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प्रश्न
In view of the passage given below. Choose the best option for question.
When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of Independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased. So has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledging, has grown tremendously. And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetually on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still on walking backwards.
Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing 'world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had. It suffered hardly or not at all during the Second World War. It had advantages like an English speaking elite, quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet, today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness. it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top. Hong Kong is an export powerhouse. So is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back. note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India, no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car. The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism.
The government discouraged imports and encouraged self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and, therefore. became absolutely uncompetitive. only when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent. The years since then have been spent merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it operated under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crookS how were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, how we're to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, how we're to be tolerated in the same way as an inexcusable wan. The high expropriation rates of taxation. the licensing Jaws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector, and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude. The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created.
The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been a but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide. But most of these Changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 ana the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds of support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself. or that of more than handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations. Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no exit policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labour is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business If one industry is not allowed to retrench labour, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labour. In other way too, the government hurts industries.
Public sector monopolies like the department of telecommunications and Yidesh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad The infrastructure is in a shambles partly because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business, and partly because it does not have the stomach to change market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government iS dragging itS feet. At the rate, it is going. it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy By then, of course, the world would have moved even further ahead.
India was in better condition than the other Asian nations because...
विकल्प
it did not face the ravages of the second world war
it had an English speaking populace and good business sense.
it had enough wealth through its exports
Both (a) and (b)
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उत्तर
Both (a) and (b)
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संबंधित प्रश्न
In Mann Joseph's debut novel Serious Men, the protagonist, Ayyan Mani, is a U1, scheming Dalit-Buddhist who almost gets away with passing off his partially deaf son, Adi, as a prodigy, a genius who can recite the first 1,000 prime numbers. The garb of satire-where almost every character cuts a sorry figure-gives the author the licence to offer one' of the most bleak and pessimistic portrayals of urban Dalits. Despite his savage portrayal of Dalit (and Female) character-or perhaps because of it? - Serious Men has won critical appreciation front a cross-section of readers and critics.
At a time when a formidable body of Dalit literature - writing by Dalits about Dalit lives- has created a distinct space for itself, how and why is it that a novel such as serious Men, with its gleefully skewed portrayal of an angry Dalit Man, manages to win such accolades? In American literature and particularly in the case of African-American authors and characters-these issues of representation have been debated for decades. But in India, the sustained refusal to address issues related to caste in every life and the continued and unquestioned predominance of a Brahminical stranglehold over cultural production has led us to a place where the non-Dalit portrayal of Dalits in literature, cinema and art remains the norm.
The journey of modem Dalit literature has been a difficult one. But even though it has not necessarily enjoyed the support of numbers, we must engage with what Dalit are writing not simply for reasons of authenticity, or as a concession to identity politics, but simply because of the aesthetic value of this body of writing, and for the insights, it offers into the human condition. In a society that is still largely unwilling to recognize Dalits as equal, rights-bearing human beings, in a society that is inherently indifferent to the everyday violence against Dalits, in a society unwilling to share social and cultural resources equitably with Dalits unless mandated by law (as seen in the anti-reservation discourse), Dalit literature has the potential to humanise non-Dalits and sensitise them to a world into which they have no insight. But before we can understand what Dalit literature is seeking to accomplish, we need first to come to terms with the stranglehold of non-Dalit representations of Dalits.
Rohinton Miary's ( A Fine Balance), published 15 years ago, chronicles the travails of two Dalit characters uncle Ishvar and nephew Omprakash who migrate to Bombay of the Emergency, Ishvar's father Dukhy belongs to the era of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. During one of Dukhi's visits to the town, he chances upon a meeting of the Indian National Congress, where speakers spread the "Mahatma's message regarding the freedom struggle, the struggle for justice," and wiping out "the disease of untouchability; ravaging us for centuries, denying dignity to our fellow human beings."
Neither in the 1940s, where the novel's past is set nor in the Emergency period of the 1970s when the minds and bodies Ishvar and Omprakash, are savaged by the state do we find any mention of a figure like B.R. Ambedkar or of Dalit movements. In his 'nationalist' understanding of modem Indian history, Mistry seems to have not veered too far from the road charted by predecessors like Mulk Raj Anand and Premchand. Sixty years after Premchand, Mistry's literary imagination seems stuck in the empathy-realism mode, trapping Dalits in abjection. Mistry happily continues the broad stereotype of the Dalit as a passive sufferer, without consciousness of caste politics.
The writer refers to the 'anti-reservation discourse' in order to argue that:
In recent weeks, the writers William Dalrymple and Patrick French, among others, have come before a fusillade of criticism in India, much of it questioning not their facts, not their interpretations, but their foreignness.
"Who gets to write about India?" The Wall Street Journal asked on Wednesday in its own report on this Indian literary feuding. It is a complicated question, not least because to decide who gets to write about India, you would need to decide who gets to decide who gets to write about India. Rather than conjecturing some Committee for the Deciding of the Deciding of Who Gets to Write about India, it might be easier to let writers write what they please and readers read what they wish.
The accusations pouring forth from a section of the Indian commentariat are varied. Some criticism is of a genuine literary nature, fair game, customary, expected. But lately a good amount of the reproaching has been about identity.
In the case of Mr. Dalrymple, a Briton who lives in New Delhi, it is - in the critics' view - that his writing is an act of re-colonization. In the case of Mr. French, it is that he belongs to a group of foreign writers who use business-class lounges and see some merit in capitalism and therefore do not know the real India, which only the commentariat member in question does.
What is most interesting about these appraisals is that their essential nature makes reading the book superfluous, as one of my Indian reviewers openly admitted. (His review was not about the book but about his refusal to read the book.) The book is not necessary in these cases, for the argument is about who can write about India, not what has been written.
For critics of this persuasion, India surely seems a lonely land. A country with a millennial history of Hindus, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists living peaceably together; a country of hundreds.of dialects in which so many Indians are linguistic foreigners to each other, and happily, tolerantly so; a country that welcomes foreign seekers (of yoga poses, of spiritual wisdom, of ancestral roots) with open arms; a country where, outside the elite world of South Delhi and South Bombay, I have not heard an Indian ask whether outsiders have a right to write, think or exist on their soil.
But it is not just this deep-in-the-bones pluralism that challenges the who-gets-to write- about India contingent. It is also that at the very heart of India's multifarious changes today is this glimmering idea: that Indians must be rewarded for what they do, not who they are.
Identities you never chose - caste, gender, birth order - are becoming less important determinants of fate. Your deeds - how hard you work, what risks you take - are becoming more important.
It is this idea, which I have found pulsating throughout the Indian layers, that leaves a certain portion of the intelligentsia out of sync with the surrounding country. As Mr. French has observed, there is a tendency in some of these writers to value social mobility only for themselves. When the new economy lifts up the huddled masses, then it becomes tawdry capitalism and rapacious imperialism and soulless globalization.
Fortunately for those without Indian passports, the nativists' vision of India is under demographic siege. The young and the relentless are India's future. They could not think more differently from this literatis.
They savor the freedom they are gaining to seek their own level in the society and to find their voice, and they tend to be delighted at the thought that some foreigners do the same in India and love their country as much as they do.
Which of the following statements is least likely to be inferred from the passage:
Direction: The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
With an aim to check flow of black money and evasion of taxes through stock market, market regulator SEBI has decided to impose hefty penalty on brokers facilitating such transactions from tomorrow. The regulator recently came across a loophole in its existing regulations, which was being abused by stock brokers for facilitating tax evasion and flow of black money through fictitious trades in lieu of hefty commissions. To remove this anomaly, SEBI has asked stock exchanges to penalise the brokers transferring trades from one trading account to another after terming them as ‘punching’ errors. The penalty could be as high as 2% of the value of shares traded in the ‘wrong’ account, as per new rules coming into effect from August 1. In a widely-prevalent, but secretly operated practice, the people looking to evade taxes approach certain brokers to show losses in their stock trading accounts, so that their earnings from other sources are not taxed. These brokers are also approached by people looking to show their black money as earnings made through stock market. In exchange for a commission, generally 5-10% of the total amount, these brokers show desired profits or losses in the accounts of their clients after transferring trades from other accounts, created for such purposes only. The brokers generally keep conducting both ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ trades in these fictitious accounts so that they can be used accordingly when approached by such clients. In the market parlance, these deals are known as profit or loss shopping. While profit is purchased to show black money as earnings from the market, the losses are purchased to avoid tax on earnings from other sources. As the transfer of trades is not allowed from one account to the other in general cases, the brokers show the trades conducted in their own fictitious accounts as ‘punching’ errors. The regulations allow the transfer of trades in the cases of genuine errors, as at times ‘punching’ or placing of orders can be made for a wrong client. To check any abuse of this rule, SEBI has asked the bourses to put in place a robust mechanism to identify whether the errors are genuine or not. At the same time, the bourses have been asked to levy penalty on the brokers transferring their non-institutional trades from one account to the other. The penalty would be 1% of the traded value in wrong account if such trades are up to 5% of the broker’s total non-institutional turnover in a month. The penalty would be 2% of trade value in wrong account if such transactions exceed 5% of total monthly turnover in a month.
In the light of the second paragraph what do people who intend to evade taxes do?
Direction: The passage given below is followed by a set of question. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Johnson was deeply but not necessarily conventionally religious: he struggled within himself most of his life to sustain his belief in God in the face of enormous pressures, disappointments, and psychological calamities. On the surface, and in much of his work, he appeared to be an orthodox, conventional, conservative adherent of revealed religion, of the Church of England, but the conventional Anglican explanations for the existence of evil in the world failed to satisfy him, and in any case his characteristic reluctance to believe without evidence, his fear of credulity, his dislike of mysteries, continually undermined his attempts to accept conventional beliefs. He was remarkable, privately, for his tolerance; maintaining that the differences between Christian sects (Protestants and Roman Catholics, for example) were trivial, and due primarily to political rather than religious differences.
His religious difficulties began at a very early age. His mother, when he was only three, told him of "a fine place filled with happiness called Heaven" and "a sad place, called Hell." Many years later he recalled that (as one might expect) this account did not impress him very deeply: it is significant, however, that he remembered it at all. After the age of nine, and through his adolescence, he stopped going to church. One part of him remained a skeptic for the rest of his life, and, as his private journals show, even after he had regained his faith he struggled continually (and privately) with fears, guilt, and disbelief: in "The Vanity of Human Wishes," written when he was forty, he returns to a traditional religious theme as well as a personal preoccupation and insists that we cannot find genuine or permanent happiness in this world and that we must therefore turn to religious belief and faith in the existence of a better world after death if we are to endure our existence here. It was a belief; however, which he himself had difficulty maintaining. The happiness derived from such belief was in any case a limited one, but the only alternative
to religious faith, as Johnson saw it, was a dull apathy, a stoical disengagement from life. He was troubled, too — a better word would be tormented — by a fear of death and by a deeper fear that he might in spite of his best efforts be so guilty, so sinful, that he merited damnation. And beneath that fear was another, even deeper — the fear that God might not exist at all, that death might bring annihilation, mere nothingness, the loss of personal identity. He struggled all his life — in the end, successfully — not so much to overcome these fears as to coexist with them. In public he was much more conventional, much more characteristically paternalistic. He maintained in print, for example, that religion was a valuable asset to society and to mankind and that Anglicanism, as the English state religion, ought, therefore, to be carefully protected: "Permitting men to preach any opinion contrary to the doctrine of the established church," he wrote, "tends, in a certain degree, to lessen the authority of
the church, and, consequently, to lessen the influence of religion."
Which of the following can be inferred from the given passage about religion during the times of Johnson?
Four alternative summaries are given the text. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text.
Some decisions will be fairly obvious- "no-brainers". Your bank account is low, but you have a two-week vacation coming up and you want to get away to some place warm to relax with your family. Will you accept your in-laws' offer of free use of their Florida beach front condo? Sure. You like your employer and feel ready to move forward in your career. Will you step in for your boss for three weeks while she attends a professional development course? Of course.
A. Some decisions are obvious under certain circumstances. You may, for example, readily accept a relative's offer of free holiday accommodation. Or step in for your boss when she is away.
B. Some decisions are no-brainers. You need not think when making them. Examples are condo offers from inlaws and job offers from bosses when your bank account is low or boss is away.
C. Easy decisions are called "no-brainers" because they do not require any cerebral activity. Examples such as accepting free holiday accommodation around in our lives.
D Accepting an offer from in-laws when you are short on funds and want a holiday is a no-brainer. Another no-brainer is taking the boss's job when she is away.
In view of the passage given below. Choose the best option for question.
When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of Independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased. So has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledging, has grown tremendously. And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetually on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still on walking backwards.
Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing 'world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had. It suffered hardly or not at all during the Second World War. It had advantages like an English speaking elite, quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet, today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness. it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top. Hong Kong is an export powerhouse. So is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back. note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India, no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car. The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism.
The government discouraged imports and encouraged self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and, therefore. became absolutely uncompetitive. only when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent. The years since then have been spent merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it operated under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crookS how were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, how we're to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, how we're to be tolerated in the same way as an inexcusable wan. The high expropriation rates of taxation. the licensing Jaws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector, and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude. The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created.
The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been a but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide. But most of these Changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 ana the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds of support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself. or that of more than handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations. Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no exit policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labour is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business If one industry is not allowed to retrench labour, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labour. In other way too, the government hurts industries.
Public sector monopolies like the department of telecommunications and Yidesh sanchar Nigam Ltd. make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad The infrastructure is in a shambles partly because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business, and partly because it does not have the stomach to change market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government iS dragging itS feet. At the rate, it is going. it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy By then, of course, the world would have moved even further ahead.
The writer is surprised at the Government's attitude toward its Industrialists because.
Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
There is a fairly universal sentiment that the use of nuclear weapons is clearly contrary to morality and that its production probably so, does not go far enough. These activities are not only opposed to morality but also to the law if the legal objection can be added to the moral, the argument against the use and the manufacture of these weapons will considerably be reinforced. Now the time is ripe to evaluate the responsibility of scientists who knowingly use their expertise for the construction of such weapons, which has deleterious effect on mankind.
To this must be added the fact that more than 50 percent of the skilled scientific manpower in the world is now engaged in the armaments industry. How appropriate it is that all this valuable skill should be devoted to the manufacture of weapons of death in a world of poverty is a question that must touch the scientific conscience.
A meeting of biologists on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological consequences of nuclear war added frightening dimension to those forecasts. Its report suggested that the long biological effects resulting from climatic changes may at least be as serious as the immediate ones. Sub-freezing temperatures, low light levels, and high doses of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation extending for many months after a large-scale nuclear war could destroy the biological support system of civilization, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Productivity in natural and agricultural ecosystems could be severely restricted for a year or more. Post war survivors would face starvation as well as freezing conditions in the dark and be exposed to near lethal doses of radiation. If, as now seems possible, the Southern Hemisphere were affected also, global disruption of the biosphere could ensue. In any event, there would be severe consequences, even in the areas not affected directly, because of the interdependence of the world economy. In either case the extinction of a large fraction of the earth’s animals, plants and microorganisms seem possible.
The population size of Homo sapiens conceivably could be reduced to prehistoric levels or below, and extinction of the human species itself cannot be excluded.
Which of the following statements I, II, III and IV are definitely true in the context of the passage?
(I) There is every likelihood of survival of the human species as a consequence of nuclear war.
(II) Nuclear war risks and harmful effects are highly exaggerated.
(III) The post war survivors would be exposed to the benefits of non-lethal radiation.
(IV) Living organisms in the areas which are not directly affected by nuclear was would also suffer.
The questions section is based on the passage. The question is to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
In principle, a cohesive group-one whose members generally agree with one another and support one another’s judgments do a much better job at decision making than it could if it were non-cohesive. When cohesiveness is low or lacking entirely, compliance out of fear of recrimination is likely to be strongest. To overcome this fear, participants in the group’s deliberations need to be confident that they are members in good standing and that the others will continue to value their role in the group, whether or not they agree about a particular issue under discussion. As members of a group feel more accepted by the others, they acquire greater freedom to say what they really think, becoming less likely to use deceitful arguments or to play it safe by dancing around the issues with vapid or conventional comments. Typically, then, the more cohesive a group becomes, the less its members will deliberately censor what they say out of fear of being punished socially for antagonizing their fellow members. But group cohesiveness can have pitfalls as well: while the members of a highly cohesive group can feel much freer to deviate from the majority, their desire for genuine concurrence on every important issue often inclines them not to use this freedom. In a highly cohesive group of decision-makers, the danger is not that individuals will conceal objections they harbor regarding a proposal favored by the majority, but that they will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out critical scrutiny that could reveal grounds for strong objections. Members may then decide that any misgivings they feel are not worth pursuing that the benefit of any doubt should be given to the group consensus. In this way, they may fall victim to a syndrome known as ‘groupthink’, which one psychologist concerned with collective decision making has defined as ‘a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures’. Based on analyses of major fiascos of international diplomacy and military decision making, researchers have identified groupthink behaviour as a recurring pattern that involves several factors: overestimation of the group’s power and morality, manifested, for example, is an illusion of invulnerability, which creates excessive optimism;
closed-mindedness to warnings of problems and to alternative viewpoints; and unwarranted pressures toward uniformity, including self-censorship with respect to doubts about the group’s reasoning and a concomitant shared illusion of unanimity concerning group decisions. The cohesiveness of the decision-making group is an essential antecedent condition for this syndrome but not a sufficient one, so it is important to work toward identifying the additional factors that determine whether group cohesiveness will deteriorate into groupthink or allow for effective decision making.
The passage mentions which one of the following as a component of group think?
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
King Solomon was celebrated for his wisdom. The Queen of the Sheba once paid a visit to his court. She was very much impressed by his wealth and grandeur. She had also heard of his uncanny ability to solve the most difficult puzzles which she meant to test. She showed Solomon two garlands of flowers, one in the right-hand and the other in the left and asked which one was real. The courtiers were puzzled. Both the garlands looked the same. Solomon could not say a word. The Queen felt triumphant. Solomon soon ordered that the windows be opened. A number of bees flew into the hall from the garden and settled on the garland in the right-hand. "The flowers in the right-hand are real", said Solomon. The Queen was greatly impressed with his wisdom.
The Queen intended to test Solomon's
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Once upon a time, there was a royal elephant that used to reside in the premises of the king's palace. The elephant was very dear to the king, so he was well-fed and well treated. There was also a Dog who lived near the Elephant's shed. He was very weak and skinny. He was always fascinated by the smell of rich sweet rice being fed to the royal elephant. One day, the Dog could no longer resist the aroma of the rice and somehow managed to sneak into the Elephant's shed. He ate the grains of sweet rice that fell from the Elephant's mouth. He liked the rice so much, that he started going there daily to eat the rice. For days, the huge Elephant didn't notice the small dog as he was busy enjoying the delicious food. Gradually, the Dog grew bigger and stronger eating such rich food. Finally, the Elephant noticed him and allowed him access to the food. The Elephant enjoyed the company of the Dog and started sharing his food with him. They also started spending time with each other and soon became good friends. They ate together, slept together and played together. While playing, the Elephant would hold the Dog in his trunk and swing him back and forth. Soon neither of them was happy without the other. They became great friends and didn't want to be separated from each other.
Then one day, a man saw the Dog and asked the Elephant-keeper, "I want to buy this Dog. What price do you want for it?" The Elephant keeper didn't own the Dog but sold it and extracted a sum of money from this deal. The man took the Dog to his home village, which was quite far away. The King's Elephant became very sad after this incident. He missed his friend a lot and started neglecting everything. He didn't want to do anything without his dear friend, so he stopped eating, drinking and even bathing. Finally, the Elephant-keeper reported this to the King; however, he didn't mention anything about the Dog. The King had a wise minister, who was known for his keen understanding of animals. The King ordered the minister, "Go to the Elephant shed and find out the reason for the Elephant's condition". The intelligent minister went to the Elephant's shed and found the Elephant very sad. He examined the Elephant and asked the Elephant keeper, "There is nothing wrong with this Elephant's body, then why does he look so sad?" I think this Elephant is grief-stricken, possibly due to the loss of a dear friend.
Do you know if this Elephant shared a close friendship with anyone? The Elephant-keeper said, "There was a Dog who used to eat, sleep and play with the Elephant. He was taken by a stranger three days ago''. The minister went back to the King and said, "Your majesty, in my opinion, the royal Elephant is not sick, but he is lonesome without his dear friend, the Dog". The King said, "You're right, friendship is one of the most wonderful things of life. Do you know where that ·Dog is?" The Minister replied, "Elephant keeper has informed me that a stranger took him away and he doesn't know his whereabouts". The King asked, "how can we bring back my Elephant's friend and make him happy again?" The Minister suggested, "Your Majesty, make a declaration that whoever has the dog that used to live at the royal Elephant's shed will be penalised". The King did the same and the man who had taken the dog, instantly turned him loose when he heard the proclamation. As soon as he was freed, the Dog ran back as fast as he could to the Elephant's shed. The Elephant was so delighted to see the Dog that he picked his friend up with his trunk and swung him back and forth. The Dog wagged his tail, while the Elephant's eyes sparkled with happiness. The King was content to see the Elephant happy once again and rewarded the Minister for his wise judgement.
What was the Minister's diagnosis of the Elephant's condition?
