List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions

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Aristotle conceives of ethical theory as a field distinct from the theoretical sciences. Its methodology must match its subject matter-good action-and must respect the fact that in this field many generalizations hold only for the most part. We study ethics in order to improve our lives, and therefore its principal concern is the nature of human well-being. Aristotle follows Socrates and Plato in taking the virtues to be central to a well-lived life. Like Plato, he regards the ethical virtues (justice, courage, temperance and so on) as complex rational, emotional and social skills, But he rejects Plato's idea that to be completely virtuous one must acquire, through a training in the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy, an understanding of what goodness is. What we need, in order to live well, is a proper appreciation of the way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each occasion, which course of action is best supported by reasons. Therefore practical wisdom, as he conceives it, cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion.
According to Aristotle,...........

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The outline of our theory can be expressed as follows. When employment increases, aggregate real income is increased. The psychology of the community is such that when aggregate real income is increased aggregate consumption is increased, but not by so much as income. Hence employers would make a loss if the whole of the increased employment were to be devoted to satisfying the increased demand for immediate consumption. Thus, to justify any given amount of employment there must be an amount of current investment sufficient to absorb the excess of total output over what the community chooses to consume when employment is at the given level. For unless there is this amount of investment, the receipts of the entrepreneurs will be less than is required to induce them to offer the given amount of employment. It follows, therefore, that, given what we shall call the community's propensity to consume, the equilibrium level of employment, i.e. the level at which there is no inducement to employers as a whole either to expand or to contract employment, will depend on the amount of current investment. The amount of current investment will depend, in turn, on what we shall call the inducement to invest; and the inducement to invest will be found to depend on the relation between the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital and the complex of rates of interest on loans of various maturities and risks. Thus, given the propensity to consume and the rate of new investment, there will be only one level of employment consistent with equilibrium; since any other level will lead to inequality between the aggregate supply price of output as a whole and its aggregate demand price. This level cannot be greater than full employment, i.e. the real wage cannot be less than the marginal disutility of labour. But there is no reason in general for expecting it to be equal to full employment. The effective demand associated with full employment is a special case, only realised when the propensity to consume and the inducement to invest stand in a particular relationship to one another. This particular relationship, which corresponds to the assumptions of the classical theory, is in a sense an optimum relationship. But it can only exist when, by accident or design, current investment provides an amount of demand just equal to the excess of the aggregate supply price of the output resulting from full employment over what the community will choose to spend on consumption when it is fully employed.
The equilibrium level of employment is the function of

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Indian Railways (IR) measures the punctuality of trains at the terminating stations. In other countries, it is measured at the originating point, intermediata station, and at terminating stations. In addition, for measuring punctuality, IR provides an allowance of 15 minutes delay with reference to the scheduled time. Other countries have much stricter thresholds as given follows. Japan in seconds, Netherland 3 minutes, Russia and Germany in 5 minutes, Great Brittan in 10 minutes. Even with a low benchmark and higher threshold, the punctuality of Mail/Express trains over IR declined from 79 per cent (2012-13) to 69.23 per cent (2018-19) that ton at the terminating stations only. As per the ICMS report, the poorest punctuality arnong the zones were in NCR during 2012-13 and 2018-19. In 2015-16, out of 5.85 lakh traine, 1.27 lakh Express trains reached the destination station with delay. During 2018-19, number of delayed trains increased by 43 per cent. Out of 6.22 lakh trains, 1.82 lakh trains did not meet the punctuality yardstick of 15 minutes. Three zonal railways ways-NCR ECR and NR-contributed 100 and 67 per cent in total delay of IR during 2015-16 and 2018-19. Review of the Complaint Management System by by Audit revealed that there was sharp increase in the number or of complaint cases on a of punctually in IR. Duning the period 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 the number of complaints that were lodged in the system for late e running of trains was 9112, 20,025 and 35,793 res actively The complaints increased to 40,077 (an increase of 340 per cent over the year 2015-16) in 2018-19. Audit analysed the data for Mal/Express trains for 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-10 from ICMS report number 201 and noticed that on an average 13,15,450 trains are reported through ICMS per annum. Of these, only 29.64 per cent of trains (3,80,877 trains) reached on time (RT) and 20.17 per cent of trains (2.65,301 trains) arrived before time (IT). Remaining 50.18 per cent of trains (6,60,188 raine) are delayed. Before time cases indicates poor timetabling by provision of extra running time, Ministry of Railways stated (November 2021) that IR measures punctuality on terminating basis However, monitoring of running r is done on continuou ous and real-time basis. To put the punctuality performance in perspective it is to be noted that between 2012-2013 and 2018-2019, the train services have increased In numbers by 20 O per cent. Audit is of the view that Punctuality massured on terminating bels does not conform to global best practicos. Audit noticed that by computerized timetabling, grouping of trains, conflict resolution and integrated maintenance, punctuality of trains can be improved.
From the above analysis it is known that some trains reach the destination before the scheduled time. What is the reason?

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The object of study in game theory is the game, which is a formal model of an interactive situation. It typically involves several players; a game with only one player is usually called a decision problem. The formal definition lays out the players, their preferences, their information, the strategic actions available to them, and how these influence the outcome. Games can be described formally at various levels of detail. A coalitional (or cooperative) game is a high-level description, specifying only what payoffs each potential group, or coalition, can obtain by the cooperation of its members. What is not made explicit is the process by which the coalition forms. As an example, the players may be several parties in parliament. Each party has a different strength, based upon the number of seats occupied by party members. The game describes which coalitions of parties can form a majority, but does not delineate, for example, the negotiation process through which an agreement to vote en bloc is achieved. Cooperative game theory investigates such coalitional games with respect to the relative amounts of power held by various players, or how a successful coalition should divide its proceeds. This is most naturally applied to situations arising in political science or international relations, where concepts like power are most important. For example, Nash proposed a solution for the division of gains from agreement in a bargaining problem which depends solely on the relative strengths of the two parties' bargaining position. The amount of power a side has is determined by the usually inefficient outcome that results when negotiations break down. Nash's model fits within the cooperative framework in that it does not delineate a specific timeline of offers and counteroffers, but rather focuses solely on the outcome of the bargaining process. In contrast, noncooperative game theory is concerned with the analysis of strategic choices. The paradigm of noncooperative game theory is that the details of the ordering and timing of players' choices are crucial to determining the outcome of a game. In contrast to Nash's cooperative model, a noncooperative model of bargaining would posit a specific process in which it is prespecified who gets to make an offer at a given time. The term "noncooperative" means this branch of game theory explicitly models the process of players making choices out of their own interest. Cooperation can, and often does, arise in noncooperative models of games, when players find it in their own best interests.
Nash's model........................

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On Monday, the Indian rupee fell to an all-time low of 77.6 against the dollar during intraday. While it has pulled back marginally since then, the rupee has, of late, been exhibiting signs of weakness. However, the Indian currency is not an outlier. Currencies of most other emerging economies have also exhibited weakness against the dollar. In fact, of late, the Turkish lira, Malaysian ringgit and Thai bhat have declined more sharply than the rupee according to analysts at Bank of Baroda. Notwithstanding these day-to-day fluctuations, the outlook for the Indian rupee continues to be weighed down by tighter global monetary policy, a strengthening of the US dollar and risk aversion, and higher current account deficits. With the US Federal Reserve hiking rates by 50 basis points, there has been a sell-off in global markets as investors have rushed to the dollar. In India, foreign portfolio investors have pulled out around $5.8 billion since the beginning of this financial year as per data from Kotak, exerting downward pressure on the currency. The DXY index - which measures the US dollar against six major currencies, namely the euro, pound, Canadian dollar, yen, Swedish kroner and Swiss franc has been rising. This strengthening of the dollar is unlikely to be reversed in the near term. As the US Fed embarks on an aggressive tightening of rates - some analysts are factoring in a terminal rate of more than 3 per cent asset classes across the world will witness further adjustments. There is also the pressure owing to the rising trade deficit — in April the deficit stood at $20 billion, up from $18.7 billion in March. In fact, according to analysts, the current account deficit is likely to be at its highest level since the crisis of 2013. During this period, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been intervening to soften the currency's slide the fall in its foreign exchange reserves suggests that is the case. However, considering that the rupee is overvalued, the central bank should allow the currency to slide, allowing it to find its own level, intervening only to smoothen excess volatility. Currency depreciation will act as an automatic stabiliser. It will help ease current account pressures by curbing imports, but more importantly, it will help boost exports—a critical driver of the country's economy at the current juncture.
Currencies globally in depreciation mode due to......

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The Securities Exchange Board of India's (SEBI's) move, under its new Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, to undertake a thorough review of securities market regulations should be welcomed as it is a necessary initiative to keep up with the times. The review can perhaps focus on three aspects. One, as India's financial market evolves with rising retail participation, market regulations need to keep up with new products and asset classes that are springing up. While comprehensive frameworks are in place to govern traditional investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds currently, newer options such as curated stock portfolios and digital gold which are quite popular with retail investors, are in the grey zone. Two, existing laws on insider trading, front-running and other market crimes rely mainly on call logs, preservation of transcripts and sharing of information on official databases to prevent leakage of unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI). But the widespread use of social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter and YouTube apart from apps that encrypt and instantly purge messages, are helping rogue players bypass such checks, with the result that mass dissemination of false information about dodgy companies has become rampant. SEBI's regulations must be rewritten to plug this gap. Three, regulations that haven't been updated in a while can stand in the way of innovation and deter the launch of new products or services that better serve the interests of investors. The proposed review must do away with redundant regulations wherever warranted, to facilitate market development. Updating laws apart, if financial market regulators such as SEBI are to keep up with new-age fraudsters, they need to be armed with the skillsets and regulatory powers to keep up close surveillance of communications through the digital media, call for information and carry out decryption to decipher such data. Recently, for instance, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) refused to uphold a SEBI ruling against market players for insider trading, after they were discovered to be sharing unpublished company results on WhatsApp groups, on the grounds that these messages couldn't be traced back to company insiders. SEBI is therefore quite right to seek powers from the Government under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguard for Monitoring and Collecting Traffic Data or Information) Rules, to be allowed to access digital communication channels and carry out interception and decryption of such information. The Centre should waste no time in arming SEBI with such powers, with adequate safeguards to protect personal data privacy. To keep up with scamsters, the regulator will also have to build internal capacity and skillsets in efficiently mining surveillance data, connecting the dots and building a convincing evidence trail. The Kotak Committee on Corporate Governance had noted that SEBI was severely under-staffed, overseeing 5,000-odd listed companies with just 800-odd staff while the US SEC had over 4,500 employees to oversee an equal number of companies. Apart from adding numerically to its workforce, SEBI must look at lateral hiring of data science and tech talent at competitive pay scales, to buttress its regulatory capacity to keep up with the times.

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After wheat, there is pressure building up for banning exports of raw cotton. The Narendra Modi government must resist any such demand emanating from domestic textile mills and the garment industry. There are at least three reasons why this is so. To start with, the output of one industry is often the input of another. In this case, cotton is spun by mills into yarn, which is further woven or knitted into fabric used for making garments. During the year ended March 31, 2022, India exported $2.8 billion worth of raw cotton, $5.5 billion of cotton yarn, $8.2 billion of cotton fabrics and made-ups, and $9 billion of cotton ready-made garments. Will spinning mills seeking a ban on cotton shipments agree to the same in respect of yarn? When exports are happening at every stage of the value chain, how can there be pick and choose on which one to disallow or promote? Secondly, while it is true that cotton prices have risen by around 50 per cent since the start of 2022, this cannot be blamed just on exports - which are actually expected to halve in the current marketing season (October-September) compared to 2020-21. Domestic prices increasing to international parity levels should, by itself, slow down exports in the natural course. The Modi government did the right thing last month by scrapping the import duty on cotton. It should, in fact, remove the 10 per cent duty on yarn imports as well. The correct approach to tackling inflation, whether in wheat, cotton or yarn, is by allowing duty-free imports without putting fetters on exports. The third reason has to do with timing. Sowing of cotton has already started in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. Plantings in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana and other states will also take off with the arrival of the southwest monsoon rains. High prices would definitely incentivise farmers to expand acreage this time; banning exports will send the opposite signals to the ultimate detriment of the textile industry. The real problem in cotton that needs addressing is yields. The introduction of Bt cotton in the early 2000s led to India's production going up about 2.5 times to 398 lakh bales by 2013-14. Since then, it has been on a falling trajectory, with the latest output estimate for 2021-22 at below 325 lakh bales. The plants incorporating Bt genes have over time developed susceptibility to pink bollworm and whitefly insect pests, reducing yields and also farmer enthusiasm for growing cotton. The Modi government's succumbing to uninformed lobby pressures against genetic engineering technologies has not helped matters. A clearheaded approach is required for this crop, which is a source of not just fibre (lint), but also food (cotton-seed oil) and feed (oil-cake).
The main suggestion in the above passage is...

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India's official statistical machinery is gearing up to relaunch the All-India Household Consumer Expenditure Survey, traditionally undertaken quinquennially, from July 2022. If it fructifies, the result may be known towards the latter half of 2024, provided the Government permits the release. The last such Survey (2017-18), did not get such a sanction- its results reportedly indicated the first fall in monthly per-capita spending by households since 1972-73, with rural households facing a sharper decline compared to 2011-12. The Statistics Ministry had flagged 'discrepancies', 'data quality issues' and 'divergences' between estimated consumption levels and the actual output of goods and services. While it had sought to scuttle suggestions that unflattering data were being obfuscated, a better course of action would have been to release the data with caveats. It could have argued, for instance, that the numbers, at best, reflect the short-term impact of the 'bold structural reforms' carried out in the year preceding the Survey, to 'formalise' the economy-demonetisation and the GST. A fresh survey could then have been commissioned later for a clearer picture. This is what the UPA had done in 2011-12 to measure employment and consumer spending levels afresh, after the 2009-10 Surveys were affected by the global financial crisis and a severe drought that hit rural incomes. The Government had promised to examine the 'feasibility' of a fresh Consumer Spending Survey, over 2020-21 and 2021-22, after 'incorporating all data quality refinements' mooted by a panel. One hopes the exact 'refinements' are spelt out upfront in the upcoming Survey. Of equal import is providing data comparable with past numbers, while factoring in changes in consumption patterns; and it may still not be too late to release the previous Survey's findings to help assess longer term trends. The absence of official data on such a critical aspect of the economy-used to estimate poverty levels, rebase GDP, and to make private investment decisions for over a decade, is damaging to India. Being a free-market and transparent democracy distinguished India from the likes of China where official data are read with a pinch of salt. The Government's actions, including the delayed release of critical jobs data, have dulled that perception. If anything, such Surveys need to be conducted more frequently for more effective policy actions informed by ground realities, no matter how unpleasant they may be. Now, imperfect proxies are deployed to gauge the economy, surmises made about the extinction of extreme poverty, and outlays are tom-tommed without evidence on outcomes. The NSO must be empowered to collect and disseminate more data points, without fear of insinuations about its abilities, or a looming axe on its regular Surveys.
What is the central theme of the above passage?

The following idiom is followed by some alternatives.Choose the one which best expresses its meaning.
DRY RUN

The following idiom is followed by some alternatives.Choose the one which best expresses its meaning.
A BRAINWAVE

Pick out the best filler which can complete the given sentence correctly.
I'm late to the class,………………?

The following idiom is followed by some alternatives.Choose the one which best expresses its meaning.
EAGER BEAVER

The following idiom is followed by some alternatives.Choose the one which best expresses its meaning.
LAID HIM OUT IN LAVENDER

The following idiom is followed by some alternatives.Choose the one which best expresses its meaning.
VALE OF TEARS

The following idiom is followed by some alternatives.Choose the one which best expresses its meaning.
CALL A SPADE A SPADE

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which is OPPOSITE in meaning to the given word:DUD

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which is OPPOSITE in meaning to the given word:MELANCHOLY

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which is OPPOSITE in meaning to the given word:TRANSIENT

The following question has two blanks,each blank indicating something has been omitted.Choose the word for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
To achieve its full potential,India must not only be able to ……many obstacles that hold it back but also sail with the rest of the world in ……………the benchmarks of democratic rights,equitable distribution of wealth and access to health and education.

Convert the sentence given in the question into INDIRECT SPEECH.
Rahim said to Ramla,Go away'.

Convert the sentence given in the question into INDIRECT SPEECH.
"Where do you live?",asked the Police constable.

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word:SPLENDID

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word:DEBONAIR

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word:RAKISH

Out of the four given alternatives,choose the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word: ADDLE