering of others.

Mengzi also argues that humans have a sense of shame that can at least compete with our self-interested motivations. He does not naively assume that all humans are fully virtuous. He acknowledges that our innate compassion and sense of shame are only incipient. We often fail to have compassion for those we should, or fail to be ashamed of what is genuinely despicable. Menzi compares our innate dispositions toward virtue as ‘sprouts’. The sprout of a peach tree cannot bear fruit, but it has an active tendency to develop into a mature, fruit-bearing tree if given good soil, the right amounts of sun and rain, and the weeding of a prudent gardener. Similarly, the ‘sprout of benevolence’ – manifested in our spontaneous feeling of alarm and compassion for the child about to fall into a well – and the ‘sprout of righteousness’ – manifested in a beggar’s disdain to accept a handout given with contempt – are not fully formed, but can develop into genuine virtues given the right environment and cultivation.

How do we make sure that our moral sprouts bloom into actual virtues? Aristotle said that human nature is neither good nor evil, but it allows us to be habituated to virtue. However, Aristotle emphasised that virtue requires doing the right thing out of the right motivation. In contrast, Plato argued that our souls innately love the good, and retain a dim knowledge of the transcendent truths they were exposed to before they were embodied. The way to purify the soul and recover the knowledge of these truths, Plato claimed, is by the study of pure mathematics and philosophy. This theory of cultivation as recollection explains how we can act with the right motivations from the very beginning of moral cultivation. But Platonic ethical cultivation involves giving up our ordinary attachments to our family and an almost ascetic indifference to our physical bodies. In contrast, Mengzi’s suggestion that the path of ethical cultivation is through rich commitments to family, friends and other individuals in our community provides a much more appealing view of the goal of human life.

Mengzi recognised that humans are partly responsible for their own ethical development, but (like Plato and Aristotle) he held that society should create an environment conducive to virtue. He advised rulers that their first task is to make sure that the common people’s physical needs are met. To punish the people when they steal out of hunger is no different from setting traps for them.  He asked one ruler what he would do if one of his subordinates was bad at his job. The ruler replied: ‘Discharge him.’ Mengzi then asked what should be done if his own kingdom were in disorder. The ruler, clearly seeing what this implied, abruptly changed the topic. Once the people’s basic needs were met, Mengzi suggested that they should be ethically educated.

Mengzi claimed that humans are endowed with ‘four hearts’ of benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom. Mengzi emphasises Wisdom because it is crucial for any virtuous person to be able to engage in deliberation about the best means to achieve the ends provided by the other ‘hearts’.
Excerpt from the article “The second sage” by Bryan W Van Norden

Q. Which of the following is not mentioned by Mengzi as one of the four hearts?

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

A man is hiking in the countryside when he suddenly sees a toddler about to fall into an abandoned well. What will he do? Many people will instinctively run toward the toddler to save him. However, some people will simply panic, freezing in the moment of crisis. A handful of people might start to move toward the child, but then stop, because they realise that the crumbling old well could collapse under their weight. Their initial impulse to save the child competes with their desire for self-preservation.

This thought experiment was formulated by the ancient Confucian Mengzi, who uses it to argue that, contrary to egoists, and to those who believe that human psychology is a tabula rasa, human nature is hard-wired with an incipient tendency toward compassion for the suffering of others.

Mengzi also argues that humans have a sense of shame that can at least compete with our self-interested motivations. He does not naively assume that all humans are fully virtuous. He acknowledges that our innate compassion and sense of shame are only incipient. We often fail to have compassion for those we should, or fail to be ashamed of what is genuinely despicable. Menzi compares our innate dispositions toward virtue as ‘sprouts’. The sprout of a peach tree cannot bear fruit, but it has an active tendency to develop into a mature, fruit-bearing tree if given good soil, the right amounts of sun and rain, and the weeding of a prudent gardener. Similarly, the ‘sprout of benevolence’ – manifested in our spontaneous feeling of alarm and compassion for the child about to fall into a well – and the ‘sprout of righteousness’ – manifested in a beggar’s disdain to accept a handout given with contempt – are not fully formed, but can develop into genuine virtues given the right environment and cultivation.

How do we make sure that our moral sprouts bloom into actual virtues? Aristotle said that human nature is neither good nor evil, but it allows us to be habituated to virtue. However, Aristotle emphasised that virtue requires doing the right thing out of the right motivation. In contrast, Plato argued that our souls innately love the good, and retain a dim knowledge of the transcendent truths they were exposed to before they were embodied. The way to purify the soul and recover the knowledge of these truths, Plato claimed, is by the study of pure mathematics and philosophy. This theory of cultivation as recollection explains how we can act with the right motivations from the very beginning of moral cultivation. But Platonic ethical cultivation involves giving up our ordinary attachments to our family and an almost ascetic indifference to our physical bodies. In contrast, Mengzi’s suggestion that the path of ethical cultivation is through rich commitments to family, friends and other individuals in our community provides a much more appealing view of the goal of human life.

Mengzi recognised that humans are partly responsible for their own ethical development, but (like Plato and Aristotle) he held that society should create an environment conducive to virtue. He advised rulers that their first task is to make sure that the common people’s physical needs are met. To punish the people when they steal out of hunger is no different from setting traps for them.  He asked one ruler what he would do if one of his subordinates was bad at his job. The ruler replied: ‘Discharge him.’ Mengzi then asked what should be done if his own kingdom were in disorder. The ruler, clearly seeing what this implied, abruptly changed the topic. Once the people’s basic needs were met, Mengzi suggested that they should be ethically educated.

Mengzi claimed that humans are endowed with ‘four hearts’ of benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom. Mengzi emphasises Wisdom because it is crucial for any virtuous person to be able to engage in deliberation about the best means to achieve the ends provided by the other ‘hearts’.
Excerpt from the article “The second sage” by Bryan W Van Norden

Q. What would the words tabula rasa mean?

DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. In September, he published an 8,000-word reconsideration of his father's signature concept in an Australian monthly. The old man was right that meritocracy would gradually create a stratified and immobile society, he wrote, but wrong that abolishing selective education was the cure. Unlike my father, I'm not an egalitarian, Young wrote. If meritocracy creates a new caste system, the answer is more meritocracy. To restore equality of opportunity, he suggested subsidies for intelligence-maximizing embryo selection for poor parents,with below-average IQs. The irony lay in the implication that Young, because of who his father was, has special insight into the ideology that holds that it shouldn't matter who your father is.

His outlandish resort to eugenics suggests that Toby Young found himself at a loss for solutions, as all modern critics of meritocracy seem to do. The problems they describe are fundamental, but none of their remedies are more than tweaks to make the system more efficient or less prejudicial to the poor. For instance, in Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz accuses the Ivy League of imposing a malignant ruling class on the country, then meekly suggests that elite universities might solve the problem by giving greater weight in admissions to socioeconomic disadvantage and less to resum-stuffing. In The Tyranny of the Meritocracy, Lani Guinier belies the harsh terms of her title by advising that we simply learn to reward "democratic rather than testocratic merit". Christopher Hayes subtitled his debut book Twilight of the Elites "America after Meritocracy", but the remedies he prescribes are all meant to preserve meritocracy by making it more effective. In his latest book, Our Kids, Robert Putnam proves that American social mobility is in crisis, then reposes his hopes in such predictable nostrums as housing vouchers and universal pre-kindergarten.

When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called "the last chapter problem". When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.

Meritocracy began by destroying an aristocracy; it has ended in creating a new one. Nearly every book in the American anti-meritocracy literature makes this charge, in what is usually its most empirically reinforced chapter.  But the solutions on offer never rise to the scale of the problem. Authors attack the meritocratic machine with screwdrivers, not sledgehammers, and differ only in which valve they want to adjust. Some think the solution is to tip more disadvantaged kids over the lip of the intake funnel, which would probably make things worse. If more people start competing for a finite number of slots, slim advantages like those that come from having grown up with two meritocrats for parents will only loom larger.  Others favor the slightly more radical solution of redefining our idea of merit, usually in a way that downplays what Guinier calls "pseudoscientific measures of excellence". She even has a replacement in mind, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the testing of which involves Legos. (Why are you laughing? It is backed by a study.)

My solution is quite different. The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy"so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

Q. From the context of the passage, the meaning of the word 'meritocracy' can be derived to be:

DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. In September, he published an 8,000-word reconsideration of his father's signature concept in an Australian monthly. The old man was right that meritocracy would gradually create a stratified and immobile society, he wrote, but wrong that abolishing selective education was the cure. Unlike my father, I'm not an egalitarian, Young wrote. If meritocracy creates a new caste system, the answer is more meritocracy. To restore equality of opportunity, he suggested subsidies for intelligence-maximizing embryo selection for poor parents,with below-average IQs. The irony lay in the implication that Young, because of who his father was, has special insight into the ideology that holds that it shouldn't matter who your father is.

His outlandish resort to eugenics suggests that Toby Young found himself at a loss for solutions, as all modern critics of meritocracy seem to do. The problems they describe are fundamental, but none of their remedies are more than tweaks to make the system more efficient or less prejudicial to the poor. For instance, in Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz accuses the Ivy League of imposing a malignant ruling class on the country, then meekly suggests that elite universities might solve the problem by giving greater weight in admissions to socioeconomic disadvantage and less to resum-stuffing. In The Tyranny of the Meritocracy, Lani Guinier belies the harsh terms of her title by advising that we simply learn to reward "democratic rather than testocratic merit". Christopher Hayes subtitled his debut book Twilight of the Elites "America after Meritocracy", but the remedies he prescribes are all meant to preserve meritocracy by making it more effective. In his latest book, Our Kids, Robert Putnam proves that American social mobility is in crisis, then reposes his hopes in such predictable nostrums as housing vouchers and universal pre-kindergarten.

When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called "the last chapter problem". When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.

Meritocracy began by destroying an aristocracy; it has ended in creating a new one. Nearly every book in the American anti-meritocracy literature makes this charge, in what is usually its most empirically reinforced chapter.  But the solutions on offer never rise to the scale of the problem. Authors attack the meritocratic machine with screwdrivers, not sledgehammers, and differ only in which valve they want to adjust. Some think the solution is to tip more disadvantaged kids over the lip of the intake funnel, which would probably make things worse. If more people start competing for a finite number of slots, slim advantages like those that come from having grown up with two meritocrats for parents will only loom larger.  Others favor the slightly more radical solution of redefining our idea of merit, usually in a way that downplays what Guinier calls "pseudoscientific measures of excellence". She even has a replacement in mind, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the testing of which involves Legos. (Why are you laughing? It is backed by a study.)

My solution is quite different. The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy"so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

Q. What is ironic in Toby Young's solution for meritocracy?

DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. In September, he published an 8,000-word reconsideration of his father's signature concept in an Australian monthly. The old man was right that meritocracy would gradually create a stratified and immobile society, he wrote, but wrong that abolishing selective education was the cure. Unlike my father, I'm not an egalitarian, Young wrote. If meritocracy creates a new caste system, the answer is more meritocracy. To restore equality of opportunity, he suggested subsidies for intelligence-maximizing embryo selection for poor parents,with below-average IQs. The irony lay in the implication that Young, because of who his father was, has special insight into the ideology that holds that it shouldn't matter who your father is.

His outlandish resort to eugenics suggests that Toby Young found himself at a loss for solutions, as all modern critics of meritocracy seem to do. The problems they describe are fundamental, but none of their remedies are more than tweaks to make the system more efficient or less prejudicial to the poor. For instance, in Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz accuses the Ivy League of imposing a malignant ruling class on the country, then meekly suggests that elite universities might solve the problem by giving greater weight in admissions to socioeconomic disadvantage and less to resum-stuffing. In The Tyranny of the Meritocracy, Lani Guinier belies the harsh terms of her title by advising that we simply learn to reward "democratic rather than testocratic merit". Christopher Hayes subtitled his debut book Twilight of the Elites "America after Meritocracy", but the remedies he prescribes are all meant to preserve meritocracy by making it more effective. In his latest book, Our Kids, Robert Putnam proves that American social mobility is in crisis, then reposes his hopes in such predictable nostrums as housing vouchers and universal pre-kindergarten.

When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called "the last chapter problem". When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.

Meritocracy began by destroying an aristocracy; it has ended in creating a new one. Nearly every book in the American anti-meritocracy literature makes this charge, in what is usually its most empirically reinforced chapter.  But the solutions on offer never rise to the scale of the problem. Authors attack the meritocratic machine with screwdrivers, not sledgehammers, and differ only in which valve they want to adjust. Some think the solution is to tip more disadvantaged kids over the lip of the intake funnel, which would probably make things worse. If more people start competing for a finite number of slots, slim advantages like those that come from having grown up with two meritocrats for parents will only loom larger.  Others favor the slightly more radical solution of redefining our idea of merit, usually in a way that downplays what Guinier calls "pseudoscientific measures of excellence". She even has a replacement in mind, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the testing of which involves Legos. (Why are you laughing? It is backed by a study.)

My solution is quite different. The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy"so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

Q. The tone of the author of the passage can be said to be:

DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. In September, he published an 8,000-word reconsideration of his father's signature concept in an Australian monthly. The old man was right that meritocracy would gradually create a stratified and immobile society, he wrote, but wrong that abolishing selective education was the cure. Unlike my father, I'm not an egalitarian, Young wrote. If meritocracy creates a new caste system, the answer is more meritocracy. To restore equality of opportunity, he suggested subsidies for intelligence-maximizing embryo selection for poor parents,with below-average IQs. The irony lay in the implication that Young, because of who his father was, has special insight into the ideology that holds that it shouldn't matter who your father is.

His outlandish resort to eugenics suggests that Toby Young found himself at a loss for solutions, as all modern critics of meritocracy seem to do. The problems they describe are fundamental, but none of their remedies are more than tweaks to make the system more efficient or less prejudicial to the poor. For instance, in Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz accuses the Ivy League of imposing a malignant ruling class on the country, then meekly suggests that elite universities might solve the problem by giving greater weight in admissions to socioeconomic disadvantage and less to resum-stuffing. In The Tyranny of the Meritocracy, Lani Guinier belies the harsh terms of her title by advising that we simply learn to reward "democratic rather than testocratic merit". Christopher Hayes subtitled his debut book Twilight of the Elites "America after Meritocracy", but the remedies he prescribes are all meant to preserve meritocracy by making it more effective. In his latest book, Our Kids, Robert Putnam proves that American social mobility is in crisis, then reposes his hopes in such predictable nostrums as housing vouchers and universal pre-kindergarten.

When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called "the last chapter problem". When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.

Meritocracy began by destroying an aristocracy; it has ended in creating a new one. Nearly every book in the American anti-meritocracy literature makes this charge, in what is usually its most empirically reinforced chapter.  But the solutions on offer never rise to the scale of the problem. Authors attack the meritocratic machine with screwdrivers, not sledgehammers, and differ only in which valve they want to adjust. Some think the solution is to tip more disadvantaged kids over the lip of the intake funnel, which would probably make things worse. If more people start competing for a finite number of slots, slim advantages like those that come from having grown up with two meritocrats for parents will only loom larger.  Others favor the slightly more radical solution of redefining our idea of merit, usually in a way that downplays what Guinier calls "pseudoscientific measures of excellence". She even has a replacement in mind, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the testing of which involves Legos. (Why are you laughing? It is backed by a study.)

My solution is quite different. The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy"so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

Q. According to the author of the passage, "the last chapter problem" implies:

DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. In September, he published an 8,000-word reconsideration of his father's signature concept in an Australian monthly. The old man was right that meritocracy would gradually create a stratified and immobile society, he wrote, but wrong that abolishing selective education was the cure. Unlike my father, I'm not an egalitarian, Young wrote. If meritocracy creates a new caste system, the answer is more meritocracy. To restore equality of opportunity, he suggested subsidies for intelligence-maximizing embryo selection for poor parents,with below-average IQs. The irony lay in the implication that Young, because of who his father was, has special insight into the ideology that holds that it shouldn't matter who your father is.

His outlandish resort to eugenics suggests that Toby Young found himself at a loss for solutions, as all modern critics of meritocracy seem to do. The problems they describe are fundamental, but none of their remedies are more than tweaks to make the system more efficient or less prejudicial to the poor. For instance, in Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz accuses the Ivy League of imposing a malignant ruling class on the country, then meekly suggests that elite universities might solve the problem by giving greater weight in admissions to socioeconomic disadvantage and less to resum-stuffing. In The Tyranny of the Meritocracy, Lani Guinier belies the harsh terms of her title by advising that we simply learn to reward "democratic rather than testocratic merit". Christopher Hayes subtitled his debut book Twilight of the Elites "America after Meritocracy", but the remedies he prescribes are all meant to preserve meritocracy by making it more effective. In his latest book, Our Kids, Robert Putnam proves that American social mobility is in crisis, then reposes his hopes in such predictable nostrums as housing vouchers and universal pre-kindergarten.

When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called "the last chapter problem". When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.

Meritocracy began by destroying an aristocracy; it has ended in creating a new one. Nearly every book in the American anti-meritocracy literature makes this charge, in what is usually its most empirically reinforced chapter.  But the solutions on offer never rise to the scale of the problem. Authors attack the meritocratic machine with screwdrivers, not sledgehammers, and differ only in which valve they want to adjust. Some think the solution is to tip more disadvantaged kids over the lip of the intake funnel, which would probably make things worse. If more people start competing for a finite number of slots, slim advantages like those that come from having grown up with two meritocrats for parents will only loom larger.  Others favor the slightly more radical solution of redefining our idea of merit, usually in a way that downplays what Guinier calls "pseudoscientific measures of excellence". She even has a replacement in mind, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the testing of which involves Legos. (Why are you laughing? It is backed by a study.)

My solution is quite different. The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy"so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

Q. According to the author of the passage:

I. the solutions to the problems of meritocracy primarily suggest tinkering with the system rather than abolishing it.
II. the solutions for the problems posed by meritocracy are not just not strong enough to question the very validity of the system and break its very foundations.
III. solutions for meritocracy, such as the one that involve re-defining merit, miss the mark by making suggestions that are laughable in themselves.

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Let us consider a very simple example. Some earth-moving job has to be done in an area of high unemployment. There is a wide choice of technologies, ranging from the most modern earth- moving equipment to purely manual work without tools of any kind. The 'output' is fixed by the nature of the job, and it is quite clear that the capital / output ratio will be highest, if the input of 'capital' is kept lowest. If the job were done without any tools, the capital/output ratio would be infinitely large, but the productivity per man would be exceedingly low. If the job were done at the highest level of modern technology, the capital/output ratio would be low and the productivity per man very high.

Neither of these extremes is desirable, and a middle way has to be found. Assume some of the unemployed men were first set to work to make a variety of tools, including wheel-barrows and the like, while others were made to produce various 'wages goods'. Each of these lines of production in turn could be based on a wide range of different technologies, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The task in every case would be to find an intermediate technology which obtains a fair level of productivity without having to resort to the purchase of expensive and sophisticated equipment. The outcome of the whole venture would be an economic development going far beyond the completion of the initial earth-moving Project. With a total input of 'capital' from outside which might be much smaller than would have been involved in the acquisition of the most modern earth-moving equipment, and an input of (previously unemployed) labour much greater than the 'modern' method would have demanded, not only a given project would have been completed, but a whole community would have been set on the path of development.

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognise. This leads to the next objection which has been raised against the idea of intermediate technology. It is argued that all this might be quite promising if it were not for a notorious shortage of entrepreneurial ability in the under-developed countries. This scarce resource should therefore be utilised in the most concentrated way, in places where it has the best chances of success and should be endowed with the finest capital equipment the world can offer. Industry, it is thus argued, should be established in or near the big cities, in large integrated units, and on the highest possible level of capitalisation per workplace.

The argument hinges on the assumption that 'entrepreneurial ability' is a fixed and given quantity, and thus again betrays a purely static point of view. It is, of course, neither fixed nor given, being largely a function of the technology to be employed. Men, quite incapable of acting as entrepreneurs on the level of modern technology, may nonetheless be fully capable of making a success of a small-scale enterprise set up on the basis of intermediate technology - for reasons already explained above. In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the 'negative demonstration effect' of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment. The introduction of an appropriate, intermediate technology would not be likely to founder on any shortage of entrepreneurial ability. Nor would it diminish the supply of entrepreneurs for enterprises in the modem sector; on the contrary, by spreading familiarity with systematic, technical modes of production over the entire population it would undoubtedly help to increase the supply of the required talent.

Q. Which of the following is in consonance with author's opinions?

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Let us consider a very simple example. Some earth-moving job has to be done in an area of high unemployment. There is a wide choice of technologies, ranging from the most modern earth- moving equipment to purely manual work without tools of any kind. The 'output' is fixed by the nature of the job, and it is quite clear that the capital / output ratio will be highest, if the input of 'capital' is kept lowest. If the job were done without any tools, the capital/output ratio would be infinitely large, but the productivity per man would be exceedingly low. If the job were done at the highest level of modern technology, the capital/output ratio would be low and the productivity per man very high.

Neither of these extremes is desirable, and a middle way has to be found. Assume some of the unemployed men were first set to work to make a variety of tools, including wheel-barrows and the like, while others were made to produce various 'wages goods'. Each of these lines of production in turn could be based on a wide range of different technologies, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The task in every case would be to find an intermediate technology which obtains a fair level of productivity without having to resort to the purchase of expensive and sophisticated equipment. The outcome of the whole venture would be an economic development going far beyond the completion of the initial earth-moving Project. With a total input of 'capital' from outside which might be much smaller than would have been involved in the acquisition of the most modern earth-moving equipment, and an input of (previously unemployed) labour much greater than the 'modern' method would have demanded, not only a given project would have been completed, but a whole community would have been set on the path of development.

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognise. This leads to the next objection which has been raised against the idea of intermediate technology. It is argued that all this might be quite promising if it were not for a notorious shortage of entrepreneurial ability in the under-developed countries. This scarce resource should therefore be utilised in the most concentrated way, in places where it has the best chances of success and should be endowed with the finest capital equipment the world can offer. Industry, it is thus argued, should be established in or near the big cities, in large integrated units, and on the highest possible level of capitalisation per workplace.

The argument hinges on the assumption that 'entrepreneurial ability' is a fixed and given quantity, and thus again betrays a purely static point of view. It is, of course, neither fixed nor given, being largely a function of the technology to be employed. Men, quite incapable of acting as entrepreneurs on the level of modern technology, may nonetheless be fully capable of making a success of a small-scale enterprise set up on the basis of intermediate technology - for reasons already explained above. In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the 'negative demonstration effect' of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment. The introduction of an appropriate, intermediate technology would not be likely to founder on any shortage of entrepreneurial ability. Nor would it diminish the supply of entrepreneurs for enterprises in the modem sector; on the contrary, by spreading familiarity with systematic, technical modes of production over the entire population it would undoubtedly help to increase the supply of the required talent.

Q. As used in the last paragraph, which of the following would be an appropriate example of a ‘demonstration effect’?

A. Ethics and value systems of a society influence the level of entrepreneurship.
B. Parents taking care of their parents.
C. Odisha adopting the Bihar model for economic policies.
D. The American War of Independence influencing the French Revolution.

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Let us consider a very simple example. Some earth-moving job has to be done in an area of high unemployment. There is a wide choice of technologies, ranging from the most modern earth- moving equipment to purely manual work without tools of any kind. The 'output' is fixed by the nature of the job, and it is quite clear that the capital / output ratio will be highest, if the input of 'capital' is kept lowest. If the job were done without any tools, the capital/output ratio would be infinitely large, but the productivity per man would be exceedingly low. If the job were done at the highest level of modern technology, the capital/output ratio would be low and the productivity per man very high.

Neither of these extremes is desirable, and a middle way has to be found. Assume some of the unemployed men were first set to work to make a variety of tools, including wheel-barrows and the like, while others were made to produce various 'wages goods'. Each of these lines of production in turn could be based on a wide range of different technologies, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The task in every case would be to find an intermediate technology which obtains a fair level of productivity without having to resort to the purchase of expensive and sophisticated equipment. The outcome of the whole venture would be an economic development going far beyond the completion of the initial earth-moving Project. With a total input of 'capital' from outside which might be much smaller than would have been involved in the acquisition of the most modern earth-moving equipment, and an input of (previously unemployed) labour much greater than the 'modern' method would have demanded, not only a given project would have been completed, but a whole community would have been set on the path of development.

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognise. This leads to the next objection which has been raised against the idea of intermediate technology. It is argued that all this might be quite promising if it were not for a notorious shortage of entrepreneurial ability in the under-developed countries. This scarce resource should therefore be utilised in the most concentrated way, in places where it has the best chances of success and should be endowed with the finest capital equipment the world can offer. Industry, it is thus argued, should be established in or near the big cities, in large integrated units, and on the highest possible level of capitalisation per workplace.

The argument hinges on the assumption that 'entrepreneurial ability' is a fixed and given quantity, and thus again betrays a purely static point of view. It is, of course, neither fixed nor given, being largely a function of the technology to be employed. Men, quite incapable of acting as entrepreneurs on the level of modern technology, may nonetheless be fully capable of making a success of a small-scale enterprise set up on the basis of intermediate technology - for reasons already explained above. In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the 'negative demonstration effect' of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment. The introduction of an appropriate, intermediate technology would not be likely to founder on any shortage of entrepreneurial ability. Nor would it diminish the supply of entrepreneurs for enterprises in the modem sector; on the contrary, by spreading familiarity with systematic, technical modes of production over the entire population it would undoubtedly help to increase the supply of the required talent.

Q. As per the passage, what is the correlation between technology and entrepreneurial ability?

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Let us consider a very simple example. Some earth-moving job has to be done in an area of high unemployment. There is a wide choice of technologies, ranging from the most modern earth- moving equipment to purely manual work without tools of any kind. The 'output' is fixed by the nature of the job, and it is quite clear that the capital / output ratio will be highest, if the input of 'capital' is kept lowest. If the job were done without any tools, the capital/output ratio would be infinitely large, but the productivity per man would be exceedingly low. If the job were done at the highest level of modern technology, the capital/output ratio would be low and the productivity per man very high.

Neither of these extremes is desirable, and a middle way has to be found. Assume some of the unemployed men were first set to work to make a variety of tools, including wheel-barrows and the like, while others were made to produce various 'wages goods'. Each of these lines of production in turn could be based on a wide range of different technologies, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The task in every case would be to find an intermediate technology which obtains a fair level of productivity without having to resort to the purchase of expensive and sophisticated equipment. The outcome of the whole venture would be an economic development going far beyond the completion of the initial earth-moving Project. With a total input of 'capital' from outside which might be much smaller than would have been involved in the acquisition of the most modern earth-moving equipment, and an input of (previously unemployed) labour much greater than the 'modern' method would have demanded, not only a given project would have been completed, but a whole community would have been set on the path of development.

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognise. This leads to the next objection which has been raised against the idea of intermediate technology. It is argued that all this might be quite promising if it were not for a notorious shortage of entrepreneurial ability in the under-developed countries. This scarce resource should therefore be utilised in the most concentrated way, in places where it has the best chances of success and should be endowed with the finest capital equipment the world can offer. Industry, it is thus argued, should be established in or near the big cities, in large integrated units, and on the highest possible level of capitalisation per workplace.

The argument hinges on the assumption that 'entrepreneurial ability' is a fixed and given quantity, and thus again betrays a purely static point of view. It is, of course, neither fixed nor given, being largely a function of the technology to be employed. Men, quite incapable of acting as entrepreneurs on the level of modern technology, may nonetheless be fully capable of making a success of a small-scale enterprise set up on the basis of intermediate technology - for reasons already explained above. In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the 'negative demonstration effect' of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment. The introduction of an appropriate, intermediate technology would not be likely to founder on any shortage of entrepreneurial ability. Nor would it diminish the supply of entrepreneurs for enterprises in the modem sector; on the contrary, by spreading familiarity with systematic, technical modes of production over the entire population it would undoubtedly help to increase the supply of the required talent.

Q. ‘Wages goods’, as used in the second paragraph, refer to consumer goods. Which of the following would be an example of wages goods?

A. Wheel barrow
B. Grinding machine
C. Gear shaper
D. Dining Table

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Let us consider a very simple example. Some earth-moving job has to be done in an area of high unemployment. There is a wide choice of technologies, ranging from the most modern earth- moving equipment to purely manual work without tools of any kind. The 'output' is fixed by the nature of the job, and it is quite clear that the capital / output ratio will be highest, if the input of 'capital' is kept lowest. If the job were done without any tools, the capital/output ratio would be infinitely large, but the productivity per man would be exceedingly low. If the job were done at the highest level of modern technology, the capital/output ratio would be low and the productivity per man very high.

Neither of these extremes is desirable, and a middle way has to be found. Assume some of the unemployed men were first set to work to make a variety of tools, including wheel-barrows and the like, while others were made to produce various 'wages goods'. Each of these lines of production in turn could be based on a wide range of different technologies, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The task in every case would be to find an intermediate technology which obtains a fair level of productivity without having to resort to the purchase of expensive and sophisticated equipment. The outcome of the whole venture would be an economic development going far beyond the completion of the initial earth-moving Project. With a total input of 'capital' from outside which might be much smaller than would have been involved in the acquisition of the most modern earth-moving equipment, and an input of (previously unemployed) labour much greater than the 'modern' method would have demanded, not only a given project would have been completed, but a whole community would have been set on the path of development.

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognise. This leads to the next objection which has been raised against the idea of intermediate technology. It is argued that all this might be quite promising if it were not for a notorious shortage of entrepreneurial ability in the under-developed countries. This scarce resource should therefore be utilised in the most concentrated way, in places where it has the best chances of success and should be endowed with the finest capital equipment the world can offer. Industry, it is thus argued, should be established in or near the big cities, in large integrated units, and on the highest possible level of capitalisation per workplace.

The argument hinges on the assumption that 'entrepreneurial ability' is a fixed and given quantity, and thus again betrays a purely static point of view. It is, of course, neither fixed nor given, being largely a function of the technology to be employed. Men, quite incapable of acting as entrepreneurs on the level of modern technology, may nonetheless be fully capable of making a success of a small-scale enterprise set up on the basis of intermediate technology - for reasons already explained above. In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the 'negative demonstration effect' of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment. The introduction of an appropriate, intermediate technology would not be likely to founder on any shortage of entrepreneurial ability. Nor would it diminish the supply of entrepreneurs for enterprises in the modem sector; on the contrary, by spreading familiarity with systematic, technical modes of production over the entire population it would undoubtedly help to increase the supply of the required talent.

Q. What is the primary purpose of the passage?

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Let us consider a very simple example. Some earth-moving job has to be done in an area of high unemployment. There is a wide choice of technologies, ranging from the most modern earth- moving equipment to purely manual work without tools of any kind. The 'output' is fixed by the nature of the job, and it is quite clear that the capital / output ratio will be highest, if the input of 'capital' is kept lowest. If the job were done without any tools, the capital/output ratio would be infinitely large, but the productivity per man would be exceedingly low. If the job were done at the highest level of modern technology, the capital/output ratio would be low and the productivity per man very high.

Neither of these extremes is desirable, and a middle way has to be found. Assume some of the unemployed men were first set to work to make a variety of tools, including wheel-barrows and the like, while others were made to produce various 'wages goods'. Each of these lines of production in turn could be based on a wide range of different technologies, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The task in every case would be to find an intermediate technology which obtains a fair level of productivity without having to resort to the purchase of expensive and sophisticated equipment. The outcome of the whole venture would be an economic development going far beyond the completion of the initial earth-moving Project. With a total input of 'capital' from outside which might be much smaller than would have been involved in the acquisition of the most modern earth-moving equipment, and an input of (previously unemployed) labour much greater than the 'modern' method would have demanded, not only a given project would have been completed, but a whole community would have been set on the path of development.

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognise. This leads to the next objection which has been raised against the idea of intermediate technology. It is argued that all this might be quite promising if it were not for a notorious shortage of entrepreneurial ability in the under-developed countries. This scarce resource should therefore be utilised in the most concentrated way, in places where it has the best chances of success and should be endowed with the finest capital equipment the world can offer. Industry, it is thus argued, should be established in or near the big cities, in large integrated units, and on the highest possible level of capitalisation per workplace.

The argument hinges on the assumption that 'entrepreneurial ability' is a fixed and given quantity, and thus again betrays a purely static point of view. It is, of course, neither fixed nor given, being largely a function of the technology to be employed. Men, quite incapable of acting as entrepreneurs on the level of modern technology, may nonetheless be fully capable of making a success of a small-scale enterprise set up on the basis of intermediate technology - for reasons already explained above. In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the 'negative demonstration effect' of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment. The introduction of an appropriate, intermediate technology would not be likely to founder on any shortage of entrepreneurial ability. Nor would it diminish the supply of entrepreneurs for enterprises in the modem sector; on the contrary, by spreading familiarity with systematic, technical modes of production over the entire population it would undoubtedly help to increase the supply of the required talent.

Q. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.

Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.

1. Walmart is betting on the future growth it can unlock from this full-frontal entry into a market that has proved difficult despite its best attempts for over a decade.
2. Most importantly, it is time to nuance the debates that have dominated India’s retail FDI policy — big versus small, local versus foreign — to create a truly level playing field where all can compete, without artificial safeguards that can be overcome via such deals.
3. The company had entered India in 2007 but exited the joint venture with the Bharti group and restricted its operations to cash-and-carry stores, in the face of strict curbs on foreign direct investment (FDI) in the multi-brand retail sector.
4. Facing heat at home from Amazon, which is now moving from online-only to a brick-and-mortar plus e-tail model, this is a vital time for Walmart to get into India’s business-to-consumer segment.
5. These restrictions, ostensibly to protect smaller retailers, have remained in place under the NDA government, belying expectations of a reset. 

DIRECTIONS for the question: Identify the most appropriate summary for the paragraph.

It takes more fossil fuel to produce lamb in the UK than in New Zealand, which has a longer grassy season and more hydroelectric power, and this should be weighted against emissions from transport. The green Britisher’s choice of British over Spanish tomatoes is also certainly misguided: the carbon dioxide emitted by road-hauling them from Spain is utterly outweighed by the fact that Spain is sunny, whereas British tomatoes need heated greenhouses. As for avoiding Chilean wine, shipping wine halfway around the world adds only about 5 per cent to the greenhouse gas emissions involved in making it in the first place. 

DIRECTIONS for the question:  Identify the most appropriate summary for the paragraph.

Do animals have free will? Probably, the answer to that question would be agreed by most people to be a fairly obvious “no.” The concept of free will is traditionally bound up with such things as our capacity to choose our own values, the sorts of lives we want to lead, the sorts of people we want to be, etc. and it seems obvious that no non-human animal lives the kind of life which could make sense of the attribution to it of such powers as these. But in thinking about free will, it is essential, nevertheless, to consider the capacities of animals. Even if animals cannot be said to have full-blown free will, animal powers of various sorts provide a kind of essential underpinning for free will which philosophers who focus too exclusively on the human phenomenon are forever in danger of ignoring. And these simpler capacities are interesting enough to raise many philosophical issues all by themselves; indeed, I would argue that they raise the most discussed problem in this area of philosophy all by themselves. For they are, in my view, hard to accommodate within certain conceptions of the universe in which we live – what might be called mechanistic or deterministic conceptions of that universe. This makes it very useful and important to think about the simpler capacities from a philosophical perspective. Instead of asking, as philosophers constantly do, whether free will is compatible with determinism, we should first ask ourselves whether even the simpler powers which constitute what I call animal agency are consistent with it.

DIRECTIONS for the question: Identify the most appropriate summary for the paragraph.

The abortive fate of The Prince makes you wonder why some of the great utopian texts of our tradition have had much more effect on reality itself, like The Republic of Plato, or Rousseau’s peculiar form of utopianism, which was so important for the French Revolution. Christianity itself— its imagination of another world beyond the so-called real world—completely transformed the real politics of Europe. Or Karl Marx, for that matter. It’s not the realism of the Marxian analysis, it’s not his critique of capitalism’s unsustainable systemic contradictions—it’s more his utopian projection of a future communist state that inspired socialist movements and led to political revolutions throughout the world.

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Four sentences related to a topic are given below. Three of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.

1. Jefferson’s words were accurate, and it’s tempting to call them prophetic, but they weren’t: Jefferson’s nightmare had in fact come true before she wrote her article, even before “the night Jimi died.”

2. The article’s most striking moment arrived in its penultimate paragraph: The night Jimi died I dreamed this was the latest step in a plot being designed to eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites. Future generations, my dream ran, will be taught that while rock may have had its beginnings among blacks, it had its true flowering among whites. The best black artists will thus be studied as remarkable primitives who unconsciously foreshadowed future developments.

3. The piece was partly a broad historical overview of white appropriations of black musical forms, from blackface minstrel pioneer T.D. Rice through the current day, and partly a more personal lament over what Jefferson, a black critic, had come to see as an endless cycle of cultural plunder.

4. In January of 1973—the same month that the Rolling Stones were banned from touring Japan due to prior drug convictions, the same month that a band called Kiss played its first gig in Queens, and the same month that a young New Jerseyan named Bruce Springsteen released his debut album on Columbia Records—Harper’s magazine published an essay by future Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson titled “Ripping Off Black Music.”

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.

1. That particular burger coalesced in a substrate of foetal calf serum, but the goal is to develop an equally effective plant-based solution so that a relatively small amount of animal cells can serve as the initial foundation for glistening mounds of brainless flesh in vats meat without the slaughter.

2. Three years ago, a televised taste test of a lab-grown burger proved it was possible to grow a tiny amount of edible meat in a lab.

3. For many cultured-meat advocates, a major motive is the reduction of animal suffering.

4. By avoiding all the good aspects of subjective experience, growing faceless flesh in vats also escapes this objection

5. This flesh was never linked to any central nervous system, and so there was none of the pain, boredom and fear that usually plague animals unlucky enough to be born onto our farms.

DIRECTIONS for the question: Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.

1. Yes, it’s taken for granted that creating is hard, but also that it’s somehow fundamentally unserious.

2. In the popular imagination, artists tend to exist either at the pinnacle of fame and luxury or in the depths of penury and obscurity — rarely in the middle, where most of the rest of us toil and dream.

3. But the elevation of the amateur over the professional trivializes artistic accomplishment and helps to undermine the already precarious living standards that artists have been able to enjoy.

4. They are subject to admiration, envy, resentment and contempt, but it is odd how seldom their efforts are understood as work.

5. Schoolchildren may be encouraged, at least rhetorically, to pursue their passions and cultivate their talents, but as they grow up, they are warned away from artistic careers. 

DIRECTIONS for the question: Identify the most appropriate summary for the paragraph.

For much of human history, horses have been our travelling companions, our weapons of war, our industrial machines, our shoe leather, and our dog food. They have influenced human society around the world, including what it meant to be a man during the 17th and 18th centuries. At that time, Britain was known for the English Civil Wars and the rise of the British Empire. It was also an age in which, for many men, horses were indivisible from their masculinity, their ability to govern successfully and their personal identity. While the practice of horsemanship changes over the period, equestrian skill and the ability to present oneself as a unified being with a mount was a central component, for many, of what it meant to be a man.

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. The correct sequence in which they'll make a meaningful sentence will be:

1. The strange thing is that these moments of love and loss are not the place where language finds its truest expression of meaning but are in fact the place where meaning itself starts to break down, where language as a whole reveals its incapacities.

2. Greeting cards present themselves at some of the most important, and often difficult, events of our lives: the loss of a family member or a friend, an outpouring of love and devotion, or even the simple recognition of time’s passing.

3. A cliché is a marker, or a stand-in, for something we aren’t sure how to express. 

4. Whether the message is pre-printed or one we resort to writing ourselves, clichés appear where words fail.

5. In this way, greeting cards function as material testament to the lack of articulation at the heart of human experience, drawing attention to the gap between language and life

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Study the following Graph & table given below and answer the question that follows.
The following table shows the exchange rates and interest rates of currency of various countries.



CAFECAFE Ltd., takes a loan of 0.1 million BRL (Brazilian Real) on 2nd March 2003 for one year from Brazil. It then purchases the coffee seeds from the local market at the rate of 4 BRL per kg of all the borrowed amount, spends US$ 1000 on transportation and refines the seeds in a plant in United States. It gets 0.8 kg of refined coffee for each kg of coffee seed. Refining costs US$ 3 per kg of coffee seed. The Company then sells the refined coffee in the market all over the world.

Q. Which of the following conclusion/s is/are not valid with respect to the table given?

I.The value of one Pound is equal to 1.91 Dollars (approximately).
II.Poland has the maximum percentage change in the currency unit per $ from 2nd March 2003 to 2nd  March 2004.

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Study the following Graph & table given below and answer the question that follows.
The following table shows the exchange rates and interest rates of currency of various countries.



CAFECAFE Ltd., takes a loan of 0.1 million BRL (Brazilian Real) on 2nd March 2003 for one year from Brazil. It then purchases the coffee seeds from the local market at the rate of 4 BRL per kg of all the borrowed amount, spends US$ 1000 on transportation and refines the seeds in a plant in United States. It gets 0.8 kg of refined coffee for each kg of coffee seed. Refining costs US$ 3 per kg of coffee seed. The Company then sells the refined coffee in the market all over the world.

Q. If in India, China, Mexico and Egypt the rate of coffee per kg respectively is Rs 80, CNY(Chinese Yuan) 11, MXN 20 and EGP 15 and the company sells 25% of the refined coffee produced each to India, China, Mexico and Egypt, then  what will be the total sales of the company in Mar 04?

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Study the following Graph & table given below and answer the question that follows.
The following table shows the exchange rates and interest rates of currency of various countries.



CAFECAFE Ltd., takes a loan of 0.1 million BRL (Brazilian Real) on 2nd March 2003 for one year from Brazil. It then purchases the coffee seeds from the local market at the rate of 4 BRL per kg of all the borrowed amount, spends US$ 1000 on transportation and refines the seeds in a plant in United States. It gets 0.8 kg of refined coffee for each kg of coffee seed. Refining costs US$ 3 per kg of coffee seed. The Company then sells the refined coffee in the market all over the world.

Q. Which of the following transactions gives the maximum profit? (Use the currency rates and interest rates as on 2nd March 2004)

1. Take a loan of 0.05 million NIS(New Sheqel) from Israel then change half the amount to MXN(Mexican Peso)and invest it at the rate of 5% per annum for one year in Mexico and change the  rest amount to HUF(Hungarian Forint) and invest it at the rate of 7% per annum for one year in Hungary.

2. Take a loan of 0.05 million EGP(Egyptian Pound) from Egypt change in INR(Indian Rupees) and invest it at the rate of 19.9% per annum for one year in India.

3. Take a loan of 0.05 million KRW(South Korean Won) and invest the amount in 5 equal parts in Indonesia, Taiwan, Venezuela, Russia and Turkey at the rate of 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5% respectively.

DIRECTIONS for the question:
Study the following Graph & table given below and answer the question that follows.
The following table shows the exchange rates and interest rates of currency of various countries.



CAFECAFE Ltd., takes a loan of 0.1 million BRL (Brazilian Real) on 2nd March 2003 for one year from Brazil. It then purchases the coffee seeds from the local market at the rate of 4 BRL per kg of all the borrowed amount, spends US$ 1000 on transportation and refines the seeds in a plant in United States. It gets 0.8 kg of refined coffee for each kg of coffee seed. Refining costs US$ 3 per kg of coffee seed. The Company then sells the refined coffee in the market all over the world.

Q. What will be the combined value of 120 SGD(Singapore Dollar), 60 PLN(Zloty) and 180 ARS(Argentine Peso), in pound sterling terms on 2nd March 2004?

DIRECTIONS for the question: Go through the graph and the information given below and answer the question that follows.

In a factory there are six polishing machines - A, B, C, D, E and F. The factory produces item X. Polishing is the last step of manufacturing process. Each of the machines A, B, C, D, E and F takes 3, 2, 3, 1, 2 and 4 hours respectively to polish one unit of X, which is called one polish time. After polishing each unit the machines need a rest of 3, 1, 1, 2, 2 and 2 hours respectively. Every machine starts polishing at 6.00 a.m. and no machine works after 4.00 p.m. Each unit of item X needs to be polished exactly thrice. These three polishing should be done on three different machines. There should be a time gap of at least two hours between two successive polishings of a unit. The total time taken for an item to be polished is the time taken from the starting of the first polish to the end of the third polish. No polish time has any break in between. No machine takes more or less time than the stipulated rest time between two consecutive polishings in a day.

In how many different ways can an item be polished by any three different machines, within a day? (in numerical value)