Paragraph Completion Exercise - V

In each of the following questions a short passage is given with one of the lines in the passage missing and represented by a blank. Select the best answer choices given, to make the passage complete.

Paragraph 1.
Cut to the 1990s, when the media ecology changed drastically with the advent of the World Wide Web. The generation and distribution of news and opinion was no longer a linear process but networked. _____________________________. It was felt that the rise of the Internet had given way to the decline of the newspaper but that theory was soon debunked, and between 2000 and 2009, newspapers began setting up the online versions of their printed publications; this became a time of consolidation for the news media online as people would visit the websites of trusted publications for news.

(A) The presumption in this model was that media organisations were driven by responsibility to the public while the audience was politically engaged, rational and discerning.
(B) This was a medium that was democratic, accessible to all and a place where multiple conversations could take place.
(C) The Digital News Report 2016 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 51% of their sample use social media as a source of news.
(D) At least 78% of the Internet population aged 16-64 is now networking via a mobile.
Answers :
Correct Option: B
The sentences preceding as well as following the blank affirm how the advent of Internet has impacted the ways news is delivered to the masses. Clearly, the sentence for the blank must express the same idea.

Paragraph 2.
By obfuscating issues and putting out evasive responses that the team had not been selected owing to ‘operational reasons’, BCCI officials have demonstrated a shocking degree of insensitivity. ___________________________________. Virat Kohli’s men should compete in the tournament, and the faster the BCCI clarifies its position and selects the squad, the better it would be for the players and the game.

(A) It is poor sportsmanship that of the eight teams, ranging from Australia to Bangladesh, competing in the tournament, it is only India that hasn’t announced the squad yet.
(B) Immediately thereafter, BCCI officials floated the story that India would not participate in the eighth edition of the Champions Trophy in England.
(C) Seen in that context, it is a travesty that the Board of Control for Cricket in India is now using the Champions Trophy as a bargaining tool with the ICC (International Cricket Council) in a bid to retrieve its earlier proposed governance and revenue model with the parent body.
(D) They have let down the cricketers, who are busy with the Indian Premier League but also have an eye on the Champions Trophy as it kick-starts their international season besides giving them an opportunity to defend their title.
Answers :
Correct Option: D
The sentence preceding the blank discusses apathetic interest of BCCI officials towards the issue and the sentence following the blank quotes the importance of participating in the event for the players.

Paragraph 3.
In popular imagination, the Railway Budget was seen as a grand spectacle, with the Railway Minister using it as a platform for populism and political grandstanding. What is not appreciated is that the Budget is not merely a statement of allotment of funds to various projects and programmes, unlike other ministries, but comprises a fairly detailed performance review, physical and financial, of the previous year and prospects for the current (Budget) year. ____________________________. A separate post-Budget discussion in Parliament on the Railways, as indicated by the Finance Minister, is no substitute, as the focus most likely will be on allotments to various projects, not on financial performance.

(A) The fact is that the Railways is indeed unlike any other Central ministry in size and scope, it is actually an operational ministry.
(B) There have been sporadic calls in the past for doing away with a separate Railway Budget for various reasons, but the matter was never pursued seriously.
(C) Perhaps nowhere in the world is a political functionary called upon to present a financial report card of the country’s largest public undertaking in the full glare of publicity.
(D) A point particularly stressed by the Finance Minister in the press conference announcing the Cabinet decision was that the Railways’ share in the General Budget has progressively reduced over the years, making a separate budget an anachronism.
Answers :
Correct Option: C
The paragraph talks about how the Railway budget has been used as a platform for populism for long. Now, if we read the sentences given as options carefully, we can observe that only two – option A and option C are linking to the chain of thoughts while others stress upon the need to do away with a separate Railway budget. Clearly, options B, D and E get eliminated.

Paragraph 4.
Out of all the taxes, corporate taxes imposed on multinational corporations (MNCs) are major sources of revenue for most economies. But in the event of these corporate tax payers shifting their tax liabilities from a high tax jurisdiction to a low- or no-tax jurisdiction, massive revenue losses are imminent for the fiscal jurisdiction where the taxes should have been ideally paid. ______________________________. With a mélange of some creative accounting techniques and existing loopholes in different fiscal jurisdictions across the world, tax evasion has emerged as a global woe in the last few decades.

(A) Both historical and contemporary perceptions of tax have characterised it as a necessary extraction, a penalty.
(B) Despite some major limitations, various fiscal jurisdictions have already gone ahead with signing such agreements.
(C) Various countermeasures have been deployed by states, either at an individual level or as members of different economic groups.
(D) Once riddled with incidents of double taxation, the MNCs have now outsmarted the system and have moved into an era of double non-taxation.
Answers :
Correct Option: E
If we read the given paragraph carefully, we can infer that it talks about how MNCs are evading taxes. The sentence following the blank points towards some ‘creative accounting techniques’ that MNCs use to avoid paying taxes to the government.