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SECTION A- READING
I. Read the passage and answer the questions given below:
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One more Olympics has gone by. A total of 974 medals were won by 87 countries; 54 countries won at least
one Gold. The U.S flew home with the best medal tally of all time for that country with 121 medals
Notwithstanding the individual brilliance and the face-saving medals of P.V.Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, India's
performance is the poorest among all big countries. The discourse on this is an unhappy one: there has been a
lot of handwringing, blame on the Sports Ministry and sports administrators, complaints about lack of facilities
grumbles about corruption being the villain, and so on. India says the same things once in four years during
and after every Olympics. It should instead look for simple lessons, develop a strategy to win medals and
execute it diligently. No, I don't believe that India should be planning for the Olympics scheduled eight or
twelve years from now. While long-term thinking is good, any leader will tell you that it is too slow. We should
aim to win a lot more medals in Tokyo in 2020. But how? The final medals tally by country tells all sorts of
stories. The top 22 countries -- those with a double-digit medals tally with a minimum of three gold medals
took home a total of 702 medals, or 72 per cent of all medals. The top ten suggests that only the established
West (the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Australia) along with Russia, Japan and South Korea
will continue to dominate. The emergence of China is explained as "you know the Chinese can dictate anything.
so they are not comparable." It is often implied that wealth and size are the reasons for the success of these
countries. They have the facilities and programmers in place. They are bound to win. So goes the argument and
acceptance. This logic should be probed further. Olympics medals are won by people between the ages of 15 to
29, with a few exceptions on either side of this age band. I looked at the number of medal wins in relation to the
population in the age group 15 to 29 in each country, for which data is available. This was juxtaposed with
medals won, to calculate the numbers of medals won per lakh of population in this age group. The story
changes dramatically.
Questions:
1. What was the result of Olympics?
2. How can India stand at the strong position in Olympics?
3. How do the other countries dominate in Olympics?
4. What are the short comings for the poor position in Olympics?
5. Identify the word which means the same as 'a plan of action
(i) discourse (ii) wringing (iii) complain (iv) strategy
6. Identify the word which means the same as 'carry out'.
(i) strategy (ii) execute (iii) grumbles (iv) diligently
hich means the same as suggested
Answers
Answer:
Like the lapis lazuli gem it resembles, the blue, cloud-enveloped planet the we recognize immediately from satellite pictures seems remarkably stable. Continents and oceans, encircled by an oxygen-rich atmosphere, support familiar life-forms. Yet this constancy is an illusion produced by the human experience of time. Earth and its atmosphere are continuously altered. Plate tectonics shift the continents, raise mountains and move the ocean floor while processes not fully understood alter the climate.
Such constant change has characterized Earth since its beginning some 4.5 billion years ago. From the outset, heat and gravity shaped the evolution of the planet. These forces were gradually joined by the global effects of the emergence of life. Exploring this past offers us the only possibility of understanding the origin of life and, perhaps, its future.
Scientists used to believe the rocky planets, including Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars, were created by the rapid gravitational collapse of a dust cloud, a deation giving rise to a dense orb. In the 1960s the Apollo space program changed this view. Studies of moon craters revealed that these gouges were caused by the impact of objects that were in great abundance about 4.5 billion years ago. Thereafter, the number of impacts appeared to have quickly decreased. This observation rejuvenated the theory of accretion postulated by Otto Schmidt. The Russian geophysicist had suggested in 1944 that planets grew in size gradually, step by step.