CAT 2003 Slot 2 — Question Paper with Solutions
The complete CAT 2003 Slot 2 previous-year paper with the answer key and detailed solutions for all 150 questions across 3 sections. Attempt each question and check it, or tap Show solution — free, and your progress saves when you sign in.
CAT 2003 Slot 2 — practice
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
Their achievement in the field of literature is described as ______; sometimes it is even called ______.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
From the time she had put her hair up, every man she had met had grovelled before her and she had acquired a mental attitude toward the other sex which was a blend of _______ and _______.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
This simplified ________ to the decision-making process is a must read for anyone ______ important real estate, personal, or professional decisions.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
Physicians may soon have _____ to help paralyzed people move their limbs by bypassing the ____ nerves that once controlled their muscles.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
The Internet is a medium where users have nearly _____ choices and _____ constraints about where to go and what to do.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
The best punctuation is that of which the reader is least conscious, for when punctuation, or lack of it, _____ itself, it is usually because it _____.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
The argument that the need for a looser fiscal policy to _____ demand outweighs the need to _____ budget deficits is persuasive.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- To, much of the Labour movement, it symbolises the brutality of the upper classes.
- And to everybody watching, the current mess over foxhunting symbolises the government’s weakness.
- To foxhunting’s supporters, Labour’s 1991 manifesto commitment to ban it symbolises the party’s metropolitan roots and hostility to the countryside.
- Small issues sometimes have large symbolic power.
- To those who enjoy thundering across the countryside in red coats after foxes, foxhunting symbolises the ancient roots of rural lives.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- In the case of King Merolchazzar’s courtship of the Princess of the Outer Isles, there occurs a regrettable hitch.
- She acknowledges the gifts, but no word of a meeting date follows.
- The monarch, hearing good reports of a neighbouring princess, dispatches messengers with gifts to her court, beseeching an interview.
- The princess names a date, and a formal meeting takes place; after that everything buzzes along pretty smoothly.
- Royal love affairs in olden days were conducted on the correspondence method.
Fill in the blanks in the passage with the most appropriate set of words from the options for each blank.
The Athenians on the whole were peaceful and prosperous, they had _____ to sit at home and think about the universe and dispute with Socrates, or to travel abroad and _____ the world.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- Who can trace to its first beginnings the love of Damon for Pythias, of David for Jonathan, of Swan for Edgar?
- Similarly with men.
- There is about great friendships between man and man a certain inevitability that can only be compared with the age old association of ham and eggs.
- One simply feels that it is one of the things that must be so.
- No one can say, what the mutual magnetism was that brought about the deathless partnership of these wholesome and palatable foodstuffs.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- Events intervened, and in the late 1930s and 1940s, Germany suffered from "over-branding".
- The British used to be fascinated by the home of Romanticism.
- But reunification and the federal government's move to Berlin have prompted Germany to think again about its image.
- The first foreign package holiday was a tour of Germany organized by Thomas Cook in 1855.
- Since then, Germany has been understandably nervous about promoting itself abroad.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- The wall does not simply divide Israel from a putative Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders.
- A chilling omission from the road map is the gigantic 'separation wall' now being built in the West Bank by Israel.
- It is surrounded by trenches, electric wire and moats; there are watchtowers at regular intervals.
- It actually takes in new tracts of Palestinian land, sometimes five or six kilometres at a stretch.
- Almost a decade after the end of South African apartheid, this ghastly racist wall is going up with scarcely a peep from Israel's American allies who are going to pay for most of it.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- Luckily the tide of battle moved elsewhere after the American victory at Midway and an Australian victory over Japan at Milne Bay.
- It could have been no more than a delaying tactic.
- The Australian military, knowing the position was hopeless, planned to fall back to the south-east in the hope of defending the main cities.
- They had captured most of the Solomon Islands and much of New Guinea, and seemed poised for an invasion.
- Not many people outside Australia realize how close the Japanese got.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- Call it the third wave sweeping the Indian media.
- Now, they are starring in a new role, as suave dealmakers who are in a hurry to strike alliances and agreements.
- Look around and you will find a host of deals that have been inked or are ready to be finalized.
- Then the media barons wrested back control from their editors, and turned marketing warriors with the brand as their missile.
- The first came with those magnificent men in their mahogany chambers who took on the world with their mighty fountain pens.
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- The celebrations of economic recovery in Washington may be as premature as that "Mission Accomplished" banner hung on the USS Abraham Lincoln to hail the end of the Iraq war.
- Meanwhile, in the real world, the struggles of families and communities continue unabated.
- Washington responded to the favourable turn in economic news with enthusiasm.
- The celebrations and high-fives up and down Pennsylvania Avenue are not to be found beyond the Beltway.
- When the third quarter GDP showed growth of 7.2% and the monthly unemployment rate dipped to 6%, euphoria gripped the US capital.
Each question has a base word that is used in the options given below. Choose the option in which the usage of the word is inappropriate.
Help
Each question has a base word that is used in the options given below. Choose the option in which the usage of the word is inappropriate.
Reason
Each question has a base word that is used in the options given below. Choose the option in which the usage of the word is inappropriate.
Paper
Each question has a base word that is used in the options given below. Choose the option in which the usage of the word is inappropriate.
Business
Each question has a base word that is used in the options given below. Choose the option in which the usage of the word is inappropriate.
Service
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
- Some decisions will be fairly obvious- “no-brainers.” Your bank account is low, but you have a two-week vacation coming up and you want to get away to some place warm to relax with your family. Will you accept your in-laws’ offer of free use of their Florida beachfront condo? Sure. You like your employer and feel ready to move forward in your career. Will you step in for your boss for three weeks while she attends a professional development course? Of course.
- Some decisions are obvious under certain circumstances. You may, for example, readily accept a relative’s offer of free holiday accommodation. Or step in for your boss when she is away.
- Some decisions are no-brainers. You need not think when making them. Examples are condo offers from in-laws and job offers from bosses when your bank account is low or boss is away.
- Easy decisions are called “no-brainers” because they do not require any cerebral activity. Examples such as accepting free holiday accommodation abound in our lives.
- Accepting an offer from in-laws when you are short on funds and want a holiday is a no-brainer. Another no-brainer is taking the boss’s job when she is away.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
- Physically, inertia is a feeling that you just can’t move; mentally, it is a sluggish mind. Even if you try to be sensitive, if your mind is sluggish, you just don’t feel anything intensely. You may even see a tragedy enacted in front of your eyes and not be able to respond meaningfully. You may see one person exploiting another, one group persecuting another, and not be able to get angry. Your energy is frozen. You are not deliberately refusing to act; you just don’t have the capacity.
- Inertia makes your body and mind sluggish. They become insensitive to tragedies, exploitation, and persecution because it freezes your energy and de-capacitates it.
- When you have inertia you don’t act although you see one person exploiting another or one group persecuting another. You don't get angry because you are incapable.
- Inertia is of two types– physical and mental. Physical inertia restricts bodily movements. Mental inertia prevents mental response to events enacted in front of your eyes.
- Physical inertia stops your body from moving; mental inertia freezes your energy, and stops your mind from responding meaningfully to events, even tragedies, in front of you.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
- Try before you buy. We use this memorable saying to urge you to experience the consequences of an alternative before you choose it, whenever this is feasible. If you are considering buying a van after having always owned sedans, rent one for a week or borrow a friend’s. By experiencing the consequences first hand, they become more meaningful. In addition, you are likely to identify consequences you had not even thought of before. May be you will discover that it is difficult to park the van in your small parking space at work, but that, on the other hand, your elderly father has a much easier time getting in and out of it.
- If you are planning to buy a van after being used to sedans, borrow a van or rent it and try it before deciding to buy it. Then you may realize that parking a van is difficult while it is easier for your elderly father to get in and out of it.
- Before choosing an alternative, experience its consequences if feasible. If, for example, you want to change from sedans to a van, try one before buying it. You will discover aspects you may never have thought of.
- Always try before you buy anything. You are bound to discover many consequences. One of the consequences of going in for a van is that it is more difficult to park than sedans at the office car park.
- We urge you to try products such as vans before buying them. Then you can experience consequences you have not thought of such as parking problems. But your father may find vans more comfortable than cars.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
- It is important for shipping companies to be clear about the objectives for maintenance and materials management– as to whether the primary focus is on service level improvement or cost minimization. Often when certain systems are set in place, the cost minimization objective and associated procedure become more important than the flexibility required for service level improvement. The problem really arises since cost minimization tends to focus on out of pocket costs which are visible, while the opportunity costs, often greater in value, are lost sight of.
- Shipping companies have to either minimize costs or maximize service quality. If they focus on cost minimization, they will reduce quality. They should focus on service level improvement, or else opportunity costs will be lost sight of.
- Shipping companies should determine the primary focus of their maintenance and materials management. Focus on cost minimization may reduce visible costs, but ignore greater invisible costs and impair service quality.
- Any cost minimization program in shipping is bound to lower the quality of service. Therefore, shipping companies must be clear about the primary focus of their maintenance and materials management before embarking on cost minimization.
- Shipping companies should focus on quality level improvement rather than cost cutting. Cost cutting will lead to untold opportunity costs. Companies should have systems in place to make the service level flexible.
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom but an embodiment of it and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit's best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the unclouded reason. “Nothing in excess,” the Greek axiom of art is the dictum of men who would brush aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity, and see clearly: plainly, unadorned, what they wished to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architectonics was pre-eminently a mark of the Greek. The power that made a unified whole of the trilogy of a Greek tragedy, that envisioned the sure, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, found its most conspicuous expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
A Hindu temple is a conglomeration of adornment. The lines of the building are completely hidden by the decorations. Sculptured figures and ornaments crowd its surface, stand out from it in thick masses, and break it up into a bewildering series of irregular tiers. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, confused. It looks like something not planned but built this way and that as the ornament required. The conviction underlying it can be perceived: each bit of the exquisitely wrought detail had a mystical meaning and the temple’s exterior was important only as a means for the artist to inscribe thereon the symbols of the truth. It is decoration, not architecture.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if only the power that moves in the earthquake were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of geometry balanced by beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there most of all is force, inhuman force, calm but tremendous, overwhelming. It reduces to nothingness all that belongs to man. He is annihilated. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the awful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give to the insignificant atom that was man.
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, only second to that, lovers of the human world. The Greek temple is the perfect expression of the pure intellect illumined by the spirit. No other great buildings anywhere approach its simplicity. In the Parthenon straight columns rise to plain capitals; a pediment is sculptured in bold, relief; there is nothing more. And yet-here is the Greek miracle-this absolute simplicity of structure is alone in majesty of beauty among all the temples and cathedrals and palaces of the world. Majestic but human truly Greek! No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity! At ease, calm, ordered, sure of itself and the world. The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples on the summit of a hill overlooking the wide sea, outlined against the circle of the sky. They would build what was more beautiful than hill and sea and sky and greater than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is large or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters not how much it is in ruins. A few white columns dominate the lofty height at Sunion as securely as the great mass of the Parthenon dominates all the sweep of sea and land around Athens. To the Greek architect man was the master of the world. His mind could understand its laws; his spirit could discover its beauty.
From the passage, which of the following combinations can be inferred to be correct?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom but an embodiment of it and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit's best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the unclouded reason. “Nothing in excess,” the Greek axiom of art is the dictum of men who would brush aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity, and see clearly: plainly, unadorned, what they wished to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architectonics was pre-eminently a mark of the Greek. The power that made a unified whole of the trilogy of a Greek tragedy, that envisioned the sure, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, found its most conspicuous expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
A Hindu temple is a conglomeration of adornment. The lines of the building are completely hidden by the decorations. Sculptured figures and ornaments crowd its surface, stand out from it in thick masses, and break it up into a bewildering series of irregular tiers. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, confused. It looks like something not planned but built this way and that as the ornament required. The conviction underlying it can be perceived: each bit of the exquisitely wrought detail had a mystical meaning and the temple’s exterior was important only as a means for the artist to inscribe thereon the symbols of the truth. It is decoration, not architecture.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if only the power that moves in the earthquake were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of geometry balanced by beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there most of all is force, inhuman force, calm but tremendous, overwhelming. It reduces to nothingness all that belongs to man. He is annihilated. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the awful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give to the insignificant atom that was man.
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, only second to that, lovers of the human world. The Greek temple is the perfect expression of the pure intellect illumined by the spirit. No other great buildings anywhere approach its simplicity. In the Parthenon straight columns rise to plain capitals; a pediment is sculptured in bold, relief; there is nothing more. And yet-here is the Greek miracle-this absolute simplicity of structure is alone in majesty of beauty among all the temples and cathedrals and palaces of the world. Majestic but human truly Greek! No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity! At ease, calm, ordered, sure of itself and the world. The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples on the summit of a hill overlooking the wide sea, outlined against the circle of the sky. They would build what was more beautiful than hill and sea and sky and greater than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is large or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters not how much it is in ruins. A few white columns dominate the lofty height at Sunion as securely as the great mass of the Parthenon dominates all the sweep of sea and land around Athens. To the Greek architect man was the master of the world. His mind could understand its laws; his spirit could discover its beauty.
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of Greek architecture, according to the passage?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom but an embodiment of it and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit's best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the unclouded reason. “Nothing in excess,” the Greek axiom of art is the dictum of men who would brush aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity, and see clearly: plainly, unadorned, what they wished to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architectonics was pre-eminently a mark of the Greek. The power that made a unified whole of the trilogy of a Greek tragedy, that envisioned the sure, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, found its most conspicuous expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
A Hindu temple is a conglomeration of adornment. The lines of the building are completely hidden by the decorations. Sculptured figures and ornaments crowd its surface, stand out from it in thick masses, and break it up into a bewildering series of irregular tiers. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, confused. It looks like something not planned but built this way and that as the ornament required. The conviction underlying it can be perceived: each bit of the exquisitely wrought detail had a mystical meaning and the temple’s exterior was important only as a means for the artist to inscribe thereon the symbols of the truth. It is decoration, not architecture.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if only the power that moves in the earthquake were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of geometry balanced by beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there most of all is force, inhuman force, calm but tremendous, overwhelming. It reduces to nothingness all that belongs to man. He is annihilated. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the awful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give to the insignificant atom that was man.
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, only second to that, lovers of the human world. The Greek temple is the perfect expression of the pure intellect illumined by the spirit. No other great buildings anywhere approach its simplicity. In the Parthenon straight columns rise to plain capitals; a pediment is sculptured in bold, relief; there is nothing more. And yet-here is the Greek miracle-this absolute simplicity of structure is alone in majesty of beauty among all the temples and cathedrals and palaces of the world. Majestic but human truly Greek! No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity! At ease, calm, ordered, sure of itself and the world. The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples on the summit of a hill overlooking the wide sea, outlined against the circle of the sky. They would build what was more beautiful than hill and sea and sky and greater than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is large or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters not how much it is in ruins. A few white columns dominate the lofty height at Sunion as securely as the great mass of the Parthenon dominates all the sweep of sea and land around Athens. To the Greek architect man was the master of the world. His mind could understand its laws; his spirit could discover its beauty.
According to the passage, what conception of man can be inferred from Egyptian architecture?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom but an embodiment of it and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit's best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the unclouded reason. “Nothing in excess,” the Greek axiom of art is the dictum of men who would brush aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity, and see clearly: plainly, unadorned, what they wished to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architectonics was pre-eminently a mark of the Greek. The power that made a unified whole of the trilogy of a Greek tragedy, that envisioned the sure, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, found its most conspicuous expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
A Hindu temple is a conglomeration of adornment. The lines of the building are completely hidden by the decorations. Sculptured figures and ornaments crowd its surface, stand out from it in thick masses, and break it up into a bewildering series of irregular tiers. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, confused. It looks like something not planned but built this way and that as the ornament required. The conviction underlying it can be perceived: each bit of the exquisitely wrought detail had a mystical meaning and the temple’s exterior was important only as a means for the artist to inscribe thereon the symbols of the truth. It is decoration, not architecture.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if only the power that moves in the earthquake were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of geometry balanced by beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there most of all is force, inhuman force, calm but tremendous, overwhelming. It reduces to nothingness all that belongs to man. He is annihilated. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the awful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give to the insignificant atom that was man.
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, only second to that, lovers of the human world. The Greek temple is the perfect expression of the pure intellect illumined by the spirit. No other great buildings anywhere approach its simplicity. In the Parthenon straight columns rise to plain capitals; a pediment is sculptured in bold, relief; there is nothing more. And yet-here is the Greek miracle-this absolute simplicity of structure is alone in majesty of beauty among all the temples and cathedrals and palaces of the world. Majestic but human truly Greek! No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity! At ease, calm, ordered, sure of itself and the world. The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples on the summit of a hill overlooking the wide sea, outlined against the circle of the sky. They would build what was more beautiful than hill and sea and sky and greater than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is large or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters not how much it is in ruins. A few white columns dominate the lofty height at Sunion as securely as the great mass of the Parthenon dominates all the sweep of sea and land around Athens. To the Greek architect man was the master of the world. His mind could understand its laws; his spirit could discover its beauty.
According to the passage, which of the following best explains why there is little symbolism in Greek art?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom but an embodiment of it and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit's best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the unclouded reason. “Nothing in excess,” the Greek axiom of art is the dictum of men who would brush aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity, and see clearly: plainly, unadorned, what they wished to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architectonics was pre-eminently a mark of the Greek. The power that made a unified whole of the trilogy of a Greek tragedy, that envisioned the sure, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, found its most conspicuous expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
A Hindu temple is a conglomeration of adornment. The lines of the building are completely hidden by the decorations. Sculptured figures and ornaments crowd its surface, stand out from it in thick masses, and break it up into a bewildering series of irregular tiers. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, confused. It looks like something not planned but built this way and that as the ornament required. The conviction underlying it can be perceived: each bit of the exquisitely wrought detail had a mystical meaning and the temple’s exterior was important only as a means for the artist to inscribe thereon the symbols of the truth. It is decoration, not architecture.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if only the power that moves in the earthquake were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of geometry balanced by beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there most of all is force, inhuman force, calm but tremendous, overwhelming. It reduces to nothingness all that belongs to man. He is annihilated. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the awful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give to the insignificant atom that was man.
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, only second to that, lovers of the human world. The Greek temple is the perfect expression of the pure intellect illumined by the spirit. No other great buildings anywhere approach its simplicity. In the Parthenon straight columns rise to plain capitals; a pediment is sculptured in bold, relief; there is nothing more. And yet-here is the Greek miracle-this absolute simplicity of structure is alone in majesty of beauty among all the temples and cathedrals and palaces of the world. Majestic but human truly Greek! No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity! At ease, calm, ordered, sure of itself and the world. The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples on the summit of a hill overlooking the wide sea, outlined against the circle of the sky. They would build what was more beautiful than hill and sea and sky and greater than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is large or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters not how much it is in ruins. A few white columns dominate the lofty height at Sunion as securely as the great mass of the Parthenon dominates all the sweep of sea and land around Athens. To the Greek architect man was the master of the world. His mind could understand its laws; his spirit could discover its beauty.
“The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the fullness of their joyous strength.” Which of the following best captures the ‘challenge’ that is being referred to?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union Government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity has exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many causes. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to a multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long-term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s, many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which State-level parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union Government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India's panchayati raj system, inaugurated with such fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre's encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the Congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to bypass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the State administration and given the upper hand to State Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant State capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The "foreign aid" syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of "grass roots development".
The central theme of the passage can be best summarized as
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union Government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity has exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many causes. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to a multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long-term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s, many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which State-level parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union Government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India's panchayati raj system, inaugurated with such fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre's encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the Congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to bypass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the State administration and given the upper hand to State Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant State capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The "foreign aid" syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of "grass roots development".
The sentence in the last paragraph, “And their own volition has been further circumscribed...”, refers to:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union Government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity has exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many causes. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to a multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long-term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s, many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which State-level parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union Government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India's panchayati raj system, inaugurated with such fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre's encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the Congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to bypass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the State administration and given the upper hand to State Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant State capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The "foreign aid" syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of "grass roots development".
What is the "dilemma" at the intra-State level mentioned in the first paragraph of the passage?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union Government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity has exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many causes. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to a multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long-term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s, many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which State-level parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union Government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India's panchayati raj system, inaugurated with such fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre's encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the Congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to bypass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the State administration and given the upper hand to State Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant State capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The "foreign aid" syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of "grass roots development".
Which of the following most closely describes the 'fatal flaw' that the passage refers to?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union Government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity has exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many causes. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to a multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long-term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s, many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which State-level parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union Government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India's panchayati raj system, inaugurated with such fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre's encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the Congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to bypass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the State administration and given the upper hand to State Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant State capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The "foreign aid" syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of "grass roots development".
Which of the following best captures the current state of Indian federalism as described in the passage?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer's scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home– he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I wasn't up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can't get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn't welcome anymore. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It's like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it's often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can't understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor's office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means; it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more, organic, 'legitimate' means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten Culture' can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates– universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals, born to the working-class, report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won't always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn't always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity; obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm- the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
When Straddlers enter white collar jobs, they get lost because
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer's scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home– he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I wasn't up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can't get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn't welcome anymore. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It's like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it's often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can't understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor's office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means; it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more, organic, 'legitimate' means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten Culture' can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates– universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals, born to the working-class, report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won't always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn't always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity; obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm- the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
What does the author's statement, "My father wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I wasn't up on arches," illustrate?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer's scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home– he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I wasn't up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can't get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn't welcome anymore. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It's like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it's often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can't understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor's office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means; it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more, organic, 'legitimate' means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten Culture' can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates– universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals, born to the working-class, report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won't always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn't always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity; obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm- the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
Which of the following statements about Straddlers does the passage NOT support explicitly?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer's scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home– he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I wasn't up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can't get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn't welcome anymore. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It's like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it's often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can't understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor's office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means; it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more, organic, 'legitimate' means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten Culture' can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates– universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals, born to the working-class, report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won't always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn't always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity; obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm- the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
According to the passage, which of the following statements about 'cultural capital' is NOT true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer's scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home– he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I wasn't up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can't get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn't welcome anymore. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It's like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it's often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can't understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor's office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means; it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more, organic, 'legitimate' means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten Culture' can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates– universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals, born to the working-class, report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won't always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn't always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity; obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm- the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
According to the passage, the patterns of socialization of working-class children make them most suited for jobs that require
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The invention of the gas turbine by Frank Whittle in England and Hans von Ohain in Germany in 1939 signalled the beginning of jet transport. Although the French engineer Lorin had visualized the concept of jet propulsion more than 25 years earlier, it took improved materials and the genius of Whittle and von Ohain to recognize the advantages that a gas turbine offered over a piston engine, including speeds in excess of 350 miles per hour. The progress from the first flights of liquid propellant rocket and jet-propelled aircraft in 1939 to the first faster-than-sound (supersonic) manned airplane (the Bell X–1) in 1947 happened in less than a decade. This then led very rapidly to a series of supersonic fighters and bombers, the first of which became operational in the 1950s. World War II technology foundations and emerging Cold War imperatives then led us into space with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the placing of the first man on the moon only 12 years later- a mere 24 years after the end of World War II.
Now, a hypersonic flight can take you anywhere in the planet in less than four hours. British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and the air forces of several other countries are going to use a single-engine cousin to the F/A–22 called the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter. These planes exhibit stealthy angles and coatings that make it difficult for radar to detect them, among aviation’s most cutting-edge advances in design. The V–22, known as tilt-rotor, part helicopter, part airplane, takes off vertically, then tilts its engine forward for winged flight. It provides speed, three times the payload, five times the range of the helicopters it’s meant to replace. The new fighter, F/A–22 Raptor, with more than a million parts, shows a perfect amalgamation of stealth, speed, avionics and agility.
It seems conventional forms, like the Predator and Global Hawk are passé, the stealthier unmanned aerial vehicles (VA Vs) are in. They are shaped like kites, bats and boomerang, all but invisible to the enemy radar and able to remain over hostile territory without any fear of getting grilled if shot down. Will the UAVs take away pilots’ jobs permanently? Can a computer-operated machine take a smarter and faster decision in a warlike situation? The new free-flight concept will probably supplement the existing air traffic control system by computers on each plane to map the altitude, route, weather and other planes; and a decade from now, there will be no use of radar any more.
How much bigger can the airplanes get? In the ‘50s they got speed, in the ‘80s they became stealthy. Now, they are getting smarter thanks to computer automation. The change is quite huge: from the four-seater to the A380 airplane. It seems we are now trading speed for size as we build a new Super-jumbo jet, the 555 seater A380, which will fly at almost the same speed of the Boeing 707, introduced half a century ago, but with an improved capacity, range, greater fuel economy. A few years down the line will come the truly larger model, to be known as 747X. In the beginning of 2005, the A380, the world’s first fully double-decked superjumbo passenger jet, weighing 1.2 million pounds, may carry a load of about 840 passengers.
Barring the early phase, civil aviation has always lagged behind the military technologies (of jet engines, lightweight composite materials etc.). There are two fundamental factors behind the decline in commercial aeronautics in comparison to military aeronautics. There is no collective vision of our future such as the one that drove us in the past. There is also a need for a more aggressive pool of airplane design talents to maintain an industry that continues to find a multibillion dollar-a-year market for its product.
Can the history of aviation technology tell us something about the future of aeronautics? Have we reached a final state in our evolution to a mature technology in aeronautics? Are the challenges of coming out with the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ designs somehow inferior to those that are suited for ‘faster, higher, further’? Safety should improve greatly as a result of the forthcoming improvements in airframes, engines, and avionics. Sixty years from now, aircraft will recover on their own if the pilot loses control. Satellites are the key not only to GPS (global positioning system) navigation but also to in-flight communications, uplinked weather, and even in-flight e-mail. Although there is some debate about what type of engines will power future airplanes- lightweight turbines, turbocharged diesels, or both- there is little debate about how these power plants will be controlled. Pilots of the future can look forward to more and better on-board safety equipment.
According to the first paragraph of the passage, which of the following statements is NOT false?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The invention of the gas turbine by Frank Whittle in England and Hans von Ohain in Germany in 1939 signalled the beginning of jet transport. Although the French engineer Lorin had visualized the concept of jet propulsion more than 25 years earlier, it took improved materials and the genius of Whittle and von Ohain to recognize the advantages that a gas turbine offered over a piston engine, including speeds in excess of 350 miles per hour. The progress from the first flights of liquid propellant rocket and jet-propelled aircraft in 1939 to the first faster-than-sound (supersonic) manned airplane (the Bell X–1) in 1947 happened in less than a decade. This then led very rapidly to a series of supersonic fighters and bombers, the first of which became operational in the 1950s. World War II technology foundations and emerging Cold War imperatives then led us into space with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the placing of the first man on the moon only 12 years later- a mere 24 years after the end of World War II.
Now, a hypersonic flight can take you anywhere in the planet in less than four hours. British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and the air forces of several other countries are going to use a single-engine cousin to the F/A–22 called the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter. These planes exhibit stealthy angles and coatings that make it difficult for radar to detect them, among aviation’s most cutting-edge advances in design. The V–22, known as tilt-rotor, part helicopter, part airplane, takes off vertically, then tilts its engine forward for winged flight. It provides speed, three times the payload, five times the range of the helicopters it’s meant to replace. The new fighter, F/A–22 Raptor, with more than a million parts, shows a perfect amalgamation of stealth, speed, avionics and agility.
It seems conventional forms, like the Predator and Global Hawk are passé, the stealthier unmanned aerial vehicles (VA Vs) are in. They are shaped like kites, bats and boomerang, all but invisible to the enemy radar and able to remain over hostile territory without any fear of getting grilled if shot down. Will the UAVs take away pilots’ jobs permanently? Can a computer-operated machine take a smarter and faster decision in a warlike situation? The new free-flight concept will probably supplement the existing air traffic control system by computers on each plane to map the altitude, route, weather and other planes; and a decade from now, there will be no use of radar any more.
How much bigger can the airplanes get? In the ‘50s they got speed, in the ‘80s they became stealthy. Now, they are getting smarter thanks to computer automation. The change is quite huge: from the four-seater to the A380 airplane. It seems we are now trading speed for size as we build a new Super-jumbo jet, the 555 seater A380, which will fly at almost the same speed of the Boeing 707, introduced half a century ago, but with an improved capacity, range, greater fuel economy. A few years down the line will come the truly larger model, to be known as 747X. In the beginning of 2005, the A380, the world’s first fully double-decked superjumbo passenger jet, weighing 1.2 million pounds, may carry a load of about 840 passengers.
Barring the early phase, civil aviation has always lagged behind the military technologies (of jet engines, lightweight composite materials etc.). There are two fundamental factors behind the decline in commercial aeronautics in comparison to military aeronautics. There is no collective vision of our future such as the one that drove us in the past. There is also a need for a more aggressive pool of airplane design talents to maintain an industry that continues to find a multibillion dollar-a-year market for its product.
Can the history of aviation technology tell us something about the future of aeronautics? Have we reached a final state in our evolution to a mature technology in aeronautics? Are the challenges of coming out with the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ designs somehow inferior to those that are suited for ‘faster, higher, further’? Safety should improve greatly as a result of the forthcoming improvements in airframes, engines, and avionics. Sixty years from now, aircraft will recover on their own if the pilot loses control. Satellites are the key not only to GPS (global positioning system) navigation but also to in-flight communications, uplinked weather, and even in-flight e-mail. Although there is some debate about what type of engines will power future airplanes- lightweight turbines, turbocharged diesels, or both- there is little debate about how these power plants will be controlled. Pilots of the future can look forward to more and better on-board safety equipment.
What is the fourth paragraph of the passage, starting, “How much bigger ... .”, about?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The invention of the gas turbine by Frank Whittle in England and Hans von Ohain in Germany in 1939 signalled the beginning of jet transport. Although the French engineer Lorin had visualized the concept of jet propulsion more than 25 years earlier, it took improved materials and the genius of Whittle and von Ohain to recognize the advantages that a gas turbine offered over a piston engine, including speeds in excess of 350 miles per hour. The progress from the first flights of liquid propellant rocket and jet-propelled aircraft in 1939 to the first faster-than-sound (supersonic) manned airplane (the Bell X–1) in 1947 happened in less than a decade. This then led very rapidly to a series of supersonic fighters and bombers, the first of which became operational in the 1950s. World War II technology foundations and emerging Cold War imperatives then led us into space with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the placing of the first man on the moon only 12 years later- a mere 24 years after the end of World War II.
Now, a hypersonic flight can take you anywhere in the planet in less than four hours. British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and the air forces of several other countries are going to use a single-engine cousin to the F/A–22 called the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter. These planes exhibit stealthy angles and coatings that make it difficult for radar to detect them, among aviation’s most cutting-edge advances in design. The V–22, known as tilt-rotor, part helicopter, part airplane, takes off vertically, then tilts its engine forward for winged flight. It provides speed, three times the payload, five times the range of the helicopters it’s meant to replace. The new fighter, F/A–22 Raptor, with more than a million parts, shows a perfect amalgamation of stealth, speed, avionics and agility.
It seems conventional forms, like the Predator and Global Hawk are passé, the stealthier unmanned aerial vehicles (VA Vs) are in. They are shaped like kites, bats and boomerang, all but invisible to the enemy radar and able to remain over hostile territory without any fear of getting grilled if shot down. Will the UAVs take away pilots’ jobs permanently? Can a computer-operated machine take a smarter and faster decision in a warlike situation? The new free-flight concept will probably supplement the existing air traffic control system by computers on each plane to map the altitude, route, weather and other planes; and a decade from now, there will be no use of radar any more.
How much bigger can the airplanes get? In the ‘50s they got speed, in the ‘80s they became stealthy. Now, they are getting smarter thanks to computer automation. The change is quite huge: from the four-seater to the A380 airplane. It seems we are now trading speed for size as we build a new Super-jumbo jet, the 555 seater A380, which will fly at almost the same speed of the Boeing 707, introduced half a century ago, but with an improved capacity, range, greater fuel economy. A few years down the line will come the truly larger model, to be known as 747X. In the beginning of 2005, the A380, the world’s first fully double-decked superjumbo passenger jet, weighing 1.2 million pounds, may carry a load of about 840 passengers.
Barring the early phase, civil aviation has always lagged behind the military technologies (of jet engines, lightweight composite materials etc.). There are two fundamental factors behind the decline in commercial aeronautics in comparison to military aeronautics. There is no collective vision of our future such as the one that drove us in the past. There is also a need for a more aggressive pool of airplane design talents to maintain an industry that continues to find a multibillion dollar-a-year market for its product.
Can the history of aviation technology tell us something about the future of aeronautics? Have we reached a final state in our evolution to a mature technology in aeronautics? Are the challenges of coming out with the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ designs somehow inferior to those that are suited for ‘faster, higher, further’? Safety should improve greatly as a result of the forthcoming improvements in airframes, engines, and avionics. Sixty years from now, aircraft will recover on their own if the pilot loses control. Satellites are the key not only to GPS (global positioning system) navigation but also to in-flight communications, uplinked weather, and even in-flight e-mail. Although there is some debate about what type of engines will power future airplanes- lightweight turbines, turbocharged diesels, or both- there is little debate about how these power plants will be controlled. Pilots of the future can look forward to more and better on-board safety equipment.
What is the most noteworthy difference between V-22 and a standard airplane?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The invention of the gas turbine by Frank Whittle in England and Hans von Ohain in Germany in 1939 signalled the beginning of jet transport. Although the French engineer Lorin had visualized the concept of jet propulsion more than 25 years earlier, it took improved materials and the genius of Whittle and von Ohain to recognize the advantages that a gas turbine offered over a piston engine, including speeds in excess of 350 miles per hour. The progress from the first flights of liquid propellant rocket and jet-propelled aircraft in 1939 to the first faster-than-sound (supersonic) manned airplane (the Bell X–1) in 1947 happened in less than a decade. This then led very rapidly to a series of supersonic fighters and bombers, the first of which became operational in the 1950s. World War II technology foundations and emerging Cold War imperatives then led us into space with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the placing of the first man on the moon only 12 years later- a mere 24 years after the end of World War II.
Now, a hypersonic flight can take you anywhere in the planet in less than four hours. British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and the air forces of several other countries are going to use a single-engine cousin to the F/A–22 called the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter. These planes exhibit stealthy angles and coatings that make it difficult for radar to detect them, among aviation’s most cutting-edge advances in design. The V–22, known as tilt-rotor, part helicopter, part airplane, takes off vertically, then tilts its engine forward for winged flight. It provides speed, three times the payload, five times the range of the helicopters it’s meant to replace. The new fighter, F/A–22 Raptor, with more than a million parts, shows a perfect amalgamation of stealth, speed, avionics and agility.
It seems conventional forms, like the Predator and Global Hawk are passé, the stealthier unmanned aerial vehicles (VA Vs) are in. They are shaped like kites, bats and boomerang, all but invisible to the enemy radar and able to remain over hostile territory without any fear of getting grilled if shot down. Will the UAVs take away pilots’ jobs permanently? Can a computer-operated machine take a smarter and faster decision in a warlike situation? The new free-flight concept will probably supplement the existing air traffic control system by computers on each plane to map the altitude, route, weather and other planes; and a decade from now, there will be no use of radar any more.
How much bigger can the airplanes get? In the ‘50s they got speed, in the ‘80s they became stealthy. Now, they are getting smarter thanks to computer automation. The change is quite huge: from the four-seater to the A380 airplane. It seems we are now trading speed for size as we build a new Super-jumbo jet, the 555 seater A380, which will fly at almost the same speed of the Boeing 707, introduced half a century ago, but with an improved capacity, range, greater fuel economy. A few years down the line will come the truly larger model, to be known as 747X. In the beginning of 2005, the A380, the world’s first fully double-decked superjumbo passenger jet, weighing 1.2 million pounds, may carry a load of about 840 passengers.
Barring the early phase, civil aviation has always lagged behind the military technologies (of jet engines, lightweight composite materials etc.). There are two fundamental factors behind the decline in commercial aeronautics in comparison to military aeronautics. There is no collective vision of our future such as the one that drove us in the past. There is also a need for a more aggressive pool of airplane design talents to maintain an industry that continues to find a multibillion dollar-a-year market for its product.
Can the history of aviation technology tell us something about the future of aeronautics? Have we reached a final state in our evolution to a mature technology in aeronautics? Are the challenges of coming out with the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ designs somehow inferior to those that are suited for ‘faster, higher, further’? Safety should improve greatly as a result of the forthcoming improvements in airframes, engines, and avionics. Sixty years from now, aircraft will recover on their own if the pilot loses control. Satellites are the key not only to GPS (global positioning system) navigation but also to in-flight communications, uplinked weather, and even in-flight e-mail. Although there is some debate about what type of engines will power future airplanes- lightweight turbines, turbocharged diesels, or both- there is little debate about how these power plants will be controlled. Pilots of the future can look forward to more and better on-board safety equipment.
Why might radars not be used a decade from now?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The invention of the gas turbine by Frank Whittle in England and Hans von Ohain in Germany in 1939 signalled the beginning of jet transport. Although the French engineer Lorin had visualized the concept of jet propulsion more than 25 years earlier, it took improved materials and the genius of Whittle and von Ohain to recognize the advantages that a gas turbine offered over a piston engine, including speeds in excess of 350 miles per hour. The progress from the first flights of liquid propellant rocket and jet-propelled aircraft in 1939 to the first faster-than-sound (supersonic) manned airplane (the Bell X–1) in 1947 happened in less than a decade. This then led very rapidly to a series of supersonic fighters and bombers, the first of which became operational in the 1950s. World War II technology foundations and emerging Cold War imperatives then led us into space with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the placing of the first man on the moon only 12 years later- a mere 24 years after the end of World War II.
Now, a hypersonic flight can take you anywhere in the planet in less than four hours. British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and the air forces of several other countries are going to use a single-engine cousin to the F/A–22 called the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter. These planes exhibit stealthy angles and coatings that make it difficult for radar to detect them, among aviation’s most cutting-edge advances in design. The V–22, known as tilt-rotor, part helicopter, part airplane, takes off vertically, then tilts its engine forward for winged flight. It provides speed, three times the payload, five times the range of the helicopters it’s meant to replace. The new fighter, F/A–22 Raptor, with more than a million parts, shows a perfect amalgamation of stealth, speed, avionics and agility.
It seems conventional forms, like the Predator and Global Hawk are passé, the stealthier unmanned aerial vehicles (VA Vs) are in. They are shaped like kites, bats and boomerang, all but invisible to the enemy radar and able to remain over hostile territory without any fear of getting grilled if shot down. Will the UAVs take away pilots’ jobs permanently? Can a computer-operated machine take a smarter and faster decision in a warlike situation? The new free-flight concept will probably supplement the existing air traffic control system by computers on each plane to map the altitude, route, weather and other planes; and a decade from now, there will be no use of radar any more.
How much bigger can the airplanes get? In the ‘50s they got speed, in the ‘80s they became stealthy. Now, they are getting smarter thanks to computer automation. The change is quite huge: from the four-seater to the A380 airplane. It seems we are now trading speed for size as we build a new Super-jumbo jet, the 555 seater A380, which will fly at almost the same speed of the Boeing 707, introduced half a century ago, but with an improved capacity, range, greater fuel economy. A few years down the line will come the truly larger model, to be known as 747X. In the beginning of 2005, the A380, the world’s first fully double-decked superjumbo passenger jet, weighing 1.2 million pounds, may carry a load of about 840 passengers.
Barring the early phase, civil aviation has always lagged behind the military technologies (of jet engines, lightweight composite materials etc.). There are two fundamental factors behind the decline in commercial aeronautics in comparison to military aeronautics. There is no collective vision of our future such as the one that drove us in the past. There is also a need for a more aggressive pool of airplane design talents to maintain an industry that continues to find a multibillion dollar-a-year market for its product.
Can the history of aviation technology tell us something about the future of aeronautics? Have we reached a final state in our evolution to a mature technology in aeronautics? Are the challenges of coming out with the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ designs somehow inferior to those that are suited for ‘faster, higher, further’? Safety should improve greatly as a result of the forthcoming improvements in airframes, engines, and avionics. Sixty years from now, aircraft will recover on their own if the pilot loses control. Satellites are the key not only to GPS (global positioning system) navigation but also to in-flight communications, uplinked weather, and even in-flight e-mail. Although there is some debate about what type of engines will power future airplanes- lightweight turbines, turbocharged diesels, or both- there is little debate about how these power plants will be controlled. Pilots of the future can look forward to more and better on-board safety equipment.
According to the author, commercial aeronautics, in contrast to military aeronautics, has declined because, among other things,
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons .... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word ‘clerc’ even today has the connotation of intellectual.
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
According to the passage, what led to the secularization of the curriculum of the liberal arts in the twelfth century?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons .... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word ‘clerc’ even today has the connotation of intellectual.
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
According to the author, in the twelfth century, individuals were motivated to get higher education because it
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons .... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word ‘clerc’ even today has the connotation of intellectual.
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
According to the passage, twelfth century schools were clerical and yet secular because
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons .... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word ‘clerc’ even today has the connotation of intellectual.
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
What does the sentence “Christians educate their sons. ..will be ours and the other brothers” imply?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons .... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word ‘clerc’ even today has the connotation of intellectual.
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
According to the passage, which of the following is the most noteworthy trend in education in twelfth-century Europe?
Choose 1, if the question can be answered by using statement A alone but not by using B alone.
Choose 2, if the question can be answered by using statement B alone but not by using A alone.
Choose 3, if the question can be answered by using either statement alone.
Choose 4, if the question can be answered by using both the statements together but not by either statement.
In a cricket match, the ‘man of the match’ award is given to the player scoring the highest number of runs. In case of a tie, the player (out of those locked in the tie) who has taken the higher number of catches is chosen. Even thereafter if there is a tie, the player (out of those locked in the tie) who has dropped fewer catches is selected. Aakash, Biplab and Chirag who were contenders for the award dropped at least one catch each. Biplab dropped 2 catches more than Aakash did, scored 50, and took 2 catches. Chirag got two chances to catch and dropped both. Who was the ‘man of the match’?
A. Chirag made 15 runs less than both Aakash and Biplab.
B. The catches dropped by Biplab are 1 more than the catches taken by Aakash.
Choose 1, if the question can be answered by using statement A alone but not by using B alone.
Choose 2, if the question can be answered by using statement B alone but not by using A alone.
Choose 3, if the question can be answered by using either statement alone.
Choose 4, if the question can be answered by using both the statements together but not by either statement.
Four friends, A, B, C and D got the top four ranks in a competitive examination, but A did not get the first, B did not get the second, C did not get the third, and D did not get the fourth rank. Who secured which rank?
A. Neither A nor D were among the first 2.
B. Neither B nor C was third or fourth.
Choose 1, if the question can be answered by using statement A alone but not by using B alone.
Choose 2, if the question can be answered by using statement B alone but not by using A alone.
Choose 3, if the question can be answered by using either statement alone.
Choose 4, if the question can be answered by using both the statements together but not by either statement.
The members of a local club contributed equally to pay Rs.600 towards a donation. How much did each one pay?
A. If there had been five fewer members, each one would have paid an additional Rs.10.
B. There were at least 20 members in the club, and each one paid no more than Rs.30.
Choose 1, if the question can be answered by using statement A alone but not by using B alone.
Choose 2, if the question can be answered by using statement B alone but not by using A alone.
Choose 3, if the question can be answered by using either statement alone.
Choose 4, if the question can be answered by using both the statements together but not by either statement.
A family has only one kid. The father says “after ‘n’ years, my age will be 4 times the age of my kid.” The mother says “after ‘n’ years, my age will be 3 times that of my kid.” What will be the combined ages of the parents after ‘n’ years?
A. The age difference between the parents is 10 years.
B. After ‘n’ years, the kid is going to be twice as old as she is now.
Choose 1, if the question can be answered by using statement A alone but not by using B alone.
Choose 2, if the question can be answered by using statement B alone but not by using A alone.
Choose 3, if the question can be answered by using either statement alone.
Choose 4, if the question can be answered by using both the statements together but not by either statement.
70 percent of the employees in a multinational corporation have VCD players, 75 percent have microwave ovens, 80 percent have ACs and 85 percent have washing machines. At least what percentage of employees has all four gadgets?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Four families decided to attend the marriage ceremony of one of their colleagues. One family has no kids, while the others have at least one kid each. Each family with kids has at least one kid attending the marriage. Given below is some information about the families, and who reached when to attend the marriage.
The family with 2 kids came just before the family with no kids.
Shanthi who does not have any kids reached just before Sridevi’s family.
Sunil and his wife reached last with their only kid.
Anil is not the husband of Joya.
Anil and Raj are fathers.
Sridevi’s and Anita’s daughters go to the same school.
Joya came before Shanthi and met Anita when she reached the venue.
Raman stays the farthest from the venue.
Raj said his son could not come because of his exams.
Which woman arrived third?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Four families decided to attend the marriage ceremony of one of their colleagues. One family has no kids, while the others have at least one kid each. Each family with kids has at least one kid attending the marriage. Given below is some information about the families, and who reached when to attend the marriage.
The family with 2 kids came just before the family with no kids.
Shanthi who does not have any kids reached just before Sridevi’s family.
Sunil and his wife reached last with their only kid.
Anil is not the husband of Joya.
Anil and Raj are fathers.
Sridevi’s and Anita’s daughters go to the same school.
Joya came before Shanthi and met Anita when she reached the venue.
Raman stays the farthest from the venue.
Raj said his son could not come because of his exams.
Name the correct pair of husband and wife.
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Four families decided to attend the marriage ceremony of one of their colleagues. One family has no kids, while the others have at least one kid each. Each family with kids has at least one kid attending the marriage. Given below is some information about the families, and who reached when to attend the marriage.
The family with 2 kids came just before the family with no kids.
Shanthi who does not have any kids reached just before Sridevi’s family.
Sunil and his wife reached last with their only kid.
Anil is not the husband of Joya.
Anil and Raj are fathers.
Sridevi’s and Anita’s daughters go to the same school.
Joya came before Shanthi and met Anita when she reached the venue.
Raman stays the farthest from the venue.
Raj said his son could not come because of his exams.
Of the following pairs, whose daughters go to the same school?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Four families decided to attend the marriage ceremony of one of their colleagues. One family has no kids, while the others have at least one kid each. Each family with kids has at least one kid attending the marriage. Given below is some information about the families, and who reached when to attend the marriage.
The family with 2 kids came just before the family with no kids.
Shanthi who does not have any kids reached just before Sridevi’s family.
Sunil and his wife reached last with their only kid.
Anil is not the husband of Joya.
Anil and Raj are fathers.
Sridevi’s and Anita’s daughters go to the same school.
Joya came before Shanthi and met Anita when she reached the venue.
Raman stays the farthest from the venue.
Raj said his son could not come because of his exams.
Whose family is known to have more than one kid for certain?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Recently, the answers of a test held nationwide were leaked to a group of unscrupulous people. The investigative agency has arrested the mastermind and nine other people A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I in this matter. Interrogating them, the following facts have been obtained regarding their operation. Initially the mastermind obtains the correct answer-key. All the others create their answer-key from one or two people who already possess the same. These people are called his/her “sources”. If the person has two sources, then he/she compares the answer-keys obtained from both sources. If the key to a question from both sources is identical, it is copied, otherwise it is left blank. If the person has only one source, he/she copies the source’s answers into his/her copy. Finally, each person compulsorily replaces one of the answers (not a blank one) with a wrong answer in his/her answer key.
The paper contained 200 questions; so the investigative agency has ruled out the possibility of two or more of them introducing wrong answers to the same question. The investigative agency has a copy of the correct answer key and has tabulated the following data. These data represent question numbers.
âââââââ
Which one among the following must have two sources?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Recently, the answers of a test held nationwide were leaked to a group of unscrupulous people. The investigative agency has arrested the mastermind and nine other people A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I in this matter. Interrogating them, the following facts have been obtained regarding their operation. Initially the mastermind obtains the correct answer-key. All the others create their answer-key from one or two people who already possess the same. These people are called his/her “sources”. If the person has two sources, then he/she compares the answer-keys obtained from both sources. If the key to a question from both sources is identical, it is copied, otherwise it is left blank. If the person has only one source, he/she copies the source’s answers into his/her copy. Finally, each person compulsorily replaces one of the answers (not a blank one) with a wrong answer in his/her answer key.
The paper contained 200 questions; so the investigative agency has ruled out the possibility of two or more of them introducing wrong answers to the same question. The investigative agency has a copy of the correct answer key and has tabulated the following data. These data represent question numbers.
âââââââ
How many people (excluding the mastermind) needed to make answer keys before C could make his answer key?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Recently, the answers of a test held nationwide were leaked to a group of unscrupulous people. The investigative agency has arrested the mastermind and nine other people A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I in this matter. Interrogating them, the following facts have been obtained regarding their operation. Initially the mastermind obtains the correct answer-key. All the others create their answer-key from one or two people who already possess the same. These people are called his/her “sources”. If the person has two sources, then he/she compares the answer-keys obtained from both sources. If the key to a question from both sources is identical, it is copied, otherwise it is left blank. If the person has only one source, he/she copies the source’s answers into his/her copy. Finally, each person compulsorily replaces one of the answers (not a blank one) with a wrong answer in his/her answer key.
The paper contained 200 questions; so the investigative agency has ruled out the possibility of two or more of them introducing wrong answers to the same question. The investigative agency has a copy of the correct answer key and has tabulated the following data. These data represent question numbers.
âââââââ
Both G and H were sources to:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Recently, the answers of a test held nationwide were leaked to a group of unscrupulous people. The investigative agency has arrested the mastermind and nine other people A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I in this matter. Interrogating them, the following facts have been obtained regarding their operation. Initially the mastermind obtains the correct answer-key. All the others create their answer-key from one or two people who already possess the same. These people are called his/her “sources”. If the person has two sources, then he/she compares the answer-keys obtained from both sources. If the key to a question from both sources is identical, it is copied, otherwise it is left blank. If the person has only one source, he/she copies the source’s answers into his/her copy. Finally, each person compulsorily replaces one of the answers (not a blank one) with a wrong answer in his/her answer key.
The paper contained 200 questions; so the investigative agency has ruled out the possibility of two or more of them introducing wrong answers to the same question. The investigative agency has a copy of the correct answer key and has tabulated the following data. These data represent question numbers.
âââââââ
Which of the following statements is true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Recently, the answers of a test held nationwide were leaked to a group of unscrupulous people. The investigative agency has arrested the mastermind and nine other people A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I in this matter. Interrogating them, the following facts have been obtained regarding their operation. Initially the mastermind obtains the correct answer-key. All the others create their answer-key from one or two people who already possess the same. These people are called his/her “sources”. If the person has two sources, then he/she compares the answer-keys obtained from both sources. If the key to a question from both sources is identical, it is copied, otherwise it is left blank. If the person has only one source, he/she copies the source’s answers into his/her copy. Finally, each person compulsorily replaces one of the answers (not a blank one) with a wrong answer in his/her answer key.
The paper contained 200 questions; so the investigative agency has ruled out the possibility of two or more of them introducing wrong answers to the same question. The investigative agency has a copy of the correct answer key and has tabulated the following data. These data represent question numbers.
âââââââ
Which of the following two groups of people has identical sources?
(I) A, D and G
(II) E and H
Answer the following question based on the information given below.

The plan above shows an office block for six officers, A, B, C, D, E and F. Both B and C occupy offices to the right of corridor (as one enters the office block) and A occupies an office to the left of the corridor. E and F occupy offices on opposite sides of the corridor but their offices do not face each other. The offices of C and D face each other. E does not have a corner office. F’s office is further down the corridor than A’s, but on the same side.
If E sits in his office and faces the corridor, whose office is to his left?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.

The plan above shows an office block for six officers, A, B, C, D, E and F. Both B and C occupy offices to the right of corridor (as one enters the office block) and A occupies an office to the left of the corridor. E and F occupy offices on opposite sides of the corridor but their offices do not face each other. The offices of C and D face each other. E does not have a corner office. F’s office is further down the corridor than A’s, but on the same side.
Whose office faces A’s office?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.

The plan above shows an office block for six officers, A, B, C, D, E and F. Both B and C occupy offices to the right of corridor (as one enters the office block) and A occupies an office to the left of the corridor. E and F occupy offices on opposite sides of the corridor but their offices do not face each other. The offices of C and D face each other. E does not have a corner office. F’s office is further down the corridor than A’s, but on the same side.
Who is/are F’s neighbour(s)?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.

The plan above shows an office block for six officers, A, B, C, D, E and F. Both B and C occupy offices to the right of corridor (as one enters the office block) and A occupies an office to the left of the corridor. E and F occupy offices on opposite sides of the corridor but their offices do not face each other. The offices of C and D face each other. E does not have a corner office. F’s office is further down the corridor than A’s, but on the same side.
D was heard telling someone to go further down the corridor to the last office on the right. To whose room was he trying to direct that person?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Seven faculty members at a management institute frequent a lounge for strong coffee and stimulating conversation. On being asked about their visit to the lounge last Friday we got the following responses.
JC : I came in first, and the next two persons to enter were SS and SM. When I left the lounge, JP and VR were present in the lounge. DG left with me.
JP : When I entered the lounge with VR, JC was sitting there. There was someone else, but I cannot remember who it was.
SM : I went to the lounge for a short while, and met JC, SS and DG in the lounge on that day.
SS : I left immediately after SM left.
DG : I met JC, SS, SM, JP and VR during my first visit to the lounge. I went back to my office with JC. When I went to the lounge the second time, JP and VR were there.
PK : I had some urgent work, so I did not sit in the lounge that day, but just collected my coffee and left. JP and DG were the only people in the lounge while I was there.
VR : No comments.
Based on the responses, which of the two JP or DG, entered the lounge first?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Seven faculty members at a management institute frequent a lounge for strong coffee and stimulating conversation. On being asked about their visit to the lounge last Friday we got the following responses.
JC : I came in first, and the next two persons to enter were SS and SM. When I left the lounge, JP and VR were present in the lounge. DG left with me.
JP : When I entered the lounge with VR, JC was sitting there. There was someone else, but I cannot remember who it was.
SM : I went to the lounge for a short while, and met JC, SS and DG in the lounge on that day.
SS : I left immediately after SM left.
DG : I met JC, SS, SM, JP and VR during my first visit to the lounge. I went back to my office with JC. When I went to the lounge the second time, JP and VR were there.
PK : I had some urgent work, so I did not sit in the lounge that day, but just collected my coffee and left. JP and DG were the only people in the lounge while I was there.
VR : No comments.
Who was sitting with JC when JP entered the lounge?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Seven faculty members at a management institute frequent a lounge for strong coffee and stimulating conversation. On being asked about their visit to the lounge last Friday we got the following responses.
JC : I came in first, and the next two persons to enter were SS and SM. When I left the lounge, JP and VR were present in the lounge. DG left with me.
JP : When I entered the lounge with VR, JC was sitting there. There was someone else, but I cannot remember who it was.
SM : I went to the lounge for a short while, and met JC, SS and DG in the lounge on that day.
SS : I left immediately after SM left.
DG : I met JC, SS, SM, JP and VR during my first visit to the lounge. I went back to my office with JC. When I went to the lounge the second time, JP and VR were there.
PK : I had some urgent work, so I did not sit in the lounge that day, but just collected my coffee and left. JP and DG were the only people in the lounge while I was there.
VR : No comments.
How many of the seven members did VR meet on Friday in the lounge?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Seven faculty members at a management institute frequent a lounge for strong coffee and stimulating conversation. On being asked about their visit to the lounge last Friday we got the following responses.
JC : I came in first, and the next two persons to enter were SS and SM. When I left the lounge, JP and VR were present in the lounge. DG left with me.
JP : When I entered the lounge with VR, JC was sitting there. There was someone else, but I cannot remember who it was.
SM : I went to the lounge for a short while, and met JC, SS and DG in the lounge on that day.
SS : I left immediately after SM left.
DG : I met JC, SS, SM, JP and VR during my first visit to the lounge. I went back to my office with JC. When I went to the lounge the second time, JP and VR were there.
PK : I had some urgent work, so I did not sit in the lounge that day, but just collected my coffee and left. JP and DG were the only people in the lounge while I was there.
VR : No comments.
Who were the last two faculty members to leave the lounge?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Shown below is a layout of major streets in a city.
Two days (Thursday and Friday) are left for campaigning before a major election, and the city administration has received requests from five political parties for taking out their processions along the following routes.
Congress: A-C-D-E
BJP: A-B-D-E
SP: A-B-C-E
BSP: B-C-E
CPM: A-C-D
Street B-D cannot be used for a political procession on Thursday due to a religious procession. The district administration has a policy of not allowing more than one procession to pass along the same street on the same day. However, the administration must allow all parties to take out their procession during these two days.

Congress procession can be allowed:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Shown below is a layout of major streets in a city.
Two days (Thursday and Friday) are left for campaigning before a major election, and the city administration has received requests from five political parties for taking out their processions along the following routes.
Congress: A-C-D-E
BJP: A-B-D-E
SP: A-B-C-E
BSP: B-C-E
CPM: A-C-D
Street B-D cannot be used for a political procession on Thursday due to a religious procession. The district administration has a policy of not allowing more than one procession to pass along the same street on the same day. However, the administration must allow all parties to take out their procession during these two days.

Which of the following is not true?
âââââââAnswer the following question based on the information given below.
Below is a table that lists countries region-wise. Each region-wise list is sorted, first by birth rate and then alphabetically by the name of the country. We now wish to merge the region-wise list into one consolidated list and provide overall rankings to each country based first on birth rate and then on death rate. Thus, if some countries have the same birth rate, then the country with a lower death rate will be ranked higher. Further, countries having identical birth and death rates will get the same rank. For example, if two countries are tied for the third position, then both will be given rank 3, while the next country (in the ordered list) will be ranked 5.
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
In the consolidated list, what would be the overall rank of the Philippines?
âââââââAnswer the following question based on the information given below.
Below is a table that lists countries region-wise. Each region-wise list is sorted, first by birth rate and then alphabetically by the name of the country. We now wish to merge the region-wise list into one consolidated list and provide overall rankings to each country based first on birth rate and then on death rate. Thus, if some countries have the same birth rate, then the country with a lower death rate will be ranked higher. Further, countries having identical birth and death rates will get the same rank. For example, if two countries are tied for the third position, then both will be given rank 3, while the next country (in the ordered list) will be ranked 5.
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
In the consolidated list, how many countries would rank below Spain and above Taiwan?
âââââââAnswer the following question based on the information given below.
Below is a table that lists countries region-wise. Each region-wise list is sorted, first by birth rate and then alphabetically by the name of the country. We now wish to merge the region-wise list into one consolidated list and provide overall rankings to each country based first on birth rate and then on death rate. Thus, if some countries have the same birth rate, then the country with a lower death rate will be ranked higher. Further, countries having identical birth and death rates will get the same rank. For example, if two countries are tied for the third position, then both will be given rank 3, while the next country (in the ordered list) will be ranked 5.
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
In the consolidated list, which country ranks 37th?
âââââââAnswer the following question based on the information given below.
Below is a table that lists countries region-wise. Each region-wise list is sorted, first by birth rate and then alphabetically by the name of the country. We now wish to merge the region-wise list into one consolidated list and provide overall rankings to each country based first on birth rate and then on death rate. Thus, if some countries have the same birth rate, then the country with a lower death rate will be ranked higher. Further, countries having identical birth and death rates will get the same rank. For example, if two countries are tied for the third position, then both will be given rank 3, while the next country (in the ordered list) will be ranked 5.
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
âââââââ
In the consolidated list, how many countries in Asia will rank lower than every country in South America, but higher than at least one country in Africa?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the following charts.
(Note: Availability is defined as production less export.)


In which year during the period 1996-1999 was Chaidesh’s export of tea, as a proportion of tea produced, the highest?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the following charts.
(Note: Availability is defined as production less export.)


In which of the following years was the population of Chaidesh the lowest?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the following charts.
(Note: Availability is defined as production less export.)


The area under tea cultivation continuously decreased in all four years from 1996 to 1999, by 10%, 7%, 4% and 1% respectively. In which year was tea productivity (production per unit of area) the highest?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The profitability of a company is defined as the ratio of its operating profit to its operating income, typically expressed in percentage. The following two charts show the operating income as well as the profitability of six companies in the Financial Years (F.Y.s) 2001-02 and 2002-03.
The operating profits of four of these companies are plotted against their respective operating income figures for the F.Y. 2002-03, in the third chart given below.
What is the approximate average operating profit, in F.Y. 2001-2002, of the two companies excluded from the third chart?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The profitability of a company is defined as the ratio of its operating profit to its operating income, typically expressed in percentage. The following two charts show the operating income as well as the profitability of six companies in the Financial Years (F.Y.s) 2001-02 and 2002-03.
The operating profits of four of these companies are plotted against their respective operating income figures for the F.Y. 2002-03, in the third chart given below.
Which company recorded the highest operating profit in F.Y. 2002-03?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The profitability of a company is defined as the ratio of its operating profit to its operating income, typically expressed in percentage. The following two charts show the operating income as well as the profitability of six companies in the Financial Years (F.Y.s) 2001-02 and 2002-03.
The operating profits of four of these companies are plotted against their respective operating income figures for the F.Y. 2002-03, in the third chart given below.
Which of the following statements is NOT true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The profitability of a company is defined as the ratio of its operating profit to its operating income, typically expressed in percentage. The following two charts show the operating income as well as the profitability of six companies in the Financial Years (F.Y.s) 2001-02 and 2002-03.
The operating profits of four of these companies are plotted against their respective operating income figures for the F.Y. 2002-03, in the third chart given below.
The average operating profit in F.Y. 2002-03, of companies with profitability exceeding 10% in F.Y. 2002-03, is approximately
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below.
Which of the following statements is correct?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below.
Locations 6 and 7 differ from all the rest because only in these two locations,
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
In a Decathlon, the events are 100m, 400m, 100m hurdles, 1500m, High jump, Pole vault, Long jump, Discus, Shot put and Javelin. The performance in the first four of these events is consolidated into Score 1, the next three into Score 2, and the last three into Score 3. Each such consolidation is obtained by giving appropriate positive weights to individual events. The final score is simply the total of these three scores. The athletes with the highest, second highest and the third highest final scores receive the gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively. The table given below gives the scores and performance of nineteen top athletes in this event.
âââââââ
The athletes from FRG and USA decided to run a 4 × 100 m relay race for their respective countries with the country having three athletes borrowing the athlete from CZE. Assume that all the athletes ran their stretch of the relay race at the same speed as in Decathlon event. How much more time did the FRG relay team take as compared to the USA team?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
In a Decathlon, the events are 100m, 400m, 100m hurdles, 1500m, High jump, Pole vault, Long jump, Discus, Shot put and Javelin. The performance in the first four of these events is consolidated into Score 1, the next three into Score 2, and the last three into Score 3. Each such consolidation is obtained by giving appropriate positive weights to individual events. The final score is simply the total of these three scores. The athletes with the highest, second highest and the third highest final scores receive the gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively. The table given below gives the scores and performance of nineteen top athletes in this event.
âââââââ
What is the least that Daley Thompson must get in Score 2 that ensures him a bronze medal?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
In a Decathlon, the events are 100m, 400m, 100m hurdles, 1500m, High jump, Pole vault, Long jump, Discus, Shot put and Javelin. The performance in the first four of these events is consolidated into Score 1, the next three into Score 2, and the last three into Score 3. Each such consolidation is obtained by giving appropriate positive weights to individual events. The final score is simply the total of these three scores. The athletes with the highest, second highest and the third highest final scores receive the gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively. The table given below gives the scores and performance of nineteen top athletes in this event.
âââââââ
At least how many competitors (excluding Daley Thompson) must Michael Smith have out-jumped in the long jump event?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The following is the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) of a select list of items with the base year of 1993-94. In other words, all the item prices are made 100 in that year (1993-94). Price in all other years for an item are measured with respect to its price in the base year. For instance, the price of cement went up by 1% in 1994-95 as compared to 1993-94. Similarly, the price of power went up by 3% in 1996–97 as compared to 1993-94.
âââââââ
Let us suppose that one bag of cement (50 kgs) consumes 100 kgs of limestones and 10 units of power. The only other cost item in producing cement is in the form of wages. During 1993-94, limestone, power and wages contribute, respectively, 20%, 25%, and 15% to the cement price per bag. The average operating profit (% of price per cement bag) earned by a cement manufacturer during 2002-03 is closest to
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The following is the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) of a select list of items with the base year of 1993-94. In other words, all the item prices are made 100 in that year (1993-94). Price in all other years for an item are measured with respect to its price in the base year. For instance, the price of cement went up by 1% in 1994-95 as compared to 1993-94. Similarly, the price of power went up by 3% in 1996–97 as compared to 1993-94.
âââââââ
Steel manufacturing requires the use of iron ore, power and manpower. The cost of iron ore has followed the All Item index. During 1993-94 power accounted for 30% of the selling price of steel, iron ore for 25%, and wages for 10% of the selling price of steel. Assuming the cost and price data for cement as given in the previous question, the operating profit (% of selling price) of an average steel manufacture in 2002-03
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The following is the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) of a select list of items with the base year of 1993-94. In other words, all the item prices are made 100 in that year (1993-94). Price in all other years for an item are measured with respect to its price in the base year. For instance, the price of cement went up by 1% in 1994-95 as compared to 1993-94. Similarly, the price of power went up by 3% in 1996–97 as compared to 1993-94.
âââââââ
Which item experienced continuous price rise during the ten-year period?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The following is the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) of a select list of items with the base year of 1993-94. In other words, all the item prices are made 100 in that year (1993-94). Price in all other years for an item are measured with respect to its price in the base year. For instance, the price of cement went up by 1% in 1994-95 as compared to 1993-94. Similarly, the price of power went up by 3% in 1996–97 as compared to 1993-94.
âââââââ
Which item(s) experienced only one decline in price during the ten-year period?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Sex Ratio (Number of females per 1,000 males) of Selected States in India : 1901-2001
âââââââ
Each of the following statements pertains to the number of states with females outnumbering males in a given census year. Which of these statements is NOT correct?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Sex Ratio (Number of females per 1,000 males) of Selected States in India : 1901-2001
âââââââ
The two states which achieved the largest increases in sex ratio over the period 1901-2001 are
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Sex Ratio (Number of females per 1,000 males) of Selected States in India : 1901-2001
âââââââ
Among the states which have a sex ratio exceeding 1000 in 1901, the sharpest decline over the period 1901-2001 was registered in the state of
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below.
During 1996-2002, the number of commodities that exhibited a net overall increase and a net overall decrease, respectively, were
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below.
The number of commodities that experienced a price decline for two or more consecutive years is
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below.
For which commodities did a price increase immediately follow a price decline only once in this period?
A piece of paper is in the shape of a right angled triangle and is cut along a line that is parallel to the hypotenuse, leaving a smaller triangle. There was a 35% reduction in the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle. If the area of the original triangle was 34 square inches before the cut, what is the area (in square inches) of the smaller triangle?
In a coastal village, every year floods destroy exactly half of the huts. After the flood water recedes, twice the number of huts destroyed are rebuilt. The floods occurred consecutively in the last three years namely 2001, 2002 and 2003. If floods are again expected in 2004, the number of huts expected to be destroyed is:
Let a, b, c, d and e be integers such that a = 6b = 12c, and 2b = 9d = 12e. Then which of the following pairs contains a number that is not an integer?
If a, a + 2 and a + 4 are prime numbers, then the number of possible solutions for a is:
A square tin sheet of side 12 inches is converted into a box with open top in the following steps – the sheet is placed horizontally. Then, equal sized squares, each of side x inches, are cut from the four corners of the sheet. Finally, the four resulting sides are bent vertically upwards in the shape of a box. If x is an integer, then what value of x maximizes the volume of the box?
Two straight roads R1 and R2 diverge from a point A at an angle of 120°. Ram starts walking from point A along R1 at a uniform speed of 3 km/hr. Shyam starts walking at the same time from A along R2 at a uniform speed of 2 km/hr. They continue walking for 4 hours along their respective roads and reach points B and C on R1 and R2, respectively. There is a straight line path connecting B and C. Then Ram returns to point A after walking along the line segments BC and CA. Shyam also returns to A after walking along line segments CB and BA. Their speeds remain unchanged. The time interval (in hours) between Ram’s and Shyam’s return to the point A is:
Let x and y be positive integers such that x is prime and y is composite. Then,
A survey on a sample of 25 new cars being sold at a local auto dealer was conducted to see which of the three popular options- air conditioning, radio and power windows- were already installed. The survey found
- 15 had air conditioning,
- 2 had air conditioning and power windows but no radios,
- 12 had radio,
- 6 had air conditioning and radio, but no power windows,
- 11 had power windows,
- 4 had radio and power windows and
- 3 had all three options.
What is the number of cars that had none of the options?
If n is such that 36 ≤ n ≤ 72, then x = satisfies
If 13x + 1 < 2z, and z + 3 = 5y2, then
Let n(>1) be a composite integer such that is not an integer.
Consider the following statements:
A: n has a perfect integer - valued divisor which is greater than 1 and less than .
B: n has a perfect integer- valued divisor which is greater than but less than n.
Then,
If |b| ≥ 1 and x = –|a|b, then which one of the following is necessarily true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider a cylinder of height h cms and radius r = 2/π cms as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). A string of a certain length, when wound on its cylindrical surface, starting at point A and ending at point B, gives a maximum of n turns (in other words, the string’s length is the minimum length required to wind n turns.)
What is the vertical spacing in cms between two consecutive turns?

Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider a cylinder of height h cms and radius r = 2/π cms as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). A string of a certain length, when wound on its cylindrical surface, starting at point A and ending at point B, gives a maximum of n turns (in other words, the string’s length is the minimum length required to wind n turns.)
The same string, when wound on the exterior four walls of a cube of side n cms, starting at point C and ending at point D, can give exactly one turn (see figure, not drawn to scale).

The length of the string, in cms, is
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider a cylinder of height h cms and radius r = 2/π cms as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). A string of a certain length, when wound on its cylindrical surface, starting at point A and ending at point B, gives a maximum of n turns (in other words, the string’s length is the minimum length required to wind n turns.)
In the setup of the previous two questions, how is h related to n?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Let the radius of each circular park be r, and the distances to be traversed by the sprinters A, B and C be a, b and c, respectively. Which of the following is true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Sprinter A traverses distances A1A2, A2A3, and A3A1 at average speeds of 20, 30 and 15 respectively. B traverses her entire path at a uniform speed of C traverses distances C1C2, C2C3, and C3C1 at average speeds of and 120 respectively. All speeds are in the same unit. Where would B and C be respectively when A finishes her sprint?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Sprinters A, B and C traverse their respective paths at uniform speeds u, v and w respectively. It is known that u2 : v2 : w2 is equal to Area A : Area B : Area C, where Area A, Area B and Area C are the areas of triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3, and C1C2C3 respectively.
Where would A and C be when B reaches point B3?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

The infinite sum equals
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Consider the sets Tn = {n, n + 1, n + 2, n + 3, n + 4}, where n = 1, 2, 3, … , 96.
How many of these sets contain 6 or any integral multiple thereof (i.e., any one of the numbers 6, 12, 18, ...)?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Let ABCDEF be a regular hexagon. What is the ratio of the area of the triangle ACE to that of the hexagon ABCDEF?

Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

The number of roots common between the two equations x3 + 3x2 + 4x + 5 = 0 and x3 + 2x2 + 7x + 3 = 0 is:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

A real number x satisfying for every positive integer n, is best described by:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

If then
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Using only 2, 5, 10, 25 and 50 paise coins, what will be the minimum number of coins required to pay exactly 78 paise, 69 paise and Rs 1.01 to three different persons?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

The length of the circumference of a circle equals the perimeter of a triangle of equal sides, and also the perimeter of a square. The areas covered by the circle, triangle, and square are c, t, and s, respectively. Then,
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

What is the remainder when 496 is divided by 6?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2 and A3 respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3 and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1 and C1 respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

If x and y are integers then the equation 5x + 19y = 64 has:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Two binary operations ⊕ and * are defined over the set {a, e, f, g, h} as per the following tables:
âââââââ
âââââââ
Thus, according to the first table f ⊕ g = a, while according to the second table g * h = f, and so on.
Also, let f2 = f * f, g3 = g * g * g, and so on.
What is the smallest positive integer n such that gn = e?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Two binary operations ⊕ and * are defined over the set {a, e, f, g, h} as per the following tables:
âââââââ
âââââââ
Thus, according to the first table f ⊕ g = a, while according to the second table g * h = f, and so on.
Also, let f2 = f * f, g3 = g * g * g, and so on.
Upon simplification, f ⊕ [f * {f ⊕ (f * f)}] equals:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Two binary operations ⊕ and * are defined over the set {a, e, f, g, h} as per the following tables:
âââââââ
âââââââ
Thus, according to the first table f ⊕ g = a, while according to the second table g * h = f, and so on.
Also, let f2 = f * f, g3 = g * g * g, and so on.
Upon simplification, (a10 * (f10 ⊕ g9)} ⊕ e8 equals
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
How many strings of letters can possibly be formed using the above rules?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
How many strings of letters can possibly be formed using the above rules such that the third letter of the string is e?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
There are 12 towns grouped into four zones with three towns per zone. It is intended to connect the towns with telephone lines such that every two towns are connected with three direct lines if they belong to the same zone, and with only one direct line otherwise. How many direct telephone lines are required?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
In the figure (not drawn to scale) given below, P is a point on AB such that AP : PB = 4 : 3. PQ is parallel to AC and QD is parallel to CP. In âARC, ∠ARC = 90°, and in ΔPQS, ∠PSQ = 90°. The length of QS is 6 cm. What is the ratio AP : PD?

Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
A car is being driven, in a straight line and at a uniform speed, towards the base of a vertical tower. The top of the tower is observed from the car and, in the process, it takes 10 minutes for the angle of elevation to change from 45° to 60°. After how much more time will this car reach the base of the tower?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
In the figure (not drawn to scale) given below, if AD = CD = BC, and ∠BCE = 96°, how much is ∠DBC?

Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
If both a and b belong to the set {1, 2, 3, 4}, then the number of equations of the form ax2 + bx + 1 = 0 having real roots is:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
If three positive real numbers x, y, z satisfy y – x = z – y and xyz = 4, then what is the minimum possible value of y?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
An intelligence agency forms a code of two distinct digits selected from 0, 1, 2, ... , 9 such that the first digit of the code is non-zero. The code, handwritten on a slip, can however potentially create confusion, when read upside down – for example, the code 91 may appear as 16. How many codes are there for which no such confusion can arise?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
Consider two different cloth-cutting processes. In the first one, n circular cloth pieces are cut from a square cloth piece of side a in the following steps: the original square of side a is divided into n smaller squares, not necessarily of the same size; then a circle of maximum possible area is cut from each of the smaller squares. In the second process, only one circle of maximum possible area is cut from the square of side a and the process ends there. The cloth pieces remaining after cutting the circles are scrapped in both the processes. The ratio of the total area of scrap cloth generated in the former to that in the latter is:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
In the figure below (not drawn to scale), rectangle ABCD is inscribed in the circle with centre at O. The length of side AB is greater than that of side BC.
The ratio of the area of the circle to the area of the recrangle ABCD is π : .
The line segment DE intersects AB at E such that ∠ODC = ∠ADE. What is the ratio AE : AD?

Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
If log10 x - log10 = 2 logx 10, then a possible value of x is given by:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
What is the sum of all two-digit numbers that give a remainder of 3 when they are divided by 7?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
In the figure given below (not drawn to scale), A, B and C are three points on a circle with centre O. The chord BA is extended to a point T such that CT becomes a tangent to the circle at point C. If ∠ATC = 30° and ∠ACT = 50°, then the angle ∠BOA is:

Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
What is the sum of n terms in the series
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
- The first letter is any vowel.
- The second letter is m, n or p.
- If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
- If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
- If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.
Let S1 be a square of side a. Another square S2 is formed by joining the mid-points of the sides of S1. The same process is applied to S2 to form yet another square S3, and so on. If A1, A2, A3... are the areas and P1, P2, P3... are the perimeters of S1, S2, S3... respectively,
then the ratio equals:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The seven basic symbols in a certain numeral system and their respective values are as follows:
I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, and M = 1000
In general, the symbols in the numeral system are read from left to right, starting with the symbol representing the largest value; the same symbol cannot occur continuously more than three times; the value of the numeral is the sum of the values of the symbols.
For example, XXVII = 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 27.
An exception to the left-to-right reading occurs when a symbol is followed immediately by a symbol of greater value; then, the smaller value is subtracted from the larger.
For example, XLVI = (50 – 10) + 5 + 1 = 46.
The value of the numeral MDCCLXXXVII is:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The seven basic symbols in a certain numeral system and their respective values are as follows:
I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, and M = 1000
In general, the symbols in the numeral system are read from left to right, starting with the symbol representing the largest value; the same symbol cannot occur continuously more than three times; the value of the numeral is the sum of the values of the symbols.
For example, XXVII = 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 27.
An exception to the left-to-right reading occurs when a symbol is followed immediately by a symbol of greater value; then, the smaller value is subtracted from the larger.
For example, XLVI = (50 – 10) + 5 + 1 = 46.
The value of the numeral MCMXCIX is
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The seven basic symbols in a certain numeral system and their respective values are as follows:
I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, and M = 1000
In general, the symbols in the numeral system are read from left to right, starting with the symbol representing the largest value; the same symbol cannot occur continuously more than three times; the value of the numeral is the sum of the values of the symbols.
For example, XXVII = 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 27.
An exception to the left-to-right reading occurs when a symbol is followed immediately by a symbol of greater value; then, the smaller value is subtracted from the larger.
For example, XLVI = (50 – 10) + 5 + 1 = 46.
Which of the following can represent the numeral for 1995?
a. MCMLXXV
b. MCMXCV
c. MVD
d. MVM
More CAT previous-year papers
View allPractise CAT the smart way
Get adaptive practice, spaced revision, and full mock tests — free to start.
Create your free account