Democracy, often hailed as the most equitable form of governance, is a system where power ultimately rests in the hands of the people. The word derives from the Greek words ”demos” meaning people and ”kratos” meaning power or rule. Democracy aims to provide equal political participation and protect the individual freedoms of all citizens. However, while the idea of democracy is simple, its practice is frequently complex and fraught with challenges. At its core, democracy functions on the principle of majority rule, yet it simultaneously guarantees the protection of minority rights.
This balance ensures that while the majority has the power to make decisions through voting, the fundamental rights of minorities are not trampled upon. Such a system requires consistent vigilance and respect for the rule of law. Without these, democracies can devolve into majoritarian tyranny or authoritarianism. The practice of democracy is not merely limited to voting in elections. It encompasses freedom of speech, an independent judiciary, free press, and protection of individual rights. These elements together create a political environment where citizens can express dissent, hold leaders accountable, and participate actively in decision-making. When any component is weakened, the democratic process becomes vulnerable.
In recent times, democratic societies worldwide have grappled with new challenges. The rise of misinformation and fake news has eroded public trust in institutions and polarized societies. Social media platforms, meant to facilitate communication, have sometimes amplified divisive narratives and falsehoods. This has resulted in voter manipulation and a growing skepticism toward democratic processes. Literacy in media and critical thinking is increasingly vital to safeguard democracy from such threats. Economic inequality poses another significant challenge. While democracy promises equal rights politically, vast disparities in wealth and opportunity undermine this ideal.
This phenomenon raises questions about whether democracy is achievable without addressing socioeconomic inequalities. Furthermore, the involvement of citizens is crucial. Democracy requires that people are informed, engaged, and willing to participate beyond casting votes. Civic education and awareness campaigns play an essential role in nurturing responsible citizenship. Apathy or disengagement weakens the democratic fabric, opening avenues for corruption and other dangers to the system. In conclusion, democracy thrives on the collective responsibility of governments and citizens to protect its pillars and ensure inclusive, fair governance.
The word "democracy" originally means:
Show Hint
- Rule by kings
- Power of the people
- Freedom from laws
- Majority rule only
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (b) directly aligns with the historical and etymological meaning of democracy.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (b) is the correct answer.
What does "inclusive" mean in the phrase "inclusive, fair governance"?
Show Hint
- Exclusive
- Accepting
- Limited to a few
- Chaotic
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (b) reflects the inclusive and accepting nature of fair governance, which aims to include all citizens in the democratic process.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (b) is the correct answer.
In the context of the above passage, consider the following statements, and select the appropriate option:
- Statement 1: Voting is the only element of democracy.
- Statement 2: Freedom of speech and an independent judiciary are essential for democracy.
- Statement 1: Voting is the only element of democracy.
- Statement 2: Freedom of speech and an independent judiciary are essential for democracy.
Show Hint
- Both statements are true and 2 is the correct explanation of 1.
- Both statements are true, but 2 is not the correct explanation of 1.
- Statement 1 is false, but statement 2 is true.
- Statement 1 is true, but statement 2 is false.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Statement 1 is false, as democracy includes multiple elements, not just voting. Statement 2 is true, as freedom of speech and an independent judiciary are crucial components of a healthy democracy.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (c) is the correct answer.
What does 'vulnerable' as used in the democratic process becomes vulnerable mean?
Show Hint
- Robust and well-protected
- Weak or exposed to harm
- Balanced and autonomous
- Completely undone and destroyed
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (b) aligns with the context of the passage, which speaks about vulnerability in democratic processes.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (b) is the correct answer.
Which of the following is NOT listed as a challenge faced by democracy?
Show Hint
- Shortage of essential natural resources impacting governance
- The spread of false information through social platforms
- Vast disparities in wealth affecting political influence
- Low levels of citizen participation and awareness
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (a) is not mentioned as a specific challenge in the context of the passage.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (a) is the correct answer.
What role does economic inequality play in weakening democracy?
Show Hint
- It promotes a more equal distribution of power among citizens.
- It encourages policies that lessen disparities in economic opportunities.
- It permits the rich to exert undue influence over political decisions.
- It results in increased political engagement from all socioeconomic classes.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (c) aligns with the concerns raised in the passage about economic inequality.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (c) is the correct answer.
Identify the sentence in the passage that contains a participial phrase.
Show Hint
- Democracy aims to provide equal political participation and protect the individual freedoms of all citizens.
- Social media platforms, meant to facilitate communication, have sometimes amplified divisive narratives and falsehoods.
- This has resulted in voter manipulation and a growing skepticism towards democratic processes.
- Civic education and awareness campaigns play an essential role in nurturing responsible citizenship.
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (b) is the correct choice, as it contains a participial phrase modifying “social media platforms.”
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (b) is the correct answer.
Which of the following best illustrates the paradox presented in the discussion of majority rule in a democracy?
Show Hint
- The majority rules but must respect minority rights.
- Democracies rely on citizens to choose leaders fairly.
- Economic inequality can lead to political inequality.
- Civic education helps citizens make better voting decisions.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (a) directly reflects the paradox of majority rule and minority rights, which is central to the passage.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (a) is the correct answer.
Based on the passage, which statement best captures the author’s perspective on the link between democracy and inequality?
Show Hint
- Democracies often tolerate economic inequality to preserve individual freedom.
- Socioeconomic inequality is a consequence, not a cause, of weakened democracies.
- Democratic systems are capable of functioning fairly despite economic gaps.
- Political equality cannot be fully realized without addressing economic disparities.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
- Step 2: Analyzing the options — Option (b) reflects this perspective, emphasizing the role of economic inequality as a consequence of weakened democratic systems.
- Step 3: Conclusion — Option (b) is the correct answer.
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
- Shown below are letters ‘e’ taken from four popular logos, arranged in a sequence. Which of the options is the correct sequence?
- UCEED - 2026
- English Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Shown below are four options, each showing consecutive frames representing the movement of a pendulum of an old-style wall clock for an animation movie. Which is the correct option?
- UCEED - 2026
- English Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Acrucial moderating factor in how people experience comparisons is self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to interpret upward comparison as informative rather than threatening. They are more resilient in the face of others’ success and more likely to believe they can reach their own goals. In contrast, people with low self-esteem are more prone to interpret comparison as judgment, reinforcing negative self-views and triggering feelings of inadequacy.
This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing loop. People with high self-esteem are less vulnerable to upward comparison, which intensifies those doubts. Those with a secure sense of self are more likely to use comparison as a learning tool. The same external stimulus—a colleague’s achievements, a friend’s popularity—can have radically different effects depending on internal stability.
Self-esteem also influences how people choose their comparison targets. Research has found that individuals often engage in “selective comparison,” seeking out those who confirm their existing beliefs about themselves. This can become a subtle form of self-sabotage. Someone who feels unworthy may subconsciously seek out targets that reinforce that sense, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority. One of the most promising antidotes to social comparison is temporal comparison—evaluating oneself not against others, but against one’s own past. This method has been shown to increase motivation and satisfaction, especially when individuals can see concrete progress. Temporal comparison activates the same reward circuits as social comparison but avoids the threat systems associated with social ranking. It also reinforces agency: individuals focus on what they can control and improve rather than what others control. In therapeutic and coaching settings, temporal comparison is used to help clients build self-efficacy and track growth over time.
Moreover, people who focus on self-improvement rather than social dominance are less likely to fall into cycles of envy or self-pity. They can still use others as inspiration, but they do so without attaching their self-worth to the outcome. This is not to say they never compare—but that they focus on learning, rather than judgment. The most skilful approach to comparison may lie in eliminating it, but in reframing it as feedback. When we interpret comparison as information rather than a verdict, we can ask, “What can I learn from this?” This shift turns comparison into a growth tool. Teachers mentor their students, not as rivals. Psychologists emphasize that the key variable here is mindset.
A fixed mindset sees comparison as a threat. If someone else is better, it means we are worse. A growth mindset sees comparison as a map. If someone else has reached a certain level, it means the path exists. This reframing is not just a cognitive trick. It changes the emotional tone of comparison, making it more likely to inspire than to wound. Reframing also requires emotional regulation—the ability to notice an initial pang of envy or shame without reacting impulsively. With practice, individuals can learn to pause, reflect, and reinterpret their emotional responses. Over time, this builds resilience and self-trust, allowing comparison to become a learning tool rather than a cage.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need the flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while demphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experiences. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUITmetaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humanity such a burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might hide from the problems and the generals. To the contrary, there was a high insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coart forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, but always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”
...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Questions Asked in AILET exam
- Author : Book = Composer : ?
- Complete the series: A2, C6, F12, J20, ?
- AILET BALLB (Hons.) - 2026
- Number Series
- Complete the series: B2, D4, G7, K11, ?
- AILET BALLB (Hons.) - 2026
- Number Series
- Keyboard : Typist = Paintbrush : ?
- Doctor : Hospital = ?