Lightning-Fast Doubt Resolution

Read the given information carefully and answer the questions that follow:
Eight friends, A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H are sitting around a square table, but not in that order. Four are sitting at the corners and four are sitting on the sides, all facing towards the centre of the table. All of them are different professionals viz. Astronaut, Businessman, Doctor, Engineer, Farmer, Politician, Scientist and Teacher, but not in that order. It is also known that:
1. The businessman is sitting between E and F, who is an astronaut. A, the scientist is sitting directly opposite to H, who is not the doctor.
2. The farmer is sitting second to the left of F. The teacher is not an immediate neighbour of either the engineer or the doctor.
3. C is sitting opposite to the doctor. B is sitting second to the right of D.
4. B, who is sitting at one of the corners, is sitting directly opposite to E. The politician is sitting between the businessman and the scientist.

The two most populous cities and the non-urban region (NUR) of each of three states, Whimshire, Fogglia, and Humbleset, are assigned Pollution Measures (PMs). These nine PMs are all distinct multiples of 10, ranging from 10 to 90. The six cities in increasing order of their PMs are: Blusterburg, Noodleton, Splutterville, Quackford, Mumpypore, Zingaloo.

The Pollution Index (PI) of a state is a weighted average of the PMs of its NUR and cities, with a weight of 50% for the NUR, and 25% each for its two cities.

There is only one pair of an NUR and a city (considering all cities and all NURs) where the PM of the NUR is greater than that of the city. That NUR and the city both belong to Humbleset.

The PIs of all three states are distinct integers, with Humbleset and Fogglia having the highest and the lowest PI respectively.

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions which follow.

As you know, I have striven hard to open English eyes to the emptiness of Shakespeare's philosophy, to the superficiality and second-handedness of his morality, to his weakness and incoherence as a thinker, to his snobbery, his vulgar prejudices, his ignorance, his disqualifications of all sorts for the philosophic eminence claimed for him. I place Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas père, etc., in the second order, because, though they are enormously entertaining, their morality is ready-made; and I point out that the one play, "Hamlet," in which Shakespeare made an attempt to give as a hero one who was dissatisfied with the ready-made morality, is the one which has given the highest impression of his genius, although Hamlet's revolt is unskillfully and inconclusively suggested and not worked out with any philosophic competence.

Among nineteenth-century poets Byron and William Morris saw clearly that Shakespeare was enormously overrated intellectually. A French book, which has been translated into English, has appeared within the last ten years, giving Napoleon's opinions of the drama. His insistence on the superiority of Corneille to Shakespeare on the ground of Corneille's power of grasping a political situation, and of seeing men in their relation to the state, is interesting. Of course you know about Voltaire's criticisms, which are the more noteworthy because Voltaire began with an extravagant admiration for Shakespeare, and got more and more bitter against him as he grew older and less disposed to accept artistic merit as a cover for philosophic deficiencies. Finally, I, for one, shall value Tolstoy's criticism all the more because it is criticism of a foreigner who cannot possibly be enchanted by the mere word-music which makes Shakespeare so irresistible in England. In Tolstoy's estimation, Shakespeare must fall or stand as a thinker, in which capacity I do not think he will stand a moment's examination from so tremendously keen a critic and religious realist. Unfortunately, the English worship their great artists quite indiscriminately and abjectly; so that is quite impossible to make them understand that Shakespeare's extraordinary literary power, his fun, his mimicry, and the endearing qualities that earned him the title of "the gentle Shakespeare"--all of which, whatever Tolstoy may say, are quite unquestionable facts--do not stand or fall with his absurd reputation as a thinker.

Tolstoy will certainly treat that side of his reputation with the severity it deserves; and you will find that the English press will instantly announce that Tolstoy considers his own works greater than Shakespeare's (which in some respects they most certainly are, by the way), and that he has attempted to stigmatize our greatest poet as a liar, a thief, a forger, a murderer, an incendiary, a drunkard, a libertine, a fool, a madman, a coward, a vagabond, and even a man of questionable gentility. You must not be surprised or indignant at this: it is what is called "dramatic criticism" in England and America. Only a few of the best of our journalist-critics will say anything worth reading on the subject.

The passage below is accompanied by three questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Developing countries struggle to break out of a trading and financial system skewed against them because the global north’s economic growth still depends on extracting their resources and labour. A 2022 study calculated that from 1990 to 2015, wealthier nations “drained” the poor world of $242tn (in 2010 prices), worth roughly a quarter of global-north income. The authors argued this shift takes place subtly and almost invisibly, without the overt coercion of the colonial apparatus and, therefore, without provoking moral outrage. However, “unequal exchange” was behind global inequality, uneven development and ecological degradation [...] Dr Hauge’s book details how the global north and its powerful corporations block fair market access for the global south (developing nations) while dodging responsibility for ecological harm. He highlights that low-income countries account for just 1% of global “excess resource use” yet are pressured to adopt green policies hastily, often with little support, while the global north continues its unsustainable practices. The rich world, Dr Hauge writes, “has colonised the planet’s ecological commons, and the No. 1 priority should be to decolonise it”. There’s no arguing with that. What must be done? We could start with comprehensive debt relief, fair climate funding and reformed global trade rules to empower developing nations with the resources and autonomy needed for climate-compatible growth - stimulating equitable and productive global demand.

Amul’s warehouse is located in Ahmadabad. Amul supplies milk to six nearby towns namely - Bijnor, Chakali, Damoh, Erantim, Fatehpur and Gemini - via road transport. Bijnor is directly connected to Chakali i.e. vehicles can travel to and fro between Bijnor and Chakali without passing through any other town. Similarly, 9 other pairs - Ahmadabad & Bijnor, Bijnor & Fatehpur, Erantim & Damoh, Erantim & Fatehpur, Ahmadabad & Chakali, Bijnor & Damoh, Chakali & Fatehpur,  Fatehpur & Damoh and Erantim & Gemini - are directly connected. It takes exactly 20 minutes to reach from one place to another place if the two places are directly connected.

A milk-delivery truck starts at 5:00 am from Ahmadabad. The truck has to deliver milk packets to each of the six towns. The truck returns to Ahmadabad after delivering the milk packets to all the towns. This is called Milk Distribution Cycle (MDC).
The truck stops for exactly 5 minutes in each town for unloading milk packets. If the truck has already delivered milk to a particular town then the truck will not stop in that town again even if the truck passes through it again.
Assume that the truck delivers milk to any town in its first visit itself.

A person named “ROBEN” is a believer in Numerology.
He number-coded each letter of the alphabet as: A-1, B-2, C-3, … Z-26.
His wife's name has some numeric properties:
1) It is a five lettered word with no letters repeated.
2) Only the alphabet ‘N’ is common between his and his wife’s names.
3) The product of the number codes of the letters of both their names is the same.
4) The name does not have the alphabet ‘A’
5) The fourth letter from the left is the second smallest and if it is removed from the word, all the remaining letters are in alphabetical order.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Last week, a bedridden retiree living with his wife in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) began feeling feverish with a bit of tightness in his chest - tell-tale signs of Covid-19. Satya Deo Prasad, 68, had possibly picked up the infection from his visits to a local hospital to get dialysis for his failing kidneys.  His daughter, based some 1,900km (1,180 miles) away in the western city of Pune, called a Kolkata helpline for an ambulance to pick her father up and take him to the hospital. After three hours, an ambulance arrived. It carried no attendant and the driver parked it some distance away from Mr Deo's house and refused to go any further. Over the telephone, Alka Prasad begged the driver to pick her father up from the house, telling him that her 62-year-old mother was in no state to bring him to the vehicle. But to no avail. "I am not going to touch a COVID 'body'," the driver, who was in protective gear, said flatly. "He will have to come out and walk into the ambulance." The panic-stricken daughter called the helpline again, which sent another ambulance with volunteers and picked up Mr Deo later that evening. "It took a full day to take him to the hospital. The stigma attached to the disease was the primary reason," Ms Prasad told me.

With more than one million reported infections, India has the world's third-largest caseload of Covid-19. As the virus spreads, so do fear and stigma, inflicting the rich and the poor, and pervading cities and villages. "Fear and stigma have devoured us," says M Mitra, a Kolkata-based homemaker whose father had tested positive for the disease.  At the receiving end of the stigma are people who have been infected and recovered from the disease, health workers and doctors. The United Nations says "fears, rumours and stigma" are key challenges accompanying Covid-19 globally.

In India, social stigma around the disease has led to people being labelled and discriminated against. It has forced people to hide illness, avoid tests and delay hospitalisation, often with fatal consequences. The stigma attached to quarantine has meant that people returning from isolation are often treated as outcasts. In April an incident involving an Indian Islamic organisation, Tablighi Jamaat, caused massive outrage and led to reports of Islamophobia across the country. Such social pressure can have catastrophic consequences.

Hours after the death of her husband from Covid-19 in early July, a homemaker in Siliguri in West Bengal picked up her two children, hailed an auto-rickshaw and got off at near the nearest railway track. There, they tried to kill themselves by throwing themselves in front of a moving train, before being rescued by locals. In many parts of their town, authorities had marked houses with Covid-19 patients by putting up bamboo barricades in front. In other parts, they put up signs like "Danger, COVID ahead", pointing to houses with patients. "The virus is like a death sentence for many. They believe if the disease doesn't kill you, the stigma will," says Abhijit Chowdhury, a physician who runs COVID Care Network, comprising a group of volunteers and a helpline to tackle stigma.