Reading Comprehension

What is the best summary of the opening paragraph?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It does not make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps. The success of any organization depends on how the performers are rewarded and how much the non-performers go unnoticed in the system. Several organizations have called for introducing a robust performance based compensation system that basically fixes accountability on the employees and compensates them accordingly. There are calls for introducing variable pay systems, ESOPs etc. However, practical these solutions might seem at present, the possible fallouts of such systems must be kept in mind. Introducing such systems on the lines of private sector banks will essentially hit at the core of the culture of the public sector banks and the relationship that it has with its employees. And, since it is clear that it will be very difficult for the PSBs to actually pay at the levels of the private sector banks, introducing such a system would essentially mean affecting one thing that still attracts people to such jobs that is the emotional connect in terms of pride etc. Also, it will mean incentivizing managers to take decisions that maximize short-term profits and in the process probably affecting long term prospects.
Keeping in mind the responsibility that the PSBs have towards the society as a whole (something the private counterparts cannot be held accountable for), it is very important that managers at the PSBs take decisions that positively affect the long terms prospects of the banks. Introducing such explicit performance oriented systems can negatively affect the pursuit of such goals. It does not, however, mean that the banks need not lay stress on the performance. Obviously, there is a need to revamp the performance evaluation systems, probably introduce modern systems like 360 degrees appraisal etc. Also, the general compensation levels may need to be looked into and possibly increased as may be possible.
There is a requirement of the introduction of scientific manpower planning. We need to scientifically come up with parameters and benchmarks against which the productivity of the employees can be measured. Welfare of the employees needs to be looked into and it is a very important part of the talent management. There needs to be substantial increase in the allocation of welfare fund for the welfare and especially for the welfare of the retired employees. It is equally important to increase the involvement of the employees in general and the new recruits specially. In this context the policy of reward and punishment must be revamped. Any disciplinary proceeding against an employee regarding procedural lapses must be completed within the shortest possible time. It must be kept in mind that employee faces least mental harassment since the employee is nearly non-productive in this period. The above matters are very important in keeping the motivational level of the employee intact because it is now an established fact that only a motivated employee can deliver results. “The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.”
Creation of congenial climate for talent nurturing calls for creation of atmosphere where employees are adequately and correctly compensated for their performance; and their talents and performances are recognized and appreciated. Apart from having right climate, the other important issues that one looks into before giving a medium to long term commitment for a career, is satisfaction arising from job enrichment/rotation, getting recognition for doing a good job, expectation of performance-based payment, flexibility in terms of job hours and other related aspects, both monetary and non-monetary incentives and a fast track promotion process through which one can look for prospects of a good career ahead. This becomes all the more important because today’s employee compares his job with the kind of job his friend/peer might be having at a private sector counterpart. More flexibility at the level of bank in deciding the compensation level reflecting the capacity of the bank to pay will be a welcome step. Today, all negotiations and settlements are reached at the industry level. There needs to be a difference in the amount being paid at a low-performing and a high performing bank. Such steps will motivate the employees of a bank on the whole to work harder and, more importantly, together. (The Indian Banker, Jan 2012)

Summarize the opening paragraph.

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

The temptation, to any man who is interested in ideas and primarily in literature, to put literature into the corner until he cleaned up the whole country first, is almost irresistible. Some persons have succeeded so well in this later profession of setting the house in order, and have attracted so much more attention than Arnold, that we must conclude that it is indeed their proper role, and that they have done well for themselves in laying literature aside.
Not only is the critic tempted outside of criticism. The criticism proper betrays such poverty of ideas and such atrophy of sensibility that men who ought to preserve their critical ability for the improvement of their own creative work are tempted into criticism. This is not to suggest as a corollary to this that the ‘creative’ gift is ‘higher’ than the critical.  When one creative mind is better than another, the reason often is that the better is the more critical. But the great bulk of the work of criticism could have been done by minds of the second order, and it is just these minds of the second order that are difficult to find. They are necessary for the rapid circulation of ideas. The periodical press—the ideal literary periodical—is an instrument of transport; and the literary periodical press is dependent upon the existence of a sufficient number of second-order (not ‘second rate,’ the expression is too derogatory) minds to supply its material. These minds are necessary for that ‘current of ideas,’ that ‘society permeated by fresh thought,’ of which Arnold Speaks.
It is a perpetual heresy of English to believe that only the first-order mind, the Genius, the Great Man, matters; that he is solitary, and produced best in the least favourable environment, perhaps the Public School; and that it is most likely a sign of inferiority that Paris can show so many minds of the second order. If too much bad verse is published in London, it does not occur to us to raise our standards, to do anything to educate the poetasters; the remedy is, kill them off.
We quite agree that poetry is not a formula. It is part of the business of the critic to preserve tradition—where a good tradition exists. It is part of his business to see literature steadily and to see it whole; and this is eminently to see it not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time; to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes. It is part of his business to help the poetaster to understand his own limitations. The poetaster who understands his own limitations will be one of our useful second-order minds; a good minor poet (something which is very rare) or another good critic. As for the first-order minds, when they happen, they will be none the worse off for a ‘current of ideas’; the solitude with which they will always and everywhere be invested is a very different thing from isolation, or a monarchy of death. (T.S.Eliot in The Sacred Wood)

What is the best summary of the first paragraph of the passage?

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

The wilderness is returning to Europe, but not without a little human help. Conservationists have spent years guarding eggs, counting stocks and reintroducing young animals into their natural habitat. But European wildlife also depends on a strong political framework, such as the hunting bans, protected sites and resettlement projects introduced by individual nations, which inspired the European Union to pass bold laws. This began with the Birds Directive, passed in 1979 which, in a single stroke, banned the hunting of virtually all European birds. In addition, EU member states were required to designate Special Protection Areas for 160 particularly vulnerable species—a measure that is largely responsible for the increase in populations of the White-tailed eagle, Marsh Harrier and Black stork, as studies carried out by Birdlife International have shown.
Thanks to EU laws, the air became cleaner, lakes and rivers recovered, and the use of chemicals in agriculture and industry declined during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, stocks of fish have increased and birds of prey have been breeding more successfully. The greatest legislative coup took place in 1992 with the Habitats Directive. This requires member states to set up Special Areas of Conservation for endangered flora and fauna, including animals and such as the beaver, European otter, Eurasian lynx and Grey wolf. If existing reserves met the required criteria, they could be re-designated, but most countries have had to place additional areas under protection.
The Directive has placed 234 vulnerable species of plants and animals under protection, including all big carnivores, as well as bison, Alpine ibex and beaver. It has also compelled governments to relook at industrial parks and highways—as was the case in Poland in 2008, when a proposed new road was relocated so that it did not cut across the protected Rospuda Valley—and prompted them to introduce bans on hunting. Any new EU member is required to implement far more stringent laws on nature conservation: laws that are often fought out in court. One in four cases before the European Court of Justice involving one of its member states involves a breach of EU environmental law.
In some countries this breach is due to a lack of ability. ‘In Eastern Europe, governments at times have too little money or too few resources to meet their EU obligations’, says Professor Christoph Knill, environmental policy researcher at Konstanz University, Germany. In other cases, it is the lack of political will: Germany, for instance, designated its last Special Area of Conservation only in 2008, after a delay of 10 years and after the EU Commission threatened to drag it to court. By now, however, all states have set up their Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation: 26,000 sanctuaries in all, that together make up the Natura 2000 network and cover 18 per cent of the EU landmass. It is the world’s largest group of biotopes and a showpiece of the EU environmental policy, no matter what the critics say. (The Laws of the Wild West by Torsten Schafer)

What is the best summary of the fourth paragraph?

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

The wilderness is returning to Europe, but not without a little human help. Conservationists have spent years guarding eggs, counting stocks and reintroducing young animals into their natural habitat. But European wildlife also depends on a strong political framework, such as the hunting bans, protected sites and resettlement projects introduced by individual nations, which inspired the European Union to pass bold laws. This began with the Birds Directive, passed in 1979 which, in a single stroke, banned the hunting of virtually all European birds. In addition, EU member states were required to designate Special Protection Areas for 160 particularly vulnerable species—a measure that is largely responsible for the increase in populations of the White-tailed eagle, Marsh Harrier and Black stork, as studies carried out by Birdlife International have shown.
Thanks to EU laws, the air became cleaner, lakes and rivers recovered, and the use of chemicals in agriculture and industry declined during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, stocks of fish have increased and birds of prey have been breeding more successfully. The greatest legislative coup took place in 1992 with the Habitats Directive. This requires member states to set up Special Areas of Conservation for endangered flora and fauna, including animals and such as the beaver, European otter, Eurasian lynx and Grey wolf. If existing reserves met the required criteria, they could be re-designated, but most countries have had to place additional areas under protection.
The Directive has placed 234 vulnerable species of plants and animals under protection, including all big carnivores, as well as bison, Alpine ibex and beaver. It has also compelled governments to relook at industrial parks and highways—as was the case in Poland in 2008, when a proposed new road was relocated so that it did not cut across the protected Rospuda Valley—and prompted them to introduce bans on hunting. Any new EU member is required to implement far more stringent laws on nature conservation: laws that are often fought out in court. One in four cases before the European Court of Justice involving one of its member states involves a breach of EU environmental law.
In some countries this breach is due to a lack of ability. ‘In Eastern Europe, governments at times have too little money or too few resources to meet their EU obligations’, says Professor Christoph Knill, environmental policy researcher at Konstanz University, Germany. In other cases, it is the lack of political will: Germany, for instance, designated its last Special Area of Conservation only in 2008, after a delay of 10 years and after the EU Commission threatened to drag it to court. By now, however, all states have set up their Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation: 26,000 sanctuaries in all, that together make up the Natura 2000 network and cover 18 per cent of the EU landmass. It is the world’s largest group of biotopes and a showpiece of the EU environmental policy, no matter what the critics say. (The Laws of the Wild West by Torsten Schafer)

Give the best summary of the second paragraph.

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

The wilderness is returning to Europe, but not without a little human help. Conservationists have spent years guarding eggs, counting stocks and reintroducing young animals into their natural habitat. But European wildlife also depends on a strong political framework, such as the hunting bans, protected sites and resettlement projects introduced by individual nations, which inspired the European Union to pass bold laws. This began with the Birds Directive, passed in 1979 which, in a single stroke, banned the hunting of virtually all European birds. In addition, EU member states were required to designate Special Protection Areas for 160 particularly vulnerable species—a measure that is largely responsible for the increase in populations of the White-tailed eagle, Marsh Harrier and Black stork, as studies carried out by Birdlife International have shown.
Thanks to EU laws, the air became cleaner, lakes and rivers recovered, and the use of chemicals in agriculture and industry declined during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, stocks of fish have increased and birds of prey have been breeding more successfully. The greatest legislative coup took place in 1992 with the Habitats Directive. This requires member states to set up Special Areas of Conservation for endangered flora and fauna, including animals and such as the beaver, European otter, Eurasian lynx and Grey wolf. If existing reserves met the required criteria, they could be re-designated, but most countries have had to place additional areas under protection.
The Directive has placed 234 vulnerable species of plants and animals under protection, including all big carnivores, as well as bison, Alpine ibex and beaver. It has also compelled governments to relook at industrial parks and highways—as was the case in Poland in 2008, when a proposed new road was relocated so that it did not cut across the protected Rospuda Valley—and prompted them to introduce bans on hunting. Any new EU member is required to implement far more stringent laws on nature conservation: laws that are often fought out in court. One in four cases before the European Court of Justice involving one of its member states involves a breach of EU environmental law.
In some countries this breach is due to a lack of ability. ‘In Eastern Europe, governments at times have too little money or too few resources to meet their EU obligations’, says Professor Christoph Knill, environmental policy researcher at Konstanz University, Germany. In other cases, it is the lack of political will: Germany, for instance, designated its last Special Area of Conservation only in 2008, after a delay of 10 years and after the EU Commission threatened to drag it to court. By now, however, all states have set up their Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation: 26,000 sanctuaries in all, that together make up the Natura 2000 network and cover 18 per cent of the EU landmass. It is the world’s largest group of biotopes and a showpiece of the EU environmental policy, no matter what the critics say. (The Laws of the Wild West by Torsten Schafer)

Summarize the fourth paragraph of the passage.

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

The temptation, to any man who is interested in ideas and primarily in literature, to put literature into the corner until he cleaned up the whole country first, is almost irresistible. Some persons have succeeded so well in this later profession of setting the house in order, and have attracted so much more attention than Arnold, that we must conclude that it is indeed their proper role, and that they have done well for themselves in laying literature aside.
Not only is the critic tempted outside of criticism. The criticism proper betrays such poverty of ideas and such atrophy of sensibility that men who ought to preserve their critical ability for the improvement of their own creative work are tempted into criticism. This is not to suggest as a corollary to this that the ‘creative’ gift is ‘higher’ than the critical.  When one creative mind is better than another, the reason often is that the better is the more critical. But the great bulk of the work of criticism could have been done by minds of the second order, and it is just these minds of the second order that are difficult to find. They are necessary for the rapid circulation of ideas. The periodical press—the ideal literary periodical—is an instrument of transport; and the literary periodical press is dependent upon the existence of a sufficient number of second-order (not ‘second rate,’ the expression is too derogatory) minds to supply its material. These minds are necessary for that ‘current of ideas,’ that ‘society permeated by fresh thought,’ of which Arnold Speaks.
It is a perpetual heresy of English to believe that only the first-order mind, the Genius, the Great Man, matters; that he is solitary, and produced best in the least favourable environment, perhaps the Public School; and that it is most likely a sign of inferiority that Paris can show so many minds of the second order. If too much bad verse is published in London, it does not occur to us to raise our standards, to do anything to educate the poetasters; the remedy is, kill them off.
We quite agree that poetry is not a formula. It is part of the business of the critic to preserve tradition—where a good tradition exists. It is part of his business to see literature steadily and to see it whole; and this is eminently to see it not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time; to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes. It is part of his business to help the poetaster to understand his own limitations. The poetaster who understands his own limitations will be one of our useful second-order minds; a good minor poet (something which is very rare) or another good critic. As for the first-order minds, when they happen, they will be none the worse off for a ‘current of ideas’; the solitude with which they will always and everywhere be invested is a very different thing from isolation, or a monarchy of death. (T.S.Eliot in The Sacred Wood)

What is the best summary of the first paragraph?

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

Empowerment is about providing opportunities to individuals to achieve their aspirations while ensuring that community objectives are met. An empowered India is a country that provides opportunities for every child to achieve its potential through education, health care, nutrition, shelter and employment. At the same time, we must ensure that these children advance the interests of the country. To achieve this dream of empowerment, it is necessary to take tough, unpopular and unpleasant decisions.
To push these decisions through, India needs strong political leaders: the leaders who have the courage of conviction, the courage to dream big, to take difficult decisions, and to make sacrifices. The leaders have to be people who can straddle several worlds—the urban and the rural, the modern and the traditional, the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate. They have to appreciate the aspirations of all these worlds. They should not believe that development is a zero-sum game where gains to one world mean losses to another.
Politicians often complain that IT sector has created a great divide between the haves and the have-nots, and that it should be checked. Sadly, they believe that the solution is to restrict the growth of the IT industry instead of encouraging the creation of a larger number of such jobs. The leaders have to believe that the only way of our solving the problem of poverty is to create more jobs and shift a large number of people from agriculture to manufacturing and services. They must be open-minded, and willing to learn from the experiences of the leaders across the world. They must aspire to bench-mark India globally. They must be action oriented. We have become too much of a rhetoric satisfied society. Success is about execution.
It is for the top leaders of every political party to demonstrate leadership by example. They must come together and resolve to promote these values for the good of the future generations. This is tough and seems virtually impossible. But ‘a plausible impossibility is better than a convincing possibility’. There is no other way to do this. In the beginning, we may see a few good leaders being cast away quickly. But, once we see this behaviour from a generation of successive leaders, it will become the norm. For example, at one time, it appeared impossible to stem the mass defection of Aayarams and Gayarams from one party to another. The practice came to an end because all our political leaders came together and stopped it. (Excerpted from A Better India A Better World)

The underlying idea of the passage is

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

The temptation, to any man who is interested in ideas and primarily in literature, to put literature into the corner until he cleaned up the whole country first, is almost irresistible. Some persons have succeeded so well in this later profession of setting the house in order, and have attracted so much more attention than Arnold, that we must conclude that it is indeed their proper role, and that they have done well for themselves in laying literature aside.
Not only is the critic tempted outside of criticism. The criticism proper betrays such poverty of ideas and such atrophy of sensibility that men who ought to preserve their critical ability for the improvement of their own creative work are tempted into criticism. This is not to suggest as a corollary to this that the ‘creative’ gift is ‘higher’ than the critical.  When one creative mind is better than another, the reason often is that the better is the more critical. But the great bulk of the work of criticism could have been done by minds of the second order, and it is just these minds of the second order that are difficult to find. They are necessary for the rapid circulation of ideas. The periodical press—the ideal literary periodical—is an instrument of transport; and the literary periodical press is dependent upon the existence of a sufficient number of second-order (not ‘second rate,’ the expression is too derogatory) minds to supply its material. These minds are necessary for that ‘current of ideas,’ that ‘society permeated by fresh thought,’ of which Arnold Speaks.
It is a perpetual heresy of English to believe that only the first-order mind, the Genius, the Great Man, matters; that he is solitary, and produced best in the least favourable environment, perhaps the Public School; and that it is most likely a sign of inferiority that Paris can show so many minds of the second order. If too much bad verse is published in London, it does not occur to us to raise our standards, to do anything to educate the poetasters; the remedy is, kill them off.
We quite agree that poetry is not a formula. It is part of the business of the critic to preserve tradition—where a good tradition exists. It is part of his business to see literature steadily and to see it whole; and this is eminently to see it not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time; to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes. It is part of his business to help the poetaster to understand his own limitations. The poetaster who understands his own limitations will be one of our useful second-order minds; a good minor poet (something which is very rare) or another good critic. As for the first-order minds, when they happen, they will be none the worse off for a ‘current of ideas’; the solitude with which they will always and everywhere be invested is a very different thing from isolation, or a monarchy of death. (T.S.Eliot in The Sacred Wood)

Give the best summary of the second paragraph.

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

Empowerment is about providing opportunities to individuals to achieve their aspirations while ensuring that community objectives are met. An empowered India is a country that provides opportunities for every child to achieve its potential through education, health care, nutrition, shelter and employment. At the same time, we must ensure that these children advance the interests of the country. To achieve this dream of empowerment, it is necessary to take tough, unpopular and unpleasant decisions.
To push these decisions through, India needs strong political leaders: the leaders who have the courage of conviction, the courage to dream big, to take difficult decisions, and to make sacrifices. The leaders have to be people who can straddle several worlds—the urban and the rural, the modern and the traditional, the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate. They have to appreciate the aspirations of all these worlds. They should not believe that development is a zero-sum game where gains to one world mean losses to another.
Politicians often complain that IT sector has created a great divide between the haves and the have-nots, and that it should be checked. Sadly, they believe that the solution is to restrict the growth of the IT industry instead of encouraging the creation of a larger number of such jobs. The leaders have to believe that the only way of our solving the problem of poverty is to create more jobs and shift a large number of people from agriculture to manufacturing and services. They must be open-minded, and willing to learn from the experiences of the leaders across the world. They must aspire to bench-mark India globally. They must be action oriented. We have become too much of a rhetoric satisfied society. Success is about execution.
It is for the top leaders of every political party to demonstrate leadership by example. They must come together and resolve to promote these values for the good of the future generations. This is tough and seems virtually impossible. But ‘a plausible impossibility is better than a convincing possibility’. There is no other way to do this. In the beginning, we may see a few good leaders being cast away quickly. But, once we see this behaviour from a generation of successive leaders, it will become the norm. For example, at one time, it appeared impossible to stem the mass defection of Aayarams and Gayarams from one party to another. The practice came to an end because all our political leaders came together and stopped it. (Excerpted from A Better India A Better World)

The underlying idea of the passage is

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

The wilderness is returning to Europe, but not without a little human help. Conservationists have spent years guarding eggs, counting stocks and reintroducing young animals into their natural habitat. But European wildlife also depends on a strong political framework, such as the hunting bans, protected sites and resettlement projects introduced by individual nations, which inspired the European Union to pass bold laws. This began with the Birds Directive, passed in 1979 which, in a single stroke, banned the hunting of virtually all European birds. In addition, EU member states were required to designate Special Protection Areas for 160 particularly vulnerable species—a measure that is largely responsible for the increase in populations of the White-tailed eagle, Marsh Harrier and Black stork, as studies carried out by Birdlife International have shown.
Thanks to EU laws, the air became cleaner, lakes and rivers recovered, and the use of chemicals in agriculture and industry declined during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, stocks of fish have increased and birds of prey have been breeding more successfully. The greatest legislative coup took place in 1992 with the Habitats Directive. This requires member states to set up Special Areas of Conservation for endangered flora and fauna, including animals and such as the beaver, European otter, Eurasian lynx and Grey wolf. If existing reserves met the required criteria, they could be re-designated, but most countries have had to place additional areas under protection.
The Directive has placed 234 vulnerable species of plants and animals under protection, including all big carnivores, as well as bison, Alpine ibex and beaver. It has also compelled governments to relook at industrial parks and highways—as was the case in Poland in 2008, when a proposed new road was relocated so that it did not cut across the protected Rospuda Valley—and prompted them to introduce bans on hunting. Any new EU member is required to implement far more stringent laws on nature conservation: laws that are often fought out in court. One in four cases before the European Court of Justice involving one of its member states involves a breach of EU environmental law.
In some countries this breach is due to a lack of ability. ‘In Eastern Europe, governments at times have too little money or too few resources to meet their EU obligations’, says Professor Christoph Knill, environmental policy researcher at Konstanz University, Germany. In other cases, it is the lack of political will: Germany, for instance, designated its last Special Area of Conservation only in 2008, after a delay of 10 years and after the EU Commission threatened to drag it to court. By now, however, all states have set up their Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation: 26,000 sanctuaries in all, that together make up the Natura 2000 network and cover 18 per cent of the EU landmass. It is the world’s largest group of biotopes and a showpiece of the EU environmental policy, no matter what the critics say. (The Laws of the Wild West by Torsten Schafer)

What is the best summary of the fourth paragraph?

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

Empowerment is about providing opportunities to individuals to achieve their aspirations while ensuring that community objectives are met. An empowered India is a country that provides opportunities for every child to achieve its potential through education, health care, nutrition, shelter and employment. At the same time, we must ensure that these children advance the interests of the country. To achieve this dream of empowerment, it is necessary to take tough, unpopular and unpleasant decisions.
To push these decisions through, India needs strong political leaders: the leaders who have the courage of conviction, the courage to dream big, to take difficult decisions, and to make sacrifices. The leaders have to be people who can straddle several worlds—the urban and the rural, the modern and the traditional, the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate. They have to appreciate the aspirations of all these worlds. They should not believe that development is a zero-sum game where gains to one world mean losses to another.
Politicians often complain that IT sector has created a great divide between the haves and the have-nots, and that it should be checked. Sadly, they believe that the solution is to restrict the growth of the IT industry instead of encouraging the creation of a larger number of such jobs. The leaders have to believe that the only way of our solving the problem of poverty is to create more jobs and shift a large number of people from agriculture to manufacturing and services. They must be open-minded, and willing to learn from the experiences of the leaders across the world. They must aspire to bench-mark India globally. They must be action oriented. We have become too much of a rhetoric satisfied society. Success is about execution.
It is for the top leaders of every political party to demonstrate leadership by example. They must come together and resolve to promote these values for the good of the future generations. This is tough and seems virtually impossible. But ‘a plausible impossibility is better than a convincing possibility’. There is no other way to do this. In the beginning, we may see a few good leaders being cast away quickly. But, once we see this behaviour from a generation of successive leaders, it will become the norm. For example, at one time, it appeared impossible to stem the mass defection of Aayarams and Gayarams from one party to another. The practice came to an end because all our political leaders came together and stopped it. (Excerpted from A Better India A Better World)

Which of the following is the best summary of the third paragraph?

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

Empowerment is about providing opportunities to individuals to achieve their aspirations while ensuring that community objectives are met. An empowered India is a country that provides opportunities for every child to achieve its potential through education, health care, nutrition, shelter and employment. At the same time, we must ensure that these children advance the interests of the country. To achieve this dream of empowerment, it is necessary to take tough, unpopular and unpleasant decisions.
To push these decisions through, India needs strong political leaders: the leaders who have the courage of conviction, the courage to dream big, to take difficult decisions, and to make sacrifices. The leaders have to be people who can straddle several worlds—the urban and the rural, the modern and the traditional, the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate. They have to appreciate the aspirations of all these worlds. They should not believe that development is a zero-sum game where gains to one world mean losses to another.
Politicians often complain that IT sector has created a great divide between the haves and the have-nots, and that it should be checked. Sadly, they believe that the solution is to restrict the growth of the IT industry instead of encouraging the creation of a larger number of such jobs. The leaders have to believe that the only way of our solving the problem of poverty is to create more jobs and shift a large number of people from agriculture to manufacturing and services. They must be open-minded, and willing to learn from the experiences of the leaders across the world. They must aspire to bench-mark India globally. They must be action oriented. We have become too much of a rhetoric satisfied society. Success is about execution.
It is for the top leaders of every political party to demonstrate leadership by example. They must come together and resolve to promote these values for the good of the future generations. This is tough and seems virtually impossible. But ‘a plausible impossibility is better than a convincing possibility’. There is no other way to do this. In the beginning, we may see a few good leaders being cast away quickly. But, once we see this behaviour from a generation of successive leaders, it will become the norm. For example, at one time, it appeared impossible to stem the mass defection of Aayarams and Gayarams from one party to another. The practice came to an end because all our political leaders came together and stopped it. (Excerpted from A Better India A Better World)

What is the best summary of the second paragraph?

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

With Charles Darwin’s popularisation of the concept of evolution, man became interested in his biological origins and affiliations. This interest was centred on man’s phylogenetic origins. Starting with the work on heredity of Gregor Mendel in the 1860s and the recognition of its significance in 1900, interest shifted to the problem of man’s ontogenetic origins. Mendel’s simple ‘laws of heredity’ came to be widely known and were uncritically assumed to apply to all human characteristics. Most physical characteristics, intelligence, and many aspects of personality were thought to operate as simple Mendelian unit characters in their transmission from parent to child. This belief stimulated an interest to eugenic movements that proposed to bring about race betterment through sterilization of the unfit and encouragement of marriage among the superior members of society. Many groups of people organised to promote such programmes. Feeble-mindedness, poverty, crime, and immorality were thought to be largely matters of poor heredity. Several studies of family lines were published that seemed to give considerable support to this general concept.
From 1900 to about 1920, there was an overemphasis on the role of heredity in producing these conditions. The fixity and certainty of hereditary determination were grossly overestimated, and the environmental contribution to intelligence, personality, morality, and crime was either ignored or underestimated. The one fundamental fact of logic—that correlation does not prove causation—was forgotten. Because certain traits follow family lines, it does not follow that they are necessarily inherited. There is a ‘social heredity’ involved in the transmission of many things from generation to generation, and it is easy to confuse its effects with those of biology heredity.
Starting in the 1920s and ‘30s there set in a reaction against the uncritical application of the simple Mendelian concepts to all human characteristics and the resulting disregard of the importance of environmental factors. The extreme hereditarians were accused of being mechanistic in their frame of reference, deterministic in their philosophy, and unscientific in their methods.
Behaviour trends, intellectual level, special talents, and temperament are not inherited as such, but heredity is certainly a factor in determining all of them. Genes affect behaviour indirectly through their influence on the structural development of the individual. Genes affect structural conditions which, in turn, influence function. Such complex things as feeble-mindedness, musical talent, mathematical aptitude, and criminality can hardly be inherited. However, the genes can be crucial factors in determining the development of the nervous system, the sensitivity of the ear, the discriminating ability of the eye, the length, diameter, and nature of the vocal cords, and as such things as the size and shape of the hands. (Sawrey and Telford in Education Psychology)

Give the best summary of the fourth paragraph.

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

With Charles Darwin’s popularisation of the concept of evolution, man became interested in his biological origins and affiliations. This interest was centred on man’s phylogenetic origins. Starting with the work on heredity of Gregor Mendel in the 1860s and the recognition of its significance in 1900, interest shifted to the problem of man’s ontogenetic origins. Mendel’s simple ‘laws of heredity’ came to be widely known and were uncritically assumed to apply to all human characteristics. Most physical characteristics, intelligence, and many aspects of personality were thought to operate as simple Mendelian unit characters in their transmission from parent to child. This belief stimulated an interest to eugenic movements that proposed to bring about race betterment through sterilization of the unfit and encouragement of marriage among the superior members of society. Many groups of people organised to promote such programmes. Feeble-mindedness, poverty, crime, and immorality were thought to be largely matters of poor heredity. Several studies of family lines were published that seemed to give considerable support to this general concept.
From 1900 to about 1920, there was an overemphasis on the role of heredity in producing these conditions. The fixity and certainty of hereditary determination were grossly overestimated, and the environmental contribution to intelligence, personality, morality, and crime was either ignored or underestimated. The one fundamental fact of logic—that correlation does not prove causation—was forgotten. Because certain traits follow family lines, it does not follow that they are necessarily inherited. There is a ‘social heredity’ involved in the transmission of many things from generation to generation, and it is easy to confuse its effects with those of biology heredity.
Starting in the 1920s and ‘30s there set in a reaction against the uncritical application of the simple Mendelian concepts to all human characteristics and the resulting disregard of the importance of environmental factors. The extreme hereditarians were accused of being mechanistic in their frame of reference, deterministic in their philosophy, and unscientific in their methods.
Behaviour trends, intellectual level, special talents, and temperament are not inherited as such, but heredity is certainly a factor in determining all of them. Genes affect behaviour indirectly through their influence on the structural development of the individual. Genes affect structural conditions which, in turn, influence function. Such complex things as feeble-mindedness, musical talent, mathematical aptitude, and criminality can hardly be inherited. However, the genes can be crucial factors in determining the development of the nervous system, the sensitivity of the ear, the discriminating ability of the eye, the length, diameter, and nature of the vocal cords, and as such things as the size and shape of the hands. (Sawrey and Telford in Education Psychology)

Summarise the third paragraph of the passage.

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

With Charles Darwin’s popularisation of the concept of evolution, man became interested in his biological origins and affiliations. This interest was centred on man’s phylogenetic origins. Starting with the work on heredity of Gregor Mendel in the 1860s and the recognition of its significance in 1900, interest shifted to the problem of man’s ontogenetic origins. Mendel’s simple ‘laws of heredity’ came to be widely known and were uncritically assumed to apply to all human characteristics. Most physical characteristics, intelligence, and many aspects of personality were thought to operate as simple Mendelian unit characters in their transmission from parent to child. This belief stimulated an interest to eugenic movements that proposed to bring about race betterment through sterilization of the unfit and encouragement of marriage among the superior members of society. Many groups of people organised to promote such programmes. Feeble-mindedness, poverty, crime, and immorality were thought to be largely matters of poor heredity. Several studies of family lines were published that seemed to give considerable support to this general concept.
From 1900 to about 1920, there was an overemphasis on the role of heredity in producing these conditions. The fixity and certainty of hereditary determination were grossly overestimated, and the environmental contribution to intelligence, personality, morality, and crime was either ignored or underestimated. The one fundamental fact of logic—that correlation does not prove causation—was forgotten. Because certain traits follow family lines, it does not follow that they are necessarily inherited. There is a ‘social heredity’ involved in the transmission of many things from generation to generation, and it is easy to confuse its effects with those of biology heredity.
Starting in the 1920s and ‘30s there set in a reaction against the uncritical application of the simple Mendelian concepts to all human characteristics and the resulting disregard of the importance of environmental factors. The extreme hereditarians were accused of being mechanistic in their frame of reference, deterministic in their philosophy, and unscientific in their methods.
Behaviour trends, intellectual level, special talents, and temperament are not inherited as such, but heredity is certainly a factor in determining all of them. Genes affect behaviour indirectly through their influence on the structural development of the individual. Genes affect structural conditions which, in turn, influence function. Such complex things as feeble-mindedness, musical talent, mathematical aptitude, and criminality can hardly be inherited. However, the genes can be crucial factors in determining the development of the nervous system, the sensitivity of the ear, the discriminating ability of the eye, the length, diameter, and nature of the vocal cords, and as such things as the size and shape of the hands. (Sawrey and Telford in Education Psychology)