Reading comprehension

Strong reading habits and skills are a must in order to
solve questions related to
RC

What to do if you are a poor reader?
➢ Initial reading should start off with EDITORIALS of good quality national
dailies:
○ The Hindu
○ The Hindustan Times
○ The Indian Express
○ The Pioneer
○ The Times of India
➢ Magazines like:
○ India Today
○ Frontline
○ Week
You can also graduate to books written in simple English (Both Fictional and nonfictional)
What to do if we are an average reader?
Read editorials + Economic newspapers + Magazines (like the Economist, Time,
Fortune)
What to do if we are a Good Reader?
Your objective should be to raise your level through CONSISTENTLY reading
material that challenges your comprehension
Magazines like Time, Economist
Books/ articles on Philosophy, advanced Science
Who is an excellent reader?
Typically reads a lot on diverse topics
COMMON OBJECTIVE:
Common objective for an aspirant will be to increase and develop the scope of
subjects
The union government’s present position vis-a-vis the
upcoming United Nations conference on racial and related
discrimination world-wide seems to be the following: discuss
race please, not caste; caste is our very own and not at all as bad
as you think. The gross hypocrisy of that position has been
lucidly underscored by Kancha llaiah. Explicitly, the world
community is to be cheated out of considering the matter on the
technicality that caste is not as a concept, tantamount to a racial
category.
Internally, however, allowing the issue to be put on agenda at the said conference
would, we are patriotically admonished, damage the country’s image. Somehow,
India’s virtual beliefs elbow out concrete actualities. Inverted representations, as we
know, have often been deployed in human histories as balm for the forsaken–
religion being the most persistent of such inversions. Yet, we would humbly submit
that if globalising our markets are thought good for the ‘national’ pocket, globalising
our social inequities might not be so bad for the mass of our people. After all, racism
was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been
within our society; why then can’t we permit the world community to express itself
on the latter with a fraction of the zeal with which, through the years, we pronounced
on the former?
As to the technicality about whether or not caste is admissible into an agenda about
race (that the conference is also about ‘related discriminations’ tends to be
forgotten), a reputed sociologist has recently argued that where race is a ‘biological’
category caste is a ‘social’ one. Having earlier fiercely opposed implementation of the
Mandal Commission Report, the said sociologist is at least to be complemented now
for admitting, however tangentially, that caste discrimination is a reality, although, in
his view, incompatible with racial discrimination. One would like quickly to offer the
hypothesis that biology, in important ways that affect the lives of many millions, is in
itself perhaps a social construction. But let us look at the matter in another way.
If it is agreed- as per the positions today at which anthropological and allied scientific
determinations rest- that the entire race of homo sapiens derived from an originally
black African female (called ‘Eve’) then one is hard put to understand how, on some
subsequent ground, ontological distinctions are to be drawn either between races or
castes. Let us also underline the distinction between the supposition that we are all
god’s children and the rather more substantiated argument about our descent from
‘Eve’, lest both positions are thought to be equally diversionary. It then stands for
reason that all subsequent distinctions are, in modern parlance, ‘constructed’ ones,
and, like all ideological constructions, attributable to changing equations between
knowledge and power among human communities through contested histories here,
there, and elsewhere.
This line of thought receives, thankfully, extremely consequential buttress from the
findings of the Human Genome Project. Contrary to earlier (chiefly 19th century
colonial) persuasions on the subject of race, as well as, one might add, the somewhat
infamous Jensen offerings in the 20th century from America, those findings deny
genetic difference between ‘races’. If anything, they suggest that environmental
factors impinge on gene-function, as a dialectic seems to unfold between nature and
culture. It would thus seem that ‘biology’ as the constitution of pigmentation enters
the picture first only as a part of that dialectic. Taken together, the originally mother
stipulation and the Genome findings ought indeed to furnish ground for human
equality across the board,
as well as yield policy initiatives towards equitable material
dispensations aimed at building a global order where, in Hegel’s
stirring formulation, only the rational constitutes the right.
Such, sadly, is not the case as everyday fresh arbitrary grounds
for discrimination are constructed in the interests of sectional
dominance.
When the author writes “globalising our social inequities”, the reference is to
(1) going beyond an internal deliberation on social inequity.
(2) dealing with internal poverty through the economic benefits of globalisation.
(3) going beyond an internal delimitation of social inequity.
(4) achieving disadvantaged people’s empowerment, globally.
According to the author, ‘inverted representations as balm for the forsaken’
(1) is good for the forsaken and often deployed in human histories.
(2) is good for the forsaken, but not often deployed historically for the oppressed.
(3) occurs often as a means of keeping people oppressed.
(4) occurs often to invert the status quo.
Based on the passage, which broad areas unambiguously fall under the purview of
the UN conference being discussed?
a. Racial prejudice
b. Racial pride
c. Discrimination, racial or otherwise
d. Caste related discrimination
e. Race related discrimination
1. A, E
2. C, E
3. A,C, E
4. B, C, D
According to the author, the sociologist who argued that race is a ‘biological’ category
and caste is a ‘social’ one;
(1) generally shares the same orientation as the author’s on many of the central
issues discussed.
(2) tangentially admits to the existence of “caste” as a category.
(3) admits the incompatibility between the people of different race and caste.
(4) admits indirectly that both caste-based prejudice and racial discrimination
exist.
An important message in the passage, if one accepts a dialectic between nature and
culture, is that;
(1) the results of the Human Genome Project reinforces racial differences.
(2) race is at least partially a social construct.
(3) discrimination is at least partially a social construct.
(4) caste is at least partially a social construct.
Let’s revise some words:
Suffix: arium/ ary
Aquarium
Library
Sanatorium
Seminary
Apiary