Written to the IBPS SO pattern, with the answer key and the method behind it — a look at how the section is actually set before you drill the full topic sets.
Fill in the blanks · solved example
Pick the pair of words that best fills the two blanks.
Although the scheme was launched with great ____, its impact on the ground remained ____.
- Afanfare / negligibleCorrect
- Bsecrecy / enormous
- Creluctance / significant
- Dfanfare / overwhelming
- Ecaution / visible
Solution
'Although' signals a contrast: a loud launch ('fanfare') set against a small result ('negligible'). Option D keeps 'fanfare' but 'overwhelming' removes the contrast, and the other pairs do not form the launch-versus-impact opposition.
Reading comprehension · solved example
India's shift to digital payments has been fastest where it was least expected: among small merchants who once dealt only in cash. A vegetable seller who a decade ago would have waved away anything but coins now displays a printed code and is paid in seconds. The convenience is real, but so is a quieter change in behaviour. Because every digital rupee leaves a record, a seller who accepts them builds, without meaning to, a history of sales that a lender can read. For the first time, a trader with no property to pledge has something a bank will look at.
Yet the same visibility cuts both ways. A record that can earn a loan can also attract a tax notice, and many small sellers, sensing this, keep one foot in cash. The state gains an unprecedented view of the informal economy; the citizen weighs the benefit of credit against the cost of being seen. What looks like a simple story of technology spreading is really a negotiation, still unsettled, over how much of a small trader's life the system should be able to observe.
Why, according to the passage, do many small sellers 'keep one foot in cash'?
- ABecause digital payments are technically unreliable
- BTo save on the cost of printing payment codes
- CTo avoid the tax scrutiny that a visible record can inviteCorrect
- DBecause their customers prefer to pay in cash
Solution
The passage notes that a record which can earn a loan can also attract a tax notice, and sellers "sensing this" stay partly in cash.
Para jumble · solved example
Arrange the four sentences into a coherent paragraph.
A. The result was a scheme that reached far fewer households than its budget allowed for.
B. The subsidy was designed to be claimed at the point of purchase.
C. Many of the intended beneficiaries, however, bought from sellers who were not registered to process claims.
D. That required every participating seller to be enrolled on the payments platform.
- ABDCACorrect
- BBCDA
- CDBCA
- DBDAC
- ECBDA
Solution
B is the only sentence that introduces its subject without pointing back at anything, so it opens. D begins with 'That', which can only refer to the design described in B, so D follows. C then supplies the contrast with 'however', explaining that beneficiaries used unregistered sellers, which is a problem only because D established the enrolment requirement. A closes with 'The result was', which needs a cause already stated. That gives BDCA. Note that A cannot precede C, because a result has to come after the thing it results from.
Reading comprehension · solved example
A crop insurance scheme is usually judged by how much it pays. A more revealing test is how quickly. A farmer whose claim is settled six months after a failed harvest has already borrowed to plant the next one, and has done so at whatever rate the local lender set, which is rarely the rate the scheme was meant to spare him. The payout, when it arrives, retires that debt rather than financing the sowing it was designed to protect. The money is not wasted, but its purpose has been quietly inverted.
Delay is built into the way losses are measured. Most schemes settle on the basis of crop-cutting experiments, in which sample harvests across a block are weighed and the average yield compared with a threshold. The method is defensible, and it is slow: it needs field staff, a harvest to sample, and a chain of approvals afterwards. Satellite assessment promises speed, and pilots have cut settlement times sharply, but it estimates area-wide vegetation rather than an individual field's yield, so a farmer whose own plot failed in a block that did well is left uncompensated and unconvinced. Faster settlement is therefore not simply a matter of better technology. It requires deciding whose loss the scheme insures: the block's, which can be measured quickly, or the farm's, which cannot.
Which of the following best captures the central argument of the passage?
- ACrop insurance schemes in India pay out too little to be of use to farmers.
- BSatellite assessment should replace crop-cutting experiments in all schemes.
- CThe speed of settlement matters as much as its size, and increasing it forces a choice about whose loss is being insured.Correct
- DFarmers borrow from local lenders because institutional credit is unavailable to them.
- ECrop-cutting experiments are an unreliable way of measuring agricultural loss.
Solution
The passage opens by displacing the usual test, how much a scheme pays, with a better one, how quickly, and closes by showing that speeding settlement up is not a technical problem but a question of whether the block's loss or the farm's is being insured. Option C carries both halves. Option A is wrong on its own terms: the passage says explicitly that the money is not wasted, and never argues the sum is too small. Option B is the position the author declines to take, since the satellite method is described as leaving a farmer uncompensated and unconvinced. Option D inverts the causal claim, which is about the timing of the payout rather than the availability of credit. Option E overstates a point the author actually concedes, calling the method defensible.