India and 25 other countries agreed to the Copenhagen Accord even as other developing countries accepted it as an irreversible decision later. The Accord came out of__(a)___ bargaining lasting almost 20 hours among ___(b)___ of governments of some of the most__(c)__ countries of the world. At the__(d)__of the day on Saturday, India___(e)__ to have given ground on some issues but blocked intrusion on other red lines. It had become evident within the first week of the talks that the best the emerging and praiseworthy economies of the developing world were going to do was to defend the existing economic resource sharing regimes.

Fill the blank at (b).

Who wrote "The Hound of the Baskervilles?"

Direction :  passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold in the passage to help you locale them while answering some of the questions. 

Governments have traditionally equated economic progress with steel mills and cement factories. While urban centres thrive and city dwellers get rich, hundreds of millions of famers remain mired in poverty. However fears of food shortages, a rethinking of anti-poverty priorities and crushing recession in 2008 are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favour of greater support for agriculture.  last time when the world's farmers felt such love was in the 1970's. At that time, as food prices spiked, there was real concern that the world was facing a crisis in which the planet was simply unable to produce enough grain and meat for an expanding population. Governments across the developing world and international aid organisations plowed investment agriculture in technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution and food production exploded. into the early 1970s, while But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% by the late 1980's from their peak in the mid- 1970's. Policy-makers and aid workers turned their attention to the poor's other pressing needs, such as health care and education. Farming got starved of resources and investment. By 2004's aid directed at agriculture sank to 3.5% and "agriculture lost its glitter", “Also, as consumers in high-growth giants such as China and India became wealthier, they began eating more meat. So grain once used for human consumption got diverted to beef up livestock. By early 2008, panicked buying by importing countries and restrictions slapped on grain exports by some big producers helped drive prices up to heights not seen for three decades. Making matters worse, land and resources got reallocated to product cash crop such as bio fuels and the result was that voluminous reserves of grain evaporated. Protests broke out across the emerging world and fierce food riots toppled governments.

Direction: Choose the words/ group of the words which is MOST OPPOSITE in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
EVAPORATED 

In the questions given below, choose the word most opposite in meaning to the given word and mark your answer.

Barbarous 

Directions: Read the following. passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. 

In February 2010 the Medical Council of India announced a major change in the regulation governing the establishment of medical colleges. With this change, corporate entities were permitted to open medical colleges. The new regulation also carried the following warning: "permission shall be withdrawn if the colleges resort to commercialization". Since the regulation does not elaborate on what constitutes "resorting to commercialisation", this will presumably be a matter left to the discretion of the Government. 

A basic requirement for a new medical college is a preexisting hospital that will serve as a teaching hospital. Corporate entities have hospitals in the major metros and that is where they will have to locate medical colleges.The earlier mandated land requirement for a medical college campus, minimum of 25 acres of contiguous land, cannot be fulfilled in the metros. Not surprisingly, yet another tweak has been made in the regulation, prescribing 10 acres as the new minimum campus size for 9 cities including the main metros. With this, the stage is set for corporate entities to enter the medical education market. 

Until now, medical education in India has been projected as a not-for- profit activity to be organised for the public good. While private bodies can run medical colleges, these can only be societies or trusts, legally non-profit organizations. In opening the door to corporate colleges, thus, a major policy change has been effected without changing the law or even a discussion in Parliament, but by simply getting a compliant MCI to change the regulation on establishment of medical colleges. This and other changes have been justified in the name of addressing the shortage of doctors. At the same time, over 50, existing medical colleges, including 15 run by the government, have been prohibited from ad- mitting students in 2010 for having failed to meet the basic standards prescribed. Ninety per cent of these colleges have come up in the last 5 years. Particularly shocking is the phenomenon of government colleges falling short of standards approved by the Government. Why are state government institutions not able to meet the requirements that have been approved by the central government? A severe problem faced by government-run in- situations is attracting and retaining teaching faculty, and this is likely to be among the major reasons for these colleges failing to satisfy the MCI norms. The crisis building up on the faculty front has been flagged by various commissions looking into problems of medical education over the years.

An indicator of the crisis is the attempt to conjure up faculty when MCI carries out inspections of new colleges, one of its regulatory functions. Judging by news reports, the practice of presenting fake faculty-students or private medical practitioners hired for the day -during MCI inspections in private colleges is common. What is interesting is that even government colleges are adopting unscrupulous methods. Another indicator is the extraordinary scheme, verging on the ridiculous that is being put in place by the MCI to make inspections 'foolproof. Faculty in all medical colleges are to be issued an RFID based smart card by the MCI with a unique Faculty Number. The Card, it is argued, will eliminate the possibility of a teacher being shown on the faculty of more than one college and establish if the qualifications of a teacher are genuine. In the future it is projected that biometric RFID readers will be installed in the colleges that will enable a Faculty from within the college and even remotely from MCI headquarters.

The picture above does not even start to reveal the true and pathetic situation of medical care especially in rural India. Only a fraction of the doctors and nursing professionals serve rural areas where 70 per cent of our population lives. The Health Ministry, with the help of the MCI, has been active in proposing yet another 'innovative' solution to the problem of lack of doctors in the rural areas. The proposal is for a three-and-a-half year course to obtain the degree of Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS). Only rural candidates would be able to join this course. The study and training would happen at two different levels -Community Health Centers for 18 months, and sub-divisional hospitals for a further period of 2 years and be conducted by retired professors. After completion of training, they would only be able to serve in their own state in district hospitals, community health centers, and primary health centers.

The BRMS proposal has invited sharp criticism from some doctors' organisations on the grounds that it is discriminatory to have two different standards of health care -one for urban and the other for rural areas, and that the health care provided by such graduates will be compromised. At the other end is the opinion expressed by some that "something is better than nothing", that since doctors do not want to serve in rural areas, the government may as well create a new cadre of medics who will be obliged to serve there. The debate will surely pick up after the government formally lays out its plans. What is apparent is that neither this proposal nor the various stopgap measures adopted so far address the root of the problem of health care. The far larger issue is government policy, the low priority attached by the government to the social sector in particular, evidenced in the paltry allocations for maintaining and upgrading medical infrastructure and medical education and for looking after precious human resoureces. 

Which of the following are the different opinions regarding the BRMS proposal?/

(1) At least a small step has been taken to improve the health care facilities in the rural areas through this proposal.
(2) There should be uniform healthcare facilities available for people living in both rural and urban areas.
(3) The healthcare providers through this proposal would not be up to the mark.

Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. If there is no need to substitute it, select ‘No substitution required’.

She came to work in spite of the heavy rain.

Direction: In the following questions, out of the four alternatives, choose the word opposite in meaning of the given word as your answer.

Unnerved

Direction: In the following questions, a sentence has been given in Direct/Indirect speech. Out of the four-alternative suggested, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Indirect/Direct speech.                                       

They said to their teacher, “Shyam will leave for the show tomorrow.”