English Questions For SBI Clerk Prelims 2018

We find that today the unity and integrity of the nation is threatened by the divisive forces of regionalism, linguism and communal loyalties which are gaining ascendancy in national life and seeking to tear apart and destroy national integrity. We tend to forget that India is one nation and we are all Indians first and Indians last. It is time we remind ourselves what the great visionary and builder of modern India Jawaharlal Nehru said, “Who dies if India lives, who lives if India dies?” We must realise, and this is unfortunately what many in public life tend to overlook, sometimes out of ignorance of the forces of history and sometimes deliberately with a view to promoting their self interest, that national interest must inevitably and forever prevail over any other considerations proceeding from regional, linguistic or communal attachments. The history of India over the past centuries bears witness to the fact that India was at no time a single political unit. Even during the reign of the Maurya dynasty, though a large part of the country was under the sovereignty of the Mauryan kings, there were considerable portions of the territory which were under the rule of independent kingdoms. So also during the Mughal rule which extended over large parts of the territory of India, there were independent rulers who enjoyed political sovereignty over the territories of their respective kingdoms.
It is an interesting fact of history that India was forged into a nation, neither on account of a common language nor on account of the continued existence of a single political regime over its territories but on account of a common culture evolved over the centuries. It is cultural unity—something more fundamental and enduring than any other bond which may unite the people of a country together which has welded this country into a nation. But until the advent of the British rule, it was not constituted into a single political unit. There were, throughout the period of history for which we have fairly authenticated accounts, various kingdoms and principalities which were occasionally engaged in conflict with one another. During the British rule, India became a compact political unit having one single political regime over its entire territories and this led to the evolution of the concept of a nation. This concept of one nation took firm roots in the minds and hearts of the people during the struggle for independence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. He has rightly been called the Father of the Nation because it was he who awakened in the people of this country a sense of national consciousness and instilled in them a high sense of patriotism without which it is not possible to build a country into nationhood. By the time the Constitution of India came to be enacted, insurgent India, breaking a new path of non-violent revolution and fighting to free itself from the shackles of foreign domination, had emerged into nationhood and “the people of India” were inspired by a new enthusiasm, a high and noble spirit of sacrifice and above all, a strong sense of nationalism and in the Constitution which they framed. They set about the task of a strong nation based on certain cherished values for which they had fought.

Q01. The author has quoted Jawaharlal Nehru to emphasize the point that
(a) national interest must enjoy supreme importance
(b) India is going to survive even if the world is under the spell of destruction
(c) the world will be destroyed if India is on the threshold of destruction
(d) the survival of the world depends only upon the well-being of India
(e) None of these

Q02. What, according to the author, is the impact of the divisive forces on our nation?
(a) They promote a sense of regional pride.
(b) They help people to form linguistic groups.
(c) They separate groups of people and create enmity among them.
(d) They encourage among people the sense of loyalty to their community.
(e) They remind us of our national pride.

Q03. “Communal loyalties” have been considered by the author as
(a) a good quality to be cherished
(b) of no consequence to the nation
(c) a very important aspect for nation-building
(d) a threat to the solidarity of the nation
(e) None of these

Q04. Which of the following was instrumental in holding the different people of India together?
(a) A common national language
(b) A common cultural heritage
(c) The endurance level of the people
(d) Fundamentalist bent of mind of the people
(e) None of these

Q05. The passage appears to have been written with the purpose of
(a) giving a piece of advice to politicians of free India
(b) assessing the patriotic values and sacrifices made by people for India’s freedom
(c) justifying the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi and its impact on the people
(d) giving a historical account of how India evolved as a nation
(e) None of these

Q06. History shows that India, which was not a political unit earlier, became so
(a) during the reign of Maurya dynasty
(b) during the Mughal rule
(c) after one-national-language policy was adopted
(d) during the regime of independent rulers
(e) during the British rule

Q07. The “people of India”, as highlighted by the author in the last sentence of the passage, refer to
(a) the people of one unified nation
(b) the subjects of several independent rulers
(c) the patriots who sacrificed themselves in the freedom struggle
(d) the people who were instrumental in writing the Constitution
(e) None of these

Q08. India’s insurgence was for
(a) breaking the path of non-violence
(b) having one common national language
(c) insisting on a unique cultural identity
(d) several independent sovereign rulers
(e) None of these

Q09. Which of the following statements is/ are definitely true in the context of the passage?
(I) The people of India had fought for certain values.
(II) The fight of the Indian people was for one common culture.
(II) The Indian people lacked sense of nationalism until they gained freedom.

(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (II)
(c) Only (III)
(d) Both (I) and (II)
(e) Both (I) and (III)

Q10. Choose the word which is most opposite in meaning to the word ‘attachments’ as used in the passage. 
(a) predicaments
(b) hatred
(c) harmony
(d) mistrust
(e) loyalty

Directions (11- 15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. 

The stubborn persistence of child malnutrition in India is one of the tragedies of our time. Many of us have long agonised over this preventable problem, and we continue to ask: why do half of our children not get enough or the right food or adequate care? Even in sub-Saharan Africa, only 30 per cent of the children are malnourished, versus 50 per cent in South Asia. And this gap exists despite our much higher levels of per capita income, education and even safer water access. One-third of the babies in India are born with low birth weight compared to one-sixth in sub-Saharan Africa. This is heartbreaking given the dramatic improvements in our agriculture, advances in literacy, and great strides in economic growth. For more than 20 years India has even sustained the greatest effort in history to improve nutritional standards, according to UNICEF, through its Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Programme. So it is not for lack of effort. Nor is it due to poverty, which has been steadily declining by one per cent a year for two decades. What accounts for this puzzle? In 1996, India’s famous physician nutritionist wrote aground-breaking article on this called ‘The Asian Enigma’. After considering different factors, including access to food and income and our vegetarianism, he concluded that the lower status of women might be the reason. The link between women’s status and child nutrition seems plausible. In many Indian homes, men eat first; women have to make do with leftovers. This is perhaps why 83 per cent of women in India suffer from iron deficiency-anaemia versus 40 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. A malnourished mother will give birth to a baby with low birth weight. Moreover, domestic work often forces a mother to delegate the chore of feeding solid food to her baby to older siblings. If women had more control over family income and decisions, they would devote them to better pre and post-natal care and to their children.
So far this was the theory. But now a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute and Emory University seems to confirm this hypothesis. It brought together data from 36 developing countries, spanning over one hundred thousand children under the age of three and an equal number of women. It measured a woman’s position in the home—whether she works for cash, her age at marriage, and the difference in age and education between spouses. The study concludes that the lowly position of women in the family is the single most important reason for the gap in children’s nutrition between South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, followed by sanitation (lack of latrines) and urbanisation (slum living).
I wonder why the position of women in India is worse than that of women in other societies. The report seemed to suggest that South Asian women were not so far behind African women as their inferior status too limited their ability to nurture children. I also wonder whether children’s well being is only a woman’s issue or a family concern where men play a crucial role. I suspect there are no easy answers. Women everywhere suffer from lower status, but in India it appears to have devastating consequences. The policy implications are clear: if we want to reduce child malnutrition, we must combine our child programmes with efforts to improve the situation of women. To succeed, we need healthy children who’ll become tomorrow’s innovative adults. If we ignore gender inequality, we will continue to produce stunted children, wasted lives, and untold misery.

Q11. A hypothesis related to low birth weight has now been confirmed. According to this, the major reason for this state is
(a) Vegetarianism
(b) Illiteracy
(c) Illiteracy of women
(d) Status of women
(e) Slum living

Q12. Which type of scheme indicates that there was no lack of efforts in India for the last two decades to improve the situation?
(a) Literacy
(b) Rural Development
(c) Child Development
(d) Family Planning
(e) Poverty Alleviation

Q13. In which of the following areas is South Asia’s performance better than that of sub-Saharan Africa?
(a) Safer drinking water
(b) Lower infant mortality rate
(c) Higher status of women
(d) Higher birth weight of children
(e) None of these

Q14. According to the author, the crux is
(a) women have lower status everywhere as compared to men.
(b) improvement of sanitation and slum conditions.
(c) that in India, the per capita income and education level of women is very low.
(d) low status of women has a horrifying result on child malnutrition.
(e) None of these

Q15. Which of the following was one of the measures of women’s position in the home?
(a) Number of children
(b) Difference in husband’s and wife’s income.
(c) Weights of child at birth
(d) Age of marriage
(e) None of these