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Direction (Q. 1 – 10): In each of the following questions, a short passage is given with one of the lines in the passage missing and represented by a blank. Select the best out of the five answer choices given to make the passage complete and coherent.
1). Indian officialdom has all but acknowledged what many suspected all along – that there is something amiss about the growth narrative. _________________. The finance ministry expects a 50,000-crore shortfall in revenue collections, against the budgeted estimate of 14.5 lakh crore. It has promised that the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent of GDP will be adhered to, without serious cutbacks in expenditure.
a) But that may not be enough to spur investment, given the poor demand impulses, borne out by flat tractor and auto sales, and the stock of unsold homes.
b) Indeed, while the Budget rightly prioritizes capital spending in infrastructure, setting aside some Rs. 70,000 crore, it is worth considering whether a larger sum is needed to get the investment cycle going — even if this entails a small deviation from the fiscal deficit target.
c) There can be no better time than now to impart an intelligent, rather than populist, fiscal stimulus — with inflation under control and oil prices not posing pressures on the subsidy front.
d) A lowering of the projections made in the Economic Survey, from 8.1-8.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent, hardly comes as a surprise, given a 14 per cent deficient monsoon, persistently negative exports and indifferent industrial growth.
e) The RBI has “frontloaded” its rate cuts and is helping banks deal with stressed assets so that they can lend freely.
2). For many years, the continent Africa remained unexplored and unknown. The main reason was the inaccessibility to its interior region due to dense forests, wildlife, savage tribal, deserts and barren solid hills. ____________. While others explored with the idea of expanding their respective empires, Livingstone did so to explore its vast and mysterious hinterland, rivers and lakes.
a) He was primarily religious man and a medical practitioner who tried to help mankind with it.
b) Livingstone was born in Scotland and was educated to become a doctor and priest.
c) He explored an unknown river in Western Luanda. However, he was reduced to a skeleton during four years of travelling.
d) He discovered the origin of the River Nile in 1866. He again suffered many discomforts. He became too sick and could not even walk.
e) Many people tried to explore the could not survive the dangers, David Livingstone is among those brave few who not only explored part of Africa but also lived among the tribals bringing them near to social milieu.
3). _______________________. Even the human body is a form of energy. Call it prana or jivatma or simply vayu energy sustains the gross body and expresses it through sensory perceptions and the basic physical elements. The three fundamental gunas- satvik, nijasik and tamasik which characterize the nature of the human being, very often in a combination, are further sub divided into many basic qualities commonly known as human values.
a) Energy is neither created nor destroyed; it is only recycled and recast in different forms.
b) Love, affection, integrity and truth, for instance, are values that are as important to life as breathing or eating.
c) Energy values are positive but in the course of practice and because they emanate from a mind that is susceptible to negative thoughts, they get corrupted.
d) Energy generates negativity and manifest in the form of tying cheating or causing others harm.
e) The very fact that human civilization has survived over centuries shows that despite all the negativity, the force of positive energy within all of us continues to expand and enrich.
4). Over the next five years, India faces one of the world’s biggest financing challenges: bringing clean, affordable, reliable, water and energy to all, building the infrastructure for smart cities to thrive and investing in enterprises that will provide livelihoods for an extra 10 million jobseekers each year. Through all of this and beyond, a sustainable financial system is both a necessity and an opportunity. _____________________. Actual practice suggests the reverse.
a) At IDFC, the business case for sustainable finance is real and multifaceted: reduced risk, increased market share, access to international finance, reduced reputational risks and enhanced brand value.
b) For too long, a myth has been allowed to take root in India that sustainability and finance are at odds – that taking account of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors raises costs, reduces returns and impedes development.
c) The fivefold increase in the country’s solar target to 100 GW of installed capacity by 2022 will require unprecedented volumes of investment, perhaps as much as $ 100 billion as per some estimates.
d) The Small Industries Development Bank of India has found, for example, that loans to energy – efficient companies have a much better loan recovery rate than the norm.
e) Sustainable finance is fundamentally about channeling capital to India’s real economy needs. Take renewable.
5). Central to the financial sector reforms would be the restructuring and financing of public sector banks (PSBs). ___________________. Accordingly, it recommended that the minimum government holding in PSBs should be reduced from 51 per cent to 33 per cent. It was argued that reducing the government holding to 33 per cent would not mean a loss of control over the social objectives of PSBs, but it would give a breather to these banks to meet minimum capital requirements.
a) The UPA government I and II swore by the 51 per cent minimum government holding and hence there was an impasse.
b) The Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (2013) recommended a single Indian Financial Sector Code.
c) The Narasimham Committee II on Banking Sector Reforms (1998) concluded that the fisc just could not meet the capital requirements of PSBs.
d) The pronouncements of the present BJP government, however, indicate that they would not deviate from the 51 per cent government holding in PSBs.
e) Under the NDA regime, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha made a valiant effort to get this recommendation accepted, but parliamentarians from his own party blocked the move.
6). _______________. But the number of insured people is only around 20% which is very less compared to other countries. There could be many reasons for this shortfall such as lack of awareness or the inability of companies to reach the masses. But the government of India on its part has taken many steps to increase insurance penetration.
a) India with a population of over 1 billion is the 2nd most populous country in the world.
b) The government has brought many reforms in the insurance sector, the above steps have helped more people to take up insurance policies.
c) In the coming years, we can be confident of seeing higher growth in insurance penetration among Indians.
d) The biggest step taken by the government in recent years was raising the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to 49% from the earlier 26%.
e) The amendment paved way for foreign insurance companies to start operations in India by partnering with existing entities& offer more products suited for Indian public.
7). Capitalism is a great slave, but a pathetic master. This truth unfortunately gets lost in our chase for that elusive dream. Especially in the west, the land that has been marketed as the land of dreams – the great Western dream. It’s the dream of being independent masters of our lives, of making big bucks and of being happy – even if that happiness is being bought by money, which all of them chase out there. ____________.
a) That is what has made the rest of the world mindlessly chase Westernism, not necessarily happiness or an ideal form of society.
b) All because the shop window looks very impressive and it has been marketed very well.
c) Thus, the shop window of Westernism looks lucidly attractive.
d) However, this has been achieved as a result of more than 200 years of unbridled growth and exploitation.
e) No doubt, the West, on its part, has been fairly successful in creating material comforts aplenty.
8). A long-standing perspective on modernity – that a march toward it would lead progressively to lessening of religious and related affiliations – has been discredited over a period of time. ____________. For example, even a product of the information revolution, the Internet, is used to hunt for marriage partners of a given caste. Modern electoral politics is all about utilizing identities that predate this modernity for political gain.
a) We have assumed erroneously that we know what modernity is, thereby confusing its present character with what we wish it to be.
b) Confusing a wish with the reality on the ground might well be called the Great Nehruvian Conceit — we are all part of this.
c) It frequently goes back to the past and incorporates elements from long-forgotten eras into its unfolding present.
d) Modern technologies – such as television – feed growing religious appetites.
e) We have too easily assumed a linear narrative for modernity, even more so if we clearly observe that it consists of bits and pieces from different historical periods, and that it unfolds in a circular rather than linear manner.
9). _______________. The vast majority of those who backed him, those who gave the BJP he led a clear mandate in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, bought his words of hope in to, and believed he could bring in much-needed change and put the country back on a trajectory of growth and development. On the first anniversary, some of the promises remain as proposals and many others appear too remote with little or no chance of coming to fruition in the next four years.
a) As the previous Congress-led government ended its term entwined in scams and scandals, Mr. Modi marketed himself as everything his predecessor Manmohan Singh was not, and sought to represent the varied aspirations of whole classes of people.
b) Having come to power on the strength of mega-promises centered on the prospect of ache din for all, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot but feel the weight of popular expectations on his government after an uneventful first year.
c) To the government’s credit, inflation is down.
d) PM Modi wanted to offer much more than a concrete programme of action; he wanted to present a vision of the future, a vision of India taking its place as an economic superpower in the first world.
e) Falling international oil prices might have had a role as also the resoluteness of the Reserve Bank of India in not lowering interest rates, but the government kept a close watch on food prices.
10). We today revel in the idea that we are living in a world of science and science can work wonders for us. It is evident that science has revolutionized modern life. What our forefathers, half a century ago, could not even dream of, we have that on our beck and call. _______________. A button is pressed, the room gets flooded with light; the fan moves, the A.C. Cools or warms the room, water is boiled or cooled even is frozen, eatables can be preserved for days.
a) Artificial limbs can be fitted into the disabled bodies, even kidneys, and hearts are being performed.
b) Means of communication- The fax, The E-mail, The mobile smart phones are really wonderful means given to us by science.
c) Electricity is a wonder and what it is doing would have appeared to be a fairy tale for our forefathers.
d) Human labor has been minimized but that has led to a more luxurious living and lens of physical activity.
e) The worlds is getting exposed to the situations of great alarms and dangers. GMOs are good for some crops and not so for others. Wild varieties cannot be allowed to go extinct.
