1. Write an essay about corruption in India? Answer: Corruption, in one form or another, is a worldwide phenomenon. But everyone admits that corruption is something ugly, immoral and detestable. Unfortunately, in our country, corruption has become a part of life. It has entered the very roots of the Indian society. Corruption, nepotism and dishonesty have tarnished every fabric of our social life. Our ministers are corrupt; our officers are corrupt; our people are corrupt. Every politician, without exception, is corrupt. Even our anti-corruption departments fall an easy prey to the viles of the corrupt persons and they let them go scot free after minor punishment. The law of a land is too weak to deal with the corrupt elements with an iron hand. The vested interests rule the roost. Everybody feels helpless in such a state of affairs. Some people have even started talking of the nationalization of corruption in the country. They argue that we should frankly admit that we are a corrupt nation and that we cannot do without it. It is a matter of shame and regret for all thee who care to hear the call of their conscience. One feels like crying out with Shakespeare.
Corruption is prevailing at all levels – economic, social, administrative, moral and spiritual. During the past few years, the images of the country has been defaced beyond redemption. A large number of scams, involving top politicians, administrators and VVIPs have come to light. These scams, most of them unearthed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, involve huge sums running into thousands of crores. They have shaken the entire conscience of the country to the bones. The law enforcing agencies are seeking the help of the judicial process to bring the culprits to book. The judicial system however, is full of flaws and the culprits do not find it very difficult to cleverly escape the legal net. The skeletons in a large number of cup-boards are however, coming out and many mightly ministers, politicians and bureaucrats and being exposed. Law might take decades to assert but it has been fully established that we are a nation full of corrupt elements.
Strongholds of corruption are the departments like the P.W.D., Railways, Tele-communication, Banks, department dealing with exports and imports, taxes, quota-permits and licences. Documents and office files to not move unless we grease the plam of the concerned officials. One cannot get the official copy of court judgment from the copying agency in a court unless one pays a fat sum to the agency typist in addition to the official court fee. One can get one’s seat in a train booked easily if one is prepared to pay an extra tip to the booking clerk. An honest man’s application is subjected to delay by red-tapism. Corruption in administrative offices has reached the saturation point Banks, too are, not free from corruption. People are beginning to take corruption for granted. The root cause of corruption is red tape or delay. Persons found guilty should be punished severely. Exemplary punishments should be given to corrupt officials, national character should be improved. Smugglers, black marketeers and hoarders should be severely dealt with.
Social and spiritual organizations can give a good healthy education to the public. Strong boards like the U.P.S.C. should be organized to deal with anti-social elements. Persons of strong character should be employed. The Government employees must be told to withstand any temptation while discharging their duties. Such officials as lay down noble standards of honesty and efficiency, should be encouraged and honored at public functions. Dishonest public servants should not only be dismissed, but should also be publicly flogged and put behind the bards. The education system of the country should be re-oriented to inculcate a spirit of honesty among-st the people.
All ministers and public servants should be made to declare their assets. The vigilance department should keep a constant eye on the corrupt officers and other public servants. Ministes and senior officials must set noble examples of an honest living free from corruption, brivery, nepotism and immorality. The law of the land should be provided with more teeth to deal with the corrupt elements. Corruption, at any level, is bad. The Government should launch a vigorous campaign against this social evil. Charity, however, must begin at home.
Evils, it is said, percolate in any society from the top. The topmost people in the country must present model examples of conduct and behavior. They should be completely above board in their dealings and should be honest to a fault. One must not only be honest but one must also be above doubt. Once we are able to curb. Corruption nepotism and bribery in high places, we shall be soon able to root out the evil of corruption from the entire society. May God help us in our object !

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances, though infrequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. In Brave New World non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature (the fee lies, orgy-porgy, centrifugal bumblepuppy) are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation.
The other world of religion is different from the other world of entertainment; but they resemble one another in being most decidedly "not of this world." Both are distractions and, if lived in too continuously, both can become, in Marx's phrase, "the opium of the people “and so a threat to freedom. Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.
A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.
In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression and rationalization the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions.
1. The author would be most likely to agree that propaganda

A. can serve a vital function in democracy B. is concerned mainly with the irrelevant C. is now combined with entertainment D. is universally recognized as a danger E. needs constant vigilance to avoid.

Answer: A

2. The early advocates of universal literacy (line 1) are mentioned as

A. advocates of propaganda B. opponents of an idea that the author thinks is correct C. proponents of an idea that the author wishes to counter D. people who made wrong predictions about freedom of the press E. social commentators unaware of man’s appetite for distractions

Answer: C
3. The author refers to Brave New World as a fictional example of a society in which

A. non-stop distractions are the main instrument of government policy B. people are totally unaware of political realities C. entertainment is used to keep people from full awareness of social realities D. entertainment resembles religion in its effects on the masses E. non-stop entertainment is provided as it was in Rome

Answer: C
4.By intelligently on the spot (line 37) the author apparently means

A. alert to the dangers of propaganda B. in a particular society at a particular time C. in a specific time and place D. conscious of political and social realities E. deeply aware of current trends

Answer: D

Passage 2

The principle of selection solved the riddle as to how what was purposive could conceivably be brought about without the intervention of a directing power, the riddle which animate nature presents to our intelligence at every turn, and in face of which the mind of a Kant could find no way out, for he regarded a solution of it as not to be hoped for. For, even if we were to assume an evolutionary force that is continually transforming the most primitive and the simplest forms of life into ever higher forms, and the homogeneity of primitive times into the infinite variety of the present, we should still be unable to infer from this alone how each of the numberless forms adapted to particular conditions of life should have appeared precisely at the right moment in the history of the earth to which their adaptations were appropriate, and precisely at the proper place in which all the conditions of life to which they were adapted occurred: the hummingbirds at the same time as the flowers the trichina at the same time as the pig the bark-coloured moth at the same time as the oak, and the wasp-like moth at the same time as the wasp which protects it. Without processes of selection we should be obliged to assume a"pre-established harmony" after the famous Leibnizian model, by means of which the clock of the evolution of organisms is so regulated as to strike in exact synchronism with that of the history of the earth.

All forms of life are strictly adapted to the conditions of their life, and can persist under these conditions alone. There must therefore be an intrinsic connection between the conditions and the structural adaptations of the organism, and, since the conditions of life cannot be determined by the animal itself, the adaptations must be called forth by the conditions. The selection theory teaches us how this is conceivable, since it enables us to understand that there is a continual production of what is non-purposive as well as of what is purposive, but the purposive alone survives, while the non-purposive perishes in the very act of arising. This is the old wisdom taught long ago by Pedophiles.

1. It can be inferred that the author believes that the Leibnizian model (line 22) is

A. ingenious and worthy of serious consideration B. untenable by all rational people C. an acceptable solution to Kant's dilemma D. unworthy of further consideration E. an alternative that might still be valid

Answer: D
2. The author's primary purpose in this extract is to

A. suggest that a particular theory explains otherwise puzzling phenomena B. describe the details of the selection theory for a lay audience C. justify a particularly controversial model of the origins of life D. persuade the reader that Empedocles was right E. prove that selection is the only possible way of looking at evolutionary biology

Answer: A
3. The examples in lines 17 - 19 are intended to

A. reinforce the author's point that is difficult to explain adaptation B. show that adaptations must take place only at specific times and in specific places C. give specific illustration of organisms that are particularly well-adapted to their conditions D. show organisms that have evolved synchronously in a predestined manner E. demonstrate that intelligent design is needed for purposive evolution

Answer: C