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

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: This was years in the making but fast-tracked during the pandemic, when “people started being more mindful about their food”, he explained.
Paragraph: For millennia, ghee has been a venerated staple of the subcontinental diet, but it fell out of favour a few decades ago when saturated fats were largely considered to be unhealthy. ____(1)____ But more recently, as the thinking around saturated fats is shifting globally, Indians are finding their own way back to this ingredient that is so integral to their cuisine. ____(2)____ For Karmakar, a renewed interest in ghee is emblematic of a return-tobasics movement in India. ____(3)____ This movement is also part of an overall trend towards “slow food”. In keeping with the movement’s philosophy, ghee can be produced locally (even at home) and has inextricable cultural ties. ____(4)____ At a basic level, ghee is a type of clarified butter believed to have originated in India as a way to preserve butter from going rancid in the hot climate.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
[1] From chemical pollutants in the environment to the damming of rivers to invasive species transported through global trade and travel, every environmental issue is different and there is no single tech solution that can solve this crisis.
[2] Discourse on the threat of environmental collapse revolves around cutting down emissions, but biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are caused by myriad and diverse reasons.
[3] This would require legislation that recognises the rights of future generations and other species that allows the judiciary to uphold a much higher standard of environmental protection than currently possible.
[4] Clearly, our environmental crisis requires large political solutions, not minor technological ones, so, instead of focusing on infinite growth, we could consider a path of stable-state economies, while preserving markets and healthy competition.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Several of the world’s earliest cities were organised along egalitarian lines. In some regions, urban populations governed themselves for centuries without any indication of the temples and palaces that would later emerge; in others, temples and palaces never emerged at all, and there is simply no evidence of a class of administrators or any other sort of ruling stratum. It would seem that the mere fact of urban life does not, necessarily, imply any particular form of political organization, and never did. Far from resigning us to inequality, the picture that is now emerging of humanity’s past may open our eyes to egalitarian possibilities we otherwise would have never considered.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
[1] The trajectory of cheerfulness through the self is linked to the history of the word ‘cheer’ which comes from an Old French meaning ‘face’.
[2] Translations of the Bible into vernacular languages, expanded the noun ‘cheer’ into the more abstract ‘cheerful-ness’, something that circulates as an emotional and social quality defining the self and a moral community.
[3] When you take on a cheerful expression, no matter what the state of your soul, your cheerfulness moves into the self: the interior of the self is changed by the power of cheer.
[4] People in the medieval ‘Canterbury Tales’ have a ‘piteous’ or a ‘sober’ cheer; ‘cheer’ is an expression and a body part, lying at the intersection of emotions and physiognomy.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
There’s a common idea that museum artworks are somehow timeless objects available to admire for generations to come. But many are objects of decay. Even the most venerable Old Master paintings don’t escape: pigments discolour, varnishes crack, canvases warp. This challenging fact of art-world life is down to something that sounds more like a thread from a morality tale: inherent vice. Damien Hirst’s iconic shark floating in a tank – entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – is a work that put a spotlight on inherent vice. When he made it in 1991, Hirst got himself in a pickle by not using the right kind of pickle to preserve the giant fish. The result was that the shark began to decompose quite quickly – its preserving liquid clouding, the skin wrinkling, and an unpleasant smell wafting from the tank.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Today, many of the debates about behavioural control in the age of big data echo Cold War-era anxieties about brainwashing, insidious manipulation and repression in the ‘technological society’. In his book Psychopolitics, Han warns of the sophisticated use of targeted online content, enabling ‘influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level’. On our current trajectory, “freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude.” The fear is that the digital age has not liberated us but exposed us, by offering up our private lives to machine-learning algorithms that can process masses of personal and behavioural data. In a world of influencers and digital entrepreneurs, it’s not easy to imagine the resurgence of a culture engendered through disconnect and disaffiliation, but concerns over the threat of online targeting, polarisation and big data have inspired recent polemics about the need to rediscover solitude and disconnect.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
[1] Women may prioritize cooking because they feel they alone are responsible for mediating a toxic and unhealthy food system.
[2] Food is commonly framed through the lens of individual choice: you can choose to eat healthily.
[3] This is particularly so in a neoliberal context where the state has transferred the responsibility for food onto individual consumers.
[4] The individualized framing of choice appeals to a popular desire to experience agency, but draws away from the structural obstacles that stratify individual food choices.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. Sentence: Easing the anxiety and pressure of having a “big day” is part of the appeal for many couples who marry in secret. Paragraph: Wedding season is upon us and – after two years of Covid chaos that saw nuptials scaled back– you may think the temptation would be to go all out. ____(1) ____. But instead of expanding the guest list, many couples are opting to have entirely secret ceremonies. With Covid case numbers remaining high and the cost of living crisis meaning that many couples are feeling the pinch, it’s no wonder that some are less than eager to send out invites. ____(2) ____. Plus, it can’t hurt that in celebrity circles getting married in secret is all the rage. ____ (3) ____. “I would definitely say that secret weddings are becoming more common,” says Landis Bejar, the founder of a therapy practice, which specialises in helping brides and grooms manage wedding stress. “People are looking for ways to get out of the spotlight and avoid the pomp and circumstance of weddings. ____ (4) ____. They just want to get to the part where they are married.”

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. Sentence: Having made citizens more and less knowledgeable than their predecessors, the Internet has proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Paragraph: Never before has a population, nearly all of whom has enjoyed at a least a secondary school education, been exposed to so much information, whether in newspapers and magazines or through YouTube, Google, and Facebook. ____(1) ____. Yet it is not clear that people today are more knowledgeable than their barely literate predecessors. Contemporary advances in technology offered more serious and inquisitive students access to realms of knowledge previously unimaginable and unavailable. ____ (2) ____. But such readily available knowledge leads many more students away from serious study, the reading of actual texts, and toward an inability to write effectively and grammatically. ____ (3) ____. It has let people choose sources that reinforce their opinions rather than encouraging them to question inherited beliefs. ____ (4) ____.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Some company leaders are basing their decisions on locating offices to foster innovation and growth, as their best-performing inventors suffered the greatest productivity losses when their commutes grew longer.
2. Shorter commutes support innovation by giving employees more time in the office and greater opportunities for in-person collaboration, while removing the physical strain of a long commute.
3. This is not always the case: remote work does not automatically lead to greater creativity and productivity as office water-cooler conversations are also very important for innovation.
4. Some see the link between long commutes and productivity as support for work-from-home scenarios, as many workers have grown accustomed to their commute-free arrangements during the pandemic

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. Petitioning is an expeditious democratic tradition, used frequently in prior centuries, by which citizens can bring issues directly to governments. As expressions of collective voice, they support procedural democracy by shaping agendas. They can also recruit citizens to causes, give voice to the voteless, and apply the discipline of rhetorical argument that clarifies a point of view. By contrast, elections are limited in several respects: they involve only a few candidates, and thus fall far short of a representative democracy. Further, voters’ choices are not specific to particular policies or laws, and elections are episodic, whereas the voice of the people needs to be heard and integrated constantly into democratic government.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. The creative element in product design has become of paramount importance as it is one of the few ways
a firm or industry can sustain a competitive advantage over its rivals.
2. In fact, the creative element in the value of world industry would be larger still, if we added the
contribution of the creative element in other industries, such as the design of tech accessories.
3. The creative industry is receiving a lot of attention today as its growth rate is faster than that of the world
economy as a whole.
4. It is for this reason that today’s trade issues are increasingly involving intellectual property, as Western
countries have an interest in protecting their revenues along with freeing trade in non-tangibles.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. It’s not that modern historians of medieval Africa have been ignorant about contacts between Ethiopia and Europe; they just had the power dynamic reversed. The traditional narrative stressed Ethiopia as weak and in trouble in the face of aggression from external forces, so Ethiopia sought military assistance from their fellow Christians to the north. But the real story, buried in plain sight in medieval diplomatic texts, simply had not yet been put together by modern scholars. Recent research pushes scholars of medieval Europe to imagine a much more richly connected medieval world: at the beginning of the so-called Age of Exploration, there is evidence that the kings of Ethiopia were sponsoring their own missions of diplomacy, faith and commerce.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. All that we think we know about how life hangs together is really some kind of illusion that we have perpetrated on ourselves because of our limited vision. What appear to be inanimate objects such as stones turn out not only to be alive in the same way that we are, but also in many infinitesimal ways to be affected by stimuli just as humans are. The distinction between animate and inanimate simply cannot be made when you enter the world of quantum mechanics and try to determine how those apparent subatomic particles, of which you and everything else in our universe is composed, are all tied together. The point is that physics and metaphysics show there is a pattern to the universe that goes beyond our capacity to grasp it with our brains.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent
paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Fish skin collagen has excellent thermo-stability and tensile strength making it ideal for use as bandage
that adheres to the skin and adjusts to body movements.
2. Collagen, one of the main structural proteins in connective tissues in the human body, is well known for
promoting skin regeneration.
3. Fish skin swims in here as diseases and bacteria that affect fish are different from most human pathogens.
4. The risk of introducing disease agents into other species through the use of pig and cow collagen proteins
for wound healing has inhibited its broader applications in the medical field

Read the following passage and answer the question
The State of Inequality in India Report was released by Dr Bibek Debroy, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). The report has been written by the Institute for Competitiveness and presents a holistic analysis of the depth and nature of inequality in India. The report compiles information on inequities across sectors of health, education, household characteristics and the labour market, As the report presents, inequities in these sectors make the population more vulnerable and triggers a descent into multidimensional poverty. Dr Bibek Debroy has stated, "inequality is an emotive issue. It is also an empirical issue, since definition and measurement are both contingent on the metric used and data available, including its timeline". He further adds, "to reduce poverty and enhance employment, since May 2014, Union Government has introduced a variety of measures interpreting inclusion as the provision of basic necessities, measures that have enabled India to withstand the shock of the Covid-19 Pandemic better". The report is a stock-taking of both inclusion and exclusion and contributes to the policy debates. The report moves beyond the wealth estimates that depict only a partial picture to highlight estimates of income distribution over the periods of 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. With a first-time focus on income distribution to understand the capital flow, the report emphasises that wealth concentration as a measure of inequality does not reveal the changes in the purchasing capacity of households. Extrapolation of the income data from PLFS 2019-20 has shown that a monthly salary of Rs 25,000 is already amongst the top 10% of total incomes earned, pointing towards some levels of income disparity. The share of the top 1% accounts for 6-7% of the total incomes earned, while the top 10% accounts for one-third of all incomes earned. In 2019-20, among different employment categories, the highest percentage was of self-employed workers (45.78%), followed by regular salaried workers (33.5%) and casual workers (20.71%). The share of self-employed workers also happens to be the highest in the lowest income categories. The country's unemployment rate is 4.8% (2019-20), and the worker population ratio is 46.8%. In the area of health infrastructure, there has been a considerable improvement in increasing the infrastructural capacity with a targeted focus on rural areas. From 1,72,608 total health centres in India in 2005, total health centres in 2020 stand at 1,85,505. States and Union Territories like Rajasthan, Gujrat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Chandigarh have significantly increased health centres (comprising of Sub-Centres, Primary Health Centres, and Community Health Centres) between 2005 and 2020, The results of NFHS-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-21) have shown that 58.6% of women received antenatal check-ups in the first trimester in 2015-16, which increased to 70% by 2019-21. 78% of women received postnatal care from a doctor or auxiliary nurse within two days of delivery, and 79.1% of children received postnatal care within two days of delivery. However, nutritional deprivation in terms of overweight, underweight, and prevalence of anaemia (especially in children, adolescent girls and pregnant women) remains areas of huge concern requiring urgent attention, as the report states. Additionally, low health coverage, leading to high out-of-pocket expenditure, directly affects poverty incidences. According to the report, education and household conditions have improved enormously due to targeted efforts through several social protection schemes, especially in the area of water availability and sanitation that have increased the standard of living. It is emphasised that education and cognitive development from the foundational years is a long-term corrective measure for inequality. By 2019-20, 95% of schools have functional toilet facilities on the school premises (95.9% functional boy's toilets and 96.9% functional girl's toilets). 80.16% of schools have functional electricity connections with States and Union Territories like Goa, Tamil Nadu, Chandigarh, Delhi, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep and Puducherry have achieved universal (100%) coverage of functional electricity connections. The Gross Enrolment Ratio has also increased between 2018-19 and 2019-20 at the primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary. In terms of improvement in household conditions, emphasis on providing access to sanitation and safe drinking water has meant leading a dignified life for most households. According to NFHS-5 (2019-21), 97% of households have electricity access, 70% have improved access to sanitation, and 96% have access to safe drinking water.
Which one of the following is NOT correct asper the above passage?

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The dire wamings of climate change experts are coming true.Flooding caused by torrential rainfall in the past two weeks has claimed close to 500 lives and left thousands homeless in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province.Tens of thousands of people in Durban are,reportedly,without water and there are concerns of an infectious disease outbreak.Authorities fear the toll could climb much higher.Intense rainfall in spring and early summer is part of South Africa's weather pattern.In April-May,a low-pressure system,stemming from the westerly trough systems of cold air,develops south of the country and often results in inclement weather.In 2019,flash floods claimed 85 lives in Durban.But the intensity of the downpour this year was unprecedented.Some parts of kwa Zulu-Natal experienced a year's rainfall in less than 36 hours.The weather vagary is straight out of classical climate change literature:Warmer seas push large amounts of moisture into the atmosphere leading to intense spells of rainfall.But that's one part of the story.The deluge's catastrophic turn has mu ch to do with a failing that's common to several parts of the world,including India:Durban's drainage system that has,at best,seen cosmetic improvements in more than a century,was ill-equipped to handle the relentless downpour.As in climate disasters in most parts of the world,the poor in South Africa have borne the brunt.Durban is a city of migrants,and large numbers live in shacks,locally called "informal settlements".These houses —an Apartheid-era legacy of the poor living in low-lying areas —were the first to be swept away by the flash floods.Experts have sounded the red alert for more extreme weather events in South Africa in the coming years.As in other parts of the world,the way forward lies in improving the accuracy of warning systems,and building the resilience of people,especially the poor.This should be the focus of adaptation strategies.
Accordling to the passage,climate disasters affect

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India is back to the situation in October 2021of abysmal coal stocks in over half of the 173 thermal plants, even as a long summer lies ahead. There are just eightdays of coal stocks in thermal power stations in 12 States, even as domestic demand, according to i ndustry observers, touched a near-four decade high in the first two weeks of April. Temperatures this March and April are at decadal highs, giving rise to a coal demand-supply gap of at least 10 per cent. Outages have already begun in many States, even as coal supplies to non-power sectors have been cut. Power utilities account for about 70 per cent of coal demand, while iron and steel accounts for another 15 per cent. A cutback of coal to industry could hurt steel, cement and aluminium production, with serious repercussions for the economy. Coal supplies must be increased without further delay by addressing bottlenecks. Coal India Ltd (CIL) has been a laggard in increasing output from its mines in the last several years. During 2015, the Centre had ambitious plans of doubling CIL's output to a billion tonnes by 2019-20. Seven years hence, in FY22 CIL's output has inched its way up to just 626 million tonnes - that's a compounded annual growth of a piffling 3.44 per cent (compared to the target of about 15 per cent between FY16-FY20). Clearly, there are issues for the Centre to sort out here. Coal output has clearly not kept pace with the rising energy demand in the country. The supply shortfall has been made worse by the non-availability of railway rakes to supply coal from the pitheads to the 150-odd plants situated a good distance away. Indeed, coal output in the summer months can be improved if there are rakes to transport the coal away from the pithead (where mounds of it would be a fire hazard at high temperatures) to the power stations. It is a mystery as to why the increased capex outlays in the Railways have not translated into improvements in this crucial area. Extra rakes on coal transport routes should be deployed without delay. There is also a more endemic problem that is holding up coal supplies to power plants: the unpaid dues by Gencos to Coal India, which in turn is because Discoms have not paid the Gencos. A sum of 1.23-lakh crore is payable by Discoms to the Gencos. Meanwhile, resource-strapped Gencos are operating at a PLF of about 60 per cent. While a clean-up of the affairs of Discoms cannot be achieved overnight, a financial intervention that improves the cash flows of Gencos can alleviate the crisis. Meanwhile, there is a need to look at climate change as a factor impacting coal demand. According to a September 2021 Crisil report, coal consumption by power plants in the month of April exceeded the monthly average of 51 million tonnes in FY19, FY20 and FY 22 (FY21 being an aberration owing to the recession), and this is likely to be repeated this month as well, if rising demand is to be met. A late monsoon retreat curtails output in coal mines, creating shortages in September-October when the heat is still on, while the onset of an early summer reduces the winter window (characterised by weak demand) to ramp up output, reducing inventories. An output increase in the summer months is the best way out.
The major reason for coal shortages is

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The sharp surge in gold imports this fiscal once again turns the spotlight on the need to find alternative avenues to meet the insatiable demand of Indians for the yellow metal. With consumers on a buying spree after the second wave of the pandemic, gold imports between April and November 2021 was at a nine-year high of $33.23 billion around 50 per cent higher than in the corresponding period in 2019-20, The last time gold imports crossed $30 billion in the first eight months of the fiscal year was in 2012-13. The Reserve Bank of India was then forced to take drastic measures to curb imports including hiking import duty sharply and laying down that 20 per cent of gold imported should be exported as jewellery. The RBI's actions were prompted by current account deficit expanding to 4.8 per cent of GDP and the rupee depreciating sharply. The surging gold imports this year could also turn problematic as the trade deficit has expanded since September, hitting a multi-decade low in November 2021. The rupee is also under pressure due to the rising trade deficit as well as continued foreign portfolio outflows. High gold imports is a structural issue in A recent report by the World Gold Council pointed out that gold imports by India have been consistently high since 2012, averaging 760 tonnes per year. This is because the domestic supply is limited, with imports meeting almost 86 per cent of domestic demand. It is clear that the Centre needs to find long-term sustainable solutions to increase the domestic supply. The obvious way to do so is to bring some of the 25,000 tonnes of gold held by households and temples into circulation, The Centre needs to consider another gold monetisation scheme (GMS) that offers higher returns compared with the previous schemes and is better tuned to the feeling and emotions of consumers, A scheme that promises that another equivalent piece of jewellery will be returned to the customer at the end of the deposit period could find more takers since the biggest drawback of the ongoing GMS is that the customer loses the jewellery and gets a gold coin or bar at the end of the scheme. Building greater awareness towards non-physical forms of gold such as sovereign gold bonds and gold exchange traded funds will also help reduce investment-led demand for physical gold to some extent. It may also be a good idea to set up bullion banks that focus on gold loans to retail and rural customers. The prime function of these banks will be to mobilise the surplus gold with citizens through gold monetisation schemes. They can also buy and sell gold in the bullion exchanges being set up in India and in the offshore business centre in GIFT City, thus imparting liquidity to these exchanges.
RBI has to intervene to reduce the gold imports in the backdrop of..............

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The stock market has demonstrated gravity-defying qualities lately. Despite worries about rate hikes, Fed taper and the inflationary impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, Indian indices rule just 3.5 per cent below lifetime highs. The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is right in crediting retail investors for the market's shock-absorbing capacity. As Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) have pulled out nearly $19 billion from stocks in the last six months, domestic investors have cushioned the fall by pumping in $20 billion. Selling by FPIs even of a fraction of this amount used to precipitate market meltdowns until a few years ago. In the four years from FY19 to FY22, retail investors have been taking multiple routes to raise their equity allocations. Demat accounts have more than doubled to nudge the 9 crore mark. Inflows into equity mutual funds have risen from 1.1 lakh crore to 1.6 lakh crore, with SIP flows up by 34 per cent. Equity mandates granted to NPS and EPF have allowed these pension funds to invest over 1.5 lakh crore annually in stocks. Apart from these conventional vehicles, individuals have been investing through newer options such as exchange traded funds and curated portfolios. It is heartening to see the equity cult in India taking off despite the withdrawal of policy sops such as zero tax on equity gains. While the retail investor's newfound propensity for equities is good for the economy and markets, there are some discomfiting aspects to it as well. One, it is clear that a large number of first-time investors are preferring direct stock bets over the institutional route. Despite the surge in SIPs, domestic mutual funds today own just 7.4 per cent of the outstanding stock on the NSE, compared to the direct retail holding of 7.3 per cent. Retail investors favour riskier small and mid-cap stocks while institutions prefer large-caps. Two, derivatives turnover on the bourses has trebled in the last couple of years with retail investors making up a third of the volumes. This suggests that many prefer short-term punting on prices to long-term business ownership. Three, with the market's vertical climb from February 2016 punctuated by just one big correction in March 2020 (from which it swiftly recovered) investors who've joined the equity party recently have no experience of a bear market. Equity product pitches rely mainly on past performance, so new investors who have come in post-2019 at Nifty valuations of 25-50 times, may have unrealistic return expectations. This is the fall side to what Sitharaman said about domestic investors stepping in to buy when FPIs head for the exit. Given that the days of global easy-money policies powering asset prices are ending, first-time equity investors need to be made aware of the risks they're taking on, especially in the DIY route. Market regulator SEBI and financial product firms must use their investor education coffers to ensure that new investors understand equity risks. Else, we could have an encore of the 2000 and 2008 experiences when many investors, after being singed by the market correction, left the asset class for good.
The retail investors are...............

It is unfortunate that the proposal by the Chief Justice of India (CJl)for a national judicial infrastructure corporation with corresponding bodies at the State level,did not find favour with many Chief Ministers at the recent joint conference of Chief Justices and Chief Ministers.A special purpose vehicle,vested with statutory powers to and implement infrastructure projects for the judiciary,would have been immensely helpful in augmenting facilities for the judiciary,given the inadequacies in court complexes across the country.However,it is a matter of relief that there was agreement on the idea of State-level bodies for the same purpose,with representation to the Chief Ministers so that they are fully involved in the implementation.The CJl,N.V.Ramana,who had mooted the proposal some months ago,sought to dispel the impression that a national body would usurp the powers of the executive,and underscored that it could have adequate representation of the Union/States.He had flagged the gulf between the available infrastructure and the justice needs of the people.If his proposal had been accepted,the available funding as a centrally sponsored scheme,with the Centre and States sharing the burden on a 60:40 ratio,could have been gone to the national authority,which would allocate the funds through high courts based on need.It is likely that Chief Ministers did not favour the idea as they wanted a greater say in the matter.Given the experience of allocated funds for judicial infrastructure going unspent in many States,it remains to be seen how far the proposed State-level bodies would be successful in identifying needs and speeding up implementation.It will naturally require greater coordination between States and the respective High Courts.Union Law Minister Kiren Rijju has promised assistance from the Centre to the States for creating the required infrastructure,especially for the lower judiciary.While it is a welcome sign that the focus is on infrastructure,unmitigated pendency,chronic shortage of judges and the burgeoning docket size remain major challenges.CJl Ramana flagged some aspects of the Government's contribution to the burden of the judiciary —the failure or unwillingness to implement court orders,leaving crucial questions to be decided by the courts and the absence of forethought and broad-based consultation before passing legislation.While this may be unpalatable to the executive,it is quite true that litigation spawned by government action or inaction constitutes a huge part of the courts'case burden.The conversation between the judiciary and the executive at the level of Chief Justices and Chief Ministers may help bring about an atmosphere of cooperation so that judicial appointments,infrastructure upgradation and downsizing pendency are seen as common concerns.
As per the passage, what is the major reason contributed from the Government for increasing burden of the Judiciary?

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The scars of the tough battle that the RBI waged last fiscal to keep bond yields under check and to control system liquidity while managing the government's expanded borrowing programme - are evident in the Reserve Bank of India's Annual Report 2021-22. The key takeaway from the Report is that in a situation of elevated yields and persistent inflation, the value of domestic and foreign securities being held by the central bank could take a hit in FY23 as well, impacting transfers to the Centre and straining the fisc. The central bank's surplus which could be transferred to the Centre fell 69 per cent over 2020-21 to 30,307.45 crore, mainly due to the losses suffered on its holding of rupee and foreign securities. The holding of rupee securities increased due to open market operations and G-SAP auctions conducted to support government borrowing and absorb excess liquidity. The need to maintain exchange rate stability despite large foreign portfolio inflows, resulted in an increase in its dollar-denominated securities as well. With bond yields spiking sharply in the US as well as in India, the central bank has incurred mark-to-market losses on these holdings in FY22, which reduced its contingency fund balance. While the outstanding balance in the rupee securities revaluation account could absorb the loss suffered on domestic securities, almost 90 per cent of the ₹94,249 crore loss on foreign security holding had to be transferred to the contingency fund. This warranted transfer of 1,14,567 crore to this reserve to maintain the minimum risk buffer at the mandated 5.5 per cent, Besides the losses on its investments, the outgo due to its LAF operations too doubled in 2021-22 to 35,501 crore as banks parked their large surplus funds with the RBI. Outgo from these operations are likely to be high this fiscal too with the RBI shifting to the SDF rate, which is higher than the reverse repo rate. The SDF rate will also move higher with RBI's policy rate hikes, increasing the central bank expense. With bond yields expected to be buoyant and prices under pressure this fiscal due to raging inflation and monetary tightening by central banks, the RBI surplus could be lower in FY23. The problem is that the economic capital of RBI, which includes contingency fund, asset development fund and revaluation accounts now make up just 20.6 per cent of the assets, which is the minimum requirement. If the central bank's holding of rupee and foreign securities continue to suffer revaluation losses, there could be a decline in transfers to the Centre in the future too. The lower surplus transfer by RBI to the Centre for FY23 will affect the fiscal math, for which the Centre should create the budgetary space. But in these extraordinarily challenging times, the Centre and the RBI are right in giving precedence to price stability to protect future growth and stave off stagflation. The Report also points to "frailties" in the NBFC space, "in their balance sheets and (the need to) ensure robust asset- liability management". It has said that "several measures" are on the anvil this fiscal. While extending digital payments in India and abroad, the RBI has indicated a "graded" approach to introducing CBDC. Overall, the RBI's job is cut out: curtailing inflation and maintaining financial and external account stability.
RBI's dollar dominated securities has increased due to its............

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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 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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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?