Even as a youngster it was clear that Rajinder was smart and ambitious. Neighbors would often say, “Someday you’re going to make us proud!” He always had a job growing up at Singh’s General Store – Uncle Balwant’s store. Balwant was a well-intentioned person. Rajinder loved being at the store and not just because Balwant paid him well. He liked helping customers, most of whom were known by the nicknames. Setting up displays and changing the merchandise for different seasons and holidays was always exciting. Uncle Balwant had one child and out of life, his interest in business had declined. But he had taught Rajinder “the ins and outs of retailing”. He had taught Rajinder everything, including ordering merchandise, putting on a sale, customer relations, and keeping the books.
The best part about working at the store was Balwant himself. Balwant loved the store as much as Rajinder did. Balwant had set up the store with a mission to make sure his neighbors got everything they needed at a fair price. He carried a wide variety of goods, based on the needs of the community. If you needed a snow shovel or piece of jewellery for your wife, it was no problem – Singh’s had it all. Rajinder was impressed by Balwant’s way of handling and caring for customers. If somebody was going through “hard times”, Balwant somehow knew it. When they came into the store, Balwant would make them feel comfortable, and say something like, “you know Jaswant, let’s put everything on credit today”. This kind of generosity made it easy to understand why Balwant was loved and respected throughout the community.
Rajinder grew up and went to school and college in Bhatinda. Later on, he made it to an MBA program in Delhi. Rajinder did well in the MBA course and was goal oriented. After first year of his MBA, the career advisor and Balwant advised Rajinder for an internship at Bigmart. That summer, Rajinder was amazed by the breadth and comprehensiveness of the internship experience. Rajinder got inspired by the life story of the founder of Bigmart, and the value the founder held. Bigmart was one of the best companies in the world.
The people that Rajinder worked for at Bigmart during the internship noticed Rajinder’s work ethic, knowledge, and enthusiasm for the business. Before the summer ended, Rajinder had been offered a job as a Management Trainee by Bigmart, to start upon graduation. Balwant was happy to see Rajinder succeed. Even for Rajinder, this was a dream job – holding the opportunity to move up the ranks in a big company. Rajinder did indeed move up the ranks quickly, from management trainee, to assistant store manager, to supervising manager of three stores, to the present position – Real Estate Manager, North India. This job involved locating new sites within targeted locations and community relations.
One day Rajinder was eagerly looking forward to the next assignment. When he received email for the same, his world came crashing down. He was asked to identify next site in Bhatinda. It was not that Rajinder didn’t believe in Bigmart’s explanation. What was printed in the popular press, especially the business press, only reinforced Rajinder’s belief in Bigmart. An executive viewed as one of the wisest business persons in the world was quoted as saying, “Bigmart had been a major force in improving the quality of life for the average consumer around the world offering great prices on good, giving them one stop solution for almost everything.” Many big farmers also benefitted through low prices, as middlemen were removed. At the same time, Rajinder knew that opening a new Bigmart could disrupt small business in Bhatinda. Some local stores in small towns went out of business within a year of the Bigmart’s opening.
In Bhatinda, one of the local stores Singh’s, now run by Balwant’s son, although Balwant still came in every day to “straighten out the merchandise”. As Rajinder thought about this assignment, depression set in, and the nightmares followed. Rajinder was frozen in time and space. Rajinder’s nightmares involved Balwant screaming something – although Rajinder could not make out what Balwant was saying. This especially troubled Rajinder, since Balwant never raised his voice.
Rajinder didn’t know what to do – who might be helpful? Rajinder’s spouse, who was a housewife? Maybe talking it through could lead to some positive course of action. Rajinder’s boss? Would Bigmart understand? Could Rajinder really disclose the conflict without fear? Uncle Balwant? Should Rajinder really disclose the situation and ask for advice? He wanted a solution that would make all stakeholders happy.
Who is the best person for Rajinder to talk to?
Show Hint
- Wife
- Boss
- Let time take its own course
- Balwant
- His colleagues in the office
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
Rajinder has been assigned the responsibility of opening a new Bigmart store in Bhatinda, his hometown. While this is a prestigious assignment, he is emotionally disturbed because such a move could threaten small local businesses – especially Singh’s General Store, run by his Uncle Balwant’s family. Rajinder is experiencing internal conflict, torn between professional responsibility and personal loyalty.
Step 2: Evaluate possible people to talk to.
- (A) Wife: While she may provide emotional support, she does not have business knowledge or a deep understanding of the situation. Advice may be limited.
- (B) Boss: Talking to his boss may be risky, as it could reveal doubts about the assignment and potentially harm Rajinder’s career. The boss may not prioritize personal dilemmas over organizational goals.
- (C) Let time take its own course: This is avoidance, not a solution. Problems would only worsen.
- (D) Balwant: Balwant has been Rajinder’s mentor since childhood, teaching him the values of business and community service. He understands both the local context and Rajinder’s emotional conflict. Balwant’s wisdom, generosity, and experience make him the best person to provide balanced advice.
- (E) Colleagues: While colleagues may sympathize, they cannot relate to Rajinder’s personal history and community connections in Bhatinda.
Step 3: Logical conclusion.
Among all the options, Balwant is the wisest choice. He has both a personal stake in the issue and the maturity to guide Rajinder with empathy and fairness. Talking to Balwant will help Rajinder reconcile his professional duties with his personal values. \[ \boxed{\text{The best person for Rajinder to talk to is Balwant.}} \]
After deliberation with many people and a lot of research, Rajinder came across a study published in a leading journal, which stated that most local farmers benefited because Bigmart bought agricultural produce directly from the farmers. Which of the following actions would you prefer Rajinder to take, after he got this fresh information?
Show Hint
- Since farmers benefit from Bigmart’s presence, Rajinder should be happy with Bigmart’s presence in Bhatinda
- Rajinder should undertake a new study to find out influence of Bigmart on local farmers
- Rajinder should see this as an opportunity to take concerns of local traders to the top management of Bigmart in India. It may help Bigmart to develop new solutions that can benefit Bigmart, retailers, farmers and consumers.
- Quit job at Bigmart and start another big retail chain to compete with Bigmart
- Request his boss to transfer him to new location, which has a low percentage of mom and pop stores. This would reduce Rajinder’s discomfort.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The study indicates that farmers are benefiting from Bigmart’s presence since the company buys agricultural produce directly from them. This reduces middlemen exploitation and increases farmers’ profits. Thus, Bigmart’s presence is not entirely negative—it has created a positive impact on one segment of society. Step 2: Understand Rajinder’s conflict.
Rajinder was initially worried because opening Bigmart in Bhatinda could harm local traders (like his uncle Balwant’s stor(E). Now he learns that while local traders may face challenges, farmers gain significantly. This means the situation is mixed—some benefit, some lose. Step 3: Evaluate the options.
- (A) Oversimplifies the problem. Being “happy” ignores the legitimate concerns of local traders.
- (B) Doing another study is repetitive and delays decision-making, without immediate benefit.
- (C) This is the most constructive option. By raising local traders’ concerns to top management, Rajinder can help Bigmart design policies that balance benefits among all stakeholders—farmers, traders, consumers, and Bigmart itself. This creates a win-win situation.
- (D) Quitting and starting a competitor is impractical, risky, and doesn’t solve the ethical dilemma.
- (E) Asking for transfer is escapism and shows avoidance, not leadership.
Step 4: Conclusion.
Rajinder should act as a bridge between local stakeholders and Bigmart’s management. This way, he can honor his personal values while fulfilling professional duties. \[ \boxed{\text{The best action for Rajinder is Option (C).}} \]
Which is the right ascending order, in terms of proportion of population, benefitting from Bigmart, in and around Bhathinda?
Show Hint
- Consumers, farmers, retailers
- Farmers, consumers, retailers
- Retailers, farmers, consumers
- Farmers, retailers, consumers
- Consumers, retailers, farmers
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
- Retailers: Retailers are adversely impacted by Bigmart’s presence because Bigmart takes away their customers. Thus, the proportion of retailers benefitting is very small Almost negligibl(E).
- Farmers: Farmers benefit significantly because Bigmart buys produce directly from them, eliminating middlemen and ensuring better prices. Hence, a moderate proportion of population (the farming community) benefits.
- Consumers: Consumers form the largest group as they get access to cheaper goods, better variety, and reliable supply chains. Thus, the majority of the population benefits at the consumer level.
Step 2: Arrange in ascending order of proportion benefitting.
- Smallest: Retailers (least benefitte(D)
- Middle: Farmers (moderately benefitte(D)
- Largest: Consumers (most benefitte(D)
Step 3: Final Order.
\[ \text{Retailers } < \text{Farmers } < \text{Consumers} \] \[ \boxed{\text{Correct ascending order: Retailers, Farmers, Consumers (Option (C)}} \]
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
No one argues that the rich should be rich because they were born to wealthy parents. Critics of inequality may complain that those who would abolish inheritance taxes, say, are implicitly endorsing hereditary privilege. But no one defends hereditary privilege outright or disputes the principle that careers should be open to talents.
Most of our debates about access to jobs, education, and public o ce proceed from the premise of equal opportunity. Our disagreements are less about the principle itself than about what it requires. For example, critics of a rmative action in hiring and college admissions argue that such policies are inconsistent with equality of opportunity, because they judge applicants on factors other than merit. Defenders of a rmative action reply that such policies are necessary to make equality of opportunity a reality for members of groups that have suffered discrimination or disadvantage.
At the level of principle at least, and political rhetoric, meritocracy has won the day. In democracies throughout the world, politicians of the center-left and center-right claim that their policies are the ones that will enable all citizens, whatever their race or ethnicity, gender or class, to compete on equal terms and to rise as far as their efforts and talents will take them. When people complain about meritocracy, the complaint is usually not about the ideal but about our failure to live up to it: The wealthy and powerful have rigged the system to perpetuate their privilege; the professional classes have gured out how to pass their advantages on to their children, converting the meritocracy into a hereditary aristocracy; colleges that claim to select students on merit give an edge to the sons and daughters of the wealthy and the well-connected. According to this complaint, meritocracy is a myth, a distant promise yet to be redeemed.- XAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Look how you turned on
the ceiling fan—it’s too high,
see how it shakes and trembles.
You walk into this room
with your hot ideas
and the ceiling fan has to work harder
to cool down the room
for us. You walk into this room
with your crazy eyes
and the ceiling fan
wants to y loose. It dreams
of becoming a spider lily.- XAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Recently, a team of social scientists launched an experiment to test that hypothesis. They recruited 1,500 entrepreneurs in West Africa—a mix of women and men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s—who were running small startups in manufacturing, service, and commerce. They randomly assigned the founders to one of three groups. One was a control group: they went about their business as usual. The other two were training groups: they spent a week learning new concepts, analyzing them in case studies of other entrepreneurs, and applying them to their own startups through role-play and re section exercises. What differed was whether the training focused on cognitive skills or character skills. In cognitive skills training, the founders took an accredited business course created by the International Finance Corporation. They studied nance, accounting, HR, marketing, and pricing, and practiced using what they learned to solve challenges and seize opportunities. In character skills training, the founders attended a class designed by psychologists to teach personal initiative. They studied proactivity, discipline, and determination, and practiced putting those qualities into action. Character skills training had a dramatic impact. After founders had spent merely ve days working on these skills, their rms’ pro ts grew by an average of 30 percent over the next two years. That was nearly triple the bene t of training in cognitive skills. Finance and marketing knowledge might have equipped founders to capitalize on opportunities, but studying proactivity and discipline enabled them to generate opportunities. They learned to anticipate market changes rather than react to them. They developed more creative ideas and introduced more new products. When they encountered nancial obstacles, instead of giving up, they were more resilient and resourceful in seeking loans. Along with demonstrating that character skills can propel us to achieve greater things, this evidence reveals that it’s never too late to build them … Character doesn’t set like plaster—it retains its plasticity. Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts. Knowing your principles doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to practice them, particularly under stress or pressure. It’s easy to be proactive and determined when things are going well. The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day. Personality is not your destiny—it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It’s not about the traits you have—it’s what you decide to do with them. Wherever you are today, there’s no reason why you can’t grow your character skills starting now.
- XAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
This uidity and situational dependence is uniquely human. In other species, in-group/outgroup distinctions re ect degrees of biological relatedness, or what evolutionary biologists call “kin selection.” Rodents distinguish between a sibling, a cousin, and a stranger by smell—xed, genetically determined pheromonal signatures—and adapt their cooperation accordingly. Those murderous groups of chimps are largely made up of brothers or cousins who grew up together and predominantly harm outsiders. Humans are plenty capable of kin-selective violence themselves, yet human group mentality is often utterly independent of such instinctual familial bonds. Most modern human societies rely instead on cultural kin selection, a process allowing people to feel closely related to what are, in a biological sense, total strangers. Often, this requires a highly active process of inculcation, with its attendant rituals and vocabularies. Consider military drills producing “bands of brothers,” unrelated college freshmen becoming sorority “sisters,” or the bygone value of welcoming immigrants into “the American family.” This malleable, rather than genetically xed, path of identity formation also drives people to adopt arbitrary markers that enable them to spot their cultural kin in an ocean of strangers—hence the importance various communities attach to ags, dress, or facial hair. The hipster beard, the turban, and the “Make America Great Again” hat all fulfill this role by sending strong signals of tribal belonging. Moreover, these cultural communities are arbitrary when compared to the relatively axed logic of biological kin selection. Few things show this arbitrariness better than the experience of immigrant families, where the randomness of a visa lottery can radically reshu e a child’s education, career opportunities, and cultural predilections. Had my grandparents and father missed the train out of Moscow that they instead barely made, maybe I’d be a chain smoking Russian academic rather than a Birkenstock-wearing American one, moved to tears by the heroism during the Battle of Stalingrad rather than that at Pearl Harbor. Scaled up from the level of individual family histories, our big-picture group identities—the national identities and cultural principles that structure our lives— are just as arbitrary and subject to the vagaries of history.
- XAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
- Work, for many on the career track, is greedy. The individual who puts in overtime, weekend time, or evening time will earn a lot more—so much more that, even on an hourly basis, the person is earning more.…The greediness of work means that couples with children or other care responsibilities would gain by doing a bit of specialization. This specialization doesn’t mean catapulting back to the world of Leave It to Beaver. Women will still pursue demanding careers. But one member of the couple will be on call at home, ready to leave the o ce or workplace at a moment’s notice. That person will have a position with considerable exibility and will ordinarily not be expected to answer an e-mail or a call at ten p.m. That parent will not have to cancel an appearance at soccer practice for an M \& A. The other parent, however, will be on call at work and do just the opposite. The potential impact on promotion, advancement, and earnings is obvious. The work of professionals and managers has always been greedy. Lawyers have always burned the midnight oil. Academics have always been judged for their cerebral output and are expected not to turn their brains off in the evenings. Most doctors and veterinarians were once on call 24/7. The value of greedy jobs has greatly increased with rising income inequality, which has soared since the early 1980s. Earnings at the very upper end of the income distribution have ballooned. The worker who jumps the highest gets an ever-bigger reward. The jobs with the greatest demands for long hours and the least exibility have paid disproportionately more, while earnings in other employments have stagnated. Thus, positions that have been more di cult for women to enter in the rst place, such as those in nance, are precisely the ones that have seen the greatest increases in income in the last several decades. The private equity associate who sees the deal through from beginning to end, who did the di cult modeling, and who went to every meeting and late-night dinner, will have maximum chance for a big bonus and the sought-after promotion. Rising inequality in earnings may be one important reason why the gender pay gap among college graduates has remained at in the last several decades, despite improvements in women’s credentials and positions. It may be the reason why the gender earnings gap for college graduates became larger than that between men and women in the entire population in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Women have been swimming upstream, holding their own but going against a strong current of endemic income inequality. Greedy work also means that couple equity has been, and will continue to be, jettisoned for increased family income. And when couple equity is thrown out the window, gender equality generally goes with it, except among same-sex unions. Gender norms that we have inherited get reinforced in a host of ways to allot more of the childcare responsibility to mothers, and more of the family care to grown daughters. 68. Which of the following statements CANNOT be inferred from the passage?
- XAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Questions Asked in XAT exam
Match the following renowned Indian personalities with their respective awards.
Names Award 1. Shri Ratan Naval Tata A. Dadasaheb Phalke Award 2. Manmohan Singh B. Grammy Awards 3. Zakir Hussain C. Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy 4. Shyam Benegal D. World Statesman Award - XAT - 2025
- Famous personalities and their contributions
Match the following authors with their respective works.
Authors Books 1. Andy Weir A. Dune 2. Cixin Liu B. The Time Machine 3. Stephen Hawking C. The Brief History of Time 4. HG Wells D. The Martian 5. Frank Herbert E. The Three Body Problem - XAT - 2025
- Books and Authors
Match the following airlines with the countries where they are headquartered.
Airlines Countries 1. AirAsia A. Singapore 2. AZAL B. South Korea 3. Jeju Air C. Azerbaijan 4. Indigo D. India 5. Tigerair E. Malaysia - XAT - 2025
- Business and Economy
The diagram below represents a road network connecting five towns, namely Meeren, Lannisport, Winterfell, Oldtown, and Gulltown. The maximum speed limits along any stretch of road are as shown in the diagram. The straight road that connects Meeren to Gulltown passes through Oldtown. Another straight road, running west to east, connecting Meeren to Winterfell, passes through Lannisport. Further, two straight roads, one from Lannisport to Oldtown and another from Winterfell to Gulltown, are perpendicular to the road joining Meeren to Winterfell, and run from south to north.
Consider a car always travelling at the maximum permissible speed, and always taking the shortest route. It takes 1 hour to reach Oldtown from Meeren, 2 hours to reach Gulltown from Oldtown, and 45 minutes to reach Winterfell from Gulltown. (For this problem, always consider the shortest route in terms of distance.)
- XAT - 2025
- Logical and Analytical Reasoning Skills
The plots below depict and compare the average monthly incomes (in Rs. ’000) of males and females in ten cities of India in the years 2005 and 2015. The ten cities, marked A-J in the records, are of different population sizes. For a fair comparison, to adjust for inflation, incomes for both the periods are scaled to 2025 prices. Each red dot represents the average monthly income of females in a particular city in a particular year, while each blue dot represents the average monthly income of males in a particular city in a particular year. The gender gap for a city, for a particular year, is defined as the absolute value of the average monthly income of males, minus the average monthly income of females, in that year.
- XAT - 2025
- Data Interpretation