Reading Comprehension Test 20

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question below.[/passage-header]In 1948 after Gandhi's death, Vinoba Bhave, one of his closest disciples, retired to five acres of land to learn to live without money and to practise the self-sufficiency which Gandhi and believed was the solution to the poverty of rural India. Then, in 1951, after much persuasion, he agreed to travel 300 miles to attend the annual general meeting of the 'Sarvodaya Samaj' to be held in Hyderabad.
After the meeting was over, he went into the district of Telengana where there was a state of political terrorism in the countryside. Here on April 18, 1951, at the village of Pochempelli, he was offered one hundred acres for the use of Harijans by a rich landowner. Vinoba Bhave was tremendously excited by this gift. He decided to get more people to give away some of their land to the poor.
The news of the saint who caused people to give land to the landless spread through the district and his arrival was now eagerly awaited in village after village. The richer villagers began to offer him more land. Sometimes, of course, the rich men did not want to give their land. To these he said, "Treat me as one of your sons and give me my share of land." Within fifty days he had collected 12,000 acres for distributing to the landless poor of the countryside.

Stories of dolphins saving human lives have been told throughout history. The latest incident happened recently when dolphins saved the life of an Australian surfer from a shark which tore a chunk out of his surfboard. As the shark moved in for the kill it was chased away by a group of dolphins.
Some scientists argue that such behaviour is an instinctive response to distress signals. Others insist that incidents like these are deliberate acts of compassion adding support to the widespread belief that dolphins are highly intelligent. Two factors were initially responsible for sparking off the popular idea that dolphins might possess high intelligence. The first was the size of the dolphin brains. In some species it is about the same weight as our own. The second factor was the work of Dr. John Lilly who convinced that dolphins must possess a language, set about trying to prove this theory by teaching captive dolphins to speak English. But Lilly's work, though appealing, proved nothing except that dolphins are talented vocal mimics. But in seeking to establish whether dolphins share human characteristics, we may be barking up the wrong tree. As dolphins have evolved in an environment completely like our own, it is reasonable to expect that their intelligence will be a different kind too.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question below.[/passage-header]In India working women lead a life of dual responsibilities if they are married and have a family. In the west, many women are hard -headed careerists and are committed to their jobs. Here in India women still have traditional roles to fulfill and prefer a career to avoid domestic drudgery.
There are four categories of working women in India. Some work while they are waiting for matrimony. A majority work because they are qualified, want a second income and different kind of life for part of the day. A small section consists of career women. A sizeable number of women are breadwinners.
It is quite apparent that with a majority of working women the family takes precedence over the job. They prefer to stay in joint families where their children can be taken care of while they are at work. When they come back in the evenings from the relatively modem surroundings of their work -- spots, their personalities have to undergo a change to accommodate the demands on their time and attention by different family members whose predominant feelings are of having been neglected. These women often do their shopping on the way from the office. They reserve their weekends for heavy housework which will help them to cope with the rest of the week with relatively less tension. Weekends are also reserved for spending time with their spouses and children, for entertainment, family duties, visits and other such endless chores. Actually speaking, they hardly have time for personal needs. Despite the freedom and confidence of their jobs and pay packets, working women still prefer to leave the financial decision -- making and budgeting to their husbands. They are unwilling to compromise on their dual burdens and prefer jobs with flexible timings. They are managing their double roles admirably.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question below.[/passage-header]In 1948 after Gandhi's death, Vinoba Bhave, one of his closest disciples, retired to five acres of land to learn to live without money and to practise the self-sufficiency which Gandhi and believed was the solution to the poverty of rural India. Then, in 1951, after much persuasion, he agreed to travel 300 miles to attend the annual general meeting of the 'Sarvodaya Samaj' to be held in Hyderabad.
After the meeting was over, he went into the district of Telengana where there was a state of political terrorism in the countryside. Here on April 18, 1951, at the village of Pochempelli, he was offered one hundred acres for the use of Harijans by a rich landowner. Vinoba Bhave was tremendously excited by this gift. He decided to get more people to give away some of their land to the poor.
The news of the saint who caused people to give land to the landless spread through the district and his arrival was now eagerly awaited in village after village. The richer villagers began to offer him more land. Sometimes, of course, the rich men did not want to give their land. To these he said, "Treat me as one of your sons and give me my share of land." Within fifty days he had collected 12,000 acres for distributing to the landless poor of the countryside.

[passage-header]Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]    The Law Commission of India's recommendation that the anti-dowry law be suitably amended to dilute the provision of immediate arrest of the accused, is sensible. The suggestion comes in light of the fact that an increasing number of dowry complaints have been found to be false. Section 498 of the Indian Penal Code - dealing with physical and mental cruelty by husbands and their relatives over dowry - empowers the complainant to have the accused arrested even before a proper investigation into the case. This only incentivizes misuse of the law. Not only does this amount to gross injustice but also significant damages to the anti-dowry movement. 

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]I consider myself something of an authority on apologies because a quick temper has provided me with plenty of opportunities to make them. In one of my earliest memories, my mother is telling me, "Don't look at the ground when you say, 'I'm sorry'. Hold your head up and look the person in the eye, he'll know you mean it". My mother thus conveyed the first principle of a successful apology: it must be direct. You must never pretend to be doing something else. You do not leaf through a sheaf of correspondence while apologizing to a subordinate after blaming her for a mistake that turned out to be your fault. You do not apologize to a hostess, whose guest of honor you insulted, by sending flowers the next day without having mentioned your behaviour.

[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 accordingly, fill in the blank:
[/passage-header]Martin Luther King's active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he held numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the 'Negro'. He, like Gandhiji, hated the eye-for-an-eye method and fought with the weapons of nonviolence - a weapon, said King, that 'cuts without wounding and enables the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals', and he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategy and intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of nonviolence was criticized and challenged by the 'Black Power' militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and accordingly, fill in the blank:
[/passage-header]Martin Luther King's active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he held numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the 'Negro'. He, like Gandhiji, hated the eye-for-an-eye method and fought with the weapons of nonviolence - a weapon, said King, that 'cuts without wounding and enables the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals', and he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategy and intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of nonviolence was criticized and challenged by the 'Black Power' militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Grandchildren at university, now how time passes! I wonder if they or anyone else would be interested in what student life was like in the '30s. Well, here goes... The academic part of a student's life doesn't change all that much through the generations, but the style of social life has changed. (For better or worse, who are we to say? ) The 'English Lit." more properly Edinburgh University English Literature society, met on Tuesday evening in the Non Soc Hall, which is round about where the student shop is now. It was called the Non Soc Hall because the meetings there were of Non-Associated societies being high and mighty affairs with a long history, such as Dialectic, Philomathic, and Diagnostic, which, in those days certainly didn't admit women.