For decades, the Government has grappled with India's health care shortcomings by introducing various programmes. Despite some measure of success, the problem of universal health care access continues to fester like a recalcitrant sore. While there are several reasons for the lack of complete success in improving health care access, the overall problem may lie in the pursuit of improper priorities. To address access issued headon, radically improving primary health care in India should be top priority. A steep shortage in primary health care centres (PHCs) across India is the prime reason why villagers are forced to trek almost 20 km to reach the nearest PHC. This may still be of little use, because most PHCs are perpetually plagued by a supply and staff shortage, making matters worse for sick patients who expend time, energy and resources to reach the PHC. For people from towns and semi-urban areas seeking modern medical care the situation is no different since they need to travel to the nearest city. Despite 7,50,000 doctors registered with the Medical Council of India, the ground reality is that about 2,00,000 aren't active anymore. This means India has only one doctor to treat 2,000 people, instead of one doctor for every 1,000. Improving those figures will take time because the number of medical and nursing colleges cannot be hiked overnight to boost the output of medical graduates. The time has come to firmly recognise that health and health care issues cannot be left solely to the Government or public sector entities if India is to meet its health care targets including Millennium Development Goals for 2015. Such immense investments and specialised skills could best be tapped if public-private partnerships were promoted and Private companies encouraged to establish health care infrastructure in all geographies- urban, semi-urban and rural - particularly where primary health care is concerned. Estimated indicate that only 320 million people or 26 percent of India's population are covered under some form of medical insurance - public or private. In other words, large uncovered sections of the populace are forced to meet medical costs via out-ofpocket spends, causing immense financial burden and pushing many families into poverty.
What is/ are the primary reason(s) for the lack of complete success in improving health care in India?
A. Total government apathy in this area.
B. Policy makers' inability to properly priorities the measures required.
C. Shortage of PHCs across the country.
A. Total government apathy in this area.
B. Policy makers' inability to properly priorities the measures required.
C. Shortage of PHCs across the country.
- A only
- B only
- A & C
- A, B & C
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
It is implied in the passage that
- when it comes to primary health care facilities, people from villages and towns are equally at a disadvantage
- PHCs established in the country actually become ineffective due to shortage of doctors and medical supplies
- the best way to ensure better health care facilities in the country is to privatise them completely
- with the will to work, government can improve health care facilities in the country within a short period
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
Which of the following statements is/ are true in the context of the passage?
- A country's monetary health is directly affected by the physical health of its citizens
- India has lesser number of doctors and nurses than most other countries in the world
- Only about one-fourth of India's population has access to health insurance
- All these
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
B. can be inferred as well, given that the passage discusses the limited effectiveness of the existing number of doctors relative to the population.
C. is clearly stated in the passage.
So, all three statements can be considered true in the context of the passage.The correct option is (D): All these
Which of the following statements is/ are not true in the context of the passage?
A. The Government has failed to correctly assess the requirement of medical colleges in India.
B. Over 25% of the doctors who register with the Medical Council of India never get into the medical profession.
C. Private participation in the primary health sector is a must to ensure its success we go forward towards Millennium Development Goals for 2015.
A. The Government has failed to correctly assess the requirement of medical colleges in India.
B. Over 25% of the doctors who register with the Medical Council of India never get into the medical profession.
C. Private participation in the primary health sector is a must to ensure its success we go forward towards Millennium Development Goals for 2015.
- A only
- B only
- A & B
- A, B & C
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
B. is not true based on the passage, which indicates that about 200,000 doctors registered are inactive, but it does not state that these doctors "never get into the medical profession."
C. is a true statement; the passage suggests that private participation is necessary for improving health care access and meeting health care targets.
Since A and B are not true, and C is true, the answer is D (A, B, & C are not true in the context of the passage).The correct option is (D): A, B & C
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
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- 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
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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
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