Reading Comprehension - Previous Year CAT/MBA Questions
The best way to prepare for Reading Comprehension is by going through the previous year Reading Comprehension omet questions. Here we bring you all previous year Reading Comprehension omet questions along with detailed solutions.
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Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
If we imagine the action of a vaccine not just in terms of how it affects a single body, but also in terms of how it affects the collective body of a community, it is fair to think of vaccination as a kind of banking of immunity. Contributions to this bank are donations to those who cannot or will not be protected by their own immunity. This is the principle of herd immunity, and it is through herd immunity that mass vaccination becomes far more effective than individual vaccination.
Any given vaccine can fail to produce immunity in an individual, and some vaccines, like the influenza vaccine, are less effective than others. But when enough people are vaccinated with even a relatively ineffective vaccine, viruses have trouble moving from host to host and cease to spread, sparing both the unvaccinated and those in whom vaccination has not produced immunity. This is why the chances of contracting measles can be higher for a vaccinated person living in a largely unvaccinated community than they are for an unvaccinated person living in a largely vaccinated community.
The unvaccinated person is protected by the bodies around her, bodies through which disease is not circulating. But a vaccinated person surrounded by bodies that host disease is left vulnerable to vaccine failure or fading immunity. We are protected not so much by our own skin, but by what is beyond it. The boundaries between our bodies begin to dissolve here. Donations of blood and organs move between us, exiting one body and entering another, and so too with immunity, which is a common trust as much as it is a private account. Those of us who draw on collective immunity owe our health to our neighbors.
Based on the passage, which of the following CANNOT be concluded?
- (a)
Our survival, as a community, is largely based on herd immunity.
- (b)
A vaccinated person may get infected if her surroundings are largely unvaccinated.
- (c)
A vaccine cannot guarantee immunity in an individual.
- (d)
Even, relatively, ineffective vaccines can stop the spread of viruses if enough people are vaccinated.
- (e)
Collective immunity protects those with compromised immune systems.
Solution
Discuss
ReportWhy does the author think about vaccination as a “banking of immunity?”
- (a)
Because when somebody is vaccinated, it is a deposit of protection against a particular disease.
- (b)
Because it is like providing a safety net for those who are more vulnerable to diseases.
- (c)
Because it is a way to mitigate health risks for those who may not have access to vaccination.
- (d)
Because it creates a reserve of immunity within a person’s immune system.
- (e)
Because different vaccines contribute to a diverse portfolio of immune defences.
Based on the last paragraph of the passage, which of the following would the author BEST agree with?
- (a)
It is an ethical obligation of individuals to get vaccinated for the greater good.
- (b)
Immunity of a community is interconnected, and everyone plays a role to keep each other healthy.
- (c)
In times of health crises, communities should come together to support and protect each other.
- (d)
It is important to express gratitude to those who contribute to the herd immunity by getting vaccinated.
- (e)
In any community, immunity is transactional.
Read the following poem and answer the TWO questions that follow.
In the darkened room
a woman
cannot find her reflection in the mirror
waiting as usual
at the edge of sleep
In her hands she holds
the oil lamp
whose drunken yellow flames
know where her lonely body hides
Which of the following statements BEST conveys the theme of the poem?
- (a)
The poem laments the suffering and frustration of a woman.
- (b)
The poem revolves around a woman whose liberty has been throttled.
- (c)
The poem revolves around the woman’s feeling of alienation.
- (d)
The poem celebrates the woman’s futile and meaningless life.
- (e)
The poem explores the quality of life of a woman.
What do the lines “the drunken yellow flames/know where her lonely body hides” BEST represent?
- (a)
The lines represent flames as distorted memories that preserve her identity.
- (b)
The lines represent flames as turbulent emotions of a nameless woman.
- (c)
The lines represent flames as her desperate pursuit for her lost self.
- (d)
The lines represent flames that highlight the location of her body.
- (e)
The lines represent flames as forces that are aware of her solitude.
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
What I call fast political thinking is driven by simplified moral frames. These moral frames give us the sense that those who agree with us have the right answer, while those who disagree are unreasonable, or worse.
Each moral frame sets up an axis of favorable and unfavorable. Progressives use the oppressor-oppressed axis. Progressives view most favorably those groups that can be regarded as oppressed or standing with the oppressed, and they view most unfavorably those groups that can be regarded as oppressors. Conservatives use the civilization-barbarism axis. Conservatives view most favorably the institutions that they believe constrain and guide people toward civilized behavior, and they view most unfavorably those people who they see as trying to tear down such institutions. Libertarians use the liberty-coercion axis. Libertarians view most favorably those people who defer to decisions that are made on the basis of personal choice and voluntary agreement, and they view most unfavorably those people who favor government interventions that restrict personal choice.
If you have a dominant axis, I suggest that you try to learn the languages spoken by those who use the other axes. Don’t worry—learning other languages won’t make it easy for others to convert you to their point of view. By the same token, it will not make it easy to convert others to your point of view. However, you may become aware of assumptions your side makes that others might legitimately question.
What learning the other languages can do is enable you to understand how others think about political issues. Instead of resorting to the theory that people with other views are crazy or stupid or evil, you may concede that they have a coherent point of view. In fact, their point of view could be just as coherent as yours. The problem is that those people apply their point of view in circumstances where you are fairly sure that it is not really appropriate.
Consider that there may be situations in which one frame describes the problem much better than the others. For example, I believe that the civil rights movement in the United States is best described using the progressive heuristic of the oppressed and the oppressor. In the 1950s and the early 1960s, the people who had the right model were the people who were fighting for black Americans to have true voting rights, equal access to housing, and an end to the Jim Crow laws. The civilization-barbarism axis and the liberty-coercion axis did not provide the best insight into the issue….
Which of the following BEST describes the civilization-barbarism axis?
- (a)
Some people are barbaric and should be restrained from public life.
- (b)
Government should play a very heavy role in maintaining law and order.
- (c)
The way we are trained to behave affects our peace in life.
- (d)
Every society has to have a harmonious mix of civilized and the barbaric for it to survive.
- (e)
It is how you behave, not who you are, that makes you acceptable.
Which of the following BEST explains the author’s usage of the term moral frames?
- (a)
The frames give those who believe in them the right to question others’ behaviours.
- (b)
It makes easy for the believer to declare others as wrong.
- (c)
The frames define what the believer believes as right or wrong.
- (d)
A frame is a belief and cannot be rationally explained.
- (e)
What is right to the believer is wrong to those who do not share that belief.
Which of the following can BEST be concluded from the above passage?
- (a)
Most problems in the world are because of applying the wrong axis to a particular problem.
- (b)
Knowing why you think the way you think, enables you to understand others’ perspectives.
- (c)
Issues can be solved by looking at them from the right axis and questioning the assumptions.
- (d)
Most controversial issues in the world can be simplified into three axes.
- (e)
The assumptions we hold leads to our dominant axis.
Read the following passage and answer the TWO questions that follow.
Beauty has an aesthetic, but it is not the same as aesthetics, not when it can be embodied, controlled by powerful interests, and when it can be commodified. Beauty can be manners, also a socially contingent set of traits. Whatever power decides that beauty is, it must always be more than reducible to a single thing. Beauty is a wonderful form of capital in a world that organizes everything around gender and then requires a performance of gender that makes some of its members more equal than others.
Beauty would not be such a useful distinction were it not for the economic and political conditions. It is trite at this point to point out capitalism, which is precisely why it must be pointed out. Systems of exchange tend to generate the kind of ideas that work well as exchanges. Because it can be an idea and a good and a body, beauty serves many useful functions for our economic system. Even better, beauty can be political. It can exclude and include, one of the basic conditions of any politics. Beauty has it all. It can be political, economic, external, individualized, generalizing, exclusionary, and perhaps best of all a story that can be told. Our dominant story of beauty is that it is simultaneously a blessing, of genetics or gods, and a site of conversion. You can become beautiful if you accept the right prophets and their wisdoms with a side of products thrown in for good measure. Forget that these two ideas—unique blessing and earned reward—are antithetical to each other. That makes beauty all the more perfect for our (social and political) time, itself anchored in paradoxes like freedom and property, opportunity and equality.
Based on the passage, which of the following CANNOT be inferred about beauty?
- (a)
Different powers and influences delineate beauty for us.
- (b)
Beauty is defined and appreciated by the perceiver.
- (c)
Beauty is no longer an abstract concept.
- (d)
The beautiful does not define the standards of beauty.
- (e)
Beauty has become an aspirational good.
Based on the passage, which of the following BEST explains beauty to be simultaneously a “blessing” and a “site of conversion?”
- (a)
When properly communicated people will believe anything.
- (b)
Because beauty is a blessing everyone wants to possess it by converting to the standards.
- (c)
A blessing, when sought, results in a provider of the blessing, in a capitalistic society.
- (d)
Both are narratives, with one supporting the other.
- (e)
Though beauty is a unique blessing, one can become beautiful by imitating beautiful people.
Read the following passage and answer the TWO questions that follow.
But as the behavioral economists like to remind us, we are already prone to all sorts of reductions as a species. It’s not just the scientists. We compress complex reality down into abbreviated heuristics that often work beautifully in everyday life for high-frequency, low-significance decisions. Because we are an unusually clever and self-reflective species, we long ago realized that we needed help overcoming those reductive instincts when it really matters. And so we invented a tool called storytelling. At first, some of our stories were even more reductive than the sciences would prove to be: allegories and parables and morality plays that compressed the flux of real life down to archetypal moral messages. But over time the stories grew more adept at describing the true complexity of lived experience, the whorls and the threadlike pressures. One of the crowning achievements of that growth is the realist novel. That, of course, is the latent implication of Prince Andrei’s question: “innumerable conditions made meaningful only in unpredictable moments” would fare well as a description of both War and Peace and Middlemarch, arguably the two totemic works in the realist canon. What gives the novel the grain of truth lies precisely in the way it doesn’t quite run along the expected grooves, the way it dramatizes all the forces and unpredictable variables that shape the choices humans confront at the most meaningful moments of their lives.
When we read those novels—or similarly rich biographies of historical figures—we are not just entertaining ourselves; we are also rehearsing for our own real-world experiences….
Which of the following is the BEST interpretation regarding reductive instincts?
- (a)
After the invention of storytelling, humans have overcome their reductive instincts.
- (b)
Reductive instincts led to compression of complex reality to moral messages.
- (c)
Reductive instincts have to be overcome for survival in the real world.
- (d)
Reductive instincts tell us to reduce every situation to a heuristic.
- (e)
Reductive instincts can help us in handling uncertainty.
Why would a realist novel consist of “innumerable conditions made meaningful only in unpredictable moments?”
- (a)
To engage the reader with realism and fantasy at the same time.
- (b)
To keep the reader engaged till the end of the novel.
- (c)
To show to the reader that realist novel does not work on expected lines.
- (d)
To bring in as much content as possible without making it seem forced.
- (e)
To showcase unexpected complexity while making it seem relevant in the given context.
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
Because it’s so easy to judge the idiocy of others, it may be sorely tempting to think this doesn’t apply to you. But the problem of unrecognized ignorance is one that visits us all. And over the years, I’ve become convinced of one key, overarching fact about the ignorant mind. One should not think of it as uninformed. Rather, one should think of it as misinformed.
An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest strengths as a species. We are unbridled pattern recognizers and profligate theorizers. Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day, or at least to an age when we can procreate. But our genius for creative storytelling, combined with our inability to detect our own ignorance, can sometimes lead to situations that are embarrassing, unfortunate, or downright dangerous—especially in a technologically advanced, complex democratic society that occasionally invests mistaken popular beliefs with immense destructive power. As the humorist Josh Billings once put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Ironically, one thing many people “know” about this quote is that it was first uttered by Mark Twain or Will Rogers—which just ain’t so.)
Because of the way we are built, and because of the way we learn from our environment, we are all engines of misbelief. And the better we understand how our wonderful yet kludge-ridden, Rube Goldberg engine works, the better we—as individuals and as a society—can harness it to navigate toward a more objective understanding of the truth.
Which of the following statement is NOT true about an ignorant mind?
- (a)
An ignorant mind theorizes without robust evidence.
- (b)
An ignorant mind succumbs to illusionary pattern detection.
- (c)
An ignorant mind often fuels scepticism.
- (d)
An ignorant mind is unaware of its own limitations.
- (e)
An ignorant mind is often filled with unfounded and misguided distractions.
Based on the passage, what does the author BEST mean when he says, “we are all engines of misbelief?”
- (a)
We are naturally inclined to form, and often share, misleading and inaccurate beliefs.
- (b)
We are always fuelled by our ignorance to spread information.
- (c)
Our brains are wired with certain heuristics that can lead to systematic errors in judgement.
- (d)
Driven by misbelief, we blend our creativity and ignorance.
- (e)
We are prone to holding beliefs that are not necessarily true.
With which of the following statements will the author agree the MOST?
- (a)
Our desire to see patterns in everything makes us unable to detect misbeliefs in others.
- (b)
We must be aware that the patterns we see may not necessarily reflect the truth.
- (c)
We must be sceptical of the beliefs we have, regardless how true they seem to us.
- (d)
The more we are sure of something, the more we are wrong about it.
- (e)
We must try not to see patterns in everything that we observe.
Read the following paragraph and answer the question that follows.
The fundamental laws that govern the smallest constituents of matter and energy, when applied to the Universe over long enough cosmic timescales, can explain everything that will ever emerge. This means that the formation of literally everything in our Universe, from atomic nuclei to atoms to simple molecules to complex molecules to life to intelligence to consciousness and beyond, can all be understood as something that emerges directly from the fundamental laws underpinning reality, with no additional laws and forces.
Which of the following can be BEST inferred from the paragraph above?
- (a)
Everything in the Universe fundamentally occurs randomly.
- (b)
Fundamental laws operating in the Universe and in an atom are the same.
- (c)
All phenomena in the Universe are fundamentally dependent on long cosmic timescales.
- (d)
All phenomena in the Universe fundamentally occur spontaneously.
- (e)
Fundamental laws undergo a change from atom to the Universe.
Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.
More people signed up for Harvard’s online courses in a year, for example, than have attended the university in its 377 years of existence. In the same spirit, there are more unique visits each month to the WebMD network, a collection of health websites, than to all the doctors working in the United States. In the legal world, three times as many disagreements each year amongst eBay traders are resolved using ‘online dispute resolution’ than there are lawsuits filed in the entire US court system. On its sixth birthday, the Huffington Post had more unique monthly visitors than the website of the New York Times, which is almost 164 years of age. The British tax authorities use a fraud-detection system that holds more data than the British Library (which has copies of every book ever published in the UK). In 2014, the US tax authorities received electronic tax returns from almost 48 million people who had used online tax preparation software rather than a tax professional to help them. The architectural firm Gramazio & Kohler used a group of autonomous flying robots to assemble a structure out of 1500 bricks. The consulting firm Accenture has 750 hospital nurses on its staff, while Deloitte, founded as an audit practice 170 years ago, now has over 200,000 professionals and its own full-scale corporate university set in a 700,000-square-foot campus in Texas.
The author of the above paragraph is trying to conclude something by citing different pieces of evidence. What could the author be trying to prove?
- (a)
What old firms can do to survive.
- (b)
How professionals are getting replaced by technology
- (c)
How new organizational forms are emerging
- (d)
How old firms are dying.
- (e)
How automation is taking away jobs traditionally done by humans.
When facing various challenges, people in today’s digital world heavily rely on private, online information-seeking behaviour. Individuals who experience depression will often attempt to understand their predicament and seek remedy by searching the Internet for depression-related information and treatment. A recent report says that there exists evidence of many searches comprising the word depression, during and just after the elections, in country Y. So, it can be concluded that the election is experienced by many people in country Y as a truly psychologically traumatizing event—and as such as being potentially depressionogenic.
Which of the following statements MOST seriously weakens the conclusion drawn in the passage?
- (a)
Per day sale of anti-depression drugs is constant across the years in country Y.
- (b)
Election is a festival in some countries, people happily choose their leader by casting votes.
- (c)
A survey in country Y shows that an election can cause a significant increase in the average level of depression.
- (d)
Many people do not use the Internet in country X.
- (e)
Depression-related advertisements are on the rise during and just after the election in country Y.
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
It is harder and harder to make sense of life. Everything is changing, all the time, at a faster and faster pace. Our civilization is struggling to keep up with exponential technology and disruptive change. Our age-old institutions, politics, economics, ethics, religion and laws, even our environment, are so fundamentally challenged, that we risk collapse. Our stories have gotten so divorced from reality, so divisive, so inflexible and so inept to adapt to and explain our present, let alone guide us towards a better future, that we often feel like helpless passengers on a Titanic spaceship Earth. No wonder Aristotle observed that “When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.”
But why is this the case? And, perhaps more importantly, how is it that bad storytelling can keep, if not bring, a whole society down? Is that not simply overstating the power of story? Literary theorist Kenneth Burke famously noted: “Stories are equipment for human living. We need storytelling in order to make certain sense out of life.” If that is true then our equipment for living has gone obsolete. And unless we upgrade it we are going to go obsolete too.
It was this process that Fred Polak had in mind in 1961 while observing:
Any student of the rise and fall of cultures cannot fail to be impressed by the role played in this historical succession by the image of the future. The rise and fall of images precede or accompany the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society’s image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.
That is why we desperately need a new story. A story that will not only help us make sense of the world today but also unite us as a species of human beings. A story that will motivate us to stop bickering and resolve our common problems. A story that will inspire us to achieve our common goals and guide us towards a better future for all sentient beings on our planet.
We have to rewrite the human story. Because the old stories that brought us thus far are no longer useful. They’ve lost their vision and grandeur. They’ve become petty and short-sighted. They’re stuck in a past that never was at the expense of a future that can be. They divide us and keep us bickering while our civilization is facing unprecedented diversity and depth of existential challenges. Those stories are not simply our history. They are now our chains. And unless we break them, they will be our death sentence.
So, it is worth exploring if or how new stories, good stories can bring us up.
The human story that brought us into the 21st century was written and rewritten several times. The latest major update was perhaps during the industrial revolution. It is time to rewrite it again. We need a new story. A brave story. An unreasonable story. A story that can inspire, unite and motivate us to break free from the past and create the best possible future.
According to the passage, which of the following is NOT associated with bad storytelling in a society?
- (a)
It cannot stop bickering.
- (b)
It’s inability to create a future image that is positive and flourishing.
- (c)
They were written before 21st Century.
- (d)
It is inclusive.
- (e)
Its ability to create a compelling goal for some sections.
Which of the following options BEST captures the essence of a GOOD STORY?
- (a)
Compared to other nations, our nation has played a special role in progress of humanity.
- (b)
India has a glorious past, it had 25% share of global economy before arrival of the British
- (c)
Life is full of sorrows and only death can provide a solution.
- (d)
Everyone and I are a part of the universe.
- (e)
Laying of railways led to economic and industrial development of India.
Read the following statements:
1. A story without connections and coherence.
2. A story that talks about recreating the past glory.
3. A story may not be factually true.
4. A story that is meaningful and compelling for humanity
Which of the above statements can be ASSOCIATED with the meaning of “unreasonable story”, as used in the passage?
- (a)
2 & 4
- (b)
2 & 3
- (c)
1 & 3
- (d)
1 & 2
- (e)
3 & 4
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
Corporations continue to ignore the threat of global warming, probably because global warming is a hyper-object, very difficult to touch and feel. Because hyper-objects have much wider time-space boundaries than human beings, we tend to consider hyper-objects as given and non-existent. Therefore, it is very difficult to deal with hyper-objects as their common understanding is lacking. Some of us continue to believe that global warming is blown out of proportion-it is not a serious threat. Even those who understood hyper-objects have yet to figure out right response to them.
The lack of understanding and response from corporations to “climate change” is evident from the fact that most of businesses have remained largely human-centric. Some businesses have adopted green practices- voluntarily, or involuntary. These efforts attempt to reduce emissions through better energy efficiency. Though laudable, the efforts have failed to make any significant dent at the global level; the planet continues to get warmer. Moreover, most of the efforts are still in the sphere of “business as usual” and “what is good for us”.
Business as usual, the current model of economic production and distribution is deeply flawed as it is based mainly on the capitalistic ethos of free-market legitimized through private property, competition, and unlimited consumption. The word “free” has come to mean that there are no constraints on individuals, and the word market has come to mean that buying and selling are the primary mechanisms, and everything is a transaction. Private property gives individuals/nations a chance to create legal rights to own more and more, subject to very little constraints. It is evident in income inequalities witnessed across the world. The very notion of ownership is control-oriented and human-centric that promotes unlimited extraction from environment, hyper-nationalism, and hyper-individualism. The extraction and exploitation of the environment has served our economic interests, and led to the growth and survival of businesses. However, it has also led to the destruction of environment. Global warming is the response of nature to human actions driven by businesses operating on the principles of surplus, predictability, control, hyper-rationality, linearity, and quantification. In other words, “business as usual” has yet to dance to the rhythm of nature.
According to the passage, which of the following will be closest to the idea of hyperobject?
- (a)
How regular exercise makes our body healthy.
- (b)
How the Earth, over centuries, takes less time to revolve around the Sun.
- (c)
How temperature fluctuates because of seasons.
- (d)
How hard work leads to better grades for students.
- (e)
How a technology company contributed to the development of a mobile phone technology.
Based on the passage, which of the following is NOT an example of human-centric statement?
- (a)
We should plant trees as they provide us with Oxygen.
- (b)
We should preserve nature for our future generations.
- (c)
We should respect nature for its inherent intelligence.
- (d)
We should not cut trees as it causes excessive floods, destroying crops and human habitats.
- (e)
We should use natural resources for economic growth.
Which of the following statement(s) is NOT in consonance with the author’s views, as expressed in the passage?
1. Patents should be respected.
2. Trading of shares on the free stock markets should be promoted.
3. Building a beautiful resort on a hilltop.
- (a)
3 only
- (b)
2 & 3 only
- (c)
1 & 2 only
- (d)
1 & 3 only
- (e)
1, 2 & 3
Read the poem and answer the TWO questions that follow.
The slow person you left behind when, finally,
you mastered the world, and scaled the heights you now command,
where is he while you
walked around the shaved lawn in your plus fours,
organizing with an electric clipboard
your big push to tomorrow?
Oh, I have come across him, yes, I have, more than once,
coaxing his battered grocery cart down the freeway meridian,
Others see in you sundry mythic types distinguished
not just in themselves but by the stories
we put in with beginnings, ends, surprises:
the baby Oedipus on the hillside with his broken feet
or the dog whose barking saves the grandmother
flailing in the millpond beyond the weir,
dragged down by her woolen skirt.
He doesn’t see you as a story, though.
He feels you as his atmosphere. When your sun shines,
he chorteles. When your barometric pressure drops
and the thunder heads gather,
he huddles under the overpass and writes me long letters with
the study little pencil he steals from the public library.
He asks me to look out for you.
Which of the following BEST captures the theme of the poem?
- (a)
The poem is meaninglessly brooding over the past
- (b)
The poem is celebrating success and moaning losses
- (c)
The poem is examining a loss of trust between old friends
- (d)
The poem is analysing a person’s past and present
- (e)
The poem is exploring the lives of the rich and the poor