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Reading Comprehension for Bank Exams
This is the 9th set of the Reading Comprehension series for bank and insurance exams. Reading Comprehension plays an important role in the English section of banking exams. Because English is not subject it should be treated as a language and for this, we should read English regularly in any form like an editorial, or story.
This post is for the bank exam candidates preparing for bank exams like SBI PO, IBPS PO, and RRB PO. If any candidate has any doubt regarding any question or topic, he/she can comment in the comment section provided below the post. Our every reading comprehension post contains 2 prelims levels and one mains level passage. The aim of our platform is to provide free content that is available on Google to those students who are preparing for the banking sector.
Set-1. Trade policy is once again gaining prominence in the agenda of multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund. Though open trade remains the top priority, there is now a slow policy shift in favor of diversification of trade to build resilience in times of crisis like the pandemic. They also vouch that a significant reduction in barriers to services trade can foster higher growth and confer substantial gains to the global economy. One reason for this refocus on global trade is its diminishing role in global growth as evident from the stagnant ratio of global merchandise trade to gross domestic product (GDP) since the middle of the 2000s.
This is a far cry from the scenario just three decades back when international trade buoyed up global growth and opened new markets to emerging and developing countries. Between 1990 and 2008, global merchandise trade grew at an annual average rate of 9.1%. However, the growth of the global merchandise trade has halved to 4.1% since then. Though global merchandise trade has now touched $45 trillion in 2021, its share in the global GDP shrunk from 51% in 2011 to 46.5% in 2021.
A positive trend during this period has been the sustained growth of services trade, which has steadily expanded at an annual average rate of 6.9% between 1990 and 2021 to $11.5 trillion. Consequently, the share of services trade in global GDP has almost doubled from around 6% to 12% during this period. The growth of digital technologies, which has significantly reduced trade costs of services, is a major factor that has made these gains possible.
More recent numbers show that the trends continue. The overall growth of merchandise trade more than halved from 27% in 2021 to just 12% in 2022. Many important products were badly hit. Thus, while the growth of trade in agriculture products slowed down from 19% to 11%, that of the mining and fuels segment only dipped from 60% to 42%. The worst hit was manufacturing where growth shrunk sharply to 7%, just a third of the pace in the previous year. Important products where the growth of trade fell by around half included iron and steel, chemicals, automotive products, and clothing. The worst affected was the textile trade which has shrunk for two consecutive years now.
In contrast, though the slowdown in services trade was more restrained, it was also heavily skewed. While the growth of overall services trade dipped from 17% in 2021 to 15% in 2022, that of travel (mainly tourism) shot up sixfold to 79%. The slowdown was also pronounced in both goods-related services and other commercial services where the pace of growth slipped to 6% and 2%, respectively. Among other commercial services, growth was negative in financial, insurance, pension, intellectual property, and construction-related services. However, services trade growth hovered around the 5% mark in segments like telecommunication, recreational, computer, information, and other business services.
Similarly, the more disaggregated export and import numbers also point to new headwinds. The overall export figures for 2022 show that while merchandise exports grew by 11% to around $25 trillion in 2022, the national trends were very uneven. Thus, it is seen that while merchandise exports from China, the world’s largest exporter, rose by 7% in 2022, that of the United States (US), the second largest, shot up at more than double the pace. However, merchandise exports from Japan and Hong Kong China declined during the year. India, which was ranked the 18th largest merchandise exporting nation, with a 1.8% share of the global market, saw its exports grow by 15%.
As for services, its global exports rose by 15% to around $7 trillion in 2022. The US, the largest exporter of services, saw its flows go up by 16%, while that of the United Kingdom, the second largest exporter, grew at just half the pace. India, the seventh largest exporter of services with a 4.4% global share, saw its services outflows go up by 31%. But Spain and Turkey registered a higher growth of services exports than India. A major advantage for India is that it has emerged as the fifth largest exporter of digitally exported services with its outflows almost doubling in four years to $227 billion.
However, the immediate trade prospects remain constrained as trade tensions and restrictions, distorting subsidies, and the slow pace of trade reforms have stalled manufacturing sector globalization. The growing constraints to the development of global value chains and weakened multilateral trade systems are now adding to the problems even as the global trade system is increasingly threatened by geo-economic fragmentation as nations friend-shore investments and trade to political allies.
Given the scenario, a revival of global trade requires fast-tracking services exports, especially given the demographic changes and the increasing labor shortage in the developed economies. Countries like India must realign their strategies to tap their full potential. While the focus of merchandise exports must be dovetailed to generate more employment opportunities in labor-intensive products, the services exports should be focused on utilizing the huge talent skills that remain unutilized. Such a rehaul of export priorities can help make significant inroads into global markets and boost overall growth.
Set-2. Textbooks issued by the National Council of Educational Training and Research (NCERT) have reportedly undergone some significant changes recently as part of their latest decision about textbook revisions. These changes are being justified in light of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which emphasizes upon reducing the load or burden of heavy textbooks and rote learning upon the students.
However, these changes by the NCERT are being criticised by various academics and opposition parties, as it appears to mostly omit chapters and content that are politically inconvenient for the ruling establishment. Hence, far from a seemingly neutral decision of “rationalising” the syllabus and the otherwise laudable aim of promoting “experiential” instead of rote learning, these changes in textbooks are clearly political and ideological in character.
Some of the changes include deleting entire chapters on the history of Mughal courts, omitting references to M K Gandhi’s unpopularity among Hindu extremists, as well as various topics dealing with the Cold War, industrial revolution, gender, religion, caste, etc. These changes have been justly denounced by historians and opposition parties as distortions of history and sociology, and only harms an honest encounter with the varied realities of Indian society in the present as well as in the past.
Another deletion reported from the Class 11 political science textbook was the references to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who, apart from being a stalwart of the freedom struggle and independent India’s first education minister, was also an accomplished Islamic scholar, writer, and journalist. It is ironic, if not wholly tragic, that the latest education policy adopted by the union government has compelled the NCERT to remove any references to India’s first education minister from its school textbooks. In addition to social sciences textbooks, the NCERT has also made changes in textbooks for physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. These deletions will not only affect schoolchildren, but also the scores of aspirants who study these books while preparing for various competitive exams of government services. Although several topics have been removed from the science textbooks, what is particularly noteworthy is that the full chapter on reproduction in organisms has been removed from the Class 12 biology textbook, which smacks of a highly regressive and anti-scientific mindset of those responsible for these revisions. The list of such changes, deletions, and omissions is quite long; however, it is clear that the main motivation behind these decisions is to mould the pedagogical content of India’s schools in ways that are amenable to the ideological agenda of the ruling party.
One also wonders whether these textbook revisions, justified as they are on the basis of “rationalising” the curriculum, are informed by any long-term visions of transforming pedagogical practices in Indian schools. That these various deletions and omissions serve a short-term goal of the ideological flattening of the intellectual vibrancy witnessed in existing NCERT textbooks is well evident. However, these short-term strategies also inform a reactionary project which will likely show its effects only in the long term, giving an official sanction to certain narratives about Indian history that are not in all cases historically truthful. In other words, deleting key elements from textbooks will adversely affect students’ comprehension of India’s history, as well India’s historical relations with the wider world. Another consequence of these revisions is that it will lead to a pernicious hierarchy of curricula in Indian schools, wherein those studying in elite private schools following international boards would have access to a well-researched and world-class curriculum, while those passing out from NCERT-administered schools will be trained with a curriculum containing half-truths at best.
While the aim of reducing the burden of rote learning on students is praiseworthy, the manner in which the NCERT has progressed in the implementation of the NEP raises certain questions about this policy’s political neutrality as well. The fine print of the NEP might consist of a host of measures that are designed to make the life of students and teachers in the classroom more interactive and engaging, but it is anybody’s guess whether the recent changes in textbooks would contribute positively towards such an aim. If anything, it is likely to curtail the naturally inquisitive nature of children in schools, where many students may end up becoming clueless about the various peoples, rulers, and movements that shaped Indian and world history.
Finally, it is important to highlight that the context of these curricular changes raises the question about what an emancipatory conception of pedagogy ought to be—something that orients both students and teachers towards changing society for the better. The inspiration for such a progressive conception of education can very well be located in the writings and educational work of Jotirao Phule and B R Ambedkar. Both emphasised on the central importance of cultivating the skill of critical thought, with Phule comparing the work of education as the opening of an individual’s “third eye” (trutiya ratna), which equips individuals to test their ordinary perceptions and experiences on the grounds of rationality. Similarly, Ambedkar placed education as having the highest priority in his cherished slogan of “Educate, Agitate, Organise,” knowing that any successful agitation and organisation for a better society rests on the foundation of an emancipatory and egalitarian education. Both Phule and Ambedkar started schools and colleges/hostels, respectively, which sought to realise and institutionalise such a liberatory conception of education. The recent revisions in NCERT textbooks do not advance the goals of an egalitarian and modern–rational system of education forward, which are the hallmarks of the Phule–Ambedkarite conception of education.
Set-3. By 2009, an Rs 8,000 crore hole had appeared in India's finances, courtesy of beer baron Vijay Mallya's stab at commercial aviation. Then, as Kingfisher Airlines went down in metaphorical flames, two catchphrases rose to prominence. One was ‘NPA’- a debt that remained unpaid despite repeated attempts by the lender to collect payment. The other was ‘absconding billionaire'. In 2018, those titles made the news together once more thanks to diamond merchant Nirav Modi. This time, not only was the NPA larger-over Rs 11,400 crore-it was 'created' through outright fraud. However, if even that were the worst of the current NPA crisis, it wouldn't have been so bad. A loss of Rs 20,000 crore can break a bank but won't wreck a banking sector as big as India's. NPAs are also a fact of (financial) life-every single loan cycle in history has contained a percentage of cases in which the money was never repaid. That said, the Modis and Mallyas are a bare scrape of the full problem. According to the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, the current total of gross NPAs with listed banks is over Rs 8.5 lakh crore. With RBI reporting norms becoming ever tighter, that number is expected to rise. Financial rating agency ICRA said the total could soon cross Rs 9.25 lakh crore, while its peer, Crisil, estimated it at Rs 9.5 lakh crore. That is more than India's defense and infrastructure budgets combined, and close to twice Sri Lanka's GDP. And since the 21 public sector banks (PSBs) owned by the government comprise roughly 80 percent of the Indian banking sector, it is ultimately liable for the lion's share of debt being dealt with. When it comes to causes, the trials of UCO Bank offer a good starting point for the analysis.
In April, the CBI registered a case against ArunKaul, a former chairman and CEO of that bank, alleging that he aided Era Infra Engineering India chief managing director Hem Singh Bharana in defrauding UCO of over Rs 600 crore. News reports say the loans were taken with the stated intention of paying off existing debts, but were instead siphoned off for other purposes-with chartered accountants forging paperwork to disguise the scam. Kaul's case is not unique. For instance, just 10 days before that investigation was announced, the CBI filed a case against another UCO Bank employee, former branch manager K.R. Saroja, alleging involvement in a loans fraud of Rs 19 crore Incidentally, but A government paper on weak PSBs noted that UCO (along with United Bank of India and Indian Bank) were especially good at losing money, writing, Even after the infusion of Rs 6,740 crore into these three banks over the last seven years, basic weakness persists. Even so, in 2018, recapitalization is once again the plan. Last October, a Rs 2.1 lakh crore ‘liquidity infusion' into banks was announced, This is an old debate. PSBs have, since the early 1990s, repeatedly needed bailouts, cash infusions, equity dilutions, or some other form of financial help from the state. One report estimated that between 2000 and 2015, over Rs 81,000 crore was spent on bank recapitalization, some Rs 70,000 crore from 2010-14 alone. Last October's announcement of Rs 2.1 lakh crore is essentially the same strategy yet again. When bailouts become a recurring feature, they possibly need to be reconsidered.
