Reading Comprehension

Which one of the following is the most polluted river in Rajasthan?

Directions: Read the given passage and answer the following question.

Holy rivers have become a myth today. According to a report of the National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) all the fourteen big rivers of India are heavily polluted. They cover 85 per cent of the surface water in the country. The main pollutant of the river water is the industrial waste. River Jamuna in Delhi receives 6000 kg of dissolved solids, 3000 kg of heavy metals and 200 kg of detergents every day. In its 48 kms stretch around Delhi, Yamuna gets polluted through 17 drains that bring toxics, acids and a number of chemicals that affect the health of the river and consequently of all those who depend on it for drinking and bathing.

Cauvery and Kapila in Karnataka are so polluted that in a stretch of 10 kms of the banks of Cauvery, people suffer badly from skin diseases, boils and burning sensation. Cauvery receives industrial wastes from Tamil Nadu. The story of Godaveri is no different. It receives 4,500 gallons of toxic waste everyday from Andhra Paper Mills alone. Plankton, on which fishes' depend, has been dying in large numbers in the rivers. Similarly Hoogly and Damodar, receive untreated waste from coal washeries, pulp and paper mills, steel mills, and chemical industries in Bengal. Hoogly receives industrial wastes of 150 big factories including jute mills, textile mills, paper and pulp factories distilleries, and tanneries. Even the fishes have been greatly contaminated causing bone diseases and arthritis among those who eat fish in the area. The waste of fertilizer plant and Indian Oil Corporation flowing in to Mahi Sagar in Gujarat has killed fishes, cattles and even elephants.

Human and animal excreta flows into all rivers in India. As it is untreated it is responsible for almost all water borne diseases. Untreated sewage flows into the Jamuna in Delhi through 17 open drains. Chambal, tributary of the Jamuna, is the most polluted river in Rajasthan. The people between Rajpura and Nagda suffer from acute shin diseases because of the water pollution.
Efforts have been made to remove pollution of the Ganga by Central Ganga Authority (CGA). No serious efforts have been made anywhere else. No government efforts can make the rivers clean if the common man has no consciousness as to how to keep the rivers clean as he keeps his house neat and clean. Non Government Organizations can play an important role in educating the people both in cities and the rural areas.

Which one of the following is/are the main pollutant(s) of rivers?

Directions: Read the given passage and answer the following question.

Holy rivers have become a myth today. According to a report of the National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) all the fourteen big rivers of India are heavily polluted. They cover 85 per cent of the surface water in the country. The main pollutant of the river water is the industrial waste. River Jamuna in Delhi receives 6000 kg of dissolved solids, 3000 kg of heavy metals and 200 kg of detergents every day. In its 48 kms stretch around Delhi, Yamuna gets polluted through 17 drains that bring toxics, acids and a number of chemicals that affect the health of the river and consequently of all those who depend on it for drinking and bathing.

Cauvery and Kapila in Karnataka are so polluted that in a stretch of 10 kms of the banks of Cauvery, people suffer badly from skin diseases, boils and burning sensation. Cauvery receives industrial wastes from Tamil Nadu. The story of Godaveri is no different. It receives 4,500 gallons of toxic waste everyday from Andhra Paper Mills alone. Plankton, on which fishes' depend, has been dying in large numbers in the rivers. Similarly Hoogly and Damodar, receive untreated waste from coal washeries, pulp and paper mills, steel mills, and chemical industries in Bengal. Hoogly receives industrial wastes of 150 big factories including jute mills, textile mills, paper and pulp factories distilleries, and tanneries. Even the fishes have been greatly contaminated causing bone diseases and arthritis among those who eat fish in the area. The waste of fertilizer plant and Indian Oil Corporation flowing in to Mahi Sagar in Gujarat has killed fishes, cattles and even elephants.

Human and animal excreta flows into all rivers in India. As it is untreated it is responsible for almost all water borne diseases. Untreated sewage flows into the Jamuna in Delhi through 17 open drains. Chambal, tributary of the Jamuna, is the most polluted river in Rajasthan. The people between Rajpura and Nagda suffer from acute shin diseases because of the water pollution.
Efforts have been made to remove pollution of the Ganga by Central Ganga Authority (CGA). No serious efforts have been made anywhere else. No government efforts can make the rivers clean if the common man has no consciousness as to how to keep the rivers clean as he keeps his house neat and clean. Non Government Organizations can play an important role in educating the people both in cities and the rural areas.

Rommel was going back to Germany because

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

The writer calls the conveyor belt ‘merciless’ because it

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

The jobs do not get changed around from time to time; I started off on one of the nicer ones. I sat at a conveyor belt slipping a piece of cardboard under each cake as it came down the line. At first, it was difficult to keep up. An uneconomic movement, a fumble and four cakes have gone without cards. I got up to chase the four cakes, eight more appeared and for five minutes or so I had to work at twice the speed to work my way back to where I was sitting before. But it takes half a day or so, to learn how it’s done and soon it becomes quite automatic. The frenzy had quite worn off by the end to the first day and then there was only the monotony and the aching arms. Later I moved to another job on the line, as the girl who usually did it had left. I was not surprised. It was the nastiest job in the department. As the cake came out of a machine that had sliced it in three layers, two streams of artificial cream were poured over the layers. I had to stack the layers up again— a messy and very tiring job. The cakes are heavy and the cream is slippery. Anyone who has worked at all in a factory knows how deathly conveyor belt work is. At first, it is difficult to keep up, and when you are tired, it is quite merciless. After a while, when you have become fairly used to it, the fact that you cannot work faster, is also infuriating.

The author observes that the academic life of a university

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Grandchildren at the university  know–how time passes! I wonder if they— or anyone else—would be interested in what student life was like in the 30s? Well, here goes…. The academic part of a student’s life does not change all that through the generation, but the style of social life has changed. (For better or worse—who are we to say?) The ‘English Lit’, more properly, Edinburgh University English literature society, met on Tuesday evenings in the non Soc Hall, which is roundabout where the student shop is now. It was called the Non Soc hall because the meetings there were of Non-Associated Societies being high-and-mighty affairs with a long history, such as the Dialectic, Philomathic and Diagnostic, which, in those days, certainly did not admit women.

Martin Luther’s army

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

The contents of the cardboard box had for Rommel

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

Rommel was

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

When the writer was moved to another job she wasn’t surprised to find that

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

The jobs do not get changed around from time to time; I started off on one of the nicer ones. I sat at a conveyor belt slipping a piece of cardboard under each cake as it came down the line. At first, it was difficult to keep up. An uneconomic movement, a fumble and four cakes have gone without cards. I got up to chase the four cakes, eight more appeared and for five minutes or so I had to work at twice the speed to work my way back to where I was sitting before. But it takes half a day or so, to learn how it’s done and soon it becomes quite automatic. The frenzy had quite worn off by the end to the first day and then there was only the monotony and the aching arms. Later I moved to another job on the line, as the girl who usually did it had left. I was not surprised. It was the nastiest job in the department. As the cake came out of a machine that had sliced it in three layers, two streams of artificial cream were poured over the layers. I had to stack the layers up again— a messy and very tiring job. The cakes are heavy and the cream is slippery. Anyone who has worked at all in a factory knows how deathly conveyor belt work is. At first, it is difficult to keep up, and when you are tired, it is quite merciless. After a while, when you have become fairly used to it, the fact that you cannot work faster, is also infuriating.

When the author was a student at Edinburgh, English literature society used to meet

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Grandchildren at the university  know–how time passes! I wonder if they— or anyone else—would be interested in what student life was like in the 30s? Well, here goes…. The academic part of a student’s life does not change all that through the generation, but the style of social life has changed. (For better or worse—who are we to say?) The ‘English Lit’, more properly, Edinburgh University English literature society, met on Tuesday evenings in the non Soc Hall, which is roundabout where the student shop is now. It was called the Non Soc hall because the meetings there were of Non-Associated Societies being high-and-mighty affairs with a long history, such as the Dialectic, Philomathic and Diagnostic, which, in those days, certainly did not admit women.

According to Sir Mohan Lal, a well-bred person would

Directions: Read the folowing passage and answr the question.

The arrival of the train did not disturb Sir Mohan Lal’s sang-froid. He continued to sip his scotch and ordered the bearer to tell him when he had moved the luggage to a first class compartment. Excitement, bustle, and hurry were exhibitions of bad breeding, and Sir Mohan was eminently well bred. He wanted everything ‘ticket boo’ and orderly. In his five years abroad, Sir Mohan acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes. He rarely spoke Hindustani. When he did, it was like an Englishman’s—only the very necessary words and properly anglicized. But he fancied his English, finished and refined at no less a place than the University of Oxford. He was fond of conversation and like a cultured Englishman he could talk on almost any subject—books, politics, and people. How frequently had he heard English people say that he spoke like an Englishman?

Rommel was keen to be with his wife on 6th June because it was

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

The writer found it a messy job to

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

The jobs do not get changed around from time to time; I started off on one of the nicer ones. I sat at a conveyor belt slipping a piece of cardboard under each cake as it came down the line. At first, it was difficult to keep up. An uneconomic movement, a fumble and four cakes have gone without cards. I got up to chase the four cakes, eight more appeared and for five minutes or so I had to work at twice the speed to work my way back to where I was sitting before. But it takes half a day or so, to learn how it’s done and soon it becomes quite automatic. The frenzy had quite worn off by the end to the first day and then there was only the monotony and the aching arms. Later I moved to another job on the line, as the girl who usually did it had left. I was not surprised. It was the nastiest job in the department. As the cake came out of a machine that had sliced it in three layers, two streams of artificial cream were poured over the layers. I had to stack the layers up again— a messy and very tiring job. The cakes are heavy and the cream is slippery. Anyone who has worked at all in a factory knows how deathly conveyor belt work is. At first, it is difficult to keep up, and when you are tired, it is quite merciless. After a while, when you have become fairly used to it, the fact that you cannot work faster, is also infuriating.

The similarity between Martin Luther King and Gandhiji was that both

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

The phrase ‘move but not maul’ refers to an army that would

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.