APSC CCE Prelims (Paper 2) Mock Test - 5 - APSC CCE (Assam) MCQ

A and B together can do a work in 8 days, B and C together in 6 days, while C and A together in 10 days. If they all work together, the work will be completed in how many days?

You are a Sales Manager with a leading FMCG company and report to the Territory Manager for North India. Your team has to present the Sales Target Achievement Report at the upcoming quarterly sales meet. Since most of your targets have not been achieved, your boss has asked you to fudge the sales numbers to show higher sales than the actual. What will you do?   

Statements:

I. Kapil's mother remembers that Kapil was born before nineteenth but after fifteenth.

II. Kapil's brother remembers that Kapil was born before seventeenth but after twelth.

Q. On which date in August was Kapil born?    

                                                                                  Passage - 3

For want of a better job, Orwell took a job with the Burmese civil service. It was here in Burma, that Orwell begin to assert his independence from his privileged upbringing. Revealingly, Orwell later told that he found himself rooting for the local population; and despising the imperial ideology which he represented. He resigned from his position in 1927.

It was in the nature of Orwell to try and see a situation from other people's point of view. He was unhappy at accepting the conventional social wisdom. In fact, he grew to despise the middle class upbringing so much so that he decided to spend time as a tramp. He wanted to experience life from the view of the gutter. His vivid experiences are recorded in the book "Down and Out in Paris and London". No longer could Orwell be described as a "Champagne Socialist"; by living with the poorest and underprivileged, he gained a unique insight into the practical working class ideas and working class politics

Q. Which of the following statements is/are correct?

1. Orwell was always against conventional wisdom

2. Orwell despised his middle class upbringing

Choose the correct option using the codes given below:

Directions for the following (one) item:

Read the following passage and answer the item that follow. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Governments need to be generous in supporting international humanitarian agencies, whether with food or funds. Stepping-up supply of food to countries worst-hit by the hunger crisis is necessary. While this will help ease the symptoms of the crisis, it will not address its underlying causes. The latter is necessary to address the problem of food insecurity in the world. Humanitarian food aid is important but simultaneously, we need to put in place medium and long-term strategies to address conflict and climate shocks.

Q. Which of the following is the most logical, critical and rational inference that can be drawn from the above passage?

Find the ratio in which rice at Rs. 7.20 a kg be mixed with rice at Rs. 5.70 a kg to produce a mixture worth Rs. 6.30 a kg.

Statements:

I. Ritesh will complete 30 years of service in office X in April 2015 and desires to retire.

II. As per office X rules, an employee has to complete minimum 30 years of service and attain age of 60. Ritesh has 3 years to complete age of 60.

Q. Can Ritesh retire from office X in January 2018, with full pension benefits?   

Statements:

I. T does not study in the same school as either R or J.

II. R and J study in schools D and F respectively.

Q. T studies in which of the schools B, C, D, E and F?

                                                                                    Passage 1

The NAC proposals go against its earlier proposal of experimenting with universal entitlements in the poorest 150 districts of the country - a retrograde step for a country where half of the population is malnourished. In the final proposals, even this minimum effort to experiment with universalization was given up. The issue is why the NAC went against such universalization.

A universal PDS is not only the best possible option from the perspective of a rights based approach, it is also far more realistic in its commitment to ensure food security for the poor. Universalization would also be in line with the larger agenda of the UPA government of changing the architecture of the social service programs to make them more inclusive.

Targeting is inherently problematic. The BPL census, which is the primary means of targeting public services and subsidies to the poor, has failed to serve the purpose. The process of targeting is not only administratively costly but also discriminatory to the poor; limiting food security to BPL necessarily involves the exclusion of families who are very similar to other families that have been included. Historically, limiting food security to BPL families has severely impaired the effective access of food for poor families. Large numbers of poor families did not have BPL cards, even when they had cards, access to PDS was not automatic and, even ifthey had access to the PDS, they did not receive the full entitlement of food. But does it really mean that universalization is not feasible? Do we have enough foodgrains for a universal system?

The total requirement of a Universal PDS is 96.60 million tonnes if the entire population lifts its foodgrain quota. However, there will be some sections of the population who will not take their quota of foodgrain. This could be because they are well off and therefore do not need the ration food. It could also be a matter of taste and preference and they may not like the PDS foodgrain which is generally of inferior quality. These will largely be the rich and well off in urban areas.

Q. Limited food security to BPL families is not a feasible option. Why?  

Statements:

I. Sulekha's husband is the only son of Nandini's mother.

II. Sulekha's brother and Nandini's husband are cousins.

Q. How is Sulekha related to Nandini?

Directions for the following (one) item:

Read the following passage and answer the item that follow. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

In 2019, women's actual involvement in politics remains noticeably weak across parties. And nine out of ten of our legislators are men. In the matter of women's actual political representation in Parliament, India ranks 151 globally among 190 countries. Among its eight South Asian neighbours, India ranks below Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. And (according to the Inter-Parliamentary Forum), as of 2014, India' s women occupied less than 12 per cent seats both in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Even in the state and national decision-making bodies, women remain hugely under-represented.

Q. Which of the following is the most logical and rational corollary to the above passage?

Statements:

I. B is heavier than T and C and is lighter than V who is not the heaviest.

II. C is heavier than only T.

Q. Among T, V, B, E and C, who is the third from the top when arranged in the descending order of their weights?

                                                                                      Passage 2

How is India's middle class culture being changed and affected? Let us have a look at what is happening. First the numbers, independent India did not count its population along the lines of caste, and it required special surveys, like that of the Mandal Commission, to identify the size of peasant groupings. The number was revealed to be over 50% of the population. The British census before independence told us that the Brahmin population was about 6%, though the community's power and projection in urban India was disproportionate.

Three small castes, all put together about 10% of the population, dominated the urban middle classes. Brahmin, Baniya and Kayastha. What most urban Indians know as middle class culture is actually the culture of these 3 communities.

The second most important thing we must consider is the quality and texture of literacy. India was only 5% literate at the turn of the 20^th century, and in the last 20 years the direction of urban middle class literacy is towards English. Increasingly, families speak English even at home and most middle class Indians do not read in their mother tongue. We are not referring here to the ability to read, which they have picked up at school. They can speak in the mother tongue, if it is peppered with the English words which have become indispensable. We mean regular reading of literature or entertainment in the mother tongue.

This has produced a unique community. There is no parallel to India of a nation whose middle class is trained to think and approach life in a foreign language, one they have not mastered. India's elite occupy a minimal space; it is emotionally Hindi and intellectually English. One reason India produces so little literature is that India's middle class does not own any language properly. The knowledge of English has come to them through stock phrases because the quality of teaching is poor. Even half literate Americans speak better, cleaner and more precise English than educated Indians. And on the mother-tongue side, the loss of language has resulted in the erosion of India's high culture, its classical inheritance.

Q. Consider the following assumptions:

1. Brahmin, Baniya and Kayastha overpowered communities in India

2. Indian middle class is fluent in English

With reference to the above passage, which of the following assumption is/are valid?  

You are a student in a government operated intermediate school. Some children from the economically weaker sections have been admitted to this school. You observe that the teachers and the students from affluent families are biased against these children. You will  

Highways are a critically important infrastructure for an emerging nation. And the design of appropriate contracts is the critical instrument for meeting the challenge of highways. What are these challenges? To put it in one sentence, the objective or the challenge is to maximise the difference between:

1. The additional welfare that our citizens get from having more and better roads and,
2. The present value of the cost of building those roads.

The broad principles above translate into these following general rules.

1. We have to have a cut-off rule to decide which project is worthwhile and which are not.
2. Between two identical roads if one can be done at lower cost, we should choose the one with the lower cost, subject to that being viable in the sense of (1), above.
3. All costs do not take the form of brick and mortar. A build-up of fiscal deficit is also a form of cost. This may be difficult to reduce to the equivalent of brick and mortar cost but must not be omitted for that reason.

Some of the problems can be overcome if projects are awarded on the basis of a transparent and hands-off auction system. The heart of an efficient, cost effective and transparent system of PPP partnership whereby the government gives out the task of developing new highways to the private sector is the system of auction. Auction work best when the product is being sold lock, stock and barrel to a bidder. Hence, system such as BOT (toll) and annuitized BOT (toll) are better suited to being given out through competitive auction than the BOT (annuity). In the case of BOT (toll) and annuitized BOT the developer basically gets to own the road for the next 20 years. Hence, this comes close to a lock, stock and barrel sale.

Which of the following is suggested by the passage to overcome some of the problems associated with highway projects?

A man covered a certain distance at some speed. If he had moved 3 kmph faster, he would have taken 40 minutes less. If he had moved 2 kmph slower, he would have taken 40 minutes more. What is the the distance in km?

                                                                                   Passage - 2

When the late evolutionist and polymath Stephen Jay Gould was a toddler, he became fascinated and terrified by the towering Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History. Gould later claimed that he decided on the spot to become a palaeontologist- years before he even learned the word. Steven Pinker does not believe this oft told story. Pinker relates that Gould dedicated his first book: "For my father, who took me to see the Tyrannosaurus when I was five" and admires Gould's genius for coming up with that charming line, "But he does not believe it. Pinker says that long term memory is notoriously untrustworthy. Many children are exposed to books and museums, but few become scientists. Pinker concludes that perhaps the essence of who we are from birth shapes our childhood experiences rather than the other way round.

Q. Which of the following is/ are correct?

1. Those who grow up as scientists are usually not exposed to books and museums in their childhood

2. Only those who become scientists remember their childhood experiences of books and museums

Choose the correct option using the codes given below:

You are working as an HR manager in an educational organization. The company is facing a financial crunch and as a consequence there are consistent salary disbursement delays. The training staff at one of the centers is highly agitated and refuses to take classes. You will  

Statements:

I. M's brother is husband of P.

II. P is mother of R's sister.

Q. How is R related to M?   

You head the commercial aviation arm of the government, which is not doing well financially. The reason for this is the laid back attitude of the employees of the company. The employees hardly bother about providing the services to the customer. You have been asked to turn around the organization and make it possible. You will-   

You got a 2 month internship in the company of your choice and if you do well the company will offer you a job at the end of 2 months. Your boss has given you a project with a deadline to complete it in a month and has promised to provide 2 people for completing the project on time. Two weeks have passed and rather than giving you any more people to help with the project your boss keeps giving you other short term assignments to finish. Also, he/she is pressurizing you and saying that it seems unlikely that you will get the job if you do not complete the project within the given deadline. You will  

A can finish a work in 24 days, B in 9 days and C in 12 days. B and C start the work but are forced to leave after 3 days. The remaining work was done by A in?

The cost of Type 1 material is Rs. 15 per kg and Type 2 material is Rs.20 per kg. If both Type 1 and Type 2 are mixed in the ratio of 2 : 3, then what is the price per kg of the mixed variety of material?

Directions(Q.34-40) for the following items:

Each of the items below consists of a question and two statements. You have to decide whether the data provided in the statements are sufficient to answer the question. Give answer as: 

Statements:

I. There are ten students between Nitin and Deepak.

II. Deepak is twentieth from the top.

Q. What is Nitin's rank from the top in a class of forty students?

The broad principles which determine the validity/ suitability of a Highway/ road is to determine the difference between;

                                                                                  Passage - 3

For want of a better job, Orwell took a job with the Burmese civil service. It was here in Burma, that Orwell begin to assert his independence from his privileged upbringing. Revealingly, Orwell later told that he found himself rooting for the local population; and despising the imperial ideology which he represented. He resigned from his position in 1927.

It was in the nature of Orwell to try and see a situation from other people's point of view. He was unhappy at accepting the conventional social wisdom. In fact, he grew to despise the middle class upbringing so much so that he decided to spend time as a tramp. He wanted to experience life from the view of the gutter. His vivid experiences are recorded in the book "Down and Out in Paris and London". No longer could Orwell be described as a "Champagne Socialist"; by living with the poorest and underprivileged, he gained a unique insight into the practical working class ideas and working class politics

Q. Orwell-

1. loved his job with the Burmese Civil Service

2. did not have a privileged upbringing

Choose the correct option using the codes given below:

                                                                                   Passage - 1

All this time, Abe had kept on steadily with his reading whenever he had time, especially in the long winter evenings when he could read by the firelight. Lamps and candles were luxuries no settler could afford, but the wood was plentiful and it was easy to heap the fire high and make a splendid blaze.

He was careful, too, not to forget his writing, and he practiced writing his own name in the snow with a charred stick on slabs of wood. His father was not always pleased to find every smooth surface of the house scrawled over with black marks, but he had a great respect for learning and when he found that Abe was teaching himself to write, he was quite proud of the boy. When spring came around and they were working together in the fields, Abe took a stick and began writing his name with great care in the soft earth.

Q. Abe used to

1. work with his father in the fields sometimes

2. write his name in the snow, on wood and in the earth

Choose the correct option using the codes given below: