Free Reading Comprehension Online Practice Test 3 for Competitive Exams – Check Your Score Instantly

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q.  Which of the following statements can be correctly inferred from the passage?

A) The new and updated Census will abrogate the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

B) The mobile service providers, in a roundabout way have been asked to break the law by the government.

C) The anonymity of the enumerating exercises is a risk to the national security.

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q. Which of the following is true about 'the government' with reference to the passage?

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q. Which of the following is the MOST OPPOSITE to the word given in bold in the passage?

SHOOK

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q. What is the author's viewpoint regarding paragraph 2?

I. The guidelines set down by the Supreme Court lacks proper drafting.

II. The justifications for mass surveillance are unchanging.

III. Government is using loopholes in the law to pursue its own agenda.

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q.  Which of the following statements is NOT true with respect to the passage?

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q.  What is tone of the paragraph?

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

It is clear now that the Centre has dropped all arguments for “public good” when it comes to mass surveillance measures. Two recent developments illustrate this. A report by the Indian Express said the government had been asking telecommunication companies for the call data records of all users in certain pockets of the country on certain days. Another investigative series by the HuffPost India shows how the Centre is planning a National Social Registry, a “360-degree database” to track the lives of all Indians.

Neither measure seems to be backed by law or follow due process. As the government pushed forward with them in stealth, it dispensed with the usual justifications for mass surveillance that violates privacy guidelines set down by the Supreme Court – national security or the targeted delivery of goods and services.

Mass requests for call data records were sought in January and February. In a letter to the telecom department, mobile service providers noted that no reason had been offered for requesting such great amounts of data. They also violate the procedure for call requests laid down in 2013, after a snooping scandal shook the government.

The social registry seems to have flowed from a project to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census. An exercise to create a database that was updated in real time so that pro-poor government schemes reached the right beneficiaries seems to have mutated into the stuff of science fiction. It will be “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”, says the report.

It dispenses with the anonymity that enumerating exercises like the Census must adhere to. Aadhaar numbers will be used to integrate information on religion, caste, income, property, marital status, education, family. In order to enable this, the Unique Identification Authority of India proposes to tweak the Aadhaar rules. That would effectively nullify the privacy safeguards put in by the 2018 Supreme Court judgment.

Both measures – the request for call data records and the creation of a social registry – seem to intersect with the government’s citizenship project. The call data requests were made during the two months that protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act and a proposed National Register of Citizens raged across the country. The protests had stemmed from the fact that the law and the register projected an exclusionary idea of Indian citizenship, that they could be used to harass minorities that the state did not favour.

Q.  What does the phrase "the stuff of science fiction" mean?