Reading Compreh...

[passage-header]Read the passage and accordingly, fill in the blank:[/passage-header]For Abid Surti, Sunday is no day of rest. He is busy going door to door volunteering with an assistant and a plumber. They are in an apartment building in Mumbai's densely populated suburb filled with high-rise buildings. He rings doorbells and asks residents the same question, 'Any leaky taps? We are providing a free service.' Surti is a multifaceted 79-year-old man. A national award-winning author, he has written some 80 books-novels, plays, and collection of short stories and poems. He is also an artist and a cartoonist. In 2007, Surti started Drop Dead Foundation, a water conservation NGO that caters to the buildings in Mira Road, fixing leaky plumbing for free. With water shortages and the prospects of taps running dry in Mumbai, Surti's work is vital. 'Massive' is how he describes water wastage in Mumbai. 'In poor families, they can't afford to pay a plumber but in most middle-class families, the problem is one of sheer indifference. 'Indeed it was the apathy of a friend that first spurred Surti into action. While visiting a friend's house, Surti saw a leaking tap and asked why it wasn't fixed, his friend casually dismissed the query, saying it was hard to get a plumber 'for something so trivial.'

[passage-header]Read the following passage and answer the question given after it:[/passage-header]

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Years ago, people woke up to find sparrows chirping in their backyard. A noisy lot, they took grains right from your hand if you had befriended them. They got over their fear easily and demanded food or water with their loud chirping if you had forgotten to give them their regular share of food. Tiny pink beaks opened to morsels of food or worms sometimes regurgitated by the parent birds. We had a splendid time watching the bird family bond and as children sat gazing at them as they picked up grain or splashed about us in muddy water. Many people have written poems and lyrics on sparrows, their noisy chirps, their friendly nature, and their spotty feathers. Sparrows were a menace on the fields. There were guards with slings and stones to chase them away as they ate grain from standing crops. Now people are trying to woo them back to nature.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follow:[/passage-header]Basant Panchami is one of the biggest festivals in North India. It heralds both the approach of the harvest and the end of winter. This spring festival is celebrated by flying kites, mostly of yellow color which represents the ripening of mustard in the fields. From morning onwards, the roof of almost every house becomes full of young and old people, keeping their kites afloat. By early afternoon, the sky becomes peppered with kites of different colors and sizes. However, the fun of Basant Panchami does not preclude intense competition: the unique North Indian phenomenon of cutting each other's kite lines continues. Each time a kite's lifeline is severed, a cheer "bo-kata" is sent up by the victor.

Choose the word which best fills the blank from the four options given.

The biotechnology industry in India is likely to see a significant increase in the merger and acquisition (M & A) activity, according to research firm Grant Thornton. The Indian biotech industry has crossed the US $3 billion mark in 2010, witnessing a 23 per cent growth over the previous year. Of this, while the share of domestic firms stood at 47 per cent, exports accounted for 53 per cent of the overall revenues. India's highskill and low-cost advantage is said to have helped in gaining export contracts and clinical research bioservices.
The Indian biotech industry grew threefold in just five years to report revenues of US$3 billion in 2009-10, a rise of 17 per cent over the previous year, according to the eighth annual survey conducted by the Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE) and a monthly journal, BioSpectrum, based on inputs from over 150 biotech companies.

Read the following passage and answer the questions given after it:
We started looking on the ground for blood, hair or a drag mark that would lead us to the deer killed by the tiger. We had proceeded a hundred yards, examining every foot of the ground, and going dead slow, when Mothi, just as I turned my head to look at him, started backwards, screaming as he did so. Then he whipped round and ran for dear life, beating the air with his hands as if warding off a swarm of bees and continuing to scream as he ran. The sudden and piercing scream of a human being in a jungle, where a moment before all has been silent is terrifying to hear. Instinctively I knew what had happened. With his eyes fixed on the ground, looking for the blood or hair on the kill, Mothi had failed to see where he was going and had walked towards the tiger.

The theory of natural selection was put forth by Charles Darwin in his book 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection', co-authored by Alfred Russel Wallace. According to Darwin, nature has its own ways of selecting the best from the available species for continuation of life. The mechanism of natural selection works as follows :
Individuals of a species produce more offspring than necessary to replace themselves. This results in competition and struggle for existence among the individuals. Within the species itself there is variation that results in minor differences between the individuals.
Thus in the struggle for existence only the ones with the variations best adapted to their environment survive. In this manner nature ensures survival of the fittest.

Many poor farmers had been compelled to take up indigo cultivation when the British settlers were given the right to purcahse and cultivate land in India.Many whites, therefore, either acquired loans to poor farmers or pressurised them to forsake the farming of food grains and other cash crops for indigo cultivation. Indigo export to to Europe was lucrative for the British settlers who held a monopoly for this business.Within a few years,most of the fertile lands had undergone forcible indigo cultivation,resulting in a famine situation in Bengal.When the farmers declined to cultivate indigo,they were tortured,jailed and even killed.

The biotechnology industry in India is likely to see a significant increase in the merger and acquisition (M & A) activity, according to research firm Grant Thornton. The Indian biotech industry has crossed the US $3 billion mark in 2010, witnessing a 23 per cent growth over the previous year. Of this, while the share of domestic firms stood at 47 per cent, exports accounted for 53 per cent of the overall revenues. India's highskill and low-cost advantage is said to have helped in gaining export contracts and clinical research bioservices.
The Indian biotech industry grew threefold in just five years to report revenues of US$3 billion in 2009-10, a rise of 17 per cent over the previous year, according to the eighth annual survey conducted by the Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE) and a monthly journal, BioSpectrum, based on inputs from over 150 biotech companies.