It's a Question of your Career!

Question : Comprehension:

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Rajasthan's farmers have been banging plates and lighting fires these days. It is their desperate attempt to scare away the swarms of migratory locusts invading their fields and eating away crops. The pest attack has come as a double blow for farmers already reeling under the impact of the COVID lockdown.

Millions of locusts, covering 1-4 sq km of the skyline, have reached 10 of the state's 33 districts within three weeks of being first spotted on April 30. Last year, yellow locusts entered India from Pakistan in the second half of May. The attack had originated in Yemen, coming all the way to West Asia, Pakistan, and then India, creating havoc in 17 countries en route.

With the harvest nearly over in Rajasthan, the invading population of grasshoppers this May is feeding mainly on sprouting cotton crops sown last month, vegetables, and fodder. State officials, though, fear damage to the young millet and moong dal crops due in July and August if the locusts breed.

Flying in through the Pakistan border near Jaisalmer, the locust swarms have infiltrated as deep as Kishangarh in Ajmer district. Locusts can cover 200–250 km in a day if they get wind support. Presently, the dust storms sweeping parts of Rajasthan are aiding their flight. Officials said the Union Agriculture Ministry's Locusts Warning Organisation (LWO) is in the process of acquiring 60 vehicles with mounted insecticide sprayers from abroad by July. Ten such vehicles were purchased this January.

"Immature pink locusts are very active, which is why they have reached the interiors of Rajasthan [from Pakistan] so quickly," says K.L. Gurjar, deputy director, of LWO. Their metabolism slows down during winters, but in summers, they can fly from 4 am to 8 pm, covering long distances and consuming more crops along the way than mature locusts would. The LWO has put 10 insecticide-spraying vehicles on the job in Rajasthan. The Rajasthan government has provided rented tractors, on which insecticide sprayers are mounted, and also the manpower to man them. The centre-state joint operation has so far cleared a few hundred sq km of fields of the locusts. Preliminary estimates put the loss to crops at a few crore rupees.

State officials say there is an urgent need to contain the pink locusts before they start breeding in the next few weeks. Indiscriminate aerial spraying of insecticides is ill-advised, as this can damage crops as well as affect human settlements.

One of the strategies being considered now is to use fixed-wing aircraft for ultra-low volume spraying of chemicals. The state government may request such aerial sorties from the air force. Drones have limited capabilities as they can carry only about 20 litres of insecticide at a time, making them effective only over small areas.

Question:
If the locusts breed, which crops will they damage?
 

Option 1: Cotton crop

Option 2: Millet and moong

Option 3: Fodder

Option 4: Vegetables

Question : Comprehension:

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

You go up a dark, rickety stairwell of a building on a crowded street in Calcutta. You enter a small room. The centre of the room is empty but the corners are stacked with bedrolls, utensils and water bottles. Musical instruments, drums, cymbals and gongs are piled in a corner. Today, the room is filled with the laughter of men and women in colourful attire. Among the happy chorus of congratulations and laughter, the bride Chumki Pal and the groom Sandeep can be seen smiling. They are both blind, as are most of the people surrounding them. Pal is wearing a bright turquoise blue sari. “I know it’s blue because people have told me but I can’t imagine how it looks. But believe me, when I dream, I dream only in colours,” she says. Their romance blossomed when they met as members of Blind Opera, the only one of its kind in the country as well as in Asia.

The 36 spirited members of Blind Opera demonstrate that physical disability is not an obstacle. They enact plays by Rabindranath Tagore, considered challenging even by veteran theatre groups. Blind Opera was launched in 1996 by four theatre aficionados, who took it as a challenge to get together the talents of these visually impaired people. The challenge to present the cast on stage is immense since space management is a problem. To solve this, the directors use ropes to separate the stage and the wings. When the actors step on the rope they know that it is the entrance to the stage. The members cannot see, but they can smell, hear and touch – three elements inherent to any theatre. At Blind Opera, they “believe that the blind can see. That is, they see in their own way, if not in our way, with the help of these abilities.”

For the visually impaired, theatre is the medium for the expression of their creative urges. They respond instinctively; they cannot copy anyone else because they cannot see. Their body language tells the story and hence it is very spontaneous. The members have earned kudos from Calcutta audiences. For the members of the troupe, discovering the language of the body is in a way also a journey of the persona. Coming from diverse backgrounds but bound together by the same disability, they have found an outlet for their creativity through the plays. They do not feel isolated anymore because they can relate to their fellow performers. There is also a greater purpose behind it: to use theatre to build a community and mainstream the huge number of disabled living in isolation. Together they can be a force to demand better facilities in public life. Blind children should enter the mainstream from the beginning. The big dream of the group is to establish a drama school following the ideal of Tagore’s Shantiniketan, offering a platform for creative expression to all those who are economically and socially forced to stay in the periphery. Like Chumki Pal, they all dream in colour.

Question:

What is the biggest problem in presenting the troupe on stage?

Option 1: Space management

Option 2: Time management

Option 3: Communication

Option 4: Spontaneity

Question : Select the sentence with the appropriate use of preposition.

Option 1: Are you interested along with modern art?

Option 2: Are you interested into modern art?

Option 3: Are you interested with modern art?

Option 4: Are you interested in modern art?

Question : What is the maximum strength prescribed for State Legislative Assemblies?

Option 1: 350

Option 2: 600

Option 3: 500

Option 4: 750

Question : Directions: In a certain code language, HARMONIUM is written as LEVQSRMYQ. How is TOOLMAKER written in that code language?

Option 1: PZZLMLQVT

Option 2: XSSPQEOIV

Option 3: AZXCTVLKT

Option 4: AXXDFNOJQ

Question : Bharat Ratna is designed like the leaf of

Option 1: Banyan tree

Option 2: Peepal tree

Option 3: Cocount tree

Option 4: Sandalwood tree

Question : Directions: Improve the bracketed part of each sentence.

He wanted to buy some artefacts, but (he could not have enough money).

(1) he could not have money enough

(2) he did not have enough money

(3) he could not ask enough money

(4) No Improvement

Option 1: (1)

Option 2: (2)

Option 3: (3)

Option 4: (4)

Question : What is the number of valid votes cast in favour of a candidate in an election, if the candidate received 75% of the total valid votes, and 5% of the total votes were declared invalid, given that the total number of voters was 1,46,000?

Option 1: 1,06,650

Option 2: 1,10,250

Option 3: 1,04,025

Option 4: 1,08,850

Question : Select the most appropriate antonym to substitute the bracketed word in the given sentence.
They are virtually unimpeachable in the (unbiased), invariably correct reading of a race.

Option 1: captivity

Option 2: stranger

Option 3: prejudiced

Option 4: ceasing

Question : Sentences of a paragraph are given below in jumbled order. Arrange the sentences in the correct order to form a meaningful and coherent paragraph.
A. In 1944, he was honoured by King George VI with a Knighthood and became Sir Alexander Fleming.
B. On receiving this great honour, Fleming said in his usual modest way, "Wherever I go, people thank me for saving their lives. I didn't do anything; I just found a remedy that was there."
C. Fleming became famous overnight and was regarded as one of the most distinguished scientists of his time.
D. The next year, he and his fellow bacteriologists, whose combined efforts had led to the great discovery, were honoured with a joint Nobel Prize.

Option 1: DBCA

Option 2: ADBC

Option 3: CADB

Option 4: BCDA