English Quizzes, for IBPS PO Mains 2022

Directions (1-5): Five statements are given below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical order and form a coherent paragraph. From the given options, choose the option that does not fit into the theme of the paragraph.

Q1.
(a)Should the law allow ‘living wills’?
(b)These are advance directives that people can lay down while being sound of mind, on whether they should continue to get life-sustaining treatment after they reach a stage of total incapacitation, that is, a vegetative state.
(c)The debate on allowing euthanasia as a means to protect the dignity of patients in a vegetative state has crystallised into a key question before a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court.
(d)The question is fraught with legal, moral and philosophical implications.
(e)We must understand that people with mental illness are no different from people suffering with cancer.

Q2.
(a)The council, nominally the apex body that governs the new tax regime (where it is the Finance Minister who actually calls the shots), offered some more elements aimed at fine-tuning what was heralded as a “revolutionary” tax.
(b)There was high drama as Modi summoned BharatiyaJanata Party president Amit Shah from his Kerala mission and went into a huddle with Finance Minister ArunJaitley the previous day.
(c)At its official launch some days after the announcement, 1.5 crore bank accounts were opened for people living below poverty line.
(d)Naturally, expectations of a “big bang” announcement were heightened; many, chastened by the sudden announcement of demonetisation last November, were also nervous because of the “anything-is-possible” fear associated with policymaking in the Modi era. (e)What actually came out of the council’s nine-hour-long deliberation could not have been more underwhelming.

Q3.
(a)It followed consecutive years of drought in India with production dipping to 16 million tonnes in 2015-16, the lowest in six years.
(b)New Delhi has been trying to refashion its ties with Africa with its India-Africa Summit outreach efforts with the first such event being held in New Delhi in 2008.
(c)So much so that India seems unable to keep a commitment it made to Mozambique last year to import pigeon peas—a popular pulse variety locally known as arhar—prompting a visit by Mozambican officials to New Delhi to seek clarity on the matter.
(d)The MoU or pact signed with Mozambique to buy arhar grown there was seen as the centrepiece of Prime Minister NarendraModi’s visit to the East African country in last July.
(e)A bumper crop should ordinarily mean good news but a record harvest of pulses in India last year has led to a problem of plenty.

Q4.
(a)“Everybody was chasing numbers without providing employment to the youth or meeting sectoral industry needs.”
(b)Yet the government’s much-touted goal of providing skills training to 400 million people by 2022 is unlikely to be met, increasing India’s significant unemployment burden in a country where 69% of jobs are under threat from automation.
(c)By 2026, 64% of Indians are expected to be in the working age group of 15-59 years, making it home to the largest workforce in the world.
(d)And with more than a million job seekers entering the market every month, India is already struggling to place its army of workers.
(e) India’s so-called demographic dividend could turn into its biggest liability.

Q5.
(a)Impossibly tight U-bends and a steep road that circles out of the overcrowded mayhem of Mussoorie take you to the tranquil town of Landour.
(b)Originally a sanatorium built for the British Indian Army in 1827, it is one of the few Indian holiday destinations to have escaped overdevelopment.
(c)It’s definitely a cooler place to stay than most hill stations, for reasons more than the temperature, which is 4-5 degrees Celsius lower than Mussoorie.
(d)The church, which has been immaculately preserved and is still in use, is simply bursting with stories from its fascinating past.
(e)It may be a mere 5km journey from the Queen of the Hills, but it’s worlds away in time and temperament.

Directions (6-10) 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 (coherent means logically complete and sound).

Q6. The fact that there has been a slowdown of late in the rate of growth of the Indian economy is accepted by all, including even Prime Minister NarendraModi in his all-over-the-place diatribe against critics on October 4. The government, however, sees it as remediable since the economy, it believes, “is on the right track”. The first question to ask, however, is: why should it matter if the year-on-year quarterly GDP growth rate has been slowing down for the last six consecutive quarters and is now down to 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2017-18 (which is the lowest for any quarter in the last three years)? In advanced countries the growth rate in the level of activity is considered important because, above all, of its impact on employment, a slow growth rate entailing a lower or even a negative rate of job creation (negative because of labour productivity growth). __________________________________________________.
(a)The Modi government, however, hell-bent on inflicting additional wilful damage on an economy that is already afflicted by the world economic crisis under a neoliberal regime, has neither the courage, nor the imagination, nor the humaneness, to adopt such a course.
(b)Spokespersons of the government have explicitly said that their objective is to “formalise” the economy.
(c)One factor behind this slowing down which is obvious and has affected both China and India is the persistent world economic crisis, whose impact these countries appeared initially to have escaped, but which has finally caught up with them, especially after the counteracting effects of their own local asset price “bubbles” have collapsed.
(d)Nonetheless, while an impressive growth, far from entailing faster employment growth, can even entail an absolute drop in employment, as it has done, a slowing down of growth does mean a further drop in employment, and is undoubtedly a cause for concern.
(e)In India, too, if the jejune thrill of outdoing China’s growth rate did not bedevil economic discourse, then some concern over employment should have figured in the discussion of economic slowdown.

Q7.One of the prime development agendas of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under the stewardship of NarendraModi was to launch a major sanitation and cleanliness drive. The Prime Minister sounded the bugle for behavioural change on August 15, 2014, and launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2 that year. Striking an emotional chord with the women of India, he lamented that “sisters and mothers” were forced to defecate in the open and said the country had a “responsibility” towards them. ___________________________________________________.Quoting Gandhi’s thoughts that sanitation was more important than independence, the government reduced the Father of the Nation to a symbol of sanitation, forgetting everything else that he had believed in.

(a) Young men in uniform, all contract employees of Sanitation Departments of various States, were seen sweeping roads in cities into the wee hours.
(b) House-to-house collection of waste and its hygienic transportation was a major challenge, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) observed in its status report on solid waste management.
(c) The Modi government has a grandiose plan to make the country free from open defecation by October 2, 2019, which will be the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
(d) A cleanliness drive fortnight was launched before October 2, 2017.
(e) According to the Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation, India will be free of open defecation by 2019.

Q8. With the launch, in September, of the Saubhagya scheme, a Rs.16,320-crore project aimed at providing electricity to all willing households, the NarendraModi regime has once again brought into focus the enormity of the task of bringing power to every household in the country and the progress the government has made so far. Statistics from the Rural Electrification Corporation show that the targeted number of households is around 4.04 crore, with Uttar Pradesh alone accounting for more than 1.46 crore (nearly 40 per cent). Other States with a high number of households without power are Rajasthan (above 20 lakh), Assam (above 24 lakh), Jharkhand (above 30 lakh), Odisha (above 32 lakh), Madhya Pradesh (nearly 45 lakh) and Bihar (above 64 lakh). _____________________________.
(a) As per latest data available, only about 23 per cent of the target (25.87 lakh households) has been met.
(b) However, the website also says that the rural electrification target aims to bring power to 18,452 villages and that the government has already achieved 79 per cent of the target (14,564).
(c)The government’s latest scheme to achieve universal household electrification is high on ambition and sets impractical targets.
(d) The government can declare a village as electrified if just 10 per cent of the households have been given electrical connections.
(e) According to Central Electricity Authority data, the power supply position in the country has been improving over the past eight years.

Q9. There is a case for stepping up gas usage in our energy mix, from 6-7 per cent of commercial energy now, much lower than the global average of 24 per cent. And in rapidly urbanising India, we need to boost gas supplies to provide peaking power, piped cooking gas, reduce harmful emissions in transportation and also advance manufacturing. Note that gas consumption nationally rose to 55.5 billion cubic metres (BCM) in 2016-17, with almost 31BCM domestic gas output and nearly 25 BCM liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports. _____________________________.

(a) The pact with Japan would also seek to establish reliable spot LNG price indices reflecting true demand and supply.
(b) In the short-to-medium term, there’s much scope to raise LNG imports.
(c) Meanwhile, India’s new exploration policy that offers market-determined gas prices has reportedly led to 45 expressions of interest from oil majors.
(d) Petroleum and natural gas minister DharmendraPradhan says India would soon build a natural gas trading platform.
(e) It is welcome that the Centre has decided to revamp market design for natural gas, to better match supply with demand and bring about price efficiency as well.

Q10. India would create 20 world-class universities, Prime Minister NarendraModi said at a rally in Bihar. The ambition to create excellence in higher education is welcome. However, it is not clear that Rs 500 crore each on average over five years for a university and freedom from regulations would do the job. Delhi University’s annual budget already runs to Rs 930 crore a year and an additional Rs 100 crore would not suddenly boost performance. And freedom from restrictive regulation is something that all universities, and not just a chosen few, deserve. _____________________________________________________.

(a) At one level, this means few work at the cutting edge of science and technology, advances in which constantly revolutionise the production process.
(b) India needs a determined drive to upgrade the quality of higher education across the board.
(c) Poor standards of tertiary education are a drag on India’s competitiveness.
(d) Indian industry must show greater ambition and undertake R&D partly through universities.
(e) Exemption from all regulation can be a disaster, without strong institutional mechanisms to avoid the tendency for autonomous institutes to become small tyrannies without accountability of their organisational bosses to internal or external stakeholders.

Solutions

S1. Ans. (e)
Sol. It can be inferred that sentences CABD forms the coherent paragraph as it talks about the necessity to make ‘living wills’ as legal. Read the sentence given in option (e), it is talking about the need to give importance to mental illness while we are talking about legalizing living wills in remaining statements hence option (e) doesn’t fit in this sequence and hence is the correct choice of elimination.

S2. Ans. (c)
Sol. The paragraph is about the doubt in the mind of the people regarding the various reforms brought by the Modi government in the last few months. It can be viewed the sentences BDEA forms the coherent paragraph. Option (c) doesn’t fit in this sequence as it talks about some specific statistics regarding the opening of bank accounts which is nowhere discussed in the remaining statements, and hence is the correct choice of elimination.

S3. Ans. (b)
Sol. It can be viewed that sentences ECDA forms the coherent paragraph as it is talking about the commitment given by the Indian government to Mozambique regarding the import of pigeon peas ( arhar). Among the given options, only option (b) has no connection with any of the other sentences of the paragraph as it is talking about renewing the ties between India and Mozambique. Hence sentence (b) is the correct choice.

S4. Ans. (a)
Sol. ECBD forms a coherent paragraph as it talks about the difficulties to be faced by the government in generating large number of jobs. Read the sentence given in option (a) it says people are bothered about quantity not the quality in terms of employment,which brings out some reason which has no connection with any other sentences of the paragraph. Hence option (a) is the correct choice.

S5. Ans. (d)
Sol. The paragraph is about the mesmerizing beauty of a small town of Landour which is 5km from Mussoorie. It is least crowded and has somehow escaped overdevelopment which has retained its natural charm. AECB forms a coherent paragraph whereas option (d) has no role to play in this particular paragraph as it talks about a specific church and the stories related to it. Hence option (d) is the correct choice.

S6. Ans. (e)
Sol. Going through the paragraph, we can infer that the paragraph talks about the slowdown in the rate of growth of the Indian economy and its impact on employment of the country. The sentence before the blank talks about the importance of growth rate and its impact on employment in advanced countries. Hence the blank must be filled by the sentence which is related to this theme. Sentence (e) talks about India’s concern over employment and hence making the paragraph complete. All other sentences are irrelevant. Hence sentence (e) is the correct choice.

S7. Ans. (c)
Sol. As we go through the paragraph, we come to the conclusion that the paragraph revolves around the theme of launching a major sanitation and cleanliness drive by NDA government. The sentence before the blank is about the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2 by PM Modi and his concern for the women of India who were forced to defecate in the open while the sentence after the blank is about making Mahatma Gandhi a symbol of sanitation. Hence the blank must be filled by the sentence related to the sanitation and Mahatma Gandhi. After reading all the sentences, we find that sentence (c) goes in harmony with the paragraph as it talks about making the country defecation free. Hence option (c) is the right choice.

S8. Ans. (a)
Sol. The paragraph here is about the Saubhagya scheme launched by PM Modi aiming to bring power to every household in the country. The sentences before the blank talk about the statistics of the states without electricity and hence the blank must be filled by the sentence related to it. After reading all the sentences, we find that sentence (a) completes the paragraph appropriately as it talks about the statistics of the households which are targeted for providing them electricity. Hence option (a) is the right choice.

S9. Ans. (b)
Sol. Here the paragraph talks about the need to boost gas supplies for urbanizing India. The sentence before the blank gives the statistics of consumption of gas, domestic gas output and liquefied natural gas. Hence the blank must be filled by the sentence related to these terms. Sentence (b) goes correctly with the theme talking about raising LNG imports and hence is the correct choice.

S10. Ans. (e)
Sol. The paragraph revolves around the theme of creating excellence in higher education. The sentences before the blank talks about the budget that runs a university and deserve freedom from restrictive regulation and hence the blank must be filled by the sentence that boost the performance of a university. Sentence (e) is the only sentence that appropriately completes the paragraph and hence is the correct choice.