Direction: In the following questions, you have two passages with 5 questions in each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
Passage
India is chiefly an agricultural land. The cultivation of crops depends on a proper supply of water throughout the year. Since olden times, large parts of our country have suffered from occasional periods of too much rain and those of drought. People have known that if surplus flood water could be stored away for use during the dry season, these problems will be solved. Unfortunately, they had neither
the knowledge nor the means to do much in this direction. Whatever little they knew, they tried to put into practice. They dug canals to drain water from perennial rivers. This was heavy and expensive work and practicable over only a small area. Large tanks were excavated and small dams built to hold back floods. But it was not possible to do anything on a countrywide scale.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) drought (N.) : a long period of time when there is little/no rain
(2) perennial (Adj.) : happening again and again
(3) excavated (V.) : to dig

Direction: In the following questions, you have two brief passages with 5 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
These days we hear a lot about science, but scientists, the men and women who do the work and make the discoveries, seem distant and strange to us. Science often appears to be very difficult and sometimes even magical. It is difficult of course, but we are wrong if we believe that we cannot understand it. The chief thing about the scientific method is that we get the answers to questions by making tests. The man, to take an example, who finds his bicycle tyre is flat will pump some air into it. Suppose one hour later the tyre is flat again, if the man is wise, he will first test the valve in water. If he finds air is escaping from it he will put in a new piece of valve-rubber and then pump up the tyre. All should then be well again. This man is using a simple form of scientific method. If the man was very ‘unscientific’ he might say to himself that an evil spirit had caused the tyre to go flat.