Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The key gives not sensitive enough.

The passage describes the first devices, rods of different lengths standing on end like ninepins, and then says instruments far more delicate than that were needed if any really serious advance was to be made. The rods gave only a crude indication, whether and which way they fell, and could not trace the movements as the quake passed. Calling for 'far more delicate' instruments says the early ones lacked the delicacy, in other words the sensitivity, serious study needed.

The passage never calls the early rods faulty in design (they did what they were meant to do), expensive or not sturdy; those are claims the text does not make.

Answer: B

The key gives that an earthquake comes all of a sudden like a thief.

The passage opens: An earthquake comes like a thief in the night, without warning. It was necessary, therefore to invent instruments that neither slumbered nor slept. The word 'therefore' ties the need for watchful instruments directly to the lack of warning: a quake gives no notice, so something has to be always on guard to record it.

Proving technical soundness, showing expertise and keeping busy are motives the author never mentions, so those three options are unsupported by the passage.

Answer: D

The key gives that the rod device failed to record the movements with a pen on paper.

The rods only showed, by whether and in which direction they fell, how strong the shock was and where it came from. The passage then states the next aim: to devise an instrument that could record with a pen on paper the movements of the ground or of the table, as the quake passed by. So the thing the rods could not do, and the reason a better design was sought, was to make a written record of the movements.

The other options describe things the rods did manage: if it were severe they all fell (so a severe quake was measured), if it were gentle the unstable ones fell (a gentle quake was measured), and the direction of fall recorded the direction of the quake.

Answer: A

The everyday observation is the tendency of a standing person to fall when a bus or train moves suddenly.

The passage poses the problem of writing legibly when table, pen and paper all move, and says its solution lay in an everyday observation: Why does a person standing in a bus or train tend to fall when a sudden start is made? It is because his feet move on, but his head stays still. The point is that the heavy, still part (the head, and in a seismograph the suspended mass) lags behind the moving base.

The movement of the vehicle, the passengers standing in it and the sudden start of the train are all parts of the scene, but the observation itself is about the person's tendency to fall, so only the first option states it.

Answer: B

In the passage, 'slumber' means sleep.

The word occurs in recorded for the slumbering scientist, the strength of a shock that was too weak to waken him. A shock too weak to waken someone must be acting on a person who is asleep, and the earlier phrase 'instruments that neither slumbered nor slept' also pairs 'slumbered' with 'slept' as near equivalents.

A shock is what the rods record, not what 'slumber' means; 'ground' and 'suggestion' appear elsewhere in the passage in other roles and do not fit 'too weak to waken him'.

Answer: D

The author means that comparatively more financial support is given to the higher education sector during the last decade.

The passage ties the sector's 'dominant position in the economic planning process' to public money: it quotes the allocation of ₹ 19,800 crores to universities and other higher education under the Twelfth Five Year Plan and to the aim of expansion, excellence and equity. A dominant place in planning therefore means a larger share of planned spending.

Nothing in the passage is about political dominance of the decade (A), the sector overpowering other sectors (B), or the finance department's policy makers dominating (C). 'Dominant position' describes the sector's weight in the plan, not any person or party.

Answer: A

The policy makers are raising expenditure because they aim at enabling India to match up to global standards.

The passage ends its first paragraph with the reason: government policy aims at expansion, excellence and equity, through higher education initiatives that can enable India to match up to global standards. Option A restates that sentence.

The passage never speaks of influencing the global market (B), pressure in international politics (C) or funding offered by global financial institutions (D); all three bring in ideas it does not contain.

Answer: C

The author's attitude towards the teachers is sympathetic.

The author describes highly educated academics who are 'stuck in a volatile academic ecosystem', recruited on an ad hoc basis, with no formal law governing the terms of their contract, and left outside the Contract Labour Act because they are white-collar workers. The tone is that of concern for people in an insecure position, which is sympathy.

There is no irony or mockery (A), no doubt about the teachers' ability (B) and no disrespect (D): the passage blames the system and the lack of legal protection, not the teachers.

Answer: B

The professionals are stuck in a volatile academic ecosystem because there is a lack of formal law to govern the terms and conditions of their contractual engagement.

The passage says so directly: they are recruited on an ad hoc basis and there is no formal law to govern the terms and conditions of their contractual engagement. The 1970 Contract Labour Act covers blue-collar workers and leaves them outside its reach.

The passage calls the professionals 'highly educated', so they are not ill-trained (A). It says nothing about low motivation (C) or a lack of unity among them (D).

Answer: A

According to the passage Statement I is true and Statement II is false.

The passage says the growing number of universities (58%) cannot alone fulfill the criteria of expansion, 'with negative growth in absolute increase in employment'. So the number of universities is growing (Statement I is true), while the absolute increase in employment is negative, not a growth (Statement II is false).

Options B, C and D each judge one of these two claims the wrong way round: Statement I is stated outright, and Statement II contradicts the words 'negative growth'.