List of top English Language Comprehension Questions asked in MAT

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
In a recent discussion paper, NITI Aayog has chalked out an ambitious strategy for India to become an artificial intelligence (AI) powerhouse. AI is the use of computers to make decisions that are normally made by humans. Many forms of AI surround Indians already, including chatbots on retail websites and programs that flag fraudulent bank activity. But NITI Aayog envisions AI solutions for India on a scale not seen anywhere in the world today, especially in five key sectors — agriculture, healthcare, education, smart cities and infrastructure, and transport. In agriculture, for example, machines will provide information to farmers on the quality of soil, when to sow, where to spray herbicide, and when to expect pest infestations. It’s an idea with great potential: India has 30 million farmers with smartphones, but poor extension services. If computers help agricultural universities advise farmers on best practices, India could see a farming revolution. 
However, there are formidable obstacles. AI start-ups already offer some solutions, but the challenge lies in scaling these to cover the entire value chain, as NITI Aayog envisions. The first problem is data. Machine learning, the set of technologies used to create AI, is a data-guzzling monster. It takes reams of historical data as input, identifies the relationships among data elements, and makes predictions. More sophisticated forms of machine learning, like “deep learning,” attempt to mimic the human brain. And even though they promise greater accuracy, they also need more data than what is required by traditional machine learning. Unfortunately, India has sparse data in sectors like agriculture, and this is already hampering AI-based businesses today. 
In fact, the lack of data means that deep learning doesn’t work for all companies in India. One example is Climate-Connect, a Delhi-based firm, which uses AI to predict the amount of power a solar plant will generate every 15 minutes. This is critical because solar electricity generation can change dramatically every hour depending on weather conditions and the position of the sun. 
When this happens, the plant must communicate expected changes to power distributors, which will then switch to alternative sources. 
With India planning to install 100 GW of solar power by 2022, such AI will play a central role in power planning. 
But to generate such data, Climate-Connect needs historical inputs like the time of sunrise and sunset, and cloud cover where the plant is located. Unfortunately, since most Indian solar plants are recent, data are available only for a couple of years, whereas deep learning needs data over many years to predict generation. Today, the firm uses traditional machine learning technologies such as regression analysis that work with less data. These methods have an accuracy of around 95%. While deep learning can boost accuracy for operations such as Climate-Connect, it hasn’t worked very well in the Indian scenario, says Nitin Tanwar, cofounder of the firm. 
Another problem for AI firms today is finding the right people. NITI Aayog’s report has bleak news: only about 50 Indian scientists carry out ”serious research” and they are concentrated in elite institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Science. Meanwhile,only about 4% of AI professionals have worked in emerging technologies like deep learning. A survey of LinkedIn found 386 out ofthe 22,000 people with PhDs in AI across the world to be Indians. How does this skill gap impact companies? To some extent, open libraries of machine learning code, which can be customised to solve Indian problems, help. This means that companies need not write code from scratch, and even computer science graduates can carry out the customisation.

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
The Reserve Bank of India’s annual report for 2017-18 reveals that 99.3% of currency notes that were demonetised at midnight on November 8, 2016 have returned to the banking system. This is only marginally higher than its provisional estimate last year that over 99% — or Rs.15.28 lakh crore worth of the old Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 notes — out of the Rs.15.44 lakh crore that were in circulation at the time had been deposited by June 30, 2017. This makes a couple of things crystal clear. First, the hope that a large chunk of unaccounted money would not return to the system — arguably, the principal reason for the exercise — was almost wholly belied. As a result, the plan to transfer the arising surplus from the RBI to the Centre, which was not formally declared but strongly rumoured, was a non-starter. Second, given the sheer logistical difficulty in penalising all those who converted unaccounted money into legal tender, demonetisation worked as an unintended amnesty scheme. Despite the significant cost to the economy, demonetisation, to the disappointment of the Prime Minister’s critics, had no political fallout. Narendra Modi succeeded in portraying the move as one that would knock out the corrupt rich — a harsh but necessary shock therapy. This was perhaps why the massive disruption caused by the overnight removal of 86% of the currency in value terms did not cause agitations. 
Nevertheless, the RBI report, which points to a spurt in counterfeiting of the new Rs.500 and Rs.2,000 notes, raises the old question all over again. Was it worth the slowdown in growth, the damage to informal sector supply chains, and job losses in sectors such as construction that were the bulwark of employment creation for the unskilled? True, there have been some benefits. For instance, the number of income tax returns filed has surged a little over the trend growth rate. But surely this could have been achieved by other policy measures. Cashless modes of payment have become more common, but financial savings in the form of currency have also risen, suggesting that people still value cash. Not all policy choices work out and accepting mistakes or planning flaws helps strengthen governance processes. For example, learning from the UPA’s mistakes, a cleaner auction process for natural resources has been worked out. The government must not disown its biggest reform attempt or try to sidestep parliamentary scrutiny of the outcomes of demonetisation. Instead, it could focus on fixing the problems that people still face — transactions with Rs.2,000 notes in the absence of Rs.1,000 notes are difficult as it is a departure from the currency denomination principle every note should be twice or two and a half times its preceding denomination). Even as these issues are sorted out, the larger lesson must be heeded: sudden shocks to the economy don’t always yield intended policy objectives.

Four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the Idiom/Phrase.
Feather in one’s cap

Four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the Idiom/Phrase.
Cut the mustard

Four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the Idiom/Phrase.
Throw caution to the wind

Arrange these sentences in a proper order to form a meaningful paragraph.
A. The implications of retelling of Indian stories, hence, takes on new meaning in a modern India.
B. The stories we tell reflect the world around us.
C. We cannot help but retell the stories that we value — after all, they are never quite right for us — in our time.
D. And even if we manage to get them quite right, they are only right for us — other people living around us will have different reasons for telling similar stories.
E. As soon as we capture a story, the world we were trying to capture has changed.

Arrange these sentences in a proper order to form a meaningful paragraph.
A. The process of handing down implies not a passive transfer, but some contestation in defining what exactly is to be handed down.
B. Wherever Western scholars have worked on the Indian past, the selection is even more apparent and the inventing of a tradition much more recognizable.
C. LEvery generation selects what it requires from the past and makes its innovations, some more than others.
D. It is now a truism to say that traditions are not handed down unchanged, but are invented.
E. Just as life has death as its opposite, so is tradition by default the opposite of innovation.

Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph. A. Last March, I was invited to present a paper on the topic of whether the mistakes of the 20th century would be repeated in the 21st century as well.
B. The economic crisis hadn't become grave then.
C. But today the world is in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since 1929.
D. The key difference between then and now is that the old power structures have finally disappeared.
E. Now even the US is pleading for financial help from China.

Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph. A. Last March, I was invited to present a paper on the topic of whether the mistakes of the 20th century would be repeated in the 21st century as well.
B. The economic crisis hadn't become grave then.
C. But today the world is in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since 1929.
D. The key difference between then and now is that the old power structures have finally disappeared.
E. Now even the US is pleading for financial help from China.

Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. Last March, I was invited to present a paper on the topic of whether the mistakes of the 20th century would be repeated in the 21st century as well.
B. The economic crisis hadn't become grave then.
C. But today the world is in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since 1929.
D. The key difference between then and now is that the old power structures have finally disappeared.
E. Now even the US is pleading for financial help from China.

Astrologers are habitually prone to goof-ups; now have an excuse for why their predictions have been going haywire: the emergence of newer and newer planets that have caused their calculations to go awry. For the international team of astronomers who recently discovered eight new planets, the arrivals are, however, a cause for excitement. Indeed, even as the rest of the world continues to be consumed by a morbid passion for shiny new war machines, deadly chemicals and sinister war tactics, astronomers have been doggedly searching the heavens for more heavenly bodies in the belief that the search will take us closer to a more exalted goal " that of knowing the truth about us and the universe. Reality is much bigger than it seems the part we call the universe is the merest tip of the iceberg, one scientist remarked. How true. In the beginning, skeptics wouldn't accept that the earth actually moves, let alone that it revolves around the sun because of an unshaken belief that the earth was the centre of the universe. We've come a long way. Today, scientists have spotted nearly 80 extra-solar planets using sophisticated instruments. What's more, our universe may not be the only universe in the cosmos; there could well be several parallel universes teeming with many galaxies, solar systems and planets, although none of this may be perceptible to the naked eye. Perhaps sages who say that truth is not easily perceptible, mean just this " what is evidently before us is not the whole truth.
Scientists say that everything in the tangible universe has its shadowy counterpart in other, parallel universes. In fact, it is by observing the play of cosmic light and shadow through powerful devices that scientists have been able to feel shapes or see shadows that indicate the existence of other heavenly bodies without actually seeing them. The international team of scientists involved in the present discovery conducted their search through telescopes in Australia, Belgium, UK and the US. Two of the newly discovered eight planets are believed to have circular orbits very like the Earth's, while the others have well-defined elliptical orbits much like Pluto's. This is significant because a planet with a circular orbit would more likely be hospitable to life forms than would one with an elliptical orbit. In the latter, the planet experiences extreme temperatures depending on whether it is proximate to or distant from the energy-giving star it's circumambulating. As in the case of other recent discoveries " such as finding traces of microbes in a meteorite " this too strengthens the belief that we are not alone in the universe. So would we be exchanging inter galactic e-mails soon? Perhaps not as yet, given that our closest neighbouring galaxy is millions of light years away. What is within our immediate grasp, though, is exploring the viability of establishing human settlements in space " an endeavour that has assumed urgency what with biological terrorism and the like threatening humankind on earth. As Stephen Hawking recently said, I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.