Synonyms Questions and Answers

Direction for [ Question No: 1 To 1 ] :

Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate options.

For a few days, no one knew where Venkatashami had gone. Enquiries revealed that he had run away with the Dombara girl. The leader of the troupe came to the Gowda to express his grief and went back to the camp. There was nothing that anyone could do. Four days later, a Gowda from a village some five miles away was passing this way, and he brought Venkatashami and left him at his parents' house. The boy was burning with fever. It seems the girl was with him when he became ill. She had been taken home by her father and Venkatashami had been brought back seriously ill.

The boy did not recover from that illness. He was a handsome boy with an open face. Dark, yes, but attractive. The black of his skin, that of his eyes, and of his moustache were of three different shades. When he smiled, it was like a flash of lightning among the clouds. His body was so well-built, no hammer could break it. The fever that had caught hold of him seemed unwilling to let go of such a fine physique. They call the fever by the name typhoid now and can diagnose it in no time. But those days, nobody was aware of such things. All they knew was that something was wrong with the tongue. He was given the traditional medicines and kept on a local diet. A fortnight later, Venkatashami passed away. His delirious mind rambled and his talk was all about his meeting with the girl. Whenever he was conscious, he kept asking them to call her. It would have been all right if he had been married to her. His request would have been treated with understanding and sympathy, and she would have been sent for. But does one bring the girl who had led him astray to his bedside in these circumstances ?

Direction for [ Question No: 2 To 2 ] :

Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate options.

Lata stood outside the hall for a minute. Sunlight poured onto the stone steps. The edge of her middle finger was smeared with dark blue ink, and she looked at it, frowning. She was close to tears.

Other English students stood on the steps and chatted. A post-mortem of the paper was being held, and it was dominated by an optimistic and chubby girl who was ticking off on her fingers the various points she had answered correctly.

'This is one paper I know I have done really well,' she said. 'Especially the 'King Lear' question. I think that the answer was 'Yes'.' Others were looking excited or depressed. Everyone agreed that several of the questions were far harder than they had needed to be. A knot of history students stood not far away, discussing their paper, which had been held simultaneously in the same building. One of them was the young man who had brought himself to Lata's attention in the Imperial Book Depot, and he was looking a little worried. He had spent a great deal of time these last few months in extra-curricular activities - particularly cricket - and this had taken its toll upon his performance.

Lata walked to a bench beneath the gulmohar tree and sat down to collect herself. When she got home for lunch, she would be pestered with a hundred questions about how well she had done. She looked down at the red flowers that lay scattered at her feet. In her head, she could still hear the buzzing of the fly.

The young man, though he had been talking to his classmates, had noticed her walking down the steps. When she sat down on the far bench under the tree, he decided to have a word with her. He told his friends that he had to go home for lunch - that his father would be waiting for him - and hurried along the path past the gulmohar. As he came to the bench, he uttered an exclamation of surprise and stopped.

Direction for [ Question No: 3 To 3 ] :

Directions : Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct / most appropriate options.

If asked, "What matters are related to health i.e. health decisions ?" most of us would answer - hospitals, doctors and pills. Yet we are all making a whole range of decisions about our health which go beyond this limited area of doctors, pills etc. For example, whether or not to smoke, take exercise, wear a seat belt, drive a motor bike, drink alcohol regularly etc. The way we reach decisions and form attitudes about our health is only just beginning to be understood.

The main paradox is why people consistently do things which are known to be very hazardous. Two interesting examples of this are smoking and not wearing seat belts. Addiction makes smokers keep on smoking and whether to wear a seat belt or not is affected by safety considerations. Taken together both these examples show how people reach decisions about their health. Understanding this process is crucial. Only then can we effectively change public attitude towards voluntary activities like smoking.

Smokers run the risk of contracting heart disease, several times more as compared to non-smokers. Even lung cancer. Despite extensive press campaigns which have regularly told smokers and car drivers the grave risks they are running, the number of smokers and non-wearers of seat belts has remained much the same. Although the numbers of deaths from road accidents and smoking are well publicized, they have aroused little public interest.

If we give smokers the real figures of deaths caused by smoking, will it affect their views on the dangers of smoking ? Unfortunately not. Many of the real figures are in the form of probable estimates, and evidence shows that people are very bad at understanding this kind of information.

Direction for [ Question No: 4 To 5 ] :

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Learning a language under any circumstances requires hard work and concentration. However, the circumstances can make a difference in both quality and quantity. Most foreign language students learn in a classroom, from a text-book. In a classroom, language learning can be controlled so that all the necessary structures are taught. Highly motivated students can thus learn the language efficiently and quickly. Learning on the streets and in the markets from experience and need can be effective although the student learns only what he happens to need, in a haphazard way.

Some language students find this real-life situation more meaningful because the students' success in fulfilling their needs depends on their language ability. However, shop-keepers are more likely to be tolerant of incorrect grammar than classroom teachers, so mispronunciations and errors will not matter much. Nevertheless, the rewards are different for the type of language learning situations. They are immediate (goods, bought in a store) in the real-life but delayed until a quiz or oral recital for the classroom learner.

The kind of language learnt in each setting differs too. In the classroom, the student is more likely to learn the grammatical language of educated people. The language learnt out of necessity often lacks the fine details of the classroom variety and might include informal expressions such as slang. The people learning on the street must be easily understood. Therefore, they might actually sound more like native speakers - although not necessarily educated people. So a combination of classroom instruction and the experience of using language in the street will result in the best language learning of all.

Direction for [ Question No: 6 To 6 ] :

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Water is the core of life; hence water must be central to our spiritual thinking. Water is not only most of earth, but also most of life. Therefore water conservation must be our deepest concern.

The Himalayan mountain range is among the highest, youngest and most fragile ecosystem of the planet. The Himalayas have given us some of the great river systems of the earth including the Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra, Nu Salween, Yangtze and the Mekong. The Himalayas are also called the 'Third Pole', for they contain the largest mass of ice and snow outside the earth's polar region, the north and south poles. There is a permanent snowline above 5,000 metres. Some of the glaciers in the region are the longest outside the two poles. The Himalayas serve as water towers, providing water on a sustained basis to more than 1,000 million people and millions of hectares of land in South Asia. The greenery, benevolent climate, highly productive ecosystems, food production and overall happiness in South Asia are in fact, attributable to the bounty of the Himalayas. They are not only beautiful; they are life-givers. Little wonder that they are venerated as the abode of gods.

To keep the Third Pole preserved through assured conservation is one of the greatest challenges for the contemporary world. Himalayan mountains are a common but fragile natural resource. As mountain ecosystems have enormous bearing on the earth's systems, their special care, regeneration and conservation of their pristine resources would only bring more happiness, peace and prosperity to large parts of the world. In Agenda 21, Chapter 13 of the United Nations, the importance of mountains is underlined : "mountain environments are essential to the survival of global ecosystems."

The Himalayas in the state of Uttarakhand are especially rich in water resources. This area is home to dozens of perennial streams and numerous other rain-fed rivers along with innumerable rivulets, waterfalls and ponds, etc.

Direction for [ Question No: 7 To 7 ] :

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Freedom is one of the most important factors in life. Man has fought politically all over the world for freedom. Religions have promised freedom, not in this world but in another. In the capitalist countries, individual freedom exists to some degree, and in the communist world it has been denied. From ancient times, freedom has meant a great deal to man, and there have been its opponents, not only political but religious through Inquisition, by excommunication, tortures and banishments, and the total denial of man's search for freedom. There have been wars and counter-wars fought for freedom. This has been the pattern of man's endeavours for freedom throughout history.

Freedom of self-expression and freedom of speech and thought exist in some parts of the world, but in others it does not. Those who have been conditioned, revolt against their backgrounds. This reaction which takes different forms is called 'freedom'. The reaction to politics is often to shun the field of politics.

One economic reaction is to form small communities based on some ideology or under the leadership of one person, but these soon disintegrate. The religious reaction against established organisations of belief is to revolt, either by joining other religious organisations or by following some guru or leader or by joining some cult. Or one denies the whole religious endeavour.

One thinks of freedom only as freedom of movement, either physical or movements of thought. It appears that one always seeks freedom on the surface. Surely, this is rather a limited freedom, involving a great deal of conflict, wars and violence.

Inner freedom is something entirely different. It has its roots not in the idea of freedom but in the reality of freedom. It covers all the endeavours of man. Without inner freedom life will always be an activity within the limited circle of time and conflict.

Direction for [ Question No: 8 To 8 ] :

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1. Kangri Karchok, the Kailash Purana of the Tibetans describes the sacred elephant-mouthed river or Langchen Khambab as a long and extensive river that rises from the 'lake unconquerable', the Tso Maphan or Manasarovar that flows from the mountainous regions of Tibet. According to this holy book, this cold river with its sands of gold, circles the holy Manasarovar seven times before taking its course to the west.

2. The Langchen Khambab flows down from the red coloured mountains of the Kanglung Kangri Glacier in the Trans-Himalayan region of Tibet, channelling its way through the earth forests of Tholing and Tsparang of the Gugi Kingdom. These earth forests are full of pillars formed by rocks that collectively appear like a forest from afar - an 'out of the world' landscape that was formed by geological movements of the earth and erosion by wind and water. The Khyunglung ruins also lies on the northern bank of the Sutlej river in this valley which was once known as the 'Garuda Valley".

3. This mighty river then flows north-west for about 260 km before entering Himachal Pradesh through Shipki La cutting across the formidable Himalayan ranges of Zanskar, the Greater Himalaya and the Dhauladhar. Subsequently, the waters meander through the gigantic Kinnaur Kailash-Jorkanden Range at Reckong Peo creating the terrifying Sutlej gorge. Then it streams into Shimla, Kullu, Mandi and Bilaspur and is responsible for the rich cultivation of grapes, apples and apricots all along its banks. After its confluence with the River Spiti at Khab it is known as Sutlej.

4. It is 1,448 km in length, making it the longest among the five rivers of Punjab. Extensively used for irrigation, it is topographically divided into the Upper Sutlej Basin and Lower Sutlej Basin. It leaves the Himachal boundary to enter the plains of the Punjab at the Bhakra Dam, the second highest gravity dam and a major point of water supply and electricity generation for the North of India.

Direction for [ Question No: 9 To 9 ] :

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The strength of Indian democracy lies in its tradition, in the fusion of the ideas of democracy and national independence which was characteristic of the Indian national movement long before independence. Although the British retained supreme authority over India until 1947, the provincial elections of 1937 provided real exercise in democratic practice before national independence. During the Pacific War, India was not overrun or seriously invaded by the Japanese and after the War was over, the transfer of power to a government of the Indian Congress Party was a peaceful one as far as Britain was concerned. By 1947, 'Indianization' had already gone far in the Indian Civil Service and army, so that the new government could start with effective instruments of central control.

After independence, however, India was faced with two vast problems, the first, that of ethnic diversity and the aspirations of sub-nationalities. The Congress leadership was more aware of the former problem than of the second; as a new political elite which had rebelled not only against the British Raj, but also against India's social order; they were conscious of the need to initiate economic development and undertake social reforms, but as nationalists who had led a struggle against alien rule on behalf of all parts of India, they took the cohesion of the Indian nation too much for granted and underestimated the centrifugal forces of ethnic division, which were bound to be accentuated rather than diminished as the popular masses were more and more drawn into politics. The Congress Party was originally opposed to the idea of recognizing any division of India on a linguistic basis and preferred to retain the old provinces of British India which often cut across linguistic boundaries; it was only in response to strong pressures from below that the principle of linguistic States was conceded as the basis of a federal 'Indian Union'. The rights granted to the States created new problems for the Central Government. The idea of making Hindi the national language of a united India was thwarted by the recalcitrance of the speakers of other important Indian languages, and the autonomy of the States rendered central economic planning extremely difficult.

Land reforms remained under the control of the States and many large-scale economic projects required a degree of cooperation between the Central Government and one or more of the States which it was found impossible to achieve. Coordination of policies was difficult even when the Congress Party was in power both in the States and at the Centre; when a Congress government in Delhi was confronted with non-Congress parties in office in the States, it became much harder.

Direction for [ Question No: 10 To 10 ] :

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Born out of the forces of globalization, India's IT sector is undertaking some globalization of its own. In search of new sources of rapid growth, the country's outsourcing giants are aggressively expanding beyond their usual stomping grounds into the developing world; setting up programming centres, chasing new clients and hiring local talent. Through geographic diversification, Indian companies hope to regain some momentum after the recession. This shift is being driven by a global economy in which the US is no longer the undisputed engine of growth. India's IT powers rose to prominence largely on the decisions made by American executives, who were quick to capitalize on the cost savings to be gained by outsourcing noncore operations, such as systems programming and call centres, to specialists overseas.

Revenues in India's IT sector surged from $4 billion in 1998 to $59 billion last fiscal, but with the recession NASSCOM forecasts that the growth rate of India's exports of IT and other business services to the US and Europe will drop to at most 7% in the current fiscal year, down from 16% last year and 29% in 2007-08.

Factors other than the crisis are driving India's IT firms into the emerging world. Although the US still accounts for 60% of the export revenue of India's IT sector, emerging markets are growing faster. Tapping these more dynamic economies won't be easy, however. The goal of Indian IT firms for the past 30 years has been to woo clients outside India and transfer as much of the actual work as possible back home, where lower wages for highly skilled programmers allowed them to offer significant cost savings. With costs in other emerging economies equally low, Indian firms can't compete on price alone.

To adapt, Indian companies which are relatively unknown in these emerging nations are establishing major local operations around the world, in the process hiring thousands of locals. Cultural conflicts arise at times while training new recruits. In addition, IT firms also have to work extra hard to woo business from emerging-market companies still unaccustomed to the concept of outsourcing. If successful, the future of India's outsourcing sector could prove as bright as its past.