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Reading Comprehension for Bank Exams
This is the 2nd set of reading comprehension 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 on regular basis like editorials.
This post is all about prelims level exams. If any candidate has any doubt regarding any question or topic, he/she can comment in the comment section, which is provided below the post.
Set.1- On Tuesday, two multilateral institutions presented their regional economic outlook for this year, scaling down their projection for India’s growth prospects in 2023-24. The World Bank has pared its real GDP growth forecast for the country to 6.3% from the 6.6% it had estimated a few months earlier, and 7% projected in October 2022. The key domestic factors it flagged for the downgrade are: rising borrowing costs would hurt otherwise resilient consumption demand, government consumption will likely contract, and services sectors’ growth will slip to a three-year low of 6.7% from an estimated 9.5% in 2022-23. The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) noted that a rebounding China’s and India’s domestic demand (which it believes will likely stay healthy) would lift up Asia’s growth prospects. However, it slashed its 2023-24 GDP growth forecast for India from 7.2% to 6.4%, citing tight monetary conditions and fading optimism on business conditions that it reckoned would lead to lower growth in private investments (that had only seen a fledgling post-COVID recovery till now). Apart from these domestic issues, of course, both institutions have cited the effects of the existing challenging conditions in the global economy, which are freshly exacerbated by a spate of bank failures in the developed world and resurfacing concerns about oil prices heading north despite slowing world demand as producers cut output in unison.
To be clear, the government, which presented the Union Budget around two months after the last forecasts of these institutions, of 7%-plus growth, had not articulated such high hopes for this year. The Economic Survey pegged 2023-24 growth at 6.5%, while the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimates it at 6.4%. However, India’s current growth estimate for last year is 7%, while the World Bank and ADB expect it to be marginally lower at 6.9% and 6.8%, respectively. A better picture on the base over which this year’s growth has to be calculated will only emerge by the end of May when first estimates for the last quarter of 2022-23 will be released. The world would also have spun a few more times by then and 2023-24 forecasts shall be revised whichever way the winds blow. At this time last April, the International Monetary Fund had just scaled down its India growth estimate for the year gone by, from 9% to 8.2%, while the World Bank, the ADB and the RBI had projected it to be 8%, 7.5% and 7.2%, respectively. Policymakers can safely tune out the noise generated by these numbers but must pay heed to the stress signs being flagged to proactively minimise any impending damage.
Set-2. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has obtained bail from a Sessions Court in Surat, pending his appeal against a bizarre conviction for defamation recorded by a judicial magistrate’s court. In an unusual judgment, the trial court had given him the maximum permissible prison term of two years, claiming that a Member of Parliament deserved to be awarded the highest punishment because of his status. As a result of the two-year jail term, he has now become ineligible to remain a legislator and the Lok Sabha Secretariat has notified of his disqualification. He may be able to regain his seat only if the appellate court stays his conviction, or the appeal itself is allowed and the verdict is set aside. The Sessions Court posted the application for hearing on April 13, and asked the complainant, Purnesh Modi, a Bhartiya Janata Party Member of the Legislative Assembly, to file his reply to the plea by April 10. Mr Gandhi’s appeal focuses on both the legal aspects of defamation and the factual aspects behind his remarks that referred to the surname ‘Modi’ figuring in a list of people who he accuses of carrying on business to the detriment of national interests. The trial court’s conclusion that Mr Gandhi had sought to make political gain by defaming 13 crore people who carry the surname ‘Modi’ will have to be tested against the legal position that only a definite and determinable group of people can be the object of defamation.
The relevant provision on defamation, Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code, contains an explanation that a ‘collection of persons’ can also be aggrieved by a defamatory remark. However, whether an amorphous group of people joined only by a surname can be such a ‘collection of persons’ is a relevant question. This becomes especially salient when the remarks are being construed as a slur on some backward communities. While the finding that the speech was defamatory was damaging in itself, the quantum of a sentence has yielded some separate grounds for the appeal. Mr Gandhi has contended that the judgment cites no precedent for giving the maximum punishment and that there is no discussion on the consequence of the two-year jail term. The appeal deserves to be heard and disposed of with some urgency as it may be an unacceptable precedent for legislators to be arbitrarily convicted for politically loaded remarks and awarded precisely the quantum of punishment required to get them disqualified. A flagrant example such as this may lead to a surge in the filing of multiple criminal cases in different jurisdictions by political rivals. It may also have the deleterious effect of courts being used to tailor the quantum of punishment to suit political requirements.
Set-3. The rule of law is integral to a just order. As an idea, its institution sets the modernity of equal rights apart from the inequity of being at the mercy of someone’s whim. What we institute to govern our lives, however, needs a constant vigil. The India Justice Report of 2022 released by Tata Trusts this week offers a wealth of data which aids that cause by laying bare the inadequacies of our justice system. Covid slowed India’s pace of case clearance by courts, with the result that our pile-up rose from 41 million in 2020 to 49 million in 2022. We had 5.6 million pending for longer than a decade, with 190,000 for over 30 years. The judiciary remains acutely short of capacity. With 20,093 judges at work, we barely have 15 for every million Indians, less than a third of the 50 recommended by the Law Commission in 1987. Meanwhile, Indian prisons saw a sharp rise in overcrowding to about 30 extra inmates in 2021 for every 100 they were built to hold. Only a minority were convicts, as 77% of them were under-trials yet to be found either guilty or innocent, up from about 69% two years earlier. This figure should weigh upon our conscience. Not only does it make “bail, not jail" sound hollow as the norm, since some prisoners surely deserve to be freed, but it also speaks of apathy to their plight. Unless there’s a good reason, accusations alone shouldn’t get people locked up, especially not when so many laws allow false charges a wide berth. We cannot ignore this truth of justice: If it isn’t meted out fairly, it doesn’t exist.
The report also places police forces under its lens. State-wise variation is visible on several counts, like vacancies, training budgets, police station cameras, etc. This should not surprise anyone. Except in Union territories governed by the Centre (Delhi included for this purpose), law enforcers operate directly under state governments, so politics has a structural role in justice delivery at the khaki level. Lack of police diversity is a common problem across states, whether it’s gender, caste or other markers of identity. Be it constables or officers, too few women cops is a notable worry, for it feeds anxiety over safety which imposes unseen social and economic costs. All police stations are supposed to have women’s help desks, but 28% do not and many others don’t have women cops ready to respond round-the-clock, although fail-proof help is the least we should expect. No less worrisome are other biases that could arise within a force whose composition doesn’t reflect that of the people being policed. Should political pressure come to bear in, say, politically sensitive situations, then the law’s long arm can get misused. The way out of this perplexity would be de facto autonomy for the police. Unfortunately, this reform looks very hard to achieve, given how little appeal the idea of power dispersal appears to hold among those who wield it. In this milieu, asking politicians to empower police officers so that they can freely obey only their calls of duty might be too steep an ask.
