Reading Comprehension Test 2

It can be inferred according to the passage that

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A Close Reading of the Supreme Court's August 6, 2003 judgment in T. K. Rangarajan vs Government of Tamil Nadu and Others shows that the Court has, following in the footsteps of a string of illiberal verdicts on Government servants beginning in 1962, got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabjee, has done a public service by speaking up against the apex court's observation that there was no moral or equitable right to go on strike. Characterising this as "uncalled for" and "beyond comprehension," he has pointed out that the right of collective bargaining, including the right to strike, was an invaluable entitlement of workers and employees won through years of toil and struggle. Further, there could be "horrendous situations in which the employees have no effective mechanism for redressal of their grievances and are left with no option, but to resort to strike." Implicit in this opinion is a distinction between the merits of particular strikes and the legal and moral status of the right to strike. Here is the voice not merely of law and order and the tenets of `strong' governance — but of democratic entitlement and a sense of history. There were two core issues before the two–member bench. The first was the constitutionality, legality and rightness of the summary dismissal of about 170,000 State Government employees in Tamil Nadu under the State's Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), as amended post facto by an ordinance conferring on the Government the divine right of dismissal, without any application of mind and without giving the employees an opportunity to be heard. The second issue was the status of the right of workers and employees to freedom of association and collective bargaining, including the right to agitate and strike.

In response, the apex court resorted to the technique of providing practical relief in place of a determination of the issues of justice. The relief came through the Court's success in pressuring and persuading the Tamil Nadu Government "gracefully" to agree to reinstate the overwhelming majority of the dismissed employees - not unconditionally, of course, but on submission of an apology and an undertaking not to strike or indulge in "similar activities" in future. The Court rightly found fault with the Madras High Court for not properly construing its power under Article 226 of the Constitution (the power of High Courts to issue certain writs) to "exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to meet [an] unprecedented extraordinary situation having no parallel." Referring to the High Court's totally impractical ruling that over 170,000 employees should first exhaust the "alternative remedy" of going to the one–member State Administrative Tribunal for justice, the Supreme Court found "no justifiable reason for the High Court not to entertain the petitions on the ground of alternative remedy provided under the statute." There is no doubt that getting the Tamil Nadu Government to agree to having three retired High Court Judges decide on the fate of 6072 dismissed or suspended employees within approximately a month is a much better way of providing practical relief than what the High Court offered. The fact that the retired Judges would be nominated by the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court and not by the State Government, that they would decide the representations by the employees without taking into consideration the amended Section 7 of the Act, that the retired Judges' decision would be binding on the State Government, and that aggrieved employees would be free to challenge the decisions before "an appropriate forum" must also be welcomed. However, there is a disturbing implication in the double standards that apply to Ministers and ordinary Government employees facing criminal proceedings. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not ruled against the injustice in the Tamil Nadu Government's stand that 6072 employees could not claim "a right to be reinstated" because First Information Reports (FIRs) - which merely set the investigative ball in motion — had purportedly been filed by the State police against them. This contrasts glaringly with a situation where powerful politicians in government, at the Centre and in the States, remain in office unfazed by the fact that charge–sheets have been filed against them in grave criminal cases after the investigations have been completed, and charges have even been framed against them, in some cases, by a court of law.

What is most disturbing about the Supreme Court's judgment in the Tamil Nadu Government employees' case is the a–historical, iniquitous and democratically unsustainable position taken against the right to strike as a part of internationally recognised basic democratic rights. At one level, the judgment seems to revolve round the question whether Government employees have a constitutional or statutory right or moral and equitable justification to go on strike. However, the Court's observations in a case relating exclusively to Government employees go well beyond the immediate issues into status quoits absolutism in the social and philosophical domain. Such absolutism flies in the face of modern India's historical experience of worker agitations and strikes, and the assertion of the right to strike — an experience that begins in the late nineteenth century. Not just Communist organisers, but a range of freedom movement leaders supported the right to agitate and strike as an inalienable democratic right of workers and employees. This newspaper, which will soon be celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding, may be allowed to recall that during the militant 1921 strike by 10,000 workers of the Buckingham & Carnatic Mills in Chennai, its proprietor and Editor, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, boldly championed their cause - in The Hindu's columns and through direct involvement in the relief and solidarity efforts. The Supreme Court's latest stance contrasts sadly with both the substance and spirit of earlier progressive rights–led rulings by the apex court, delivered by outstanding jurists of the stature of V. R. Krishna Iyer, Y. V. Chandrachud, A. C. Gupta, D. A. Desai, Jagannatha Shetty and A. M. Ahmadi. Contrary to the impression given by the two–member bench's citation of judgments relating to Government employees, the Supreme Court from the early 1960s has generally upheld the justifiability of, and the moral reasons behind, strikes as legitimate actions by the working class. It is this stream of judicial pronouncements that Mr. Sorabjee was drawing on in criticising the Court's new–fangled observation that there was "no moral or equitable right to go on strike." In the recent case, the Court has cited, not always in context, various judgments to the effect that "employees have no fundamental right to strike," that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to "effective collective bargaining," that strikes cannot be justified "in the present–day situation" either for a "just or unjust cause," and that the strike weapon "does more harm than any justice." If these quotations were to match the ground reality, then India in 2003 could not claim to be a democracy with any kind of regard for its working people. It would be an authoritarian state out of step with the International Labour Organisation's Conventions on "Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise" and "The Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively", neither of which India has ratified. Undoing the damage done by the Supreme Court's observations in the Tamil Nadu case is the challenge before democratic, political India and it is heartening that the Attorney General has shown the way.

Which among the following rulings of the Madras H. C. has been labelled 'Impractical' by the Apex court?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A Close Reading of the Supreme Court's August 6, 2003 judgment in T. K. Rangarajan vs Government of Tamil Nadu and Others shows that the Court has, following in the footsteps of a string of illiberal verdicts on Government servants beginning in 1962, got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabjee, has done a public service by speaking up against the apex court's observation that there was no moral or equitable right to go on strike. Characterising this as "uncalled for" and "beyond comprehension," he has pointed out that the right of collective bargaining, including the right to strike, was an invaluable entitlement of workers and employees won through years of toil and struggle. Further, there could be "horrendous situations in which the employees have no effective mechanism for redressal of their grievances and are left with no option, but to resort to strike." Implicit in this opinion is a distinction between the merits of particular strikes and the legal and moral status of the right to strike. Here is the voice not merely of law and order and the tenets of `strong' governance — but of democratic entitlement and a sense of history. There were two core issues before the two–member bench. The first was the constitutionality, legality and rightness of the summary dismissal of about 170,000 State Government employees in Tamil Nadu under the State's Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), as amended post facto by an ordinance conferring on the Government the divine right of dismissal, without any application of mind and without giving the employees an opportunity to be heard. The second issue was the status of the right of workers and employees to freedom of association and collective bargaining, including the right to agitate and strike.

In response, the apex court resorted to the technique of providing practical relief in place of a determination of the issues of justice. The relief came through the Court's success in pressuring and persuading the Tamil Nadu Government "gracefully" to agree to reinstate the overwhelming majority of the dismissed employees - not unconditionally, of course, but on submission of an apology and an undertaking not to strike or indulge in "similar activities" in future. The Court rightly found fault with the Madras High Court for not properly construing its power under Article 226 of the Constitution (the power of High Courts to issue certain writs) to "exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to meet [an] unprecedented extraordinary situation having no parallel." Referring to the High Court's totally impractical ruling that over 170,000 employees should first exhaust the "alternative remedy" of going to the one–member State Administrative Tribunal for justice, the Supreme Court found "no justifiable reason for the High Court not to entertain the petitions on the ground of alternative remedy provided under the statute." There is no doubt that getting the Tamil Nadu Government to agree to having three retired High Court Judges decide on the fate of 6072 dismissed or suspended employees within approximately a month is a much better way of providing practical relief than what the High Court offered. The fact that the retired Judges would be nominated by the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court and not by the State Government, that they would decide the representations by the employees without taking into consideration the amended Section 7 of the Act, that the retired Judges' decision would be binding on the State Government, and that aggrieved employees would be free to challenge the decisions before "an appropriate forum" must also be welcomed. However, there is a disturbing implication in the double standards that apply to Ministers and ordinary Government employees facing criminal proceedings. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not ruled against the injustice in the Tamil Nadu Government's stand that 6072 employees could not claim "a right to be reinstated" because First Information Reports (FIRs) - which merely set the investigative ball in motion — had purportedly been filed by the State police against them. This contrasts glaringly with a situation where powerful politicians in government, at the Centre and in the States, remain in office unfazed by the fact that charge–sheets have been filed against them in grave criminal cases after the investigations have been completed, and charges have even been framed against them, in some cases, by a court of law.

What is most disturbing about the Supreme Court's judgment in the Tamil Nadu Government employees' case is the a–historical, iniquitous and democratically unsustainable position taken against the right to strike as a part of internationally recognised basic democratic rights. At one level, the judgment seems to revolve round the question whether Government employees have a constitutional or statutory right or moral and equitable justification to go on strike. However, the Court's observations in a case relating exclusively to Government employees go well beyond the immediate issues into status quoits absolutism in the social and philosophical domain. Such absolutism flies in the face of modern India's historical experience of worker agitations and strikes, and the assertion of the right to strike — an experience that begins in the late nineteenth century. Not just Communist organisers, but a range of freedom movement leaders supported the right to agitate and strike as an inalienable democratic right of workers and employees. This newspaper, which will soon be celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding, may be allowed to recall that during the militant 1921 strike by 10,000 workers of the Buckingham & Carnatic Mills in Chennai, its proprietor and Editor, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, boldly championed their cause - in The Hindu's columns and through direct involvement in the relief and solidarity efforts. The Supreme Court's latest stance contrasts sadly with both the substance and spirit of earlier progressive rights–led rulings by the apex court, delivered by outstanding jurists of the stature of V. R. Krishna Iyer, Y. V. Chandrachud, A. C. Gupta, D. A. Desai, Jagannatha Shetty and A. M. Ahmadi. Contrary to the impression given by the two–member bench's citation of judgments relating to Government employees, the Supreme Court from the early 1960s has generally upheld the justifiability of, and the moral reasons behind, strikes as legitimate actions by the working class. It is this stream of judicial pronouncements that Mr. Sorabjee was drawing on in criticising the Court's new–fangled observation that there was "no moral or equitable right to go on strike." In the recent case, the Court has cited, not always in context, various judgments to the effect that "employees have no fundamental right to strike," that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to "effective collective bargaining," that strikes cannot be justified "in the present–day situation" either for a "just or unjust cause," and that the strike weapon "does more harm than any justice." If these quotations were to match the ground reality, then India in 2003 could not claim to be a democracy with any kind of regard for its working people. It would be an authoritarian state out of step with the International Labour Organisation's Conventions on "Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise" and "The Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively", neither of which India has ratified. Undoing the damage done by the Supreme Court's observations in the Tamil Nadu case is the challenge before democratic, political India and it is heartening that the Attorney General has shown the way.

According to the passage, who among the following options had never delivered a progressive rights led ruling in the Apex court?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A Close Reading of the Supreme Court's August 6, 2003 judgment in T. K. Rangarajan vs Government of Tamil Nadu and Others shows that the Court has, following in the footsteps of a string of illiberal verdicts on Government servants beginning in 1962, got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabjee, has done a public service by speaking up against the apex court's observation that there was no moral or equitable right to go on strike. Characterising this as "uncalled for" and "beyond comprehension," he has pointed out that the right of collective bargaining, including the right to strike, was an invaluable entitlement of workers and employees won through years of toil and struggle. Further, there could be "horrendous situations in which the employees have no effective mechanism for redressal of their grievances and are left with no option, but to resort to strike." Implicit in this opinion is a distinction between the merits of particular strikes and the legal and moral status of the right to strike. Here is the voice not merely of law and order and the tenets of `strong' governance — but of democratic entitlement and a sense of history. There were two core issues before the two–member bench. The first was the constitutionality, legality and rightness of the summary dismissal of about 170,000 State Government employees in Tamil Nadu under the State's Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), as amended post facto by an ordinance conferring on the Government the divine right of dismissal, without any application of mind and without giving the employees an opportunity to be heard. The second issue was the status of the right of workers and employees to freedom of association and collective bargaining, including the right to agitate and strike.

In response, the apex court resorted to the technique of providing practical relief in place of a determination of the issues of justice. The relief came through the Court's success in pressuring and persuading the Tamil Nadu Government "gracefully" to agree to reinstate the overwhelming majority of the dismissed employees - not unconditionally, of course, but on submission of an apology and an undertaking not to strike or indulge in "similar activities" in future. The Court rightly found fault with the Madras High Court for not properly construing its power under Article 226 of the Constitution (the power of High Courts to issue certain writs) to "exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to meet [an] unprecedented extraordinary situation having no parallel." Referring to the High Court's totally impractical ruling that over 170,000 employees should first exhaust the "alternative remedy" of going to the one–member State Administrative Tribunal for justice, the Supreme Court found "no justifiable reason for the High Court not to entertain the petitions on the ground of alternative remedy provided under the statute." There is no doubt that getting the Tamil Nadu Government to agree to having three retired High Court Judges decide on the fate of 6072 dismissed or suspended employees within approximately a month is a much better way of providing practical relief than what the High Court offered. The fact that the retired Judges would be nominated by the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court and not by the State Government, that they would decide the representations by the employees without taking into consideration the amended Section 7 of the Act, that the retired Judges' decision would be binding on the State Government, and that aggrieved employees would be free to challenge the decisions before "an appropriate forum" must also be welcomed. However, there is a disturbing implication in the double standards that apply to Ministers and ordinary Government employees facing criminal proceedings. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not ruled against the injustice in the Tamil Nadu Government's stand that 6072 employees could not claim "a right to be reinstated" because First Information Reports (FIRs) - which merely set the investigative ball in motion — had purportedly been filed by the State police against them. This contrasts glaringly with a situation where powerful politicians in government, at the Centre and in the States, remain in office unfazed by the fact that charge–sheets have been filed against them in grave criminal cases after the investigations have been completed, and charges have even been framed against them, in some cases, by a court of law.

What is most disturbing about the Supreme Court's judgment in the Tamil Nadu Government employees' case is the a–historical, iniquitous and democratically unsustainable position taken against the right to strike as a part of internationally recognised basic democratic rights. At one level, the judgment seems to revolve round the question whether Government employees have a constitutional or statutory right or moral and equitable justification to go on strike. However, the Court's observations in a case relating exclusively to Government employees go well beyond the immediate issues into status quoits absolutism in the social and philosophical domain. Such absolutism flies in the face of modern India's historical experience of worker agitations and strikes, and the assertion of the right to strike — an experience that begins in the late nineteenth century. Not just Communist organisers, but a range of freedom movement leaders supported the right to agitate and strike as an inalienable democratic right of workers and employees. This newspaper, which will soon be celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding, may be allowed to recall that during the militant 1921 strike by 10,000 workers of the Buckingham & Carnatic Mills in Chennai, its proprietor and Editor, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, boldly championed their cause - in The Hindu's columns and through direct involvement in the relief and solidarity efforts. The Supreme Court's latest stance contrasts sadly with both the substance and spirit of earlier progressive rights–led rulings by the apex court, delivered by outstanding jurists of the stature of V. R. Krishna Iyer, Y. V. Chandrachud, A. C. Gupta, D. A. Desai, Jagannatha Shetty and A. M. Ahmadi. Contrary to the impression given by the two–member bench's citation of judgments relating to Government employees, the Supreme Court from the early 1960s has generally upheld the justifiability of, and the moral reasons behind, strikes as legitimate actions by the working class. It is this stream of judicial pronouncements that Mr. Sorabjee was drawing on in criticising the Court's new–fangled observation that there was "no moral or equitable right to go on strike." In the recent case, the Court has cited, not always in context, various judgments to the effect that "employees have no fundamental right to strike," that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to "effective collective bargaining," that strikes cannot be justified "in the present–day situation" either for a "just or unjust cause," and that the strike weapon "does more harm than any justice." If these quotations were to match the ground reality, then India in 2003 could not claim to be a democracy with any kind of regard for its working people. It would be an authoritarian state out of step with the International Labour Organisation's Conventions on "Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise" and "The Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively", neither of which India has ratified. Undoing the damage done by the Supreme Court's observations in the Tamil Nadu case is the challenge before democratic, political India and it is heartening that the Attorney General has shown the way.

It can be inferred from the passage that

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A Close Reading of the Supreme Court's August 6, 2003 judgment in T. K. Rangarajan vs Government of Tamil Nadu and Others shows that the Court has, following in the footsteps of a string of illiberal verdicts on Government servants beginning in 1962, got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabjee, has done a public service by speaking up against the apex court's observation that there was no moral or equitable right to go on strike. Characterising this as "uncalled for" and "beyond comprehension," he has pointed out that the right of collective bargaining, including the right to strike, was an invaluable entitlement of workers and employees won through years of toil and struggle. Further, there could be "horrendous situations in which the employees have no effective mechanism for redressal of their grievances and are left with no option, but to resort to strike." Implicit in this opinion is a distinction between the merits of particular strikes and the legal and moral status of the right to strike. Here is the voice not merely of law and order and the tenets of `strong' governance — but of democratic entitlement and a sense of history. There were two core issues before the two–member bench. The first was the constitutionality, legality and rightness of the summary dismissal of about 170,000 State Government employees in Tamil Nadu under the State's Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), as amended post facto by an ordinance conferring on the Government the divine right of dismissal, without any application of mind and without giving the employees an opportunity to be heard. The second issue was the status of the right of workers and employees to freedom of association and collective bargaining, including the right to agitate and strike.

In response, the apex court resorted to the technique of providing practical relief in place of a determination of the issues of justice. The relief came through the Court's success in pressuring and persuading the Tamil Nadu Government "gracefully" to agree to reinstate the overwhelming majority of the dismissed employees - not unconditionally, of course, but on submission of an apology and an undertaking not to strike or indulge in "similar activities" in future. The Court rightly found fault with the Madras High Court for not properly construing its power under Article 226 of the Constitution (the power of High Courts to issue certain writs) to "exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to meet [an] unprecedented extraordinary situation having no parallel." Referring to the High Court's totally impractical ruling that over 170,000 employees should first exhaust the "alternative remedy" of going to the one–member State Administrative Tribunal for justice, the Supreme Court found "no justifiable reason for the High Court not to entertain the petitions on the ground of alternative remedy provided under the statute." There is no doubt that getting the Tamil Nadu Government to agree to having three retired High Court Judges decide on the fate of 6072 dismissed or suspended employees within approximately a month is a much better way of providing practical relief than what the High Court offered. The fact that the retired Judges would be nominated by the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court and not by the State Government, that they would decide the representations by the employees without taking into consideration the amended Section 7 of the Act, that the retired Judges' decision would be binding on the State Government, and that aggrieved employees would be free to challenge the decisions before "an appropriate forum" must also be welcomed. However, there is a disturbing implication in the double standards that apply to Ministers and ordinary Government employees facing criminal proceedings. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not ruled against the injustice in the Tamil Nadu Government's stand that 6072 employees could not claim "a right to be reinstated" because First Information Reports (FIRs) - which merely set the investigative ball in motion — had purportedly been filed by the State police against them. This contrasts glaringly with a situation where powerful politicians in government, at the Centre and in the States, remain in office unfazed by the fact that charge–sheets have been filed against them in grave criminal cases after the investigations have been completed, and charges have even been framed against them, in some cases, by a court of law.

What is most disturbing about the Supreme Court's judgment in the Tamil Nadu Government employees' case is the a–historical, iniquitous and democratically unsustainable position taken against the right to strike as a part of internationally recognised basic democratic rights. At one level, the judgment seems to revolve round the question whether Government employees have a constitutional or statutory right or moral and equitable justification to go on strike. However, the Court's observations in a case relating exclusively to Government employees go well beyond the immediate issues into status quoits absolutism in the social and philosophical domain. Such absolutism flies in the face of modern India's historical experience of worker agitations and strikes, and the assertion of the right to strike — an experience that begins in the late nineteenth century. Not just Communist organisers, but a range of freedom movement leaders supported the right to agitate and strike as an inalienable democratic right of workers and employees. This newspaper, which will soon be celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding, may be allowed to recall that during the militant 1921 strike by 10,000 workers of the Buckingham & Carnatic Mills in Chennai, its proprietor and Editor, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, boldly championed their cause - in The Hindu's columns and through direct involvement in the relief and solidarity efforts. The Supreme Court's latest stance contrasts sadly with both the substance and spirit of earlier progressive rights–led rulings by the apex court, delivered by outstanding jurists of the stature of V. R. Krishna Iyer, Y. V. Chandrachud, A. C. Gupta, D. A. Desai, Jagannatha Shetty and A. M. Ahmadi. Contrary to the impression given by the two–member bench's citation of judgments relating to Government employees, the Supreme Court from the early 1960s has generally upheld the justifiability of, and the moral reasons behind, strikes as legitimate actions by the working class. It is this stream of judicial pronouncements that Mr. Sorabjee was drawing on in criticising the Court's new–fangled observation that there was "no moral or equitable right to go on strike." In the recent case, the Court has cited, not always in context, various judgments to the effect that "employees have no fundamental right to strike," that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to "effective collective bargaining," that strikes cannot be justified "in the present–day situation" either for a "just or unjust cause," and that the strike weapon "does more harm than any justice." If these quotations were to match the ground reality, then India in 2003 could not claim to be a democracy with any kind of regard for its working people. It would be an authoritarian state out of step with the International Labour Organisation's Conventions on "Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise" and "The Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively", neither of which India has ratified. Undoing the damage done by the Supreme Court's observations in the Tamil Nadu case is the challenge before democratic, political India and it is heartening that the Attorney General has shown the way.

What figure of speech is used by the author to describe the humming bird?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Central and South America have some of the world’s most unique species of wildlife. Perhaps, some are more familiar than others. Central and South America has many different groups of species, which include: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects. These groups of animals need to live in specific types of climates and habitats in order to ensure their survivorship.

South America is the home to some of the strangest, some of the loveliest and some of the most horrifying animals in the world. There can be few creatures more improbable than the sloth which spends its life in a permanent state of mute slow motion, hanging upside down in the tall forest trees: few more bizarre than the giant ant eater of the Savannahs, its tail enlarged into a shaggy banner and its jaws elongated into a curved and toothless tube.  On the other hand, beautiful birds are so common as to become almost unremarkable. Gaudy macaws flap through the forest, their splendid plumage contrasting incongruously with their harsh cries; and humming–birds, like tiny jewels, flit from flower to flower sipping nectar, their iridescent feathers flashing the colors of the rainbow as they fly.

The Amazonian rain forest, in Brazil alone, is the largest rain forest in the world. Many species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and birds occupy the canopy of this magnificent rain forest. The iguana lives in the trees high above from the ground. It has flattened sides and a long, strong tail, which gives it balance and stability when it leaps. It also has clawed feet, which allows the iguana to grip branches.

The poison dart frog is a tree frog that secretes poison when it gets attacked. Even a small amount of the toxin can be lethal to humans. Today, South American Indians use the poison to tip their arrowheads before hunting.

What is the main purpose of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Mother Teresa will soon become a saint. But this celebration of the divine in a human being has turned out to be as good a moment as any to fight about all the worldly things that usually get fought about in the Balkans: namely, religion, ethnicity and history. The conflict centres on an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to donate a statue of Mother Teresa to the city of Rome. It is a simple enough dispute on one level, but on another, reflects the strains that have made it so hard to stitch together Balkan societies. The tale begins with a solitary fact that no one disputes: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who became the world's most famous Roman Catholic missionary, universally known as Mother Teresa, was born in August 1910 in Skopje. (As for the exact date, some say she was born on Aug. 26, others Aug. 27.) The city was then an especially mixed corner of the Ottoman Empire, home to Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Gypsies, Jews, Vlachs and Albanians, which is what Mother Teresa always said she was.

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, one of Macedonia's most famous artists, Tome Serafimovski, fashioned a 9–ft bronze statue of her that now stands in downtown Skopje. As the Vatican moved to make her a saint, Mr. Serafimovski decided to donate a copy to Rome. Its delivery was to coincide with her expected beatification, the last step before sainthood, in October. But then last month, an Albanian newspaper in Skopje, Fakti, carried a sensational scoop: the statue, it reported from Italy, was to have an inscription identifying her as "a Macedonian daughter." Albanian leaders were outraged. This was an attempt, they said, by the Macedonians to claim Mother Teresa as one of their own. The inscription, one Albanian political party charged, "undermines the Albanian national identity and represents usurpation of Mother Teresa's origin." Ethnic Albanians make up perhaps a quarter, though some say a third or more, of Macedonia's 2 million people. (No one knows for certain and, like much else, it is argued over bitterly.) The largest national group here are often considered Slavs. But many Macedonians contend hotly that they are in fact not Slavs, but have descended from ancient Macedonians like Alexander the Great. Whatever their descent, they fought a brief conflict with ethnic Albanians seeking greater political rights in 2001.

Mother Teresa has now emerged as yet another strain in this larger tug of war. What complicates matters further is that she was Roman Catholic, while most Albanians are Muslim, and this has opened a crack for speculation about Mother Teresa's actual ethnic roots. Jasmina Mironski, a prominent Macedonian journalist who has written two books on Mother Teresa, says there is no doubt that Mother Teresa's own mother, Dranafila Bernaj, was an ethnic Albanian. But her father, Nikola Bojaxhiu, was "the tricky combination." She says the "u" that ends his name made him more likely a Vlach, a non–Slavic Orthodox people also called Walachians. Plus, she said, Mother Teresa "didn't speak Albanian, that's for sure. She only knew five words of Albanian." Moreover, her brother's name was Lazar, the name of Serbia's most famous prince. This is heresy to Albanians, who say they have been repeatedly persecuted by Serbs. The debate has leached out from Macedonia to intellectuals in Albania proper, who in July wrote in anger to the Mayor of Rome urging him to resist the effort "to usurp the figure and deeds of Mother Teresa," as well as to Internet chat rooms read by Macedonians around the world. All sides say, naturally, that their only interest is to see Mother Teresa's life celebrated, but with the maximum truth possible.

With the argument still raging, Mayor Risto Penov of Skopje, who is overseeing the donation of the statue, said there was never a plan for an inscription that mentioned a "Macedonian daughter." He said the idea is now the same as it always was, for an inscription that reads simply: "Born Skopje 26 August 1910. Died Calcutta 5 September 1997." "Now we have a person who can put us together again — and we're dividing ourselves," he said. But the editors at Fakti insist their report was right.

Mr. Serafimovski said he has had it with all the bickering. No statue will be donated, he said, until the issue was resolved. He opposes anything that even hints that Mother Teresa was Macedonian (even if he believes her father was Vlach). At Mother Teresa's own order in Skopje, yet another view seemed to prevail about this woman who left Skopje at the age of 18. An Italian nun who declined to be named said that Mother Teresa unquestionably spoke Albanian, among other languages, but felt the strongest affinity with another part of the world entirely.

The Savannahs are found generally in _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Central and South America have some of the world’s most unique species of wildlife. Perhaps, some are more familiar than others. Central and South America has many different groups of species, which include: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects. These groups of animals need to live in specific types of climates and habitats in order to ensure their survivorship.

South America is the home to some of the strangest, some of the loveliest and some of the most horrifying animals in the world. There can be few creatures more improbable than the sloth which spends its life in a permanent state of mute slow motion, hanging upside down in the tall forest trees: few more bizarre than the giant ant eater of the Savannahs, its tail enlarged into a shaggy banner and its jaws elongated into a curved and toothless tube.  On the other hand, beautiful birds are so common as to become almost unremarkable. Gaudy macaws flap through the forest, their splendid plumage contrasting incongruously with their harsh cries; and humming–birds, like tiny jewels, flit from flower to flower sipping nectar, their iridescent feathers flashing the colors of the rainbow as they fly.

The Amazonian rain forest, in Brazil alone, is the largest rain forest in the world. Many species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and birds occupy the canopy of this magnificent rain forest. The iguana lives in the trees high above from the ground. It has flattened sides and a long, strong tail, which gives it balance and stability when it leaps. It also has clawed feet, which allows the iguana to grip branches.

The poison dart frog is a tree frog that secretes poison when it gets attacked. Even a small amount of the toxin can be lethal to humans. Today, South American Indians use the poison to tip their arrowheads before hunting.

The passage does not answer which one of the following questions?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Mother Teresa will soon become a saint. But this celebration of the divine in a human being has turned out to be as good a moment as any to fight about all the worldly things that usually get fought about in the Balkans: namely, religion, ethnicity and history. The conflict centres on an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to donate a statue of Mother Teresa to the city of Rome. It is a simple enough dispute on one level, but on another, reflects the strains that have made it so hard to stitch together Balkan societies. The tale begins with a solitary fact that no one disputes: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who became the world's most famous Roman Catholic missionary, universally known as Mother Teresa, was born in August 1910 in Skopje. (As for the exact date, some say she was born on Aug. 26, others Aug. 27.) The city was then an especially mixed corner of the Ottoman Empire, home to Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Gypsies, Jews, Vlachs and Albanians, which is what Mother Teresa always said she was.

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, one of Macedonia's most famous artists, Tome Serafimovski, fashioned a 9–ft bronze statue of her that now stands in downtown Skopje. As the Vatican moved to make her a saint, Mr. Serafimovski decided to donate a copy to Rome. Its delivery was to coincide with her expected beatification, the last step before sainthood, in October. But then last month, an Albanian newspaper in Skopje, Fakti, carried a sensational scoop: the statue, it reported from Italy, was to have an inscription identifying her as "a Macedonian daughter." Albanian leaders were outraged. This was an attempt, they said, by the Macedonians to claim Mother Teresa as one of their own. The inscription, one Albanian political party charged, "undermines the Albanian national identity and represents usurpation of Mother Teresa's origin." Ethnic Albanians make up perhaps a quarter, though some say a third or more, of Macedonia's 2 million people. (No one knows for certain and, like much else, it is argued over bitterly.) The largest national group here are often considered Slavs. But many Macedonians contend hotly that they are in fact not Slavs, but have descended from ancient Macedonians like Alexander the Great. Whatever their descent, they fought a brief conflict with ethnic Albanians seeking greater political rights in 2001.

Mother Teresa has now emerged as yet another strain in this larger tug of war. What complicates matters further is that she was Roman Catholic, while most Albanians are Muslim, and this has opened a crack for speculation about Mother Teresa's actual ethnic roots. Jasmina Mironski, a prominent Macedonian journalist who has written two books on Mother Teresa, says there is no doubt that Mother Teresa's own mother, Dranafila Bernaj, was an ethnic Albanian. But her father, Nikola Bojaxhiu, was "the tricky combination." She says the "u" that ends his name made him more likely a Vlach, a non–Slavic Orthodox people also called Walachians. Plus, she said, Mother Teresa "didn't speak Albanian, that's for sure. She only knew five words of Albanian." Moreover, her brother's name was Lazar, the name of Serbia's most famous prince. This is heresy to Albanians, who say they have been repeatedly persecuted by Serbs. The debate has leached out from Macedonia to intellectuals in Albania proper, who in July wrote in anger to the Mayor of Rome urging him to resist the effort "to usurp the figure and deeds of Mother Teresa," as well as to Internet chat rooms read by Macedonians around the world. All sides say, naturally, that their only interest is to see Mother Teresa's life celebrated, but with the maximum truth possible.

With the argument still raging, Mayor Risto Penov of Skopje, who is overseeing the donation of the statue, said there was never a plan for an inscription that mentioned a "Macedonian daughter." He said the idea is now the same as it always was, for an inscription that reads simply: "Born Skopje 26 August 1910. Died Calcutta 5 September 1997." "Now we have a person who can put us together again — and we're dividing ourselves," he said. But the editors at Fakti insist their report was right.

Mr. Serafimovski said he has had it with all the bickering. No statue will be donated, he said, until the issue was resolved. He opposes anything that even hints that Mother Teresa was Macedonian (even if he believes her father was Vlach). At Mother Teresa's own order in Skopje, yet another view seemed to prevail about this woman who left Skopje at the age of 18. An Italian nun who declined to be named said that Mother Teresa unquestionably spoke Albanian, among other languages, but felt the strongest affinity with another part of the world entirely.

It is reasonable to infer from the passage that Mrs. Sennett asked, ''Are those children making too much noise?'' because Mrs. Sennett _________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.)

My expression must have changed. Are those children making too much noise? Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I shook my head in no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone–deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking.

To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eighteenth–century England and its literary figures. Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill.

Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's sit down was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six–inch–square piece of spice cake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates.

A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen–finish paper:

Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning?

Very sincerely yours, 
Carmen Sennett

One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. Papa came today, she said, and we've got to go back day after tomorrow.

Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here? 
She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year she came back, but now she means it. 
I said, Oh dear, scarcely knowing which side I was on.
It was awful at supper. I cried and cried. 
Did Theresa cry? 
Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do.
But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest? 
Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did. 
The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going back with them just to help settle. She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish–grandee air.

This isn't really goodbye, she said. I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my 
hands.  But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, No! No! No! to her with their puckered–up mouths.

What is the main insight suggested by the conversation given in the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.)

My expression must have changed. Are those children making too much noise? Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I shook my head in no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone–deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking.

To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eighteenth–century England and its literary figures. Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill.

Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's sit down was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six–inch–square piece of spice cake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates.

A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen–finish paper:

Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning?

Very sincerely yours, 
Carmen Sennett

One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. Papa came today, she said, and we've got to go back day after tomorrow.

Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here? 
She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year she came back, but now she means it. 
I said, Oh dear, scarcely knowing which side I was on.
It was awful at supper. I cried and cried. 
Did Theresa cry? 
Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do.
But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest? 
Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did. 
The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going back with them just to help settle. She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish–grandee air.

This isn't really goodbye, she said. I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my 
hands.  But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, No! No! No! to her with their puckered–up mouths.

Considering the events of the entire passage, it is most reasonable to infer that Mrs. Sennett calls the children bad because she ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.)

My expression must have changed. Are those children making too much noise? Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I shook my head in no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone–deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking.

To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eighteenth–century England and its literary figures. Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill.

Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's sit down was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six–inch–square piece of spice cake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates.

A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen–finish paper:

Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning?

Very sincerely yours, 
Carmen Sennett

One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. Papa came today, she said, and we've got to go back day after tomorrow.

Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here? 
She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year she came back, but now she means it. 
I said, Oh dear, scarcely knowing which side I was on.
It was awful at supper. I cried and cried. 
Did Theresa cry? 
Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do.
But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest? 
Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did. 
The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going back with them just to help settle. She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish–grandee air.

This isn't really goodbye, she said. I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my 
hands.  But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, No! No! No! to her with their puckered–up mouths.

The overall tone of the passage is _________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Laws directly tell us how to behave (or not to behave) under various specific circumstances and prescribe remedies or punishments for individuals who do not comply with the law. It can be defined as a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. Legal principles are often derived from ethical ones, but legal principles deal more with the practical regulation of morality, or behaviours and activities. Additionally many legal principles deal with the inadequacies and imperfections in human nature, and the less than ideal behaviours of individuals or groups. Legal practices are also affected more by historical precedent, matters of definition, issues related to detectability and enforceability and evolution of new circumstances than are ethical ones.

Law is also defined as a body of enacted or customary rules recognized by a community as binding. The law of the Medes and the Persians were regarded as unalterable. While in ancient times the king laid down the law and the people implicitly obeyed him, in modern times laws are made by legislatures, popularly elected or partially nominated. These laws, whatever their source, are binding injunctions; if they were not binding and if their compliance with them were not obligatory, they would not be laws but mere wishes which could be treated as optional. It is the element of compulsion that distinguishes a law from an ordinary directive or expression of desire. Laws enacted by legislatures have also to be distinguished from laws of nature that indicates regularity and invariable sequence between specified conditions and specified phenomena.

All man–made laws are designed to regulate human conduct in the interest of society. In absence of such rules each person would regard himself free to do what he likes, regardless of impact of his actions on others' corresponding right of freedom of action. In fact, the very existence of society would be endangered if there were no universally recognized laws. A lawless society would mean endless confusion, possibly a reign of terror, and might result in a terrible mess where the only effective law of the jungle. Before regular laws were enacted and enforced, might was right: the physically stronger individual dominated the set–up and the weak person had perforce to surrender to the wishes of the might one or get destroyed. Laws thus enforce justice; provide equal rights and opportunities to everyone, weak or strong, male or female, rich or poor.

By which of the following options the theme of the passage is best expressed?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Laws directly tell us how to behave (or not to behave) under various specific circumstances and prescribe remedies or punishments for individuals who do not comply with the law. It can be defined as a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. Legal principles are often derived from ethical ones, but legal principles deal more with the practical regulation of morality, or behaviours and activities. Additionally many legal principles deal with the inadequacies and imperfections in human nature, and the less than ideal behaviours of individuals or groups. Legal practices are also affected more by historical precedent, matters of definition, issues related to detectability and enforceability and evolution of new circumstances than are ethical ones.

Law is also defined as a body of enacted or customary rules recognized by a community as binding. The law of the Medes and the Persians were regarded as unalterable. While in ancient times the king laid down the law and the people implicitly obeyed him, in modern times laws are made by legislatures, popularly elected or partially nominated. These laws, whatever their source, are binding injunctions; if they were not binding and if their compliance with them were not obligatory, they would not be laws but mere wishes which could be treated as optional. It is the element of compulsion that distinguishes a law from an ordinary directive or expression of desire. Laws enacted by legislatures have also to be distinguished from laws of nature that indicates regularity and invariable sequence between specified conditions and specified phenomena.

All man–made laws are designed to regulate human conduct in the interest of society. In absence of such rules each person would regard himself free to do what he likes, regardless of impact of his actions on others' corresponding right of freedom of action. In fact, the very existence of society would be endangered if there were no universally recognized laws. A lawless society would mean endless confusion, possibly a reign of terror, and might result in a terrible mess where the only effective law of the jungle. Before regular laws were enacted and enforced, might was right: the physically stronger individual dominated the set–up and the weak person had perforce to surrender to the wishes of the might one or get destroyed. Laws thus enforce justice; provide equal rights and opportunities to everyone, weak or strong, male or female, rich or poor.

Which among the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Mother Teresa will soon become a saint. But this celebration of the divine in a human being has turned out to be as good a moment as any to fight about all the worldly things that usually get fought about in the Balkans: namely, religion, ethnicity and history. The conflict centres on an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to donate a statue of Mother Teresa to the city of Rome. It is a simple enough dispute on one level, but on another, reflects the strains that have made it so hard to stitch together Balkan societies. The tale begins with a solitary fact that no one disputes: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who became the world's most famous Roman Catholic missionary, universally known as Mother Teresa, was born in August 1910 in Skopje. (As for the exact date, some say she was born on Aug. 26, others Aug. 27.) The city was then an especially mixed corner of the Ottoman Empire, home to Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Gypsies, Jews, Vlachs and Albanians, which is what Mother Teresa always said she was.

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, one of Macedonia's most famous artists, Tome Serafimovski, fashioned a 9–ft bronze statue of her that now stands in downtown Skopje. As the Vatican moved to make her a saint, Mr. Serafimovski decided to donate a copy to Rome. Its delivery was to coincide with her expected beatification, the last step before sainthood, in October. But then last month, an Albanian newspaper in Skopje, Fakti, carried a sensational scoop: the statue, it reported from Italy, was to have an inscription identifying her as "a Macedonian daughter." Albanian leaders were outraged. This was an attempt, they said, by the Macedonians to claim Mother Teresa as one of their own. The inscription, one Albanian political party charged, "undermines the Albanian national identity and represents usurpation of Mother Teresa's origin." Ethnic Albanians make up perhaps a quarter, though some say a third or more, of Macedonia's 2 million people. (No one knows for certain and, like much else, it is argued over bitterly.) The largest national group here are often considered Slavs. But many Macedonians contend hotly that they are in fact not Slavs, but have descended from ancient Macedonians like Alexander the Great. Whatever their descent, they fought a brief conflict with ethnic Albanians seeking greater political rights in 2001.

Mother Teresa has now emerged as yet another strain in this larger tug of war. What complicates matters further is that she was Roman Catholic, while most Albanians are Muslim, and this has opened a crack for speculation about Mother Teresa's actual ethnic roots. Jasmina Mironski, a prominent Macedonian journalist who has written two books on Mother Teresa, says there is no doubt that Mother Teresa's own mother, Dranafila Bernaj, was an ethnic Albanian. But her father, Nikola Bojaxhiu, was "the tricky combination." She says the "u" that ends his name made him more likely a Vlach, a non–Slavic Orthodox people also called Walachians. Plus, she said, Mother Teresa "didn't speak Albanian, that's for sure. She only knew five words of Albanian." Moreover, her brother's name was Lazar, the name of Serbia's most famous prince. This is heresy to Albanians, who say they have been repeatedly persecuted by Serbs. The debate has leached out from Macedonia to intellectuals in Albania proper, who in July wrote in anger to the Mayor of Rome urging him to resist the effort "to usurp the figure and deeds of Mother Teresa," as well as to Internet chat rooms read by Macedonians around the world. All sides say, naturally, that their only interest is to see Mother Teresa's life celebrated, but with the maximum truth possible.

With the argument still raging, Mayor Risto Penov of Skopje, who is overseeing the donation of the statue, said there was never a plan for an inscription that mentioned a "Macedonian daughter." He said the idea is now the same as it always was, for an inscription that reads simply: "Born Skopje 26 August 1910. Died Calcutta 5 September 1997." "Now we have a person who can put us together again — and we're dividing ourselves," he said. But the editors at Fakti insist their report was right.

Mr. Serafimovski said he has had it with all the bickering. No statue will be donated, he said, until the issue was resolved. He opposes anything that even hints that Mother Teresa was Macedonian (even if he believes her father was Vlach). At Mother Teresa's own order in Skopje, yet another view seemed to prevail about this woman who left Skopje at the age of 18. An Italian nun who declined to be named said that Mother Teresa unquestionably spoke Albanian, among other languages, but felt the strongest affinity with another part of the world entirely.

Which among the following statements can be inferred from the passage?
I. Mother Teresa was actually a Serbian.
II. People are fighting against the basic place where Mother Teresa lived.
III. The controversy around Mother's states actually highlights the underlying ethnic strains in the Balban Society.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Mother Teresa will soon become a saint. But this celebration of the divine in a human being has turned out to be as good a moment as any to fight about all the worldly things that usually get fought about in the Balkans: namely, religion, ethnicity and history. The conflict centres on an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to donate a statue of Mother Teresa to the city of Rome. It is a simple enough dispute on one level, but on another, reflects the strains that have made it so hard to stitch together Balkan societies. The tale begins with a solitary fact that no one disputes: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who became the world's most famous Roman Catholic missionary, universally known as Mother Teresa, was born in August 1910 in Skopje. (As for the exact date, some say she was born on Aug. 26, others Aug. 27.) The city was then an especially mixed corner of the Ottoman Empire, home to Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Gypsies, Jews, Vlachs and Albanians, which is what Mother Teresa always said she was.

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, one of Macedonia's most famous artists, Tome Serafimovski, fashioned a 9–ft bronze statue of her that now stands in downtown Skopje. As the Vatican moved to make her a saint, Mr. Serafimovski decided to donate a copy to Rome. Its delivery was to coincide with her expected beatification, the last step before sainthood, in October. But then last month, an Albanian newspaper in Skopje, Fakti, carried a sensational scoop: the statue, it reported from Italy, was to have an inscription identifying her as "a Macedonian daughter." Albanian leaders were outraged. This was an attempt, they said, by the Macedonians to claim Mother Teresa as one of their own. The inscription, one Albanian political party charged, "undermines the Albanian national identity and represents usurpation of Mother Teresa's origin." Ethnic Albanians make up perhaps a quarter, though some say a third or more, of Macedonia's 2 million people. (No one knows for certain and, like much else, it is argued over bitterly.) The largest national group here are often considered Slavs. But many Macedonians contend hotly that they are in fact not Slavs, but have descended from ancient Macedonians like Alexander the Great. Whatever their descent, they fought a brief conflict with ethnic Albanians seeking greater political rights in 2001.

Mother Teresa has now emerged as yet another strain in this larger tug of war. What complicates matters further is that she was Roman Catholic, while most Albanians are Muslim, and this has opened a crack for speculation about Mother Teresa's actual ethnic roots. Jasmina Mironski, a prominent Macedonian journalist who has written two books on Mother Teresa, says there is no doubt that Mother Teresa's own mother, Dranafila Bernaj, was an ethnic Albanian. But her father, Nikola Bojaxhiu, was "the tricky combination." She says the "u" that ends his name made him more likely a Vlach, a non–Slavic Orthodox people also called Walachians. Plus, she said, Mother Teresa "didn't speak Albanian, that's for sure. She only knew five words of Albanian." Moreover, her brother's name was Lazar, the name of Serbia's most famous prince. This is heresy to Albanians, who say they have been repeatedly persecuted by Serbs. The debate has leached out from Macedonia to intellectuals in Albania proper, who in July wrote in anger to the Mayor of Rome urging him to resist the effort "to usurp the figure and deeds of Mother Teresa," as well as to Internet chat rooms read by Macedonians around the world. All sides say, naturally, that their only interest is to see Mother Teresa's life celebrated, but with the maximum truth possible.

With the argument still raging, Mayor Risto Penov of Skopje, who is overseeing the donation of the statue, said there was never a plan for an inscription that mentioned a "Macedonian daughter." He said the idea is now the same as it always was, for an inscription that reads simply: "Born Skopje 26 August 1910. Died Calcutta 5 September 1997." "Now we have a person who can put us together again — and we're dividing ourselves," he said. But the editors at Fakti insist their report was right.

Mr. Serafimovski said he has had it with all the bickering. No statue will be donated, he said, until the issue was resolved. He opposes anything that even hints that Mother Teresa was Macedonian (even if he believes her father was Vlach). At Mother Teresa's own order in Skopje, yet another view seemed to prevail about this woman who left Skopje at the age of 18. An Italian nun who declined to be named said that Mother Teresa unquestionably spoke Albanian, among other languages, but felt the strongest affinity with another part of the world entirely.

Considering how Mrs. Sennett is portrayed in the passage, it is most reasonable to infer that the word ravaged, as it is used, most nearly means that her face reveals _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.)

My expression must have changed. Are those children making too much noise? Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I shook my head in no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone–deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking.

To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eighteenth–century England and its literary figures. Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill.

Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's sit down was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six–inch–square piece of spice cake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates.

A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen–finish paper:

Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning?

Very sincerely yours, 
Carmen Sennett

One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. Papa came today, she said, and we've got to go back day after tomorrow.

Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here? 
She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year she came back, but now she means it. 
I said, Oh dear, scarcely knowing which side I was on.
It was awful at supper. I cried and cried. 
Did Theresa cry? 
Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do.
But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest? 
Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did. 
The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going back with them just to help settle. She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish–grandee air.

This isn't really goodbye, she said. I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my 
hands.  But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, No! No! No! to her with their puckered–up mouths.

Which of these would not be an outcome of absence of laws?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Laws directly tell us how to behave (or not to behave) under various specific circumstances and prescribe remedies or punishments for individuals who do not comply with the law. It can be defined as a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. Legal principles are often derived from ethical ones, but legal principles deal more with the practical regulation of morality, or behaviours and activities. Additionally many legal principles deal with the inadequacies and imperfections in human nature, and the less than ideal behaviours of individuals or groups. Legal practices are also affected more by historical precedent, matters of definition, issues related to detectability and enforceability and evolution of new circumstances than are ethical ones.

Law is also defined as a body of enacted or customary rules recognized by a community as binding. The law of the Medes and the Persians were regarded as unalterable. While in ancient times the king laid down the law and the people implicitly obeyed him, in modern times laws are made by legislatures, popularly elected or partially nominated. These laws, whatever their source, are binding injunctions; if they were not binding and if their compliance with them were not obligatory, they would not be laws but mere wishes which could be treated as optional. It is the element of compulsion that distinguishes a law from an ordinary directive or expression of desire. Laws enacted by legislatures have also to be distinguished from laws of nature that indicates regularity and invariable sequence between specified conditions and specified phenomena.

All man–made laws are designed to regulate human conduct in the interest of society. In absence of such rules each person would regard himself free to do what he likes, regardless of impact of his actions on others' corresponding right of freedom of action. In fact, the very existence of society would be endangered if there were no universally recognized laws. A lawless society would mean endless confusion, possibly a reign of terror, and might result in a terrible mess where the only effective law of the jungle. Before regular laws were enacted and enforced, might was right: the physically stronger individual dominated the set–up and the weak person had perforce to surrender to the wishes of the might one or get destroyed. Laws thus enforce justice; provide equal rights and opportunities to everyone, weak or strong, male or female, rich or poor.

The details and events in the passage suggest that the friendship between the narrator and Mrs. Sennett would most accurately be described as ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.)

My expression must have changed. Are those children making too much noise? Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I shook my head in no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone–deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking.

To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eighteenth–century England and its literary figures. Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill.

Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's sit down was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six–inch–square piece of spice cake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates.

A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen–finish paper:

Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning?

Very sincerely yours, 
Carmen Sennett

One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. Papa came today, she said, and we've got to go back day after tomorrow.

Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here? 
She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year she came back, but now she means it. 
I said, Oh dear, scarcely knowing which side I was on.
It was awful at supper. I cried and cried. 
Did Theresa cry? 
Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do.
But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest? 
Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did. 
The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going back with them just to help settle. She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish–grandee air.

This isn't really goodbye, she said. I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my 
hands.  But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, No! No! No! to her with their puckered–up mouths.

One of the functions of laws, which is not mentioned in the passage is _________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Laws directly tell us how to behave (or not to behave) under various specific circumstances and prescribe remedies or punishments for individuals who do not comply with the law. It can be defined as a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. Legal principles are often derived from ethical ones, but legal principles deal more with the practical regulation of morality, or behaviours and activities. Additionally many legal principles deal with the inadequacies and imperfections in human nature, and the less than ideal behaviours of individuals or groups. Legal practices are also affected more by historical precedent, matters of definition, issues related to detectability and enforceability and evolution of new circumstances than are ethical ones.

Law is also defined as a body of enacted or customary rules recognized by a community as binding. The law of the Medes and the Persians were regarded as unalterable. While in ancient times the king laid down the law and the people implicitly obeyed him, in modern times laws are made by legislatures, popularly elected or partially nominated. These laws, whatever their source, are binding injunctions; if they were not binding and if their compliance with them were not obligatory, they would not be laws but mere wishes which could be treated as optional. It is the element of compulsion that distinguishes a law from an ordinary directive or expression of desire. Laws enacted by legislatures have also to be distinguished from laws of nature that indicates regularity and invariable sequence between specified conditions and specified phenomena.

All man–made laws are designed to regulate human conduct in the interest of society. In absence of such rules each person would regard himself free to do what he likes, regardless of impact of his actions on others' corresponding right of freedom of action. In fact, the very existence of society would be endangered if there were no universally recognized laws. A lawless society would mean endless confusion, possibly a reign of terror, and might result in a terrible mess where the only effective law of the jungle. Before regular laws were enacted and enforced, might was right: the physically stronger individual dominated the set–up and the weak person had perforce to surrender to the wishes of the might one or get destroyed. Laws thus enforce justice; provide equal rights and opportunities to everyone, weak or strong, male or female, rich or poor.

The second paragraph of the passage opens with a striking sentence. What method does the author employ to achieve its effect?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Central and South America have some of the world’s most unique species of wildlife. Perhaps, some are more familiar than others. Central and South America has many different groups of species, which include: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects. These groups of animals need to live in specific types of climates and habitats in order to ensure their survivorship.

South America is the home to some of the strangest, some of the loveliest and some of the most horrifying animals in the world. There can be few creatures more improbable than the sloth which spends its life in a permanent state of mute slow motion, hanging upside down in the tall forest trees: few more bizarre than the giant ant eater of the Savannahs, its tail enlarged into a shaggy banner and its jaws elongated into a curved and toothless tube.  On the other hand, beautiful birds are so common as to become almost unremarkable. Gaudy macaws flap through the forest, their splendid plumage contrasting incongruously with their harsh cries; and humming–birds, like tiny jewels, flit from flower to flower sipping nectar, their iridescent feathers flashing the colors of the rainbow as they fly.

The Amazonian rain forest, in Brazil alone, is the largest rain forest in the world. Many species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and birds occupy the canopy of this magnificent rain forest. The iguana lives in the trees high above from the ground. It has flattened sides and a long, strong tail, which gives it balance and stability when it leaps. It also has clawed feet, which allows the iguana to grip branches.

The poison dart frog is a tree frog that secretes poison when it gets attacked. Even a small amount of the toxin can be lethal to humans. Today, South American Indians use the poison to tip their arrowheads before hunting.

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A Close Reading of the Supreme Court's August 6, 2003 judgment in T. K. Rangarajan vs Government of Tamil Nadu and Others shows that the Court has, following in the footsteps of a string of illiberal verdicts on Government servants beginning in 1962, got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabjee, has done a public service by speaking up against the apex court's observation that there was no moral or equitable right to go on strike. Characterising this as "uncalled for" and "beyond comprehension," he has pointed out that the right of collective bargaining, including the right to strike, was an invaluable entitlement of workers and employees won through years of toil and struggle. Further, there could be "horrendous situations in which the employees have no effective mechanism for redressal of their grievances and are left with no option, but to resort to strike." Implicit in this opinion is a distinction between the merits of particular strikes and the legal and moral status of the right to strike. Here is the voice not merely of law and order and the tenets of `strong' governance — but of democratic entitlement and a sense of history. There were two core issues before the two–member bench. The first was the constitutionality, legality and rightness of the summary dismissal of about 170,000 State Government employees in Tamil Nadu under the State's Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), as amended post facto by an ordinance conferring on the Government the divine right of dismissal, without any application of mind and without giving the employees an opportunity to be heard. The second issue was the status of the right of workers and employees to freedom of association and collective bargaining, including the right to agitate and strike.

In response, the apex court resorted to the technique of providing practical relief in place of a determination of the issues of justice. The relief came through the Court's success in pressuring and persuading the Tamil Nadu Government "gracefully" to agree to reinstate the overwhelming majority of the dismissed employees - not unconditionally, of course, but on submission of an apology and an undertaking not to strike or indulge in "similar activities" in future. The Court rightly found fault with the Madras High Court for not properly construing its power under Article 226 of the Constitution (the power of High Courts to issue certain writs) to "exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to meet [an] unprecedented extraordinary situation having no parallel." Referring to the High Court's totally impractical ruling that over 170,000 employees should first exhaust the "alternative remedy" of going to the one–member State Administrative Tribunal for justice, the Supreme Court found "no justifiable reason for the High Court not to entertain the petitions on the ground of alternative remedy provided under the statute." There is no doubt that getting the Tamil Nadu Government to agree to having three retired High Court Judges decide on the fate of 6072 dismissed or suspended employees within approximately a month is a much better way of providing practical relief than what the High Court offered. The fact that the retired Judges would be nominated by the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court and not by the State Government, that they would decide the representations by the employees without taking into consideration the amended Section 7 of the Act, that the retired Judges' decision would be binding on the State Government, and that aggrieved employees would be free to challenge the decisions before "an appropriate forum" must also be welcomed. However, there is a disturbing implication in the double standards that apply to Ministers and ordinary Government employees facing criminal proceedings. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not ruled against the injustice in the Tamil Nadu Government's stand that 6072 employees could not claim "a right to be reinstated" because First Information Reports (FIRs) - which merely set the investigative ball in motion — had purportedly been filed by the State police against them. This contrasts glaringly with a situation where powerful politicians in government, at the Centre and in the States, remain in office unfazed by the fact that charge–sheets have been filed against them in grave criminal cases after the investigations have been completed, and charges have even been framed against them, in some cases, by a court of law.

What is most disturbing about the Supreme Court's judgment in the Tamil Nadu Government employees' case is the a–historical, iniquitous and democratically unsustainable position taken against the right to strike as a part of internationally recognised basic democratic rights. At one level, the judgment seems to revolve round the question whether Government employees have a constitutional or statutory right or moral and equitable justification to go on strike. However, the Court's observations in a case relating exclusively to Government employees go well beyond the immediate issues into status quoits absolutism in the social and philosophical domain. Such absolutism flies in the face of modern India's historical experience of worker agitations and strikes, and the assertion of the right to strike — an experience that begins in the late nineteenth century. Not just Communist organisers, but a range of freedom movement leaders supported the right to agitate and strike as an inalienable democratic right of workers and employees. This newspaper, which will soon be celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding, may be allowed to recall that during the militant 1921 strike by 10,000 workers of the Buckingham & Carnatic Mills in Chennai, its proprietor and Editor, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, boldly championed their cause - in The Hindu's columns and through direct involvement in the relief and solidarity efforts. The Supreme Court's latest stance contrasts sadly with both the substance and spirit of earlier progressive rights–led rulings by the apex court, delivered by outstanding jurists of the stature of V. R. Krishna Iyer, Y. V. Chandrachud, A. C. Gupta, D. A. Desai, Jagannatha Shetty and A. M. Ahmadi. Contrary to the impression given by the two–member bench's citation of judgments relating to Government employees, the Supreme Court from the early 1960s has generally upheld the justifiability of, and the moral reasons behind, strikes as legitimate actions by the working class. It is this stream of judicial pronouncements that Mr. Sorabjee was drawing on in criticising the Court's new–fangled observation that there was "no moral or equitable right to go on strike." In the recent case, the Court has cited, not always in context, various judgments to the effect that "employees have no fundamental right to strike," that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to "effective collective bargaining," that strikes cannot be justified "in the present–day situation" either for a "just or unjust cause," and that the strike weapon "does more harm than any justice." If these quotations were to match the ground reality, then India in 2003 could not claim to be a democracy with any kind of regard for its working people. It would be an authoritarian state out of step with the International Labour Organisation's Conventions on "Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise" and "The Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively", neither of which India has ratified. Undoing the damage done by the Supreme Court's observations in the Tamil Nadu case is the challenge before democratic, political India and it is heartening that the Attorney General has shown the way.

A unique characteristic of the law of nature is ______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Laws directly tell us how to behave (or not to behave) under various specific circumstances and prescribe remedies or punishments for individuals who do not comply with the law. It can be defined as a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. Legal principles are often derived from ethical ones, but legal principles deal more with the practical regulation of morality, or behaviours and activities. Additionally many legal principles deal with the inadequacies and imperfections in human nature, and the less than ideal behaviours of individuals or groups. Legal practices are also affected more by historical precedent, matters of definition, issues related to detectability and enforceability and evolution of new circumstances than are ethical ones.

Law is also defined as a body of enacted or customary rules recognized by a community as binding. The law of the Medes and the Persians were regarded as unalterable. While in ancient times the king laid down the law and the people implicitly obeyed him, in modern times laws are made by legislatures, popularly elected or partially nominated. These laws, whatever their source, are binding injunctions; if they were not binding and if their compliance with them were not obligatory, they would not be laws but mere wishes which could be treated as optional. It is the element of compulsion that distinguishes a law from an ordinary directive or expression of desire. Laws enacted by legislatures have also to be distinguished from laws of nature that indicates regularity and invariable sequence between specified conditions and specified phenomena.

All man–made laws are designed to regulate human conduct in the interest of society. In absence of such rules each person would regard himself free to do what he likes, regardless of impact of his actions on others' corresponding right of freedom of action. In fact, the very existence of society would be endangered if there were no universally recognized laws. A lawless society would mean endless confusion, possibly a reign of terror, and might result in a terrible mess where the only effective law of the jungle. Before regular laws were enacted and enforced, might was right: the physically stronger individual dominated the set–up and the weak person had perforce to surrender to the wishes of the might one or get destroyed. Laws thus enforce justice; provide equal rights and opportunities to everyone, weak or strong, male or female, rich or poor.

Given the evidence provided throughout the passage, the children probably silently mouth the word no because ________

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.)

My expression must have changed. Are those children making too much noise? Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I shook my head in no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone–deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking.

To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eighteenth–century England and its literary figures. Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill.

Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's sit down was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six–inch–square piece of spice cake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates.

A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen–finish paper:

Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning?

Very sincerely yours, 
Carmen Sennett

One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. Papa came today, she said, and we've got to go back day after tomorrow.

Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here? 
She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year she came back, but now she means it. 
I said, Oh dear, scarcely knowing which side I was on.
It was awful at supper. I cried and cried. 
Did Theresa cry? 
Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do.
But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest? 
Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did. 
The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going back with them just to help settle. She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish–grandee air.

This isn't really goodbye, she said. I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my 
hands.  But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, No! No! No! to her with their puckered–up mouths.

The overriding tone in the passage is ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

The unique feature of persuasion is that ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

''Matters of fact are to be ascertained'' implies that _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

Can we say that the author of this passage is a dogmatic fellow?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

The central idea of the passage is that _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

The author feels that religious men are _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

The most notable feature of civilization is that __________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

Which of the following statements is true in relation to paramis?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Moment– to – moment awareness – that is one accurate way to describe the great enterprise of becoming free. But there are other valid ways to characterize our path. In the broadest conception of the path, in the vast context of spiritual practice, we cultivate and nourish certain qualities that support and propel us forward into freedom. The Pali word ‘parami ‘refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.

The fact that we do not often find the word grace used by schools of Buddhism may allow us to connect with a fresh and immediate sense of the word by looking directly at our own experience. I feel that the paramis are one great influence in our experience that corresponds to the sense of grace, not as a theological doctrine or metaphysical concept but as something we can really feel and know.

The concept of parami reminds me of a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Parami does not come from some being outside ourselves; rather, it comes from our own gradually accumulated purity. A Buddhist understanding of reliance on a higher power would not necessarily involve reliance on some supernormal being. It is, rather, a reliance on these forces of purity in ourselves that are outside our small, constricted sense of I, and that constitute the source of grace in our lives.

In the long course of evolution in this lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes, we have generated a power of purity in our mind by acts of generosity and loving kindness, by deepening understanding and wisdom. This power becomes the karmic force that brings blessings in our life. So our own inner development, not an external agent, brings us this grace. Develop and strengthen the paramis within you, and from that source enjoy the blessings that result.

A poem by Galway Kinnell beautifully expresses the grace of blessings from within:

What is the Path?
Saint Francis and the Sow 
The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don’t flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self–blessing;
as Saint Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead 
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch 
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow 
began remembering all down her thick length, 
from the earthen snout all the way 
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, 
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine 
down through the great broken heart 
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering 
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and 
blowing beneath them: 
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Freedom cannot be found within the contraction of ego identification. The practice of Buddhadharma awakens us to an underlying reality beyond that identification. As the paramis develop through our practice – and they have been developing over lifetimes – we experience an emergence of something called dhammoja in Pali, the essence of Dharma. In deepening meditation practice, we drop out of the conceptual realm into an energy flow of awareness. Dhammoja is this energy that keeps pushing us to liberation. It is something greater than our limited sense of self.

I had a strong experience of dhammoja during one of my periods of practice in Burma. I had been in Asia for several months and was rapidly losing weight and physical strength. At one point my body became so weak that I would actually topple over from my sitting position. But even in this very weakened bodily condition, the energy from the inner flow of awareness remained so strong that the meditation continued to unfold. It was as if nothing could stop the onward–leading momentum. This experience reminded me of those stories of the Buddha visiting people who were sick or dying. He would often say to them, “Though your body is weak and full of pain, train your mind to stay alert and mindful.” A taste of dhammoja shows us that we can actually do what the Buddha advised.

Another understanding of grace comes from the Buddhist world view that recognizes beings on other planes of existence. In traditional Buddhist cultures people believe that devas, or celestial beings from higher planes, can work to protect, guide, and help us in different situations. The Buddha taught that devas are drawn to us through the power of our virtue and loving kindness. As we cultivate and purify our own morality and love, we open ourselves to receive their positive energy and beneficent help.

You may or may not choose to believe this aspect of Buddhist cosmology. Our freedom does not depend on external things. You can come to full liberation whether or not you find devas credible. But a phrase from Coleridge might suggest a useful attitude: the willing suspension of disbelief. Can we remain open to possibilities of things we do not yet know for ourselves, with neither blind belief nor blind disbelief? Many things that today seem commonplace in our world, one hundred years ago would have been called miracles.

Although strong hidden influences, given the right conditions, can assist us, they cannot accomplish the work of spiritual practice for us. The beneficence of external beings like devas is secondary to the inwardly developed, liberating force of dhammoja and the paramis.

Reflecting on our own paramis can be a great help in practice. The force of delusion is so strong that most beings never see the possibility of coming out of suffering. The very notion that the mind can be purified of greed, hatred, and delusion never even occurs to most people. Only a vast reservoir of parami brings us to practice and creates the motivation and interest to do this difficult, ultimately liberating work. Appreciating the paramis within ourselves can be a cause for great self–respect and joy. Often, in the midst of the many ups and downs of practice, we forget just how powerful the paramis are in each one of us. They engender true grace in our lives.

Classical dons praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation, this statement in the passage indicates ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

Which of the following options could be an appropriate title for the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Moment– to – moment awareness – that is one accurate way to describe the great enterprise of becoming free. But there are other valid ways to characterize our path. In the broadest conception of the path, in the vast context of spiritual practice, we cultivate and nourish certain qualities that support and propel us forward into freedom. The Pali word ‘parami ‘refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.

The fact that we do not often find the word grace used by schools of Buddhism may allow us to connect with a fresh and immediate sense of the word by looking directly at our own experience. I feel that the paramis are one great influence in our experience that corresponds to the sense of grace, not as a theological doctrine or metaphysical concept but as something we can really feel and know.

The concept of parami reminds me of a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Parami does not come from some being outside ourselves; rather, it comes from our own gradually accumulated purity. A Buddhist understanding of reliance on a higher power would not necessarily involve reliance on some supernormal being. It is, rather, a reliance on these forces of purity in ourselves that are outside our small, constricted sense of I, and that constitute the source of grace in our lives.

In the long course of evolution in this lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes, we have generated a power of purity in our mind by acts of generosity and loving kindness, by deepening understanding and wisdom. This power becomes the karmic force that brings blessings in our life. So our own inner development, not an external agent, brings us this grace. Develop and strengthen the paramis within you, and from that source enjoy the blessings that result.

A poem by Galway Kinnell beautifully expresses the grace of blessings from within:

What is the Path?
Saint Francis and the Sow 
The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don’t flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self–blessing;
as Saint Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead 
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch 
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow 
began remembering all down her thick length, 
from the earthen snout all the way 
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, 
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine 
down through the great broken heart 
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering 
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and 
blowing beneath them: 
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Freedom cannot be found within the contraction of ego identification. The practice of Buddhadharma awakens us to an underlying reality beyond that identification. As the paramis develop through our practice – and they have been developing over lifetimes – we experience an emergence of something called dhammoja in Pali, the essence of Dharma. In deepening meditation practice, we drop out of the conceptual realm into an energy flow of awareness. Dhammoja is this energy that keeps pushing us to liberation. It is something greater than our limited sense of self.

I had a strong experience of dhammoja during one of my periods of practice in Burma. I had been in Asia for several months and was rapidly losing weight and physical strength. At one point my body became so weak that I would actually topple over from my sitting position. But even in this very weakened bodily condition, the energy from the inner flow of awareness remained so strong that the meditation continued to unfold. It was as if nothing could stop the onward–leading momentum. This experience reminded me of those stories of the Buddha visiting people who were sick or dying. He would often say to them, “Though your body is weak and full of pain, train your mind to stay alert and mindful.” A taste of dhammoja shows us that we can actually do what the Buddha advised.

Another understanding of grace comes from the Buddhist world view that recognizes beings on other planes of existence. In traditional Buddhist cultures people believe that devas, or celestial beings from higher planes, can work to protect, guide, and help us in different situations. The Buddha taught that devas are drawn to us through the power of our virtue and loving kindness. As we cultivate and purify our own morality and love, we open ourselves to receive their positive energy and beneficent help.

You may or may not choose to believe this aspect of Buddhist cosmology. Our freedom does not depend on external things. You can come to full liberation whether or not you find devas credible. But a phrase from Coleridge might suggest a useful attitude: the willing suspension of disbelief. Can we remain open to possibilities of things we do not yet know for ourselves, with neither blind belief nor blind disbelief? Many things that today seem commonplace in our world, one hundred years ago would have been called miracles.

Although strong hidden influences, given the right conditions, can assist us, they cannot accomplish the work of spiritual practice for us. The beneficence of external beings like devas is secondary to the inwardly developed, liberating force of dhammoja and the paramis.

Reflecting on our own paramis can be a great help in practice. The force of delusion is so strong that most beings never see the possibility of coming out of suffering. The very notion that the mind can be purified of greed, hatred, and delusion never even occurs to most people. Only a vast reservoir of parami brings us to practice and creates the motivation and interest to do this difficult, ultimately liberating work. Appreciating the paramis within ourselves can be a cause for great self–respect and joy. Often, in the midst of the many ups and downs of practice, we forget just how powerful the paramis are in each one of us. They engender true grace in our lives.

The bud and the sow are symbols of _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Moment– to – moment awareness – that is one accurate way to describe the great enterprise of becoming free. But there are other valid ways to characterize our path. In the broadest conception of the path, in the vast context of spiritual practice, we cultivate and nourish certain qualities that support and propel us forward into freedom. The Pali word ‘parami ‘refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.

The fact that we do not often find the word grace used by schools of Buddhism may allow us to connect with a fresh and immediate sense of the word by looking directly at our own experience. I feel that the paramis are one great influence in our experience that corresponds to the sense of grace, not as a theological doctrine or metaphysical concept but as something we can really feel and know.

The concept of parami reminds me of a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Parami does not come from some being outside ourselves; rather, it comes from our own gradually accumulated purity. A Buddhist understanding of reliance on a higher power would not necessarily involve reliance on some supernormal being. It is, rather, a reliance on these forces of purity in ourselves that are outside our small, constricted sense of I, and that constitute the source of grace in our lives.

In the long course of evolution in this lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes, we have generated a power of purity in our mind by acts of generosity and loving kindness, by deepening understanding and wisdom. This power becomes the karmic force that brings blessings in our life. So our own inner development, not an external agent, brings us this grace. Develop and strengthen the paramis within you, and from that source enjoy the blessings that result.

A poem by Galway Kinnell beautifully expresses the grace of blessings from within:

What is the Path?
Saint Francis and the Sow 
The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don’t flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self–blessing;
as Saint Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead 
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch 
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow 
began remembering all down her thick length, 
from the earthen snout all the way 
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, 
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine 
down through the great broken heart 
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering 
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and 
blowing beneath them: 
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Freedom cannot be found within the contraction of ego identification. The practice of Buddhadharma awakens us to an underlying reality beyond that identification. As the paramis develop through our practice – and they have been developing over lifetimes – we experience an emergence of something called dhammoja in Pali, the essence of Dharma. In deepening meditation practice, we drop out of the conceptual realm into an energy flow of awareness. Dhammoja is this energy that keeps pushing us to liberation. It is something greater than our limited sense of self.

I had a strong experience of dhammoja during one of my periods of practice in Burma. I had been in Asia for several months and was rapidly losing weight and physical strength. At one point my body became so weak that I would actually topple over from my sitting position. But even in this very weakened bodily condition, the energy from the inner flow of awareness remained so strong that the meditation continued to unfold. It was as if nothing could stop the onward–leading momentum. This experience reminded me of those stories of the Buddha visiting people who were sick or dying. He would often say to them, “Though your body is weak and full of pain, train your mind to stay alert and mindful.” A taste of dhammoja shows us that we can actually do what the Buddha advised.

Another understanding of grace comes from the Buddhist world view that recognizes beings on other planes of existence. In traditional Buddhist cultures people believe that devas, or celestial beings from higher planes, can work to protect, guide, and help us in different situations. The Buddha taught that devas are drawn to us through the power of our virtue and loving kindness. As we cultivate and purify our own morality and love, we open ourselves to receive their positive energy and beneficent help.

You may or may not choose to believe this aspect of Buddhist cosmology. Our freedom does not depend on external things. You can come to full liberation whether or not you find devas credible. But a phrase from Coleridge might suggest a useful attitude: the willing suspension of disbelief. Can we remain open to possibilities of things we do not yet know for ourselves, with neither blind belief nor blind disbelief? Many things that today seem commonplace in our world, one hundred years ago would have been called miracles.

Although strong hidden influences, given the right conditions, can assist us, they cannot accomplish the work of spiritual practice for us. The beneficence of external beings like devas is secondary to the inwardly developed, liberating force of dhammoja and the paramis.

Reflecting on our own paramis can be a great help in practice. The force of delusion is so strong that most beings never see the possibility of coming out of suffering. The very notion that the mind can be purified of greed, hatred, and delusion never even occurs to most people. Only a vast reservoir of parami brings us to practice and creates the motivation and interest to do this difficult, ultimately liberating work. Appreciating the paramis within ourselves can be a cause for great self–respect and joy. Often, in the midst of the many ups and downs of practice, we forget just how powerful the paramis are in each one of us. They engender true grace in our lives.

Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind. This line indicates ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Man, It would seem has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility that, to us, is truly, astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who lived on the edge of the forest found another method; they looked out over the fields and discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of various kinds quite as pleasant as coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the open on the ground. They soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to soul, which are more effective missiles than coconuts.

I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths, the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not own word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or less degree in the school of every civilised country.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social cooperation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God or with mystic insight, or with any of the mailers with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. 'Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to...Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

Does the author believe in the existence of Devas?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Moment– to – moment awareness – that is one accurate way to describe the great enterprise of becoming free. But there are other valid ways to characterize our path. In the broadest conception of the path, in the vast context of spiritual practice, we cultivate and nourish certain qualities that support and propel us forward into freedom. The Pali word ‘parami ‘refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.

The fact that we do not often find the word grace used by schools of Buddhism may allow us to connect with a fresh and immediate sense of the word by looking directly at our own experience. I feel that the paramis are one great influence in our experience that corresponds to the sense of grace, not as a theological doctrine or metaphysical concept but as something we can really feel and know.

The concept of parami reminds me of a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Parami does not come from some being outside ourselves; rather, it comes from our own gradually accumulated purity. A Buddhist understanding of reliance on a higher power would not necessarily involve reliance on some supernormal being. It is, rather, a reliance on these forces of purity in ourselves that are outside our small, constricted sense of I, and that constitute the source of grace in our lives.

In the long course of evolution in this lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes, we have generated a power of purity in our mind by acts of generosity and loving kindness, by deepening understanding and wisdom. This power becomes the karmic force that brings blessings in our life. So our own inner development, not an external agent, brings us this grace. Develop and strengthen the paramis within you, and from that source enjoy the blessings that result.

A poem by Galway Kinnell beautifully expresses the grace of blessings from within:

What is the Path?
Saint Francis and the Sow 
The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don’t flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self–blessing;
as Saint Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead 
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch 
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow 
began remembering all down her thick length, 
from the earthen snout all the way 
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, 
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine 
down through the great broken heart 
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering 
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and 
blowing beneath them: 
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Freedom cannot be found within the contraction of ego identification. The practice of Buddhadharma awakens us to an underlying reality beyond that identification. As the paramis develop through our practice – and they have been developing over lifetimes – we experience an emergence of something called dhammoja in Pali, the essence of Dharma. In deepening meditation practice, we drop out of the conceptual realm into an energy flow of awareness. Dhammoja is this energy that keeps pushing us to liberation. It is something greater than our limited sense of self.

I had a strong experience of dhammoja during one of my periods of practice in Burma. I had been in Asia for several months and was rapidly losing weight and physical strength. At one point my body became so weak that I would actually topple over from my sitting position. But even in this very weakened bodily condition, the energy from the inner flow of awareness remained so strong that the meditation continued to unfold. It was as if nothing could stop the onward–leading momentum. This experience reminded me of those stories of the Buddha visiting people who were sick or dying. He would often say to them, “Though your body is weak and full of pain, train your mind to stay alert and mindful.” A taste of dhammoja shows us that we can actually do what the Buddha advised.

Another understanding of grace comes from the Buddhist world view that recognizes beings on other planes of existence. In traditional Buddhist cultures people believe that devas, or celestial beings from higher planes, can work to protect, guide, and help us in different situations. The Buddha taught that devas are drawn to us through the power of our virtue and loving kindness. As we cultivate and purify our own morality and love, we open ourselves to receive their positive energy and beneficent help.

You may or may not choose to believe this aspect of Buddhist cosmology. Our freedom does not depend on external things. You can come to full liberation whether or not you find devas credible. But a phrase from Coleridge might suggest a useful attitude: the willing suspension of disbelief. Can we remain open to possibilities of things we do not yet know for ourselves, with neither blind belief nor blind disbelief? Many things that today seem commonplace in our world, one hundred years ago would have been called miracles.

Although strong hidden influences, given the right conditions, can assist us, they cannot accomplish the work of spiritual practice for us. The beneficence of external beings like devas is secondary to the inwardly developed, liberating force of dhammoja and the paramis.

Reflecting on our own paramis can be a great help in practice. The force of delusion is so strong that most beings never see the possibility of coming out of suffering. The very notion that the mind can be purified of greed, hatred, and delusion never even occurs to most people. Only a vast reservoir of parami brings us to practice and creates the motivation and interest to do this difficult, ultimately liberating work. Appreciating the paramis within ourselves can be a cause for great self–respect and joy. Often, in the midst of the many ups and downs of practice, we forget just how powerful the paramis are in each one of us. They engender true grace in our lives.

What does the author think about the development in western science in the last 2500 years?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Guntur & Nalgonda (A.P.): "The farmers ask us what seeds to use and we advise them," says Nageswara Rao in the district headquarters of Nalgonda. He works in one of the biggest seed and fertilizer stores in town, owned by a relative of his. "We have no scientific qualification," admits the polite Rao. "We only guide them by experience. We ourselves consult the manufacturers." Seeds, fertilizer and pesticide dealers are at the centre of a growing controversy in Andhra Pradesh. They are the new moneylenders to a peasantry strapped for credit. "The banks have given no loans in the past seven years," says Malla Reddy, general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS). "So many farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase." With the seed dealers charging on hefty interest rates to their credit sales, the problem gets sharper. Nageswara Rao admits to a charge of two per cent a month on bills, but says there is no choice. Times are bad. "Besides, we are quite lenient as we wish to help the farmer. Sometimes, they agree to pay in 60 days but may not do so for 90 to 120 days."

Farmers in Nalgonda's villages are skeptical of this altruism. "Each month's delay adds to the interest," points out P. Bhiksham in G. Edavalli village. Yet, the farmer often goes by the dealer's advice on what products to buy. "The dealer has emerged an `expert', because the others have gone," says Malla Reddy. The APRS leader points to "over 2,800 vacancies in the Department of Agriculture. The last Government only appointed 7,000 unqualified people on contract. They had no background in agriculture." Many of the farmers' suicides in the State have been largely debt driven which makes the seed dealer's role more of a problem. Some of those who took their lives did so because of both, huge debts and crop failures due to spurious seeds and pesticides. But there is little punishment for those selling fake seeds. "Just Rs. 500," says the new Agriculture Minister, Raghuveera Reddy. He hopes to bring some order to a system now out of control. "We have recovered spurious seeds worth Rs. 7 crore in raids in only the past month," he told us. But the offenders are people for whom Rs. 500 fine is a joke. So the Government intends to bring in a new Seed Act at the State level. Andhra Pradesh's record of curbing such fraud in the past has been dismal. "Till date, no case filed by the State against a seed or pesticide dealer has ever been won by the Government," says Yalamanchili Shivaji. He is a former Rajya Sabha MP and a well–known farmers' leader here. "In contrast," he claims, "almost no such case filed by the Tamil Government was lost." Dr. Shivaji also points out that Andhra Pradesh has fewer agriculture and extension officers than any southern State. "The Naidu Government was bent on privatizing extension work," says Malla Reddy. The matter gets more complex given the clout the seed dealers have gained. And the alarming rise in the cost of inputs they control. Per acre costs have exploded since 1996.

As farmers in G. Edavalli explain: The cost of paddy seeds an acre almost tripled from Rs. 120 in 1996 to around Rs. 350 now. That of urea nearly doubled from around 120 then to nearly Rs. 230 now. Pesticide, ammonia phosphate, zinc – all these have more than doubled in cost." A farmer might buy most of these inputs from the same dealer. Other expenses, too, have risen. Tractors cost a lot more than manual work did. "In 1996," say farmers in G. Edavalli, "we could raise an acre of paddy within Rs. 3,500. Today that is Rs. 7,500 or more." Add higher power tariffs and water costs and people are now paying well over double what they did in 1996. Those who left food crops to experiment with cash crops in this period pay still more. The 24 per cent interest that seed dealers tag on makes the burden more worse. And with seed companies hawking a "germination rate" of only 65 per cent, farmers get even less value for money. This is Telangana. Input costs are higher in coastal region where, too, suicides have been on. The use of high cost items such as fertilizers and pesticides is greatest in Andhra Pradesh. The All–India average for fertilizer consumption per hectare was 88 kg in 2001. In Andhra Pradesh it was almost 180 kg. It is even greater in the coastal region. "Over use of fertilizer is a huge problem," says Malla Reddy of the APRS.

"At the same time," he says "tenant farmers faced massive increases in the cost of leasing land." Such tenants make up nearly 60 per cent of all farmers in many parts of the State, more so in the coastal region. From the late 1990s, they were asked by the landlords to pay (as lease cost) between 21 and 25 bags of paddy an acre each year. This, when their output was barely 30 bags an acre. So the tenant farmer is left with five bags of paddy and another three of black gram that he sows after paddy. And that is in a good year!" By the late 1990s, the farmer was wilting. In 1996, "he was making Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 an acre on an input cost of Rs. 3,500. Now he is making Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 2,000 an acre on cost close to Rs. 8,000. Between then and now, productivity has only risen from 25 to under 30 bags an acre. This huge use of fertilizer has not helped much." "But at the moment when input costs were so high and rewards so poor," says the Nalgonda ex–MLA, Narasimha Reddy, "the banks stopped giving the farmer any credit. And output prices were crashing due to rigged and volatile markets. There was also zero investment in agriculture. This crisis was man–made." That was how the suicides began. "Add drought and crop failure to that," says Reddy, "and the suicides only got worse."

Which among the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

I. Crop failures due to spurious seeds and pesticides were primarily responsible for the suicides committed by the farmers.
II. The farmers who shifted from food crops to cash crops were the only ones who were not affected.
III. A low germination rate of seed added to the woes of the farmers.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Guntur & Nalgonda (A.P.): "The farmers ask us what seeds to use and we advise them," says Nageswara Rao in the district headquarters of Nalgonda. He works in one of the biggest seed and fertilizer stores in town, owned by a relative of his. "We have no scientific qualification," admits the polite Rao. "We only guide them by experience. We ourselves consult the manufacturers." Seeds, fertilizer and pesticide dealers are at the centre of a growing controversy in Andhra Pradesh. They are the new moneylenders to a peasantry strapped for credit. "The banks have given no loans in the past seven years," says Malla Reddy, general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS). "So many farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase." With the seed dealers charging on hefty interest rates to their credit sales, the problem gets sharper. Nageswara Rao admits to a charge of two per cent a month on bills, but says there is no choice. Times are bad. "Besides, we are quite lenient as we wish to help the farmer. Sometimes, they agree to pay in 60 days but may not do so for 90 to 120 days."

Farmers in Nalgonda's villages are skeptical of this altruism. "Each month's delay adds to the interest," points out P. Bhiksham in G. Edavalli village. Yet, the farmer often goes by the dealer's advice on what products to buy. "The dealer has emerged an `expert', because the others have gone," says Malla Reddy. The APRS leader points to "over 2,800 vacancies in the Department of Agriculture. The last Government only appointed 7,000 unqualified people on contract. They had no background in agriculture." Many of the farmers' suicides in the State have been largely debt driven which makes the seed dealer's role more of a problem. Some of those who took their lives did so because of both, huge debts and crop failures due to spurious seeds and pesticides. But there is little punishment for those selling fake seeds. "Just Rs. 500," says the new Agriculture Minister, Raghuveera Reddy. He hopes to bring some order to a system now out of control. "We have recovered spurious seeds worth Rs. 7 crore in raids in only the past month," he told us. But the offenders are people for whom Rs. 500 fine is a joke. So the Government intends to bring in a new Seed Act at the State level. Andhra Pradesh's record of curbing such fraud in the past has been dismal. "Till date, no case filed by the State against a seed or pesticide dealer has ever been won by the Government," says Yalamanchili Shivaji. He is a former Rajya Sabha MP and a well–known farmers' leader here. "In contrast," he claims, "almost no such case filed by the Tamil Government was lost." Dr. Shivaji also points out that Andhra Pradesh has fewer agriculture and extension officers than any southern State. "The Naidu Government was bent on privatizing extension work," says Malla Reddy. The matter gets more complex given the clout the seed dealers have gained. And the alarming rise in the cost of inputs they control. Per acre costs have exploded since 1996.

As farmers in G. Edavalli explain: The cost of paddy seeds an acre almost tripled from Rs. 120 in 1996 to around Rs. 350 now. That of urea nearly doubled from around 120 then to nearly Rs. 230 now. Pesticide, ammonia phosphate, zinc – all these have more than doubled in cost." A farmer might buy most of these inputs from the same dealer. Other expenses, too, have risen. Tractors cost a lot more than manual work did. "In 1996," say farmers in G. Edavalli, "we could raise an acre of paddy within Rs. 3,500. Today that is Rs. 7,500 or more." Add higher power tariffs and water costs and people are now paying well over double what they did in 1996. Those who left food crops to experiment with cash crops in this period pay still more. The 24 per cent interest that seed dealers tag on makes the burden more worse. And with seed companies hawking a "germination rate" of only 65 per cent, farmers get even less value for money. This is Telangana. Input costs are higher in coastal region where, too, suicides have been on. The use of high cost items such as fertilizers and pesticides is greatest in Andhra Pradesh. The All–India average for fertilizer consumption per hectare was 88 kg in 2001. In Andhra Pradesh it was almost 180 kg. It is even greater in the coastal region. "Over use of fertilizer is a huge problem," says Malla Reddy of the APRS.

"At the same time," he says "tenant farmers faced massive increases in the cost of leasing land." Such tenants make up nearly 60 per cent of all farmers in many parts of the State, more so in the coastal region. From the late 1990s, they were asked by the landlords to pay (as lease cost) between 21 and 25 bags of paddy an acre each year. This, when their output was barely 30 bags an acre. So the tenant farmer is left with five bags of paddy and another three of black gram that he sows after paddy. And that is in a good year!" By the late 1990s, the farmer was wilting. In 1996, "he was making Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 an acre on an input cost of Rs. 3,500. Now he is making Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 2,000 an acre on cost close to Rs. 8,000. Between then and now, productivity has only risen from 25 to under 30 bags an acre. This huge use of fertilizer has not helped much." "But at the moment when input costs were so high and rewards so poor," says the Nalgonda ex–MLA, Narasimha Reddy, "the banks stopped giving the farmer any credit. And output prices were crashing due to rigged and volatile markets. There was also zero investment in agriculture. This crisis was man–made." That was how the suicides began. "Add drought and crop failure to that," says Reddy, "and the suicides only got worse."

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Guntur & Nalgonda (A.P.): "The farmers ask us what seeds to use and we advise them," says Nageswara Rao in the district headquarters of Nalgonda. He works in one of the biggest seed and fertilizer stores in town, owned by a relative of his. "We have no scientific qualification," admits the polite Rao. "We only guide them by experience. We ourselves consult the manufacturers." Seeds, fertilizer and pesticide dealers are at the centre of a growing controversy in Andhra Pradesh. They are the new moneylenders to a peasantry strapped for credit. "The banks have given no loans in the past seven years," says Malla Reddy, general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS). "So many farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase." With the seed dealers charging on hefty interest rates to their credit sales, the problem gets sharper. Nageswara Rao admits to a charge of two per cent a month on bills, but says there is no choice. Times are bad. "Besides, we are quite lenient as we wish to help the farmer. Sometimes, they agree to pay in 60 days but may not do so for 90 to 120 days."

Farmers in Nalgonda's villages are skeptical of this altruism. "Each month's delay adds to the interest," points out P. Bhiksham in G. Edavalli village. Yet, the farmer often goes by the dealer's advice on what products to buy. "The dealer has emerged an `expert', because the others have gone," says Malla Reddy. The APRS leader points to "over 2,800 vacancies in the Department of Agriculture. The last Government only appointed 7,000 unqualified people on contract. They had no background in agriculture." Many of the farmers' suicides in the State have been largely debt driven which makes the seed dealer's role more of a problem. Some of those who took their lives did so because of both, huge debts and crop failures due to spurious seeds and pesticides. But there is little punishment for those selling fake seeds. "Just Rs. 500," says the new Agriculture Minister, Raghuveera Reddy. He hopes to bring some order to a system now out of control. "We have recovered spurious seeds worth Rs. 7 crore in raids in only the past month," he told us. But the offenders are people for whom Rs. 500 fine is a joke. So the Government intends to bring in a new Seed Act at the State level. Andhra Pradesh's record of curbing such fraud in the past has been dismal. "Till date, no case filed by the State against a seed or pesticide dealer has ever been won by the Government," says Yalamanchili Shivaji. He is a former Rajya Sabha MP and a well–known farmers' leader here. "In contrast," he claims, "almost no such case filed by the Tamil Government was lost." Dr. Shivaji also points out that Andhra Pradesh has fewer agriculture and extension officers than any southern State. "The Naidu Government was bent on privatizing extension work," says Malla Reddy. The matter gets more complex given the clout the seed dealers have gained. And the alarming rise in the cost of inputs they control. Per acre costs have exploded since 1996.

As farmers in G. Edavalli explain: The cost of paddy seeds an acre almost tripled from Rs. 120 in 1996 to around Rs. 350 now. That of urea nearly doubled from around 120 then to nearly Rs. 230 now. Pesticide, ammonia phosphate, zinc – all these have more than doubled in cost." A farmer might buy most of these inputs from the same dealer. Other expenses, too, have risen. Tractors cost a lot more than manual work did. "In 1996," say farmers in G. Edavalli, "we could raise an acre of paddy within Rs. 3,500. Today that is Rs. 7,500 or more." Add higher power tariffs and water costs and people are now paying well over double what they did in 1996. Those who left food crops to experiment with cash crops in this period pay still more. The 24 per cent interest that seed dealers tag on makes the burden more worse. And with seed companies hawking a "germination rate" of only 65 per cent, farmers get even less value for money. This is Telangana. Input costs are higher in coastal region where, too, suicides have been on. The use of high cost items such as fertilizers and pesticides is greatest in Andhra Pradesh. The All–India average for fertilizer consumption per hectare was 88 kg in 2001. In Andhra Pradesh it was almost 180 kg. It is even greater in the coastal region. "Over use of fertilizer is a huge problem," says Malla Reddy of the APRS.

"At the same time," he says "tenant farmers faced massive increases in the cost of leasing land." Such tenants make up nearly 60 per cent of all farmers in many parts of the State, more so in the coastal region. From the late 1990s, they were asked by the landlords to pay (as lease cost) between 21 and 25 bags of paddy an acre each year. This, when their output was barely 30 bags an acre. So the tenant farmer is left with five bags of paddy and another three of black gram that he sows after paddy. And that is in a good year!" By the late 1990s, the farmer was wilting. In 1996, "he was making Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 an acre on an input cost of Rs. 3,500. Now he is making Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 2,000 an acre on cost close to Rs. 8,000. Between then and now, productivity has only risen from 25 to under 30 bags an acre. This huge use of fertilizer has not helped much." "But at the moment when input costs were so high and rewards so poor," says the Nalgonda ex–MLA, Narasimha Reddy, "the banks stopped giving the farmer any credit. And output prices were crashing due to rigged and volatile markets. There was also zero investment in agriculture. This crisis was man–made." That was how the suicides began. "Add drought and crop failure to that," says Reddy, "and the suicides only got worse."

What does the author assume for Thales and Anaximander?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

If physics leads us today to a worldview that is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning 2,500 years ago. It is interesting to follow the evolution of Western science along its spiral path, starting from the mystical philosophies of the early Greeks, rising and unfolding in an impressive development of intellectual thought that increasingly turned away from its mystical origins to develop a world view which is in sharp contrast to that of the Far East. In its most recent stages, Western science is finally overcoming this view and coming back to those of the early Greek and the Eastern philosophies. This time, however; it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.

The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or real constitution, of things that they called ‘physics’. The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things.

This, of course, is also the central aim of all mystics and the philosophy of the Milesian school and indeed havea strong mystical flavor. The Milesians were called ‘hylozoists’, or ‘those who think matter is alive’, by the later Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter, since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the ‘physics’, endowed with life and spirituality. Thus, Thales declared all things to be full of goods and Anaximander saw the universe as a kind of organism which was supported by ‘pneuma’, the cosmic breath, in the same way as the human body is supported by air.

What can be the title of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

If physics leads us today to a worldview that is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning 2,500 years ago. It is interesting to follow the evolution of Western science along its spiral path, starting from the mystical philosophies of the early Greeks, rising and unfolding in an impressive development of intellectual thought that increasingly turned away from its mystical origins to develop a world view which is in sharp contrast to that of the Far East. In its most recent stages, Western science is finally overcoming this view and coming back to those of the early Greek and the Eastern philosophies. This time, however; it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.

The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or real constitution, of things that they called ‘physics’. The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things.

This, of course, is also the central aim of all mystics and the philosophy of the Milesian school and indeed havea strong mystical flavor. The Milesians were called ‘hylozoists’, or ‘those who think matter is alive’, by the later Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter, since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the ‘physics’, endowed with life and spirituality. Thus, Thales declared all things to be full of goods and Anaximander saw the universe as a kind of organism which was supported by ‘pneuma’, the cosmic breath, in the same way as the human body is supported by air.

What is the tone of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

If physics leads us today to a worldview that is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning 2,500 years ago. It is interesting to follow the evolution of Western science along its spiral path, starting from the mystical philosophies of the early Greeks, rising and unfolding in an impressive development of intellectual thought that increasingly turned away from its mystical origins to develop a world view which is in sharp contrast to that of the Far East. In its most recent stages, Western science is finally overcoming this view and coming back to those of the early Greek and the Eastern philosophies. This time, however; it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.

The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or real constitution, of things that they called ‘physics’. The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things.

This, of course, is also the central aim of all mystics and the philosophy of the Milesian school and indeed havea strong mystical flavor. The Milesians were called ‘hylozoists’, or ‘those who think matter is alive’, by the later Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter, since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the ‘physics’, endowed with life and spirituality. Thus, Thales declared all things to be full of goods and Anaximander saw the universe as a kind of organism which was supported by ‘pneuma’, the cosmic breath, in the same way as the human body is supported by air.

With what the author is most likely to disagree?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Moment– to – moment awareness – that is one accurate way to describe the great enterprise of becoming free. But there are other valid ways to characterize our path. In the broadest conception of the path, in the vast context of spiritual practice, we cultivate and nourish certain qualities that support and propel us forward into freedom. The Pali word ‘parami ‘refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.

The fact that we do not often find the word grace used by schools of Buddhism may allow us to connect with a fresh and immediate sense of the word by looking directly at our own experience. I feel that the paramis are one great influence in our experience that corresponds to the sense of grace, not as a theological doctrine or metaphysical concept but as something we can really feel and know.

The concept of parami reminds me of a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Parami does not come from some being outside ourselves; rather, it comes from our own gradually accumulated purity. A Buddhist understanding of reliance on a higher power would not necessarily involve reliance on some supernormal being. It is, rather, a reliance on these forces of purity in ourselves that are outside our small, constricted sense of I, and that constitute the source of grace in our lives.

In the long course of evolution in this lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes, we have generated a power of purity in our mind by acts of generosity and loving kindness, by deepening understanding and wisdom. This power becomes the karmic force that brings blessings in our life. So our own inner development, not an external agent, brings us this grace. Develop and strengthen the paramis within you, and from that source enjoy the blessings that result.

A poem by Galway Kinnell beautifully expresses the grace of blessings from within:

What is the Path?
Saint Francis and the Sow 
The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don’t flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self–blessing;
as Saint Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead 
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch 
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow 
began remembering all down her thick length, 
from the earthen snout all the way 
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, 
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine 
down through the great broken heart 
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering 
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and 
blowing beneath them: 
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Freedom cannot be found within the contraction of ego identification. The practice of Buddhadharma awakens us to an underlying reality beyond that identification. As the paramis develop through our practice – and they have been developing over lifetimes – we experience an emergence of something called dhammoja in Pali, the essence of Dharma. In deepening meditation practice, we drop out of the conceptual realm into an energy flow of awareness. Dhammoja is this energy that keeps pushing us to liberation. It is something greater than our limited sense of self.

I had a strong experience of dhammoja during one of my periods of practice in Burma. I had been in Asia for several months and was rapidly losing weight and physical strength. At one point my body became so weak that I would actually topple over from my sitting position. But even in this very weakened bodily condition, the energy from the inner flow of awareness remained so strong that the meditation continued to unfold. It was as if nothing could stop the onward–leading momentum. This experience reminded me of those stories of the Buddha visiting people who were sick or dying. He would often say to them, “Though your body is weak and full of pain, train your mind to stay alert and mindful.” A taste of dhammoja shows us that we can actually do what the Buddha advised.

Another understanding of grace comes from the Buddhist world view that recognizes beings on other planes of existence. In traditional Buddhist cultures people believe that devas, or celestial beings from higher planes, can work to protect, guide, and help us in different situations. The Buddha taught that devas are drawn to us through the power of our virtue and loving kindness. As we cultivate and purify our own morality and love, we open ourselves to receive their positive energy and beneficent help.

You may or may not choose to believe this aspect of Buddhist cosmology. Our freedom does not depend on external things. You can come to full liberation whether or not you find devas credible. But a phrase from Coleridge might suggest a useful attitude: the willing suspension of disbelief. Can we remain open to possibilities of things we do not yet know for ourselves, with neither blind belief nor blind disbelief? Many things that today seem commonplace in our world, one hundred years ago would have been called miracles.

Although strong hidden influences, given the right conditions, can assist us, they cannot accomplish the work of spiritual practice for us. The beneficence of external beings like devas is secondary to the inwardly developed, liberating force of dhammoja and the paramis.

Reflecting on our own paramis can be a great help in practice. The force of delusion is so strong that most beings never see the possibility of coming out of suffering. The very notion that the mind can be purified of greed, hatred, and delusion never even occurs to most people. Only a vast reservoir of parami brings us to practice and creates the motivation and interest to do this difficult, ultimately liberating work. Appreciating the paramis within ourselves can be a cause for great self–respect and joy. Often, in the midst of the many ups and downs of practice, we forget just how powerful the paramis are in each one of us. They engender true grace in our lives.

All of the following statements can be inferred from the passage, except ________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Guntur & Nalgonda (A.P.): "The farmers ask us what seeds to use and we advise them," says Nageswara Rao in the district headquarters of Nalgonda. He works in one of the biggest seed and fertilizer stores in town, owned by a relative of his. "We have no scientific qualification," admits the polite Rao. "We only guide them by experience. We ourselves consult the manufacturers." Seeds, fertilizer and pesticide dealers are at the centre of a growing controversy in Andhra Pradesh. They are the new moneylenders to a peasantry strapped for credit. "The banks have given no loans in the past seven years," says Malla Reddy, general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS). "So many farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase." With the seed dealers charging on hefty interest rates to their credit sales, the problem gets sharper. Nageswara Rao admits to a charge of two per cent a month on bills, but says there is no choice. Times are bad. "Besides, we are quite lenient as we wish to help the farmer. Sometimes, they agree to pay in 60 days but may not do so for 90 to 120 days."

Farmers in Nalgonda's villages are skeptical of this altruism. "Each month's delay adds to the interest," points out P. Bhiksham in G. Edavalli village. Yet, the farmer often goes by the dealer's advice on what products to buy. "The dealer has emerged an `expert', because the others have gone," says Malla Reddy. The APRS leader points to "over 2,800 vacancies in the Department of Agriculture. The last Government only appointed 7,000 unqualified people on contract. They had no background in agriculture." Many of the farmers' suicides in the State have been largely debt driven which makes the seed dealer's role more of a problem. Some of those who took their lives did so because of both, huge debts and crop failures due to spurious seeds and pesticides. But there is little punishment for those selling fake seeds. "Just Rs. 500," says the new Agriculture Minister, Raghuveera Reddy. He hopes to bring some order to a system now out of control. "We have recovered spurious seeds worth Rs. 7 crore in raids in only the past month," he told us. But the offenders are people for whom Rs. 500 fine is a joke. So the Government intends to bring in a new Seed Act at the State level. Andhra Pradesh's record of curbing such fraud in the past has been dismal. "Till date, no case filed by the State against a seed or pesticide dealer has ever been won by the Government," says Yalamanchili Shivaji. He is a former Rajya Sabha MP and a well–known farmers' leader here. "In contrast," he claims, "almost no such case filed by the Tamil Government was lost." Dr. Shivaji also points out that Andhra Pradesh has fewer agriculture and extension officers than any southern State. "The Naidu Government was bent on privatizing extension work," says Malla Reddy. The matter gets more complex given the clout the seed dealers have gained. And the alarming rise in the cost of inputs they control. Per acre costs have exploded since 1996.

As farmers in G. Edavalli explain: The cost of paddy seeds an acre almost tripled from Rs. 120 in 1996 to around Rs. 350 now. That of urea nearly doubled from around 120 then to nearly Rs. 230 now. Pesticide, ammonia phosphate, zinc – all these have more than doubled in cost." A farmer might buy most of these inputs from the same dealer. Other expenses, too, have risen. Tractors cost a lot more than manual work did. "In 1996," say farmers in G. Edavalli, "we could raise an acre of paddy within Rs. 3,500. Today that is Rs. 7,500 or more." Add higher power tariffs and water costs and people are now paying well over double what they did in 1996. Those who left food crops to experiment with cash crops in this period pay still more. The 24 per cent interest that seed dealers tag on makes the burden more worse. And with seed companies hawking a "germination rate" of only 65 per cent, farmers get even less value for money. This is Telangana. Input costs are higher in coastal region where, too, suicides have been on. The use of high cost items such as fertilizers and pesticides is greatest in Andhra Pradesh. The All–India average for fertilizer consumption per hectare was 88 kg in 2001. In Andhra Pradesh it was almost 180 kg. It is even greater in the coastal region. "Over use of fertilizer is a huge problem," says Malla Reddy of the APRS.

"At the same time," he says "tenant farmers faced massive increases in the cost of leasing land." Such tenants make up nearly 60 per cent of all farmers in many parts of the State, more so in the coastal region. From the late 1990s, they were asked by the landlords to pay (as lease cost) between 21 and 25 bags of paddy an acre each year. This, when their output was barely 30 bags an acre. So the tenant farmer is left with five bags of paddy and another three of black gram that he sows after paddy. And that is in a good year!" By the late 1990s, the farmer was wilting. In 1996, "he was making Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 an acre on an input cost of Rs. 3,500. Now he is making Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 2,000 an acre on cost close to Rs. 8,000. Between then and now, productivity has only risen from 25 to under 30 bags an acre. This huge use of fertilizer has not helped much." "But at the moment when input costs were so high and rewards so poor," says the Nalgonda ex–MLA, Narasimha Reddy, "the banks stopped giving the farmer any credit. And output prices were crashing due to rigged and volatile markets. There was also zero investment in agriculture. This crisis was man–made." That was how the suicides began. "Add drought and crop failure to that," says Reddy, "and the suicides only got worse."

Early Greek philosophers were considered by the later Greeks as more ______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

If physics leads us today to a worldview that is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning 2,500 years ago. It is interesting to follow the evolution of Western science along its spiral path, starting from the mystical philosophies of the early Greeks, rising and unfolding in an impressive development of intellectual thought that increasingly turned away from its mystical origins to develop a world view which is in sharp contrast to that of the Far East. In its most recent stages, Western science is finally overcoming this view and coming back to those of the early Greek and the Eastern philosophies. This time, however; it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.

The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or real constitution, of things that they called ‘physics’. The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things.

This, of course, is also the central aim of all mystics and the philosophy of the Milesian school and indeed havea strong mystical flavor. The Milesians were called ‘hylozoists’, or ‘those who think matter is alive’, by the later Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter, since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the ‘physics’, endowed with life and spirituality. Thus, Thales declared all things to be full of goods and Anaximander saw the universe as a kind of organism which was supported by ‘pneuma’, the cosmic breath, in the same way as the human body is supported by air.

Select from the following statements, the option that best states the function of paragraph 2.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Guntur & Nalgonda (A.P.): "The farmers ask us what seeds to use and we advise them," says Nageswara Rao in the district headquarters of Nalgonda. He works in one of the biggest seed and fertilizer stores in town, owned by a relative of his. "We have no scientific qualification," admits the polite Rao. "We only guide them by experience. We ourselves consult the manufacturers." Seeds, fertilizer and pesticide dealers are at the centre of a growing controversy in Andhra Pradesh. They are the new moneylenders to a peasantry strapped for credit. "The banks have given no loans in the past seven years," says Malla Reddy, general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS). "So many farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase." With the seed dealers charging on hefty interest rates to their credit sales, the problem gets sharper. Nageswara Rao admits to a charge of two per cent a month on bills, but says there is no choice. Times are bad. "Besides, we are quite lenient as we wish to help the farmer. Sometimes, they agree to pay in 60 days but may not do so for 90 to 120 days."

Farmers in Nalgonda's villages are skeptical of this altruism. "Each month's delay adds to the interest," points out P. Bhiksham in G. Edavalli village. Yet, the farmer often goes by the dealer's advice on what products to buy. "The dealer has emerged an `expert', because the others have gone," says Malla Reddy. The APRS leader points to "over 2,800 vacancies in the Department of Agriculture. The last Government only appointed 7,000 unqualified people on contract. They had no background in agriculture." Many of the farmers' suicides in the State have been largely debt driven which makes the seed dealer's role more of a problem. Some of those who took their lives did so because of both, huge debts and crop failures due to spurious seeds and pesticides. But there is little punishment for those selling fake seeds. "Just Rs. 500," says the new Agriculture Minister, Raghuveera Reddy. He hopes to bring some order to a system now out of control. "We have recovered spurious seeds worth Rs. 7 crore in raids in only the past month," he told us. But the offenders are people for whom Rs. 500 fine is a joke. So the Government intends to bring in a new Seed Act at the State level. Andhra Pradesh's record of curbing such fraud in the past has been dismal. "Till date, no case filed by the State against a seed or pesticide dealer has ever been won by the Government," says Yalamanchili Shivaji. He is a former Rajya Sabha MP and a well–known farmers' leader here. "In contrast," he claims, "almost no such case filed by the Tamil Government was lost." Dr. Shivaji also points out that Andhra Pradesh has fewer agriculture and extension officers than any southern State. "The Naidu Government was bent on privatizing extension work," says Malla Reddy. The matter gets more complex given the clout the seed dealers have gained. And the alarming rise in the cost of inputs they control. Per acre costs have exploded since 1996.

As farmers in G. Edavalli explain: The cost of paddy seeds an acre almost tripled from Rs. 120 in 1996 to around Rs. 350 now. That of urea nearly doubled from around 120 then to nearly Rs. 230 now. Pesticide, ammonia phosphate, zinc – all these have more than doubled in cost." A farmer might buy most of these inputs from the same dealer. Other expenses, too, have risen. Tractors cost a lot more than manual work did. "In 1996," say farmers in G. Edavalli, "we could raise an acre of paddy within Rs. 3,500. Today that is Rs. 7,500 or more." Add higher power tariffs and water costs and people are now paying well over double what they did in 1996. Those who left food crops to experiment with cash crops in this period pay still more. The 24 per cent interest that seed dealers tag on makes the burden more worse. And with seed companies hawking a "germination rate" of only 65 per cent, farmers get even less value for money. This is Telangana. Input costs are higher in coastal region where, too, suicides have been on. The use of high cost items such as fertilizers and pesticides is greatest in Andhra Pradesh. The All–India average for fertilizer consumption per hectare was 88 kg in 2001. In Andhra Pradesh it was almost 180 kg. It is even greater in the coastal region. "Over use of fertilizer is a huge problem," says Malla Reddy of the APRS.

"At the same time," he says "tenant farmers faced massive increases in the cost of leasing land." Such tenants make up nearly 60 per cent of all farmers in many parts of the State, more so in the coastal region. From the late 1990s, they were asked by the landlords to pay (as lease cost) between 21 and 25 bags of paddy an acre each year. This, when their output was barely 30 bags an acre. So the tenant farmer is left with five bags of paddy and another three of black gram that he sows after paddy. And that is in a good year!" By the late 1990s, the farmer was wilting. In 1996, "he was making Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 an acre on an input cost of Rs. 3,500. Now he is making Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 2,000 an acre on cost close to Rs. 8,000. Between then and now, productivity has only risen from 25 to under 30 bags an acre. This huge use of fertilizer has not helped much." "But at the moment when input costs were so high and rewards so poor," says the Nalgonda ex–MLA, Narasimha Reddy, "the banks stopped giving the farmer any credit. And output prices were crashing due to rigged and volatile markets. There was also zero investment in agriculture. This crisis was man–made." That was how the suicides began. "Add drought and crop failure to that," says Reddy, "and the suicides only got worse."

Who can be author of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

If physics leads us today to a worldview that is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning 2,500 years ago. It is interesting to follow the evolution of Western science along its spiral path, starting from the mystical philosophies of the early Greeks, rising and unfolding in an impressive development of intellectual thought that increasingly turned away from its mystical origins to develop a world view which is in sharp contrast to that of the Far East. In its most recent stages, Western science is finally overcoming this view and coming back to those of the early Greek and the Eastern philosophies. This time, however; it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.

The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or real constitution, of things that they called ‘physics’. The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things.

This, of course, is also the central aim of all mystics and the philosophy of the Milesian school and indeed havea strong mystical flavor. The Milesians were called ‘hylozoists’, or ‘those who think matter is alive’, by the later Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter, since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the ‘physics’, endowed with life and spirituality. Thus, Thales declared all things to be full of goods and Anaximander saw the universe as a kind of organism which was supported by ‘pneuma’, the cosmic breath, in the same way as the human body is supported by air.