List of top Verbal and Logical Ability Questions

When income tax rates are reduced, there is an increase in taxable income, and an increase in taxable income results in increased total income tax revenues for the government. Which of the following is analogous to the argument above in terms of its logical features?
“On a wing and a prayer the Indian team landed in Heathrow to take on their formidable opponents”. From the above sentence it can be inferred that the Indian team was

There is an essential and irreducible ‘duality’ in the normative conceptualization of an individ ual person. We can see the person in terms of his or her ‘agency’, recognizing and respecting his or her ability to form goals, commitments, values, etc., and we can also see the person in terms of his or her ‘well-being’. This dichotomy is lost in a model of exclusively self-interested motivation, in which a person’s agency must be entirely geared to his or her own well-being. But once that straitjacket of self-interested motivation is removed, it becomes possible to rec ognize the indisputable fact that the person’s agency can well be geared to considerations not covered- or at least not fully covered- by his or her own well-being. Agency may be seen as important (not just instrumentally for the pursuit of well-being, but also intrinsically), but that still leaves open the question as to how that agency is to be evaluated and appraised. 
Even though the use of one’s agency is a matter for oneself to judge, the need for careful assess ment of aims, objective, allegiances, etc., and the conception of the good, may be important and exacting. To recognize the distinction between the ‘agency aspect’ and the ‘well-being aspect’ of a person does not require us to take the view that the person’s success as an agent must be independent, or completely separable from, his or her success in terms of well-being. A person may well feel happier and better off as a result of achieving what he or she wanted to achieve- perhaps for his or her family, or community, or class, or party, or some other cause. Also it is quite possible that a person’s well-being will go down as a result of frustration if there is some failure to achieve what he or she wanted to achieve as an agent, even though those achievements are not directly concerned with his or her well-being.
There is really no sound basis for demanding that the agency aspect and the well-being aspect of a person should be independent of each other, and it is, I suppose, even possible that every change in one will affect the other as well. However, the point at issue is not the plausibility of their independence, but the sustainability and relevance of the distinction. The fact that two variables may be so related that one cannot change without the other, does not imply that they are the same variable, or that they will have the same values, or that the value of one can be obtained from the other on basis of some simple transformation. The importance of an agency achievement does not rest entirely on the enhancement of well-being that it may indirectly cause. The agency achievement and well-being achievement, both of which have some distinct importance, may be casually linked with each other, but this fact does not compromise the specific importance of either. In so far as utility-based welfare calculations concentrate only on the well-being of the person, ignoring the agency aspect, or actually fails to distinguish between the agency aspect and well-being aspect altogether, something of real importance is lost.

The idea of demarcating certain areas within the country as special economic zones to promote investment and growth is not new. A large country unable to provide the kind of facilities and environment that can attract foreign investment throughout the country often finds it feasible and attractive to carve up some of its areas where such facilities can be provided. The laws and procedures for setting up new industries are waived to make the area business-friendly with developed infrastructure and a one-window interaction with government. In addition, huge tax benefits are promised to lure investors. China’s experience shows that if chalked out and implemented with care such a policy can accelerate the flow of capital and technology from abroad and thereby speed up growth. 
However, SEZs may not be the best option in all situations to clear the bottlenecks in growth. India’s experience with export processing zones (EPZs) bears this out. They have failed in India for the simple reason that the factors that made the SEZs successful in China have been absent here. In India, as in China, EPZs were thought of as a way of providing an escape route from the stranglehold of control that prevailed over the Indian economy. But even while promising to ease the rigours of controls, Indian policy-makers could not give up their pen chant for micromanaging from the centre and undoing the promised relaxations with all kinds of qualifications and “guidelines”.
Over last two decades India has evolved into a market economy and much of governmental control has disappeared, but the flow of foreign direct investment has not reached anywhere near the levels of China. Besides, infrastructure building has fallen far short of what is required. Even after three years of the enactment of the Electricity Act (2003), private investment in electricity generation is still a trickle with the states refusing to give up the monopoly of their electricity boards in the matter of purchase of the power generated. While swearing by growth, governments at both the centre and the states cite the fiscal responsibility laws to plead their helplessness in making the required investments to improve infrastructure.
Given the situation, the SEZs have apparently been thought of as a simple way out. In its enthusiasm for SEZs the commerce ministry forgot two critical lessons of the Chinese experi ence, viz., that an SEZ must be of an adequate size to provide opportunities for reaping the benefits of large-scale operations and their number should be few. Every industry or economic activity worth its name is now seeking SEZ status. Proposals are now being floated to invite foreign educational institutions to come to India with promises of SEZ treatment! The finance ministry apprehends a loss of nearly 1,75,000 crore in direct taxes, customs duties and excise duties over the next five years.

Nature is ____________ and unchangeable, and it is ____________ as to whether its hidden reasons and ____________ are ____________ to man or not. The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
In spite of being perceived as ________ by all, the club members decided to ________ Arun, a skinny teenager with prominent ________, as the member of the year, so that the whole affair would be ________ to Arun’s father who was recuperating after a serious illness. The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us, leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood? Which of the following is certainly not implied in the above verse?
__________ you have a doubt, why not go and verify? I shall be waiting in the shade __________ this banyan tree till you come back __________ me. The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Travelling is my hobby. Today in the Himalayas, as I drag my feet through the __________, I cannot but think of the same time last year when I was negotiating the thick __________ of the Ganges delta or for that matter the time I spent with my children __________ about in the waters of the Arabian Sea. The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
There is much difficulty __________ getting __________ this place and it is not possible to reach __________ without the grace of the lord. The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
The author has ____________ his composition to the best of his ____________; yet listen to it with a sympathetic ____________, O ____________ souls, and judge it. The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Choose the odd one out:
Pick the odd one out:
Choose the odd one out:
Read the following sentences and choose the option that best arranges them in a logical order: 1. In law a fiduciary individual is someone who is entrusted with the power to act on behalf of and for the benefit of another.
2. Following the weight of corporate law and legal precedent, the director primacy model positions directors as autonomous fiduciaries, not agents.
3. The term fiduciary derives from the Latin fiducia, or trust, and the fiduciary is expected to act in good faith and honesty for the beneficiary’s interests.
4. A person who accepts the role of fiduciary in law must single-mindedly pursue the interests of his or her beneficiary, in this case the corporation, even when the latter cannot monitor or control the fiduciary’s behaviour.
Read the sentences and choose the option that best arranges them in a logical order:
a. Generally, it is unusual for a new problem in international relations to be considered without at the same time some international organization being developed to deal with it.
b. International society has, in spite of the diversity of culture and political systems, been progressively drawn closer together and become more unified.
c. Despite the fears and concerns of some governments that international organizations are increasing too fast and that they are a burden on their exchequers, they are still proliferating at a considerable rate.
d. People and their governments now look far beyond national frontiers and feel a common responsibility for the major problems of the world and for lesser problems that may subsist within smaller groups of states.
e. More recently in the 1990s the problems of international trade, which was growing increasingly complex, led to the development of the WTO.
f. For instance, concern with the instability of commodities markets led to the establishment in the 1980s of the Common Fund for Commodities and the competition for the newly discovered wealth of the international seabed area resulted in the creation of the ISA under the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982, based on the concept of the “common heritage of mankind”.
Few sentences are given below continuously. Identify the best sequence of punctuations among the given options. (The rule of capitalization at the beginning of sentences has been ignored in the passage given below). Note: the arrows in the options indicate text that would be within the punctuations. A person’s frames of perception and action are narrow in early stages of development focused on social membership and technical competence the early life of the organizations often is focused on survival and efficiency only later and rarely emphasizing process of learning and development however in later stages both individual and organization become more concerned with the learning process itself the way the perceptions and practices are articulated and revised in interactions and how more people can be engaged in mutual learning and inquiry.
Impressions are direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience; ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions.
Assuming the above statement is true, which of the statements logically follow from it?
I. Every impression leads to an idea.
II. Ideas must follow an antecedent impression.
III. The colour of the 2011 XAT test booklet right in front of a candidate is an impression to her, whereas the memory of the colour of her television set is an idea.
IV. If one was interested in origin of the idea of the colour of a television set, then one need to understand the impressions from which this idea was derived.
Media are not just passive channels of information. Not only do they supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the internet seems to be doing is chipping away our capacity for concentration. Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the argument presented above?
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument presented in the previous question?
Randomness has to be dealt with successfully to ensure a better control over one’s life. Before one can deal effectively with randomness, one must acknowledge its existence. The above statement implies the following \emph{except}:
As the information on air warfare tasks and stressors was being gathered and scenarios were being developed, a parallel effort ensued to identify a test bed simulation for air warfare teams. To maintain experimental control, it was determined by the designers that choosing a low physical fidelity simulation was acceptable as long as cognitive fidelity in a team simulation was maintained through subjecting soldiers to pressure situations in a simulated combat setting and attempting to ensure that naturalistic decision making of soldiers would not be compromised.
Which of the following statements, if true, weakens the logic of the above passage?
i. A number of studies have shown that high levels of physical stress lead to a weakening of the decision-making capabilities of human beings.
ii. It has been convincingly demonstrated by various studies that human beings by nature are not designed to adapt to high levels of mental stress.
iii. Numerous studies have shown that simulated environments can be designed to be good substitutes for real-life combat situations.
iv. Studies have shown that simulated exercises for armed forces personnel have tended to induce a systematic type of “correct” and common behaviour among the trainees.
v. Officers, when short-listing soldiers for critical operations, pick up battle-hardened soldiers rather than those who have been trained through simulations.
The motivation of human beings towards their work is a complicated matter. For a long time, economists, sociologists, and psychologists believed that a carrot and stick approach, with monetary incentives, would be enough to motivate people towards higher levels of performance.
However, recent studies suggest that monetary incentives are only one part of motivation. In fact, studies show that high monetary incentives for tasks requiring higher cognitive abilities often lead to adverse outcomes. Experiments demonstrate that greater autonomy, reduced interference from management, and focusing on non-monetary factors are crucial for motivation in cognitive skill-intensive jobs.
Identify the statement(s) that is (are) logically consistent with the content of the paragraph:
i. The carrot-stick approach essentially requires the use of rewards to get more of a desired behaviour whereas penalties lead to increased undesirable behaviour.
ii. Expending time and effort on the design of monetary incentives is a wasteful exercise.
iii. The study by the group of MIT researchers was a flawed exercise from the start.
iv. There appears to be a need to reorient the existing paradigm prevalent in incentive design.
v. During the process of designing incentives, one should clearly delineate activities into those requiring mechanical skills and those requiring higher-level cognitive skills and design with separate sets of incentives and penalties for each.
Read the following discussion/passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.
Of the several features of the Toyota Production System that have been widely studied, most important is the mode of governance of the shop - oor at Toyota. Work and inter - relations between workers are highly scripted in extremely detailed ‘operating procedures’ that have to be followed rigidly, without any deviation at Toyota. Despite such rule - bound rigidity, however, Toyota does not become a ‘command - control system’. It is able to retain the character of a learning organization
In fact, many observers characterize it as a community of scientists carrying out several small experiments simultaneously. The design of the operating procedure is the key. Every principal must nd an expression in the operating procedure – that is how it has an effect in the domain of action. Workers on the shop - oor, often in teams, design the ‘operating procedure’ jointly with the supervisor through a series of hypothesis that are proposed and validated or refuted through experiments in action. The rigid and detailed ‘operating procedure’ speci cation throws up problems of the very minute kind; while its resolution leads to a reframing of the procedure and speci cations. This inter - temporal change (or exibility) of the speci cation (or operating procedure) is done at the lowest level of the organization; i.e. closest to the site of action.
One implication of this arrangement is that system design can no longer be rationally optimal and standardized across the organization. It is quite common to nd different work norms in contiguous assembly lines, because each might have faced a different set of problems and devised different counter - measures to tackle it. Design of the coordinating process that essentially imposes the discipline that is required in large - scale complex manufacturing systems is therefore customized to variations in man - machine context of the site of action. It evolves through numerous points of negotiation throughout the organization. It implies then that the higher levels of the hierarchy do not exercise the power of the at in setting work rules, for such work rules are no longer a standard set across the whole organization.
It might be interesting to go through the basic Toyota philosophy that underlines its system designing practices. The notion of the ideal production system in Toyota embraces the following -‘the ability to deliver just- in - time (or on demand) a customer order in the exact speci cation demanded, in a batch size of one (and hence an in nite proliferation of variants, models and speci cations), defect - free, without wastage of material, labour, energy or motion in a safe and (physically and emotionally) ful lling production environment’. It did not embrace the concept of a standardized product that can be cheap by giving up variations. Preserving consumption variety was seen, in fact, as one mode of serving society. It is interesting to note that the articulation of the Toyota philosophy was made around roughly the same time that the Fordist system was establishing itself in the US automotive industry.

Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers that follow. 
We can answer Fermi’s Paradox in two ways. Perhaps our current science over - estimates the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps, evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self - limiting, even self - exterminating. After Hiroshima, some suggested that any aliens bright enough to make colonizing space ships would be bright enough to make thermonuclear bombs, and would use them on each other sooner or later.
I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual - reality narcissism. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot.
The fundamental problem is that an evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological tness, rather than tracking tness itself. This was a key insight of evolutionary psychology in the early 1990s; although evolution favours brains that tend to maximize tness (as measured by numbers of great - grandkids), no brain has capacity enough to do so under every possible circumstance. As a result, brains must evolve shortcuts: tness - promoting tricks, cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on an average, under ancestrally normal conditions. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote real biological tness, but it’s even better at delivering fake tness - subjective cues of survival and reproduction without the real - world effects.
Fitness - faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. With the invention of Xbox 360, people would rather play a high - resolution virtual ape in Peter Jackson’s King Kong than be a perfect – resolution real human. Teens today must nd their way through a carnival of addictively tness faking entertainment products. The traditional staples of physical, mental and social development - athletics, homework dating - are neglected. The few young people with the self - control to pursue the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute.
Around 1900, most inventions concerned physical reality and in 2005 focus shifted to virtual entertainment. Freud’s pleasure principle triumphs over the reality principle. Today we narrow - cast human - interest stories to each other, rather than broadcasting messages of universal peace and progress to other star systems. Maybe the bright aliens did the same. I suspect that a certain period of tness - faking narcissism is inevitable after any intelligent life evolves. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species – to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures and less to their children.
Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist the Great Temptation and last longer. Some individuals and families may start with an “irrational” Luddite abhorrence of entertainment technology, and they may evolve ever more self - control, conscientiousness and pragmatism by combining the family values of the religious right with the sustainability values of the Greenpeace. They wait patiently for our tness faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical - minded breeders will inherit the Earth as like - minded aliens may have inherited a few other planets. When they nally achieve contacts, it will not be a meeting of novel readers and game - players. It will be a meeting of dead - serious super - parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox.