List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions asked in KMAT KERALA

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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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India's official statistical machinery is gearing up to relaunch the All-India Household Consumer Expenditure Survey, traditionally undertaken quinquennially, from July 2022. If it fructifies, the result may be known towards the latter half of 2024, provided the Government permits the release. The last such Survey (2017-18), did not get such a sanction- its results reportedly indicated the first fall in monthly per-capita spending by households since 1972-73, with rural households facing a sharper decline compared to 2011-12. The Statistics Ministry had flagged 'discrepancies', 'data quality issues' and 'divergences' between estimated consumption levels and the actual output of goods and services. While it had sought to scuttle suggestions that unflattering data were being obfuscated, a better course of action would have been to release the data with caveats. It could have argued, for instance, that the numbers, at best, reflect the short-term impact of the 'bold structural reforms' carried out in the year preceding the Survey, to 'formalise' the economy-demonetisation and the GST. A fresh survey could then have been commissioned later for a clearer picture. This is what the UPA had done in 2011-12 to measure employment and consumer spending levels afresh, after the 2009-10 Surveys were affected by the global financial crisis and a severe drought that hit rural incomes. The Government had promised to examine the 'feasibility' of a fresh Consumer Spending Survey, over 2020-21 and 2021-22, after 'incorporating all data quality refinements' mooted by a panel. One hopes the exact 'refinements' are spelt out upfront in the upcoming Survey. Of equal import is providing data comparable with past numbers, while factoring in changes in consumption patterns; and it may still not be too late to release the previous Survey's findings to help assess longer term trends. The absence of official data on such a critical aspect of the economy-used to estimate poverty levels, rebase GDP, and to make private investment decisions for over a decade, is damaging to India. Being a free-market and transparent democracy distinguished India from the likes of China where official data are read with a pinch of salt. The Government's actions, including the delayed release of critical jobs data, have dulled that perception. If anything, such Surveys need to be conducted more frequently for more effective policy actions informed by ground realities, no matter how unpleasant they may be. Now, imperfect proxies are deployed to gauge the economy, surmises made about the extinction of extreme poverty, and outlays are tom-tommed without evidence on outcomes. The NSO must be empowered to collect and disseminate more data points, without fear of insinuations about its abilities, or a looming axe on its regular Surveys.
What is the central theme of the above passage?
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After wheat, there is pressure building up for banning exports of raw cotton. The Narendra Modi government must resist any such demand emanating from domestic textile mills and the garment industry. There are at least three reasons why this is so. To start with, the output of one industry is often the input of another. In this case, cotton is spun by mills into yarn, which is further woven or knitted into fabric used for making garments. During the year ended March 31, 2022, India exported $2.8 billion worth of raw cotton, $5.5 billion of cotton yarn, $8.2 billion of cotton fabrics and made-ups, and $9 billion of cotton ready-made garments. Will spinning mills seeking a ban on cotton shipments agree to the same in respect of yarn? When exports are happening at every stage of the value chain, how can there be pick and choose on which one to disallow or promote? Secondly, while it is true that cotton prices have risen by around 50 per cent since the start of 2022, this cannot be blamed just on exports - which are actually expected to halve in the current marketing season (October-September) compared to 2020-21. Domestic prices increasing to international parity levels should, by itself, slow down exports in the natural course. The Modi government did the right thing last month by scrapping the import duty on cotton. It should, in fact, remove the 10 per cent duty on yarn imports as well. The correct approach to tackling inflation, whether in wheat, cotton or yarn, is by allowing duty-free imports without putting fetters on exports. The third reason has to do with timing. Sowing of cotton has already started in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. Plantings in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana and other states will also take off with the arrival of the southwest monsoon rains. High prices would definitely incentivise farmers to expand acreage this time; banning exports will send the opposite signals to the ultimate detriment of the textile industry. The real problem in cotton that needs addressing is yields. The introduction of Bt cotton in the early 2000s led to India's production going up about 2.5 times to 398 lakh bales by 2013-14. Since then, it has been on a falling trajectory, with the latest output estimate for 2021-22 at below 325 lakh bales. The plants incorporating Bt genes have over time developed susceptibility to pink bollworm and whitefly insect pests, reducing yields and also farmer enthusiasm for growing cotton. The Modi government's succumbing to uninformed lobby pressures against genetic engineering technologies has not helped matters. A clearheaded approach is required for this crop, which is a source of not just fibre (lint), but also food (cotton-seed oil) and feed (oil-cake).
The main suggestion in the above passage is...
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On Monday, the Indian rupee fell to an all-time low of 77.6 against the dollar during intraday. While it has pulled back marginally since then, the rupee has, of late, been exhibiting signs of weakness. However, the Indian currency is not an outlier. Currencies of most other emerging economies have also exhibited weakness against the dollar. In fact, of late, the Turkish lira, Malaysian ringgit and Thai bhat have declined more sharply than the rupee according to analysts at Bank of Baroda. Notwithstanding these day-to-day fluctuations, the outlook for the Indian rupee continues to be weighed down by tighter global monetary policy, a strengthening of the US dollar and risk aversion, and higher current account deficits. With the US Federal Reserve hiking rates by 50 basis points, there has been a sell-off in global markets as investors have rushed to the dollar. In India, foreign portfolio investors have pulled out around $5.8 billion since the beginning of this financial year as per data from Kotak, exerting downward pressure on the currency. The DXY index - which measures the US dollar against six major currencies, namely the euro, pound, Canadian dollar, yen, Swedish kroner and Swiss franc has been rising. This strengthening of the dollar is unlikely to be reversed in the near term. As the US Fed embarks on an aggressive tightening of rates - some analysts are factoring in a terminal rate of more than 3 per cent asset classes across the world will witness further adjustments. There is also the pressure owing to the rising trade deficit — in April the deficit stood at $20 billion, up from $18.7 billion in March. In fact, according to analysts, the current account deficit is likely to be at its highest level since the crisis of 2013. During this period, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been intervening to soften the currency's slide the fall in its foreign exchange reserves suggests that is the case. However, considering that the rupee is overvalued, the central bank should allow the currency to slide, allowing it to find its own level, intervening only to smoothen excess volatility. Currency depreciation will act as an automatic stabiliser. It will help ease current account pressures by curbing imports, but more importantly, it will help boost exports—a critical driver of the country's economy at the current juncture.
Currencies globally in depreciation mode due to......
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The Securities Exchange Board of India's (SEBI's) move, under its new Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, to undertake a thorough review of securities market regulations should be welcomed as it is a necessary initiative to keep up with the times. The review can perhaps focus on three aspects. One, as India's financial market evolves with rising retail participation, market regulations need to keep up with new products and asset classes that are springing up. While comprehensive frameworks are in place to govern traditional investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds currently, newer options such as curated stock portfolios and digital gold which are quite popular with retail investors, are in the grey zone. Two, existing laws on insider trading, front-running and other market crimes rely mainly on call logs, preservation of transcripts and sharing of information on official databases to prevent leakage of unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI). But the widespread use of social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter and YouTube apart from apps that encrypt and instantly purge messages, are helping rogue players bypass such checks, with the result that mass dissemination of false information about dodgy companies has become rampant. SEBI's regulations must be rewritten to plug this gap. Three, regulations that haven't been updated in a while can stand in the way of innovation and deter the launch of new products or services that better serve the interests of investors. The proposed review must do away with redundant regulations wherever warranted, to facilitate market development. Updating laws apart, if financial market regulators such as SEBI are to keep up with new-age fraudsters, they need to be armed with the skillsets and regulatory powers to keep up close surveillance of communications through the digital media, call for information and carry out decryption to decipher such data. Recently, for instance, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) refused to uphold a SEBI ruling against market players for insider trading, after they were discovered to be sharing unpublished company results on WhatsApp groups, on the grounds that these messages couldn't be traced back to company insiders. SEBI is therefore quite right to seek powers from the Government under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguard for Monitoring and Collecting Traffic Data or Information) Rules, to be allowed to access digital communication channels and carry out interception and decryption of such information. The Centre should waste no time in arming SEBI with such powers, with adequate safeguards to protect personal data privacy. To keep up with scamsters, the regulator will also have to build internal capacity and skillsets in efficiently mining surveillance data, connecting the dots and building a convincing evidence trail. The Kotak Committee on Corporate Governance had noted that SEBI was severely under-staffed, overseeing 5,000-odd listed companies with just 800-odd staff while the US SEC had over 4,500 employees to oversee an equal number of companies. Apart from adding numerically to its workforce, SEBI must look at lateral hiring of data science and tech talent at competitive pay scales, to buttress its regulatory capacity to keep up with the times.

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A lot of avoidable excitement, or anxiety, depending on which side of the political fence one sits, has been caused by the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of the Union of India vs Mohit Minerals Pvt Ltd. delivered on Thursday. While sitting in judgement on the limited question of whether IGST can be levied on ocean freight paid by a foreign seller to a foreign shipping line on reverse charge basis, the SC bench comprising Justices D. Y. Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath dwelt at length on the constitutional framework of GST law, and concepts such as co-operative federalism, un-co-operative federalism and fiscal federalism and came to the conclusion that recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on the Centre or the States. It is not evident if the scholarly exposition was warranted while deciding the limited question pertaining to the case but the fact is that the Court has only spelt out what is clearly evident from reading Articles 246A and 279A of the Constitution.. In simple terms, Parliament and State Legislatures have simultaneous powers to legislate under the GST. The Centre has, for obvious reasons, sought to play down the judgment as not interpreting anything new and has underlined that individual States have always complied with decisions made in the GST Council even when such decisions went against their interests. The last thing the Centre wants is for some States to legislate their own tax laws that run counter to the GST. That would begin the process of collapse of the GST which, warts and all, has aided in formalisation of the economy, improving collections and in helping tax-payers avoid the cascading effects of multiple indirect levies. While it may be tempting for some States to break out and legislate on their own, they should realise that in the long run such an act will work against their own interests, besides causing avoidable chaos for tax-payers. The benefits of a common national market for goods and services and profiting from the systemic efficiencies that this confers will be lost as check-posts re-emerge at State borders. Investors would migrate out of such States due to complexities in doing business. Though only five years have lapsed since its introduction, it may be time already for reform of the GST. What we need is statesmanship at the GST Council even if the Court has said that the Council is a place as much for political contestation as for co-operative federalism. Taking this literally will spell trouble for the Union; there are other forums for political contestation. The Council should transcend political rivalries of the day. The point is that States should have the right to dissent in the Council and their voice should not be drowned in the pursuit of unanimity in decision-making. The Centre can set an example by accommodating the demands of the States in the Council even if it means some sacrifice on its part. After all, the onus is on it to run the Council harmoniously. If the GST has made the tax-payer's life better — and it certainly has then the responsibility is on the Centre and the States to make it work. That's also in their best interests.
What is the main message of the above passage?