Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Direction for [ Question No: 21 To 21 ] :

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

As many as 24 elephants enjoyed 'mahua', a traditional country liquor, and slept for hours in an Odisha forest. When people of a nearby village went inside the forest to prepare the liquor, they found that a herd of elephants had already devoured the water fermented with the intoxicating flowers and were in deep sleep.

The villagers living near Shilipada cashew forest in Keonjhar district saw that a total of 24 jumbos, who were apparently drunk, were sleeping near the place where mahua flowers were kept in water in large pots for fermentation.

"We went into the jungle at around 6 am to prepare mahua and found that all the pots were broken and the fermented water was missing. We also found that the elephants were sleeping. They consumed the fermented water and got drunk," Naria Sethi, a villager, told PTI.

"That liquor was unprocessed. We tried to wake up the animals but failed. The forest department was then informed," he added.

Forest department personnel, after reaching the spot in the jungle under the Patana forest range, had to beat drums to wake the herd up. The elephants then went deep inside the forest, said Ghasiram Patra, the forest ranger.

The forest official, however, is not sure whether the elephants got drunk after consuming fermented mahua. Perhaps they were just resting there, he said.

Villagers, on the other hand, insisted that they spotted the elephants sleeping in intoxicated conditions at various places close to the broken pots on Tuesday.

Direction for [ Question No: 22 To 26 ] :

For a quarter of a century, those men had followed Gandhi. They had thrown off their western suits for his khadi, moved their fingers to the unfamiliar rhythms of the spinning-wheel. In his name, they had marched into the flailing lathis of the police and the gates of British jails. Quelling occasional doubts, they had followed him on his improbable crusades to the improbable triumph now beckoning: independence wrested from the British by Gandhian non-violence. They had followed him for many reasons, but above all, because they saw that his unique genius for communicating with the soul of India could draw mass support to their banner. The potential differences between them had been submerged in the common struggle with the British. Now, in that hot Delhi night, those differences began to emerge as they debated Gandhi's plan to make Jinnah Prime Minister. If they refused to endorse his scheme, Gandhi argued, the new Viceroy might find himself driven into a corner from which the only escape would be partition. Walking from village to village in Noakhali and later Bihar, applying his 'ointment' to India's sore spots, Gandhi had understood infinitely better than those political leaders in Delhi the tragedy partition might produce. He had seen in the huts and swamps of Noakhali what havoc communal fury, once unleashed, could wreak. Partition, he argued, risked unleashing those passions, not dampening them. Desperately, he begged his followers to accept his idea as perhaps their last chance to keep India united and to prevent that tragedy. He could not budge Nehru and Patel. There was a limit to the price they were prepared to pay to keep India united and handing over power to their foe, Jinnah, transgressed it. They did not share Gandhi's conviction that partition would inevitably lead to terrible violence. Broken-hearted, Gandhi would have to report to the Viceroy that he had not been able to carry his colleagues with him. The real break was still some distance ahead, but Gandhi and those men he'd so patiently groomed were fast approaching a parting of the ways. The culmination of Gandhi's crusade was now drawing near, and it would end as it had begun, in the stillness of his soul.

Direction for [ Question No: 27 To 27 ] :

Inference: Multinational corporate system

1. The degree to which people are willing to tolerate the unevenness that the multinational corporate system generates is crucial to its viability. It is important to keep in mind that Capitalism's new imperialism began after 1870. After 1914, the triumphant era was marked by war, depression, the collapse of the international economic system, and yet another war rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica, and Material Improvement. Britain's inability to deal with the by-product of its own rapid capital accumulation—a class-conscious labour force domestically, a middle class in the hinterland, and rival capital centres on the continent and in the United States—was a major factor.
2. Instead of being progressive, Britain's policy tended to be aggressive and defensive, more concerned with preventing new threats than with expanding into new areas. Ironically, the landed aristocracy's belongings were revived in Edwardian England. Colonial administrators frequently implemented policies to stifle the growth of either a native proletariat or a native capitalist class, both of which had the potential to overthrow the Empire. The centre had to rely on alliances with an ineffective class of landlords, officials, and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the expense of development as time went on. As a result, the centre had to devote an increasing portion of government activity to the military and other wasteful expenditures. As a result, a significant portion of the population's surplus was invested locally.
3. India's corporate sector was established to break free of these restrictions and open up a variety of economic sectors. Although export-import policy, technology advancement, fiscal policy, and foreign investment liberalization proposals were prefaced in the 1980s, industrial licensing and economic reform policies launched in 1991 were more general. The financial sector, the industrial sector, the foreign exchange markets, tax reforms, the investment and trade sectors, and the industrial sector all gained recognition after 1991.

Direction for [ Question No: 28 To 30 ] :

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

The popular saying is, ‘Learn to accept the things you cannot change.’ Or, ignore. Imagine you find yourself in the middle of a ferocious argument between two colleagues. What would you do – take sides and incur the wrath of the other? Demand that they pipe down and join in the confusion? Or simply walk away, ignoring them?

The safest is perhaps to ignore, but that could be mistaken for indifference, disinterest or even apathy. Yet the answer to a lot of sticky situations in life could possibly be to ignore it for the moment; to let things settle down and find their own level. That way, the heat and the dust settle down, and better sense would prevail.

To ignore something is not the same as not caring; it could even mean that you care so much that you have decided to ignore it so that it does not get worse. That is to say, to ignore responsibly – but it does not mean that you can ignore your responsibility when you are required to be responsible. Is there a way to ignore someone or something without causing offence?

To ignore is a passive response (rather, a nonresponse); there is little chance of sparking a conflict. Sometimes, silence is truly golden, for it creates the space for reflection and for calming down. Agitation only fuels further agitation and misunderstanding, whereas remaining silent could have the opposite effect, of easing tension and bringing in the much-needed calm. A lot of tricky situations in life tend to sort themselves out if only we had held our tongue and kept the peace.