Reading Compreh...

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and fill in the blank with a suitable option:[/passage-header]Our home stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the tracks over where the white folks lived. But cinders were fine weapons. All you had to do was crouch behind the brick pillars of a house with your hands full of the gritty ammunition and the first woolly black head you saw from behind another row of pillars was your target. It was fun. One day the gang to which I belonged, found itself engaged in a war with the white boys who lived beyond the tracks. As usual, we laid down our cinder barrage thinking this would wipe the white boys out.
But they replied with a steady bombardment of broken bottles. We retreated. During the retreat a broken milk bottle caught me behind the ear, opening a deep gash. The sight of blood pouring over my face completely demoralized our ranks. My fellow combatants left me standing paralyzed in the center of the yard and scurried for their houses. A kind neighbour saw me and rushed me to a doctor.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and fill in the blank with a suitable option:[/passage-header]Our home stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the tracks over where the white folks lived. But cinders were fine weapons. All you had to do was crouch behind the brick pillars of a house with your hands full of the gritty ammunition and the first woolly black head you saw from behind another row of pillars was your target. It was fun. One day the gang to which I belonged, found itself engaged in a war with the white boys who lived beyond the tracks. As usual, we laid down our cinder barrage thinking this would wipe the white boys out.
But they replied with a steady bombardment of broken bottles. We retreated. During the retreat a broken milk bottle caught me behind the ear, opening a deep gash. The sight of blood pouring over my face completely demoralized our ranks. My fellow combatants left me standing paralyzed in the center of the yard and scurried for their houses. A kind neighbour saw me and rushed me to a doctor.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]But making any big change in social affairs will not be possible unless the right sort of ideas are widespread in the population. People must be prepared for change; they must be willing to think about social affairs in a scientific way without violent feelings and prejudices so that they can decide impartially what sort of change would be good. They must learn that science is not merely something that deals with Physics and Chemistry or with the way plants and animals live; science can also deal with human life, and the scientific spirit is just as important in human affairs as in the laboratory or the workshop.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]The very survival of mankind depends upon the survival of wildlife forests. Thus the following two measures need to be taken to stop their exploitation by the poachers and traders. First, we should provide more teeth to the legislation to deal with the offenders. Destruction of wildlife should be made a criminal offence. Secondly, we should involve the local people in the protection of wildlife in protected areas instead of displacing them or putting curbs on their means of livelihood such as collection of minor forest produce. No one knows the local flora and fauna better than these people and no one is more capable of catching the poachers as was admirably demonstrated by the Bishnois sometime back in Rajasthan.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]The very survival of mankind depends upon the survival of wildlife forests. Thus the following two measures need to be taken to stop their exploitation by the poachers and traders. First, we should provide more teeth to the legislation to deal with the offenders. Destruction of wildlife should be made a criminal offence. Secondly, we should involve the local people in the protection of wildlife in protected areas instead of displacing them or putting curbs on their means of livelihood such as collection of minor forest produce. No one knows the local flora and fauna better than these people and no one is more capable of catching the poachers as was admirably demonstrated by the Bishnois sometime back in Rajasthan.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]But making any big change in social affairs will not be possible unless the right sort of ideas are widespread in the population. People must be prepared for change; they must be willing to think about social affairs in a scientific way without violent feelings and prejudices so that they can decide impartially what sort of change would be good. They must learn that science is not merely something that deals with Physics and Chemistry or with the way plants and animals live; science can also deal with human life, and the scientific spirit is just as important in human affairs as in the laboratory or the workshop.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Though it may be unessential to the imagination, travel is necessary to an understanding of men. Only with long experience and the opening of his wares on many a beach where his language is not spoken, will the merchant come to know the worth of what he carries, and what are parochial and delicate goods as justice, love, honour, courtesy, and indeed all the things we care for; that these are valid everywhere but they are variously moulded and often differently handled, and sometimes nearly unrecognizable if you meet them in a foreign land, and the art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Frogs are environmental assets, especially in an agricultural country like India. They consume pests that are responsible for diseases like malaria and also those that are a threat to plants. In fact, it has been found that an adult frog consumes its own weight of insects daily and that if their population goes down the insect population goes up. What all this also means is that a decline in the frog population necessitates an increase in the use of pesticides which are a serious health hazard for all living beings.