List of practice Questions

At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union Government and the State. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity have exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many causes. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus, the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political leverages. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to a multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long-term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s, many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which State-level parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union Government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India’s panchayati raj system, inaugurated with such fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre’s encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own. By the 1980’s and early 1990s, the only nationally left, the Congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them in stead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to by-pass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert 13 pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism. It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAswere happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the State administration and given the upper hand to State Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs.
Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant State capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of ‘centrally-sponsored schemes’. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The ‘foreign aid’ syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of ‘grass roots development’.

While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica of jury, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home — he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can’t get into: colleges, condos, coffee houses. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo kids may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brice to Kraft slices. They may wear clothes the neighbourhood raises their eyebrows about. But they still live at home, speak the language of the house and climb back there at the moment of reward.
But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the white-collar class is seen as foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts as the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate people learn as good middle-class adults, business types say, how to work with those kids. They follow the way of getting along: diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It’s also the reason they find following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to do.
People from both the middle class and the college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they had access to Picasso and Mozart, sports and career behind. In a world where actual French intellectuals are networked: Someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or the right dinner-table talk would happen that day from and with the family, the doctor’s office, the engine executive. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement and can carry them through their lives. This belongingness is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such easy entitlement and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more original, ‘legitimate’ means of appropriately cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing ‘ill-gotten’ Culture’ can learn, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater method between these class and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates — universities or corporations. Children find the middle and upper classes have been speaking about what life is for the culture.

The endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it. They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of wisdom, but an embodiment of life and her statues were beautiful grave women, whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way. The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit’s best gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity which are the endowment of the uncloaked soul. ”Nothing is excess; everything is regular,” said the dictum of men who knew how to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind in art, and architecture resides here, as Greek architects would say, “unmistakably.” These great men made a unified whole of the trilogy of Greek tragedy, by a pure line, the surest, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, from its finest conception into expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the clearest example, and it shows courage and religious spirituality in architecture.
AHindu temple is a complex expression of adornment. The lines of building are completely hidden by the architectural sculptural figures and ornaments, visible to no one but the temple-maker in thick masses, break it up into a bewildering series of irregular figures. It is not a unity but a collection, rich, refined. It continues in unexpected forms as painters build this way and that as the ornament required. The conclusion indefinitely is not planned but built this way and that as the creator who has the mystical meaning to give. Greek architecture was not particularly a means for the artist to inscribe the theory symbols of the truth.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt, those massive immensities of granite which look as if they power through the firmament were mighty enough to bring them into existence, are something other than the creation of generous humanity based in beauty. The science and the spirit are there, but what is there is a stiff, uncouth force, a form that becomes monumental, overwhelming. It leads to nothingness at all that belongs to man. It is a great idea. The Egyptian architects were possessed by the consciousness of the willful, irresistible domination of the ways of nature; they had no thought to give the insignificant details that would. 
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the visible world by their mind, but, secondly to that, lovers of the human world. The Greeks possessed the world of the pure intellect limited by the spirit. No other great builders touched anything as simple as this simplicity in the Parthenon straight columns rise to gain capitals, a gradient is sculptured in bold relief; there is nothing more. And yet —here is the Greek machine — this absolute simplicity of structure is akin to massive beauty and grand yet subtle mass. The architects and place would follow. Majestic but modern, truly Greek. No superhuman force as in Egypt; no strange supernatural shapes as in India; the Parthenon is the home of humanity at ease, calm, created of itself and high in its eyes.
The Greek’s final challenge to nature lies in the fullness of their joyous strength. They set their temples with such a small of all overlooking the whole sky, untied against the circle of the sky. They would build where no war has happened, raise and ask any grander than all these. It matters not at all if the temple is larger or small; one never thinks of the size. It matters how much it is in ruins. A few will still need to recover for their individual work. However, for Greeks, they would have let stand their stones for centuries for happiness.

Answer the questions on the basis of the information given below.
The seven basic symbols in a certain numeral system and their respective values are as follows:
• I =1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, D=500, M=1000
In general, the symbols in the numeral system are read from left to right, starting with the symbol representing the largest value; the same symbol cannot occur continuously more than three times; the value of the numeral is the sum of the values of the symbols. For example,
XXVII = 10 +10+10+5+1+1+1=27.
An exception to the left-to-right reading occurs when a symbol is followed immediately by a symbol of greater value; then the smaller value is subtracted from the larger.
For example, XLVI = (50- 10) + 5 + 1 = 46. 

Consider three circular parks of equal size with centres at A1, A2, and A3, respectively. The parks touch each other at the edge as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). There are three paths formed by the triangles A1A2A3, B1B2B3, and C1C2C3, as shown. Three sprinters A, B, and C begin running from points A1, B1, and C1, respectively. Each sprinter traverses her respective triangular path clockwise and returns to her starting point.

Consider a cylinder of height h cm and radius \(r = \frac{2}{ π}\) cm as shown in the figure (not drawn to scale). A string of a certain length, when wound on its cylindrical surface, starting at point A and ending at point B, gives a maximum of n turns (in other words, the string’s length is the minimum length required to wind n turns).

Two binary operations \( \oplus \) and \( \) are defined over the set \( \{ a, e, f, g, h \} \) as per the following tables:

Thus, according to the first table \( f \oplus g = a \), while according to the second table \( g h = f \), and so on. Also, let \( f^2 = f \oplus f \), \( g^3 = g g g \), and so on.

A string of three English letters is formed as per the following rules:
I. The first letter is any vowel.
II. The second letter is m, n or p.
III. If the second letter is m, then the third letter is any vowel which is different from the first letter.
IV. If the second letter is n, then the third letter is e or u.
V. If the second letter is p, then the third letter is the same as the first letter.

In a Decathlon, the events are 100 m, 400 m, 100 m hurdles, 1,500 m, High jump, Pole vault, Long jump, Discuss, Shot put and Javelin. The performance in the first four of these events is consolidated into Score-1, the next three into Score-2, and the last three into Score-3. Each such consolidation is obtained by giving appropriate positive weights to individual events. The final score is simply the total of these three scores. The athletes with the highest, second highest and the third highest final scores receive the gold, silver, and the bronze medals respectively. The table below gives the scores and performance of 19 top athletes in this event
 Decathlon Scores table 

Answer the questions on the basis of the following charts.

The following is the wholesale price index (WPI) of a select list of items with the base year of 1993-94. In other words, all the item prices are made 100 in that year (1993-94). Prices in all other years for an item are measured with respect to its price in the base year. For instance, the price of cement went up by 1% in 1994-95 as compared to 1993-94. Similarly, the price of power went up by 3% in 1996-97 as compared to 1993-94.

Below is a table that lists countries region-wise. Each region-wise list is sorted first by birth rate and then alphabetically by name of country. We now wish to merge the region-wise list into one consolidated list and provide overall rankings to each country based first on birth rate and then on death rate. Thus, if some countries have the same birth rate, then the country with a lower death rate will be ranked higher. Further, countries having identical birth and death rates will get the same rank. For example, if two countries are tied for the third position, then both will be given rank 3, while the next country (in the ordered list) will be ranked 5.

Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below

Answer the questions on the basis of the data presented in the figure below

The profitability of a company is defined as the ratio of its operating profit to its operating income, typically expressed in percentage. The following two charts show the operating income as well as the profitability of six companies in the financial years (F.Ys.) 2001-02 and 2002-03
 

The operating profits of four of these companies are plotted against their respective operating income figures for the F.Y. 2002-03, in the third chart given below.

Sex Ratio (Number of females per 1,000 males) of Selected States in India : 1901-2001

Shown below is the layout of major streets in a city

Two days (Thursday and Friday) are left for campaigning before a major election, and the city administration has received requests from five political parties for taking out their processions along the following routes.  

Street B-D cannot be used for a political procession on Thursday due to a religious procession. The district administration has a policy of not allowing more than one procession to pass along the same street on the same day. However, the administration must allow all parties to take out their procession during these two days.

Recently, the answers of a test held nationwide were leaked to a group of unscrupulous people. The investigative agency has arrested the mastermind and nine other people A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I in this matter. Interrogating them, the following facts have been obtained regarding their operation. Initially the mastermind obtains the correct answer-key. All the others create their answer-key in the following manner. They obtain the answer-key from one or two people who already possess the same. These people are called his/her ‘sources’. If the person has two sources, then he/she compares the answer-keys obtained from both sources. If the key to a question from both sources is identical, it is copied, otherwise it is left blank. If the person has only one source, he/she copies the source’s answers into his/her copy.
Finally, each person compulsorily replaces one of the answers (not a blank one) with a wrong answer in his/her answer key.
The paper contained 200 questions; so the investigative agency has ruled out the possibility of two or more of them introducing wrong answers to the same question. The investigative agency has a copy of the correct answer key and has tabulated the following data. These data represent question numbers. 

Table 1: Test Results Table

Four families decided to attend the marriage ceremony of one of their colleagues. One family has no kids, while the others have at least one kid each. Each family with kids has at least one kid attending the marriage. Given below is some information about the families, and who reached when to attend the marriage.
The family with two kids came just before the family with no kids.
Shanthi who does not have any kids reached just before Sridevi’s family.
Sunil and his wife reached last with their only kid.
Anil is not the husband of Joya.
Anil and Raj are fathers.
Sridevi’s and Anita’s daughters go to the same school.
Joya came before Shanthi and met Anita when she reached the venue
Raman stays the farthest from the venue.
Raj said his son could not come because of his exams

Seven faculty members at a management institute frequent a lounge for strong coffee and stimulating conversation. On being asked about their visit to the lounge last Friday we got the following responses.
JC:I came in first, and the next two persons to enter were SS and SM. When I left the lounge, JP and VR were present in the lounge. DG left with me. 
JP:When I entered the lounge with VR, JC was sitting there. There was someone else, but I cannot remember who it was. 
SM: I went to the lounge for a short while, and met JC, SS and DG in the lounge that day. 
SS: I left immediately after SM left. 
DG: I met JC, SS, SM, JP and VR during my first visit to the lounge, I went back to my office with JC. When I went to the lounge the second time, JP and VR were there.  
PK: I had some urgent work, so I did not sit in the lounge that day, but just collected my coffee and left. JP and DG were the only people in the lounge while I was there. 
VR: No comments.

The plan shows an office block for six officers — A, B, C, D, E and F. Both B and C occupy offices to the right of the corridor (as one enters the office block) and A occupies an office to the left of the corridor. E and F occupy offices on opposite sides of the corridor, but their offices do not face each other. The offices of C and D face each other. E does not have a corner office. F’s office is further down the corridor than A’s, but on the same side.