Reading Comprehension for SBI PO/CLERK Mains: 15th July 2018

Its high time you should stick to your chairs and go through all the study matter which is very much needed to pass the exam along with the golden opportunity to let you score more. English  is thus counted as one of the among which creates heebie jeebies for most of the aspirants. Thus we are providing you with questions which will head you towards your goal. The provided quiz follows the study plan whose questions are structured according to the Mains level and through the medium of such types of questions covering one of the important topics like Reading Comprehension, Error Detection, Phrase Replacement etc., you can definitely crack any of the level as this is based on the type of questions that have come in the previous SBI PO mains exams and this quiz will also help aspirants preparing for BOB PO 2018.

Directions (1-8): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below them. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.


PARAGRAPH 1: Some months ago, a global leader of the IT industry set sections of India’s corporate-sector elite aflutter with the comment that Indians are not creative. It is possible to disagree with the criterion Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple Computer, had adopted while at the same time agreeing with some of his observations. He had predicted that Indians are unlikely to create world-leading IT companies because they lack the creativity to do so and argued that this has to do with the education system.
PARAGRAPH 2: While building global IT giants may have more to do with an appetite for growing a business rather than anything else, Mr. Wozniak’s assessment of India’s education system is sharp. He traced the lack of creativity to an education system that rewarded studiousness over independent thought. He also managed an anthropological take when he identified the ‘MBA and the Merc’ as the mark of success in India’s corporate world. For good measure he likened this to the culture of Singapore, but here he may have missed a trick. The per capita income of Singaporeans is quite close to that of Americans. And that country has achieved much of what it set out to do when it struck off on its own, which was to turn a swampy colonial port into a prosperous city state proudly independent of world powers. Also, it has a national leadership more educated and responsible than what the U.S. has currently. Singapore’s orderly society may not be everybody’s cup of tea but its history suggests one way we could identify the creativity of a people as a whole. That is, a people are truly creative when they are able to collectively surmount the challenges that their country faces.
PARAGRAPH 3 : Actually, what India is experiencing in higher education today is far worse than merely the production of studious but creativity-challenged youth. There is abetment of a toxic productivity whereby our universities churn out youth with a poor grasp of the subject matter that they are expected to know and an even poorer understanding of the challenges that India today faces, for which they alone can provide the solutions. This is particularly troubling as public expenditure on education in India favours higher education far more than elsewhere in the world when schooling is severely neglected by comparison. In addition, this is a sector so micro-managed that it answers to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s description of the Indian economy in the 1990s as “over regulated and under governed” better than the economy itself. So, neither funding nor neglect can be blamed for the lack of vitality in India’s institutions of higher education.
PARAGRAPH 4 : Universities are embedded in society and cannot be expected to naturally rise above them. Close to 50 years ago, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen had spoken of a ‘crisis in Indian education’ pointing to how India’s educational policy had been shaped by the aspiration of its middle class. Creativity is unlikely to have been a part of it. However, it is precisely to ensure that there is no sectional capture of public institutions intended to serve a larger purpose that we have public regulators. While there is more than one regulator for the higher education sector in India, for sheer reach the University Grants Commission (UGC) is unmatched. To say that it has a major responsibility in the state of affairs that we are experiencing in higher education would be an understatement. The government would be advised to follow email discussions of UGC regulations circulating on the Internet right now to garner a sense of how wide the resentment against the body is.

Q1. “He also managed an anthropological take when he identified the ‘MBA and the Merc’ as the mark of success in India’s corporate world.” What is the meaning of the phrase “‘MBA and the Merc’ as the mark of success in India’s corporate world” in the passage?
(a) In India, and MBA degree from the Merc University is considered as a mark of success.
(b) In India, having an MBA degree and a Mercedes car are considered as a mark of success.
(c) In India, an MBA graduate is only considered eligible for being successful.
(d) In India, having an MBA degree is considered the eligibility to drive a Mercedes car.
(e) In India, MBA and the Merc university are the best rated in the education system.

Q2. Which of the following statements is/are true regarding the education system in India?
(I) In India, Children are going to school but not learning much beyond “floor level tasks”.
(II) The education system lays more emphasis on spending a lot of time studying than embracing independent thoughts.
(III) People in India tend to spend more on higher education in comparison to schooling.
(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (III)
(c) Both (II) and (III)
(d) Both (I) and (II)
(e) All are correct.

Q3. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage above?
(a) Creativity of a country can be assessed by its ability to get over the challenges it faces.
(b) Politicians, bureaucrats, and media can influence education from the outside, but they find it of no use to advance their agendas.
(c) Parents, students, and employers must demand that our institutions deliver real capability and not empty certificates.
(d) Both (a) and (b)
(e) All of the above.

Q4. What is the tone used by the author in the passage given above?
(a) Didactic
(b) Laudatory
(c) Satirical
(d) Cynical
(e) Critical

Q5. Which of the following word has similar meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
SWAMPY
(I) Parched
(II) Shrivelled
(III) Marshy
(IV) Soggy
(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (IV)
(c) Both (III) and (IV)
(d) Both (I) and (III)

Q6. Which of the following word has similar meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
SURMOUNT
(I)  Fondle
(II) Triumph
(III) Flunk
(IV) Subdue


(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (IV)
(c) Both (II) and (IV)
(d) Both (I) and (III)
(e) Both (I) and (IV)

Q7. Which of the following word/pair of words is/are opposite in meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
ABETMENT
(I) Assistance
(II) Backing
(III) Hindrance
(IV) Menace

(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (III)
(c) Both (III) and (IV)
(d) Both (I) and (III)
(e) (I), (II) and (III)

Q8. Which of the following word is opposite in meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
GARNER
(I) Brigade
(II) Congregate
(III) Huddle
(IV) Dissipate

(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (IV)
(c) Both (III) and (IV)
(d) Both (I) and (III)
(e) Both (I) and (IV)

Directions (9-15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below them. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.


PARAGRAPH 1: It has taken Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh over a year and a half to launch his much-anticipated war on drugs. This he did on July 4 by ordering mandatory drug tests for all government employees, including the police. While this is welcome, even if belated, it is a very small and insubstantial measure towards curbing the pervasive drug menace. For someone who promised to wipe out drugs from the State within a month of being elected, the conduct of annual drug tests on some 3.25 lakh employees is a piece of tokenism. More steps are needed; less missteps, too. The decision of the Punjab Cabinet to recommend the death penalty to drug-peddlers is an example of the latter. Capital punishment is abhorrent. Given that there is evidence that suggests it is also no guarantee of deterring crime, this is more of an empty signal. What is required is a comprehensive war on drugs fought on several fronts, including interventions in the community to spread awareness and foster a culture against the use of drugs. The challenges faced by the State are huge. Estimates vary but by some accounts as many as two-thirds of all households in Punjab have a drug addict in their midst.
PARAGRAPH 2: Punjab’s prisons are overcrowded with drug-users and peddlers, and its streets and farms witness the easy availability of narcotics and opiates. Last year the government arrested 18,977 peddlers and treated some two lakh addicts. The sheer extent of the problem suggests it is more than just a few profiteers that have been responsible for causing this menace or helping to sustain it. Something of this scale required a wide network, a well-oiled and smoothly run machinery that has the secret support and collaboration of at least a few of those who work in government.
PARAGRAPH 3: Given the geography, the drugs, whether it is opium or heroin, make an easy and assisted entrance into Punjab from the Golden Crescent (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan), and synthetic drugs are thought to come in via Himachal Pradesh. That means those guarding Punjab’s 553-km border with Pakistan must take serious steps to plug the inflow. The Central security forces are obviously beyond the control of Amarinder Singh. Therefore, security-planners in New Delhi have to make sure that the border is properly barred to the flow of narcotic substances. This is a national problem as a substantial portion of the drugs that land in Punjab make their way to the rest of the country. Given the links between drugs and terror, this poses a national security threat. Then there are the politicians. The previous Akali Dal-BJP alliance had also promised to drain Punjab’s vast drug swamp. The political class has a critical role to play in winning the war on drugs. It is not enough that politicians merely line up to have themselves tested for drugs to win political brownie points. They need to put the State and the nation above self-serving political ends and agree that this battle must be fought in concrete ways, going beyond photo-ops and sound-bites.

Q9. Which style of writing is used by the author in the passage above?
(a) Narrative
(b) Analytical
(c) Descriptive
(d) Argumentative
(e) None of the Above

Q10. Which of the following is the most appropriate title for the passage above?
(a) High on rhetoric: on punishment against peddlers
(b) High on rhetoric: on Punjab’s Drug Menace
(c) Guarding Punjab’s Border
(d) Role of Politics in curbing Drug Menace
(e) Drug abuse: Uncovering the burden in rural Punjab

Q11. Which of the following statements is/are correct in context with the passage?
(I) Death penalty to drug-peddlers by Punjab cabinet is considered as a badly judged decision by the writer.
(II) Authorized killing as punishment against drug peddling offers no guarantee of interception.
(III) CM of Punjab ordered mandatory drug tests for all government employees as a measure to curb the drug menace.

(a) Only (I)
(b) Only (III)
(c) Both (I) and (III)
(d) Both (II) and (III)
(e) All are correct

Q12. Which of the following word has similar meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
CURB
(a) Freedom
(b) Restraint
(c) Latitude
(d) Felicitate
(e) Fortunate

Q13.Which of the following word has similar meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
ABHORRENT
(a) Innocuous
(b) Inoffensive
(c) Applauding
(d) Loathsome
(e) Gleeful

Q14. Which of the following word is opposite in meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
FOSTER
(a) Incubate
(b) Agitate
(c) Indoctrinate
(d) Inhibit
(e) Patronize

Q15. Which of the following word is opposite in meaning to the word given in bold in the passage?
MENACE
(a) Imminence
(b) Pitfall
(c) Intimidation
(d) Commination
(e) Shield