CAT RC Questions | CAT RC- Social Science questions
Reading Comprehension Based on Social Science- Passages based on History, Geography, Psychology, Political Thoughts, Sociology, Economy, and Business Contemporary Issues etc.Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Steven Pinker’s new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” offers a pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but achievable ideal in personal and civic life. . . . Pinker’s ambition to illuminate such a crucial topic offers the welcome prospect of a return to sanity. . . . It’s no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance. It’s also plausible to believe that a wider application of the rational tools he analyzes would improve the world in important ways. His primer on statistics and scientific uncertainty is particularly timely and should be required reading before consuming any news about the [COVID] pandemic. More broadly, he argues that less media coverage of shocking but vanishingly rare events, from shark attacks to adverse vaccine reactions, would help prevent dangerous overreactions, fatalism and the diversion of finite resources away from solvable but less-dramatic issues, like malnutrition in the developing world. It’s a reasonable critique, and Pinker is not the first to make it. But analyzing the political economy of journalism — its funding structures, ownership concentration and increasing reliance on social media shares — would have given a fuller picture of why so much coverage is so misguided and what we might do about it. Pinker’s main focus is the sort of conscious, sequential reasoning that can track the steps in a geometric proof or an argument in formal logic. Skill in this domain maps directly onto the navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information. . . . Despite the undeniable power of the sort of rationality he describes, many of the deepest insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of epiphany. From the 19th-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene to any of Mozart’s symphonies, much extraordinary human achievement is not a product of conscious, sequential reasoning. Even Plato’s Socrates — who anticipated many of Pinker’s points by nearly 2,500 years, showing the virtue of knowing what you do not know and examining all premises in arguments, not simply trusting speakers’ authority or charisma — attributed many of his most profound insights to dreams and visions. Conscious reasoning is helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it would be interesting to consider the hidden aquifers that make much of the grain grow in the first place. The role of moral and ethical education in promoting rational behavior is also underexplored. Pinker recognizes that rationality “is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one.” But this profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, doesn’t really get developed. This is a shame, since possessing the right sort of moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Steven Pinker’s new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” offers a pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but achievable ideal in personal and civic life. . . . Pinker’s ambition to illuminate such a crucial topic offers the welcome prospect of a return to sanity. . . . It’s no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance. It’s also plausible to believe that a wider application of the rational tools he analyzes would improve the world in important ways. His primer on statistics and scientific uncertainty is particularly timely and should be required reading before consuming any news about the [COVID] pandemic. More broadly, he argues that less media coverage of shocking but vanishingly rare events, from shark attacks to adverse vaccine reactions, would help prevent dangerous overreactions, fatalism and the diversion of finite resources away from solvable but less-dramatic issues, like malnutrition in the developing world. It’s a reasonable critique, and Pinker is not the first to make it. But analyzing the political economy of journalism — its funding structures, ownership concentration and increasing reliance on social media shares — would have given a fuller picture of why so much coverage is so misguided and what we might do about it. Pinker’s main focus is the sort of conscious, sequential reasoning that can track the steps in a geometric proof or an argument in formal logic. Skill in this domain maps directly onto the navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information. . . . Despite the undeniable power of the sort of rationality he describes, many of the deepest insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of epiphany. From the 19th-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene to any of Mozart’s symphonies, much extraordinary human achievement is not a product of conscious, sequential reasoning. Even Plato’s Socrates — who anticipated many of Pinker’s points by nearly 2,500 years, showing the virtue of knowing what you do not know and examining all premises in arguments, not simply trusting speakers’ authority or charisma — attributed many of his most profound insights to dreams and visions. Conscious reasoning is helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it would be interesting to consider the hidden aquifers that make much of the grain grow in the first place. The role of moral and ethical education in promoting rational behavior is also underexplored. Pinker recognizes that rationality “is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one.” But this profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, doesn’t really get developed. This is a shame, since possessing the right sort of moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways.
CAT/2023.3(RC)
Question. 2
The author endorses Pinker’s views on the importance of logical reasoning as it:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Steven Pinker’s new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” offers a pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but achievable ideal in personal and civic life. . . . Pinker’s ambition to illuminate such a crucial topic offers the welcome prospect of a return to sanity. . . . It’s no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance. It’s also plausible to believe that a wider application of the rational tools he analyzes would improve the world in important ways. His primer on statistics and scientific uncertainty is particularly timely and should be required reading before consuming any news about the [COVID] pandemic. More broadly, he argues that less media coverage of shocking but vanishingly rare events, from shark attacks to adverse vaccine reactions, would help prevent dangerous overreactions, fatalism and the diversion of finite resources away from solvable but less-dramatic issues, like malnutrition in the developing world. It’s a reasonable critique, and Pinker is not the first to make it. But analyzing the political economy of journalism — its funding structures, ownership concentration and increasing reliance on social media shares — would have given a fuller picture of why so much coverage is so misguided and what we might do about it. Pinker’s main focus is the sort of conscious, sequential reasoning that can track the steps in a geometric proof or an argument in formal logic. Skill in this domain maps directly onto the navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information. . . . Despite the undeniable power of the sort of rationality he describes, many of the deepest insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of epiphany. From the 19th-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene to any of Mozart’s symphonies, much extraordinary human achievement is not a product of conscious, sequential reasoning. Even Plato’s Socrates — who anticipated many of Pinker’s points by nearly 2,500 years, showing the virtue of knowing what you do not know and examining all premises in arguments, not simply trusting speakers’ authority or charisma — attributed many of his most profound insights to dreams and visions. Conscious reasoning is helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it would be interesting to consider the hidden aquifers that make much of the grain grow in the first place. The role of moral and ethical education in promoting rational behavior is also underexplored. Pinker recognizes that rationality “is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one.” But this profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, doesn’t really get developed. This is a shame, since possessing the right sort of moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways.
CAT/2023.3(RC)
Question. 3
According to the author, for Pinker as well as the ancient Greek philosophers, rational thinking involves all of the following EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Steven Pinker’s new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” offers a pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but achievable ideal in personal and civic life. . . . Pinker’s ambition to illuminate such a crucial topic offers the welcome prospect of a return to sanity. . . . It’s no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance. It’s also plausible to believe that a wider application of the rational tools he analyzes would improve the world in important ways. His primer on statistics and scientific uncertainty is particularly timely and should be required reading before consuming any news about the [COVID] pandemic. More broadly, he argues that less media coverage of shocking but vanishingly rare events, from shark attacks to adverse vaccine reactions, would help prevent dangerous overreactions, fatalism and the diversion of finite resources away from solvable but less-dramatic issues, like malnutrition in the developing world. It’s a reasonable critique, and Pinker is not the first to make it. But analyzing the political economy of journalism — its funding structures, ownership concentration and increasing reliance on social media shares — would have given a fuller picture of why so much coverage is so misguided and what we might do about it. Pinker’s main focus is the sort of conscious, sequential reasoning that can track the steps in a geometric proof or an argument in formal logic. Skill in this domain maps directly onto the navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information. . . . Despite the undeniable power of the sort of rationality he describes, many of the deepest insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of epiphany. From the 19th-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene to any of Mozart’s symphonies, much extraordinary human achievement is not a product of conscious, sequential reasoning. Even Plato’s Socrates — who anticipated many of Pinker’s points by nearly 2,500 years, showing the virtue of knowing what you do not know and examining all premises in arguments, not simply trusting speakers’ authority or charisma — attributed many of his most profound insights to dreams and visions. Conscious reasoning is helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it would be interesting to consider the hidden aquifers that make much of the grain grow in the first place. The role of moral and ethical education in promoting rational behavior is also underexplored. Pinker recognizes that rationality “is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one.” But this profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, doesn’t really get developed. This is a shame, since possessing the right sort of moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways.
CAT/2023.3(RC)
Question. 4
The author mentions Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene and Mozart’s symphonies to illustrate the point that:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
In 2006, the Met [art museum in the US] agreed to return the Euphronios krater, a masterpiece Greek urn that had been a museum draw since 1972. In 2007, the Getty [art museum in the US] agreed to return 40 objects to Italy, including a marble Aphrodite, in the midst of looting scandals. And in December, Sotheby’s and a private owner agreed to return an ancient Khmer statue of a warrior, pulled from auction two years before, to Cambodia. Cultural property, or patrimony, laws limit the transfer of cultural property outside the source country’s territory, including outright export prohibitions and national ownership laws. Most art historians, archaeologists, museum officials and policymakers portray cultural property laws in general as invaluable tools for counteracting the ugly legacy of Western cultural imperialism. During the late 19th and early 20th century — an era former Met director Thomas Hoving called “the age of piracy” — American and European art museums acquired antiquities by hook or by crook, from grave robbers or souvenir collectors, bounty from digs and ancient sites in impoverished but art-rich source countries. Patrimony laws were intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs. . . . I surveyed 90 countries with one or more archaeological sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, and my study shows that in most cases the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law. There are 222 archaeological sites listed for those 90 countries. When you look into the history of the sites, you see that all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws. . . . Strict cultural patrimony laws are popular in most countries. But the downside may be that they reduce incentives for foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions to invest in overseas exploration because their efforts will not necessarily be rewarded by opportunities to hold, display and study what is uncovered. To the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects, artifacts and sites may still be discovered. . . . The survey has far-reaching implications. It suggests that source countries, particularly in the developing world, should narrow their cultural property laws so that they can reap the benefits of new archaeological discoveries, which typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride. This does not mean these nations should abolish restrictions on foreign excavation and foreign claims to artifacts. China provides an interesting alternative approach for source nations eager for foreign archaeological investment. From 1935 to 2003, China had a restrictive cultural property law that prohibited foreign ownership of Chinese cultural artifacts. In those years, China’s most significant archaeological discovery occurred by chance, in 1974, when peasant farmers accidentally uncovered ranks of buried terra cotta warriors, which are part of Emperor Qin’s spectacular tomb system. In 2003, the Chinese government switched course, dropping its cultural property law and embracing collaborative international archaeological research. Since then, China has nominated 11 archaeological sites for inclusion in the World Heritage Site list, including eight in 2013, the most ever for China.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
In 2006, the Met [art museum in the US] agreed to return the Euphronios krater, a masterpiece Greek urn that had been a museum draw since 1972. In 2007, the Getty [art museum in the US] agreed to return 40 objects to Italy, including a marble Aphrodite, in the midst of looting scandals. And in December, Sotheby’s and a private owner agreed to return an ancient Khmer statue of a warrior, pulled from auction two years before, to Cambodia. Cultural property, or patrimony, laws limit the transfer of cultural property outside the source country’s territory, including outright export prohibitions and national ownership laws. Most art historians, archaeologists, museum officials and policymakers portray cultural property laws in general as invaluable tools for counteracting the ugly legacy of Western cultural imperialism. During the late 19th and early 20th century — an era former Met director Thomas Hoving called “the age of piracy” — American and European art museums acquired antiquities by hook or by crook, from grave robbers or souvenir collectors, bounty from digs and ancient sites in impoverished but art-rich source countries. Patrimony laws were intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs. . . . I surveyed 90 countries with one or more archaeological sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, and my study shows that in most cases the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law. There are 222 archaeological sites listed for those 90 countries. When you look into the history of the sites, you see that all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws. . . . Strict cultural patrimony laws are popular in most countries. But the downside may be that they reduce incentives for foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions to invest in overseas exploration because their efforts will not necessarily be rewarded by opportunities to hold, display and study what is uncovered. To the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects, artifacts and sites may still be discovered. . . . The survey has far-reaching implications. It suggests that source countries, particularly in the developing world, should narrow their cultural property laws so that they can reap the benefits of new archaeological discoveries, which typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride. This does not mean these nations should abolish restrictions on foreign excavation and foreign claims to artifacts. China provides an interesting alternative approach for source nations eager for foreign archaeological investment. From 1935 to 2003, China had a restrictive cultural property law that prohibited foreign ownership of Chinese cultural artifacts. In those years, China’s most significant archaeological discovery occurred by chance, in 1974, when peasant farmers accidentally uncovered ranks of buried terra cotta warriors, which are part of Emperor Qin’s spectacular tomb system. In 2003, the Chinese government switched course, dropping its cultural property law and embracing collaborative international archaeological research. Since then, China has nominated 11 archaeological sites for inclusion in the World Heritage Site list, including eight in 2013, the most ever for China.
CAT/2023.3(RC)
Question. 6
Which one of the following statements best expresses the paradox of patrimony laws?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
In 2006, the Met [art museum in the US] agreed to return the Euphronios krater, a masterpiece Greek urn that had been a museum draw since 1972. In 2007, the Getty [art museum in the US] agreed to return 40 objects to Italy, including a marble Aphrodite, in the midst of looting scandals. And in December, Sotheby’s and a private owner agreed to return an ancient Khmer statue of a warrior, pulled from auction two years before, to Cambodia. Cultural property, or patrimony, laws limit the transfer of cultural property outside the source country’s territory, including outright export prohibitions and national ownership laws. Most art historians, archaeologists, museum officials and policymakers portray cultural property laws in general as invaluable tools for counteracting the ugly legacy of Western cultural imperialism. During the late 19th and early 20th century — an era former Met director Thomas Hoving called “the age of piracy” — American and European art museums acquired antiquities by hook or by crook, from grave robbers or souvenir collectors, bounty from digs and ancient sites in impoverished but art-rich source countries. Patrimony laws were intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs. . . . I surveyed 90 countries with one or more archaeological sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, and my study shows that in most cases the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law. There are 222 archaeological sites listed for those 90 countries. When you look into the history of the sites, you see that all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws. . . . Strict cultural patrimony laws are popular in most countries. But the downside may be that they reduce incentives for foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions to invest in overseas exploration because their efforts will not necessarily be rewarded by opportunities to hold, display and study what is uncovered. To the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects, artifacts and sites may still be discovered. . . . The survey has far-reaching implications. It suggests that source countries, particularly in the developing world, should narrow their cultural property laws so that they can reap the benefits of new archaeological discoveries, which typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride. This does not mean these nations should abolish restrictions on foreign excavation and foreign claims to artifacts. China provides an interesting alternative approach for source nations eager for foreign archaeological investment. From 1935 to 2003, China had a restrictive cultural property law that prohibited foreign ownership of Chinese cultural artifacts. In those years, China’s most significant archaeological discovery occurred by chance, in 1974, when peasant farmers accidentally uncovered ranks of buried terra cotta warriors, which are part of Emperor Qin’s spectacular tomb system. In 2003, the Chinese government switched course, dropping its cultural property law and embracing collaborative international archaeological research. Since then, China has nominated 11 archaeological sites for inclusion in the World Heritage Site list, including eight in 2013, the most ever for China.
CAT/2023.3(RC)
Question. 7
Which one of the following statements, if true, would undermine the central idea of the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
In 2006, the Met [art museum in the US] agreed to return the Euphronios krater, a masterpiece Greek urn that had been a museum draw since 1972. In 2007, the Getty [art museum in the US] agreed to return 40 objects to Italy, including a marble Aphrodite, in the midst of looting scandals. And in December, Sotheby’s and a private owner agreed to return an ancient Khmer statue of a warrior, pulled from auction two years before, to Cambodia. Cultural property, or patrimony, laws limit the transfer of cultural property outside the source country’s territory, including outright export prohibitions and national ownership laws. Most art historians, archaeologists, museum officials and policymakers portray cultural property laws in general as invaluable tools for counteracting the ugly legacy of Western cultural imperialism. During the late 19th and early 20th century — an era former Met director Thomas Hoving called “the age of piracy” — American and European art museums acquired antiquities by hook or by crook, from grave robbers or souvenir collectors, bounty from digs and ancient sites in impoverished but art-rich source countries. Patrimony laws were intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs. . . . I surveyed 90 countries with one or more archaeological sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, and my study shows that in most cases the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law. There are 222 archaeological sites listed for those 90 countries. When you look into the history of the sites, you see that all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws. . . . Strict cultural patrimony laws are popular in most countries. But the downside may be that they reduce incentives for foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions to invest in overseas exploration because their efforts will not necessarily be rewarded by opportunities to hold, display and study what is uncovered. To the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects, artifacts and sites may still be discovered. . . . The survey has far-reaching implications. It suggests that source countries, particularly in the developing world, should narrow their cultural property laws so that they can reap the benefits of new archaeological discoveries, which typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride. This does not mean these nations should abolish restrictions on foreign excavation and foreign claims to artifacts. China provides an interesting alternative approach for source nations eager for foreign archaeological investment. From 1935 to 2003, China had a restrictive cultural property law that prohibited foreign ownership of Chinese cultural artifacts. In those years, China’s most significant archaeological discovery occurred by chance, in 1974, when peasant farmers accidentally uncovered ranks of buried terra cotta warriors, which are part of Emperor Qin’s spectacular tomb system. In 2003, the Chinese government switched course, dropping its cultural property law and embracing collaborative international archaeological research. Since then, China has nominated 11 archaeological sites for inclusion in the World Heritage Site list, including eight in 2013, the most ever for China.
CAT/2023.3(RC)
Question. 8
From the passage we can infer that the author is likely to advise poor, but archaeologically-rich source countries to do all of the following, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. . . . This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free.". . . What is a historical fact? . . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history—archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . . The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.
CAT/2023.2(RC)
Question. 9
All of the following, if true, can weaken the passage’s claim that facts do not speak for themselves, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. . . . This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free.". . . What is a historical fact? . . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history—archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . . The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.
CAT/2023.2(RC)
Question. 10
All of the following describe the “common-sense view” of history, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. . . . This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free.". . . What is a historical fact? . . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history—archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . . The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.
CAT/2023.2(RC)
Question. 11
If the author of the passage were to write a book on the Battle of Hastings along the lines of his/her own reasoning, the focus of the historical account would be on:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. . . . This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free.". . . What is a historical fact? . . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history—archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . . The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally—or perhaps even knowingly— contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . . Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.” It’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting” has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton. So you’re cool and you care about the planet; you’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective? According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . . Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally—or perhaps even knowingly— contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . . Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.” It’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting” has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton. So you’re cool and you care about the planet; you’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective? According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . . Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally—or perhaps even knowingly— contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . . Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.” It’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting” has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton. So you’re cool and you care about the planet; you’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective? According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . . Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally—or perhaps even knowingly— contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . . Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.” It’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting” has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton. So you’re cool and you care about the planet; you’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective? According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . . Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . . . The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as “Lupin”, a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . . In 2015, about 75% of Netflix’s original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a media-analysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . . Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box. In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. “Cultural sovereignty” is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous. They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent’s non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common—even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart 2,000 years ago beats doing so in reality.
CAT/2023.2(RC)
Question. 17
Which one of the following research findings would weaken the author’s conclusion in the final paragraph?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . . . The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as “Lupin”, a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . . In 2015, about 75% of Netflix’s original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a media-analysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . . Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box. In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. “Cultural sovereignty” is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous. They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent’s non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common—even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart 2,000 years ago beats doing so in reality.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . . . The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as “Lupin”, a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . . In 2015, about 75% of Netflix’s original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a media-analysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . . Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box. In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. “Cultural sovereignty” is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous. They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent’s non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common—even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart 2,000 years ago beats doing so in reality.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . . . The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as “Lupin”, a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . . In 2015, about 75% of Netflix’s original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a media-analysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . . Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box. In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. “Cultural sovereignty” is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous. They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent’s non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common—even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart 2,000 years ago beats doing so in reality.
CAT/2023.2(RC)
Question. 20
Based on information provided in the passage, all of the following are true, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . . .
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,” or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don’t acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . . .
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,” or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don’t acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 22
All of the following are advanced by the author as reasons why non-geographers disregard geographic influences on human phenomena EXCEPT their:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . . .
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,” or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don’t acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 23
The author criticises scholars who are not geographers for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . . .
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,” or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don’t acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 24
The examples of the Inuit and Aboriginal Australians are offered in the passage to show:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[Fifty] years after its publication in English [in 1972], and just a year since [Marshall] Sahlins himself died—we may ask: why did [his essay] “Original Affluent Society” have such an impact, and how has it fared since? . . . Sahlins’s principal argument was simple but counterintuitive: before being driven into marginal environments by colonial powers, huntergatherers, or foragers, were not engaged in a desperate struggle for meager survival. Quite the contrary, they satisfied their needs with far less work than people in agricultural and industrial societies, leaving them more time to use as they wished. Hunters, he quipped, keep bankers’ hours. Refusing to maximize, many were “more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game.” . . . The so-called Neolithic Revolution, rather than improving life, imposed a harsher work regime and set in motion the long history of growing inequality . . .
Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data—the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic—but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
With its title’s nod toward The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s famously skeptical portrait of America’s postwar prosperity and inequality, and dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism, “The Original Affluent Society” brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world. It did so through the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers’ lives really exist. If the capitalist world seeks wealth through ever greater material production to meet infinitely expansive desires, foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but by wanting less. If it seems that foragers have been left behind by “progress,” this is due only to the ethnocentric self-congratulation of the West. Rather than accumulate material goods, these societies are guided by other values: leisure, mobility, and above all, freedom. . . .
Viewed in today’s context, of course, not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today. Rebuking evolutionary anthropologists for treating present-day foragers as “left behind” by progress, it too can succumb to the temptation to use them as proxies for the Paleolithic. Yet these characteristics should not distract us from appreciating Sahlins’s effort to show that if we want to conjure new possibilities, we need to learn about actually inhabitable worlds.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 25
The author of the passage mentions Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society” to:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[Fifty] years after its publication in English [in 1972], and just a year since [Marshall] Sahlins himself died—we may ask: why did [his essay] “Original Affluent Society” have such an impact, and how has it fared since? . . . Sahlins’s principal argument was simple but counterintuitive: before being driven into marginal environments by colonial powers, huntergatherers, or foragers, were not engaged in a desperate struggle for meager survival. Quite the contrary, they satisfied their needs with far less work than people in agricultural and industrial societies, leaving them more time to use as they wished. Hunters, he quipped, keep bankers’ hours. Refusing to maximize, many were “more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game.” . . . The so-called Neolithic Revolution, rather than improving life, imposed a harsher work regime and set in motion the long history of growing inequality . . .
Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data—the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic—but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
With its title’s nod toward The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s famously skeptical portrait of America’s postwar prosperity and inequality, and dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism, “The Original Affluent Society” brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world. It did so through the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers’ lives really exist. If the capitalist world seeks wealth through ever greater material production to meet infinitely expansive desires, foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but by wanting less. If it seems that foragers have been left behind by “progress,” this is due only to the ethnocentric self-congratulation of the West. Rather than accumulate material goods, these societies are guided by other values: leisure, mobility, and above all, freedom. . . .
Viewed in today’s context, of course, not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today. Rebuking evolutionary anthropologists for treating present-day foragers as “left behind” by progress, it too can succumb to the temptation to use them as proxies for the Paleolithic. Yet these characteristics should not distract us from appreciating Sahlins’s effort to show that if we want to conjure new possibilities, we need to learn about actually inhabitable worlds.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[Fifty] years after its publication in English [in 1972], and just a year since [Marshall] Sahlins himself died—we may ask: why did [his essay] “Original Affluent Society” have such an impact, and how has it fared since? . . . Sahlins’s principal argument was simple but counterintuitive: before being driven into marginal environments by colonial powers, huntergatherers, or foragers, were not engaged in a desperate struggle for meager survival. Quite the contrary, they satisfied their needs with far less work than people in agricultural and industrial societies, leaving them more time to use as they wished. Hunters, he quipped, keep bankers’ hours. Refusing to maximize, many were “more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game.” . . . The so-called Neolithic Revolution, rather than improving life, imposed a harsher work regime and set in motion the long history of growing inequality . . .
Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data—the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic—but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
With its title’s nod toward The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s famously skeptical portrait of America’s postwar prosperity and inequality, and dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism, “The Original Affluent Society” brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world. It did so through the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers’ lives really exist. If the capitalist world seeks wealth through ever greater material production to meet infinitely expansive desires, foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but by wanting less. If it seems that foragers have been left behind by “progress,” this is due only to the ethnocentric self-congratulation of the West. Rather than accumulate material goods, these societies are guided by other values: leisure, mobility, and above all, freedom. . . .
Viewed in today’s context, of course, not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today. Rebuking evolutionary anthropologists for treating present-day foragers as “left behind” by progress, it too can succumb to the temptation to use them as proxies for the Paleolithic. Yet these characteristics should not distract us from appreciating Sahlins’s effort to show that if we want to conjure new possibilities, we need to learn about actually inhabitable worlds.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[Fifty] years after its publication in English [in 1972], and just a year since [Marshall] Sahlins himself died—we may ask: why did [his essay] “Original Affluent Society” have such an impact, and how has it fared since? . . . Sahlins’s principal argument was simple but counterintuitive: before being driven into marginal environments by colonial powers, huntergatherers, or foragers, were not engaged in a desperate struggle for meager survival. Quite the contrary, they satisfied their needs with far less work than people in agricultural and industrial societies, leaving them more time to use as they wished. Hunters, he quipped, keep bankers’ hours. Refusing to maximize, many were “more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game.” . . . The so-called Neolithic Revolution, rather than improving life, imposed a harsher work regime and set in motion the long history of growing inequality . . .
Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data—the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic—but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
With its title’s nod toward The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s famously skeptical portrait of America’s postwar prosperity and inequality, and dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism, “The Original Affluent Society” brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world. It did so through the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers’ lives really exist. If the capitalist world seeks wealth through ever greater material production to meet infinitely expansive desires, foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but by wanting less. If it seems that foragers have been left behind by “progress,” this is due only to the ethnocentric self-congratulation of the West. Rather than accumulate material goods, these societies are guided by other values: leisure, mobility, and above all, freedom. . . .
Viewed in today’s context, of course, not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today. Rebuking evolutionary anthropologists for treating present-day foragers as “left behind” by progress, it too can succumb to the temptation to use them as proxies for the Paleolithic. Yet these characteristics should not distract us from appreciating Sahlins’s effort to show that if we want to conjure new possibilities, we need to learn about actually inhabitable worlds.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting – land-focused and inwardlooking.
My new book “Writing Ocean Worlds” explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking – full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different – from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader’s mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. . . .
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. . . .
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 29
All of the following statements, if true, would weaken the passage’s claim about the relationship between mainstream English-language fiction and Indian Ocean novels EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting – land-focused and inwardlooking.
My new book “Writing Ocean Worlds” explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking – full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different – from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader’s mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. . . .
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. . . .
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting – land-focused and inwardlooking.
My new book “Writing Ocean Worlds” explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking – full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different – from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader’s mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. . . .
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. . . .
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 31
Which one of the following statements is not true about migration in the Indian Ocean world?
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting – land-focused and inwardlooking.
My new book “Writing Ocean Worlds” explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking – full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different – from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader’s mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. . . .
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. . . .
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
CAT/2023.1(RC)
Question. 32
All of the following claims contribute to the “remapping” discussed by the passage, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
RESIDENTS of Lozère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,” said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists enjoy visiting a wolf park in Lozère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. . . .
As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii—wolf-catchers—was created in France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the 1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves have since spread to areas such as Lozère, delighting environmentalists, who see the predators’ presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old enemy.
Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the story. In Lozère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf in Europe—hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned by the state—plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the recovery of wolf populations.
As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who celebrate the predators’ return. Farmers’ losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals’ spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
RESIDENTS of Lozère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,” said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists enjoy visiting a wolf park in Lozère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. . . .
As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii—wolf-catchers—was created in France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the 1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves have since spread to areas such as Lozère, delighting environmentalists, who see the predators’ presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old enemy.
Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the story. In Lozère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf in Europe—hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned by the state—plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the recovery of wolf populations.
As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who celebrate the predators’ return. Farmers’ losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals’ spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
RESIDENTS of Lozère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,” said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists enjoy visiting a wolf park in Lozère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. . . .
As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii—wolf-catchers—was created in France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the 1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves have since spread to areas such as Lozère, delighting environmentalists, who see the predators’ presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old enemy.
Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the story. In Lozère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf in Europe—hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned by the state—plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the recovery of wolf populations.
As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who celebrate the predators’ return. Farmers’ losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals’ spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.
Comprehension
Directions for the questions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
RESIDENTS of Lozère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,” said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists enjoy visiting a wolf park in Lozère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. . . .
As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii—wolf-catchers—was created in France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the 1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves have since spread to areas such as Lozère, delighting environmentalists, who see the predators’ presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old enemy.
Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the story. In Lozère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf in Europe—hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned by the state—plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the recovery of wolf populations.
As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who celebrate the predators’ return. Farmers’ losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals’ spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
As software improves, the people using it become less likely to sharpen their own know-how. Applications that offer lots of prompts and tips are often to blame; simpler, less solicitous programs push people harder to think, act and learn. Ten years ago, information scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands had a group of people carry out complicated analytical and planning tasks using either rudimentary software that provided no assistance or sophisticated software that offered a great deal of aid. The researchers found that the people using the simple software developed better strategies, made fewer mistakes and developed a deeper aptitude for the work. The people using the more advanced software, meanwhile, would often “aimlessly click around” when confronted with a tricky problem. The supposedly helpful software actually short-circuited their thinking and learning. [According to] philosopher Hubert Dreyfus . . . . our skills get sharper only through practice, when we use them regularly to overcome different sorts of difficult challenges. The goal of modern software, by contrast, is to ease our way through such challenges. Arduous, painstaking work is exactly what programmers are most eager to automate—after all, that is where the immediate efficiency gains tend to lie. In other words, a fundamental tension ripples between the interests of the people doing the automation and the interests of the people doing the work. Nevertheless, automation’s scope continues to widen. With the rise of electronic health records, physicians increasingly rely on software templates to guide them through patient exams. The programs incorporate valuable checklists and alerts, but they also make medicine more routinized and formulaic—and distance doctors from their patients. . . . Harvard Medical School professor Beth Lown, in a 2012 journal article . . . warned that when doctors become “screen-driven,” following a computer’s prompts rather than “the patient’s narrative thread,” their thinking can become constricted. In the worst cases, they may miss important diagnostic signals. . . . In a recent paper published in the journal Diagnosis, three medical researchers . . . examined the misdiagnosis of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the U.S., at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. They argue that the digital templates used by the hospital’s clinicians to record patient information probably helped to induce a kind of tunnel vision. “These highly constrained tools,” the researchers write, “are optimized for data capture but at the expense of sacrificing their utility for appropriate triage and diagnosis, leading users to miss the forest for the trees.” Medical software, they write, is no “replacement for basic history-taking, examination skills, and critical thinking.” . . . There is an alternative. In “human-centered automation,” the talents of people take precedence. . . . In this model, software plays an essential but secondary role. It takes over routine functions that a human operator has already mastered, issues alerts when unexpected situations arise, provides fresh information that expands the operator’s perspective and counters the biases that often distort human thinking. The technology becomes the expert’s partner, not the expert’s replacement.
CAT/2022.3(RC)
Question. 37
In the context of the passage, all of the following can be considered examples of humancentered automation EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
CAT/2022.3(RC)
Question. 42
The author notes that, “At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas.” Which one of the following statements, if true, does not contradict this statement?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants. In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live. Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Interpretations of the Indian past . . . were inevitably influenced by colonial concerns and interests, and also by prevalent European ideas about history, civilization and the Orient. Orientalist scholars studied the languages and the texts with selected Indian scholars, but made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them. The readings therefore are something of a disjuncture from the traditional ways of looking at the Indian past. . . . Orientalism [which we can understand broadly as Western perceptions of the Orient] fuelled the fantasy and the freedom sought by European Romanticism, particularly in its opposition to the more disciplined Neo-Classicism. The cultures of Asia were seen as bringing a new Romantic paradigm. Another Renaissance was anticipated through an acquaintance with the Orient, and this, it was thought, would be different from the earlier Greek Renaissance. It was believed that this Oriental Renaissance would liberate European thought and literature from the increasing focus on discipline and rationality that had followed from the earlier Enlightenment. . . . [The Romantic English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge,] were apprehensive of the changes introduced by industrialization and turned to nature and to fantasies of the Orient. However, this enthusiasm gradually changed, to conform with the emphasis later in the nineteenth century on the innate superiority of European civilization. Oriental civilizations were now seen as having once been great but currently in decline. The various phases of Orientalism tended to mould European understanding of the Indian past into a particular pattern. . . . There was an attempt to formulate Indian culture as uniform, such formulations being derived from texts that were given priority. The so-called ‘discovery’ of India was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit. This interpretation tended to emphasize non-historical aspects of Indian culture, for example the idea of an unchanging continuity of society and religion over 3,000 years; and it was believed that the Indian pattern of life was so concerned with metaphysics and the subtleties of religious belief that little attention was given to the more tangible aspects. German Romanticism endorsed this image of India, and it became the mystic land for many Europeans, where even the most ordinary actions were imbued with a complex symbolism. This was the genesis of the idea of the spiritual east, and also, incidentally, the refuge of European intellectuals seeking to distance themselves from the changing patterns of their own societies. A dichotomy in values was maintained, Indian values being described as ‘spiritual’ and European values as ‘materialistic’, with little attempt to juxtapose these values with the reality of Indian society. This theme has been even more firmly endorsed by a section of Indian opinion during the last hundred years. It was a consolation to the Indian intelligentsia for its perceived inability to counter the technical superiority of the west, a superiority viewed as having enabled Europe to colonize Asia and other parts of the world. At the height of anti-colonial nationalism it acted as a salve for having been made a colony of Britain.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Interpretations of the Indian past . . . were inevitably influenced by colonial concerns and interests, and also by prevalent European ideas about history, civilization and the Orient. Orientalist scholars studied the languages and the texts with selected Indian scholars, but made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them. The readings therefore are something of a disjuncture from the traditional ways of looking at the Indian past. . . . Orientalism [which we can understand broadly as Western perceptions of the Orient] fuelled the fantasy and the freedom sought by European Romanticism, particularly in its opposition to the more disciplined Neo-Classicism. The cultures of Asia were seen as bringing a new Romantic paradigm. Another Renaissance was anticipated through an acquaintance with the Orient, and this, it was thought, would be different from the earlier Greek Renaissance. It was believed that this Oriental Renaissance would liberate European thought and literature from the increasing focus on discipline and rationality that had followed from the earlier Enlightenment. . . . [The Romantic English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge,] were apprehensive of the changes introduced by industrialization and turned to nature and to fantasies of the Orient. However, this enthusiasm gradually changed, to conform with the emphasis later in the nineteenth century on the innate superiority of European civilization. Oriental civilizations were now seen as having once been great but currently in decline. The various phases of Orientalism tended to mould European understanding of the Indian past into a particular pattern. . . . There was an attempt to formulate Indian culture as uniform, such formulations being derived from texts that were given priority. The so-called ‘discovery’ of India was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit. This interpretation tended to emphasize non-historical aspects of Indian culture, for example the idea of an unchanging continuity of society and religion over 3,000 years; and it was believed that the Indian pattern of life was so concerned with metaphysics and the subtleties of religious belief that little attention was given to the more tangible aspects. German Romanticism endorsed this image of India, and it became the mystic land for many Europeans, where even the most ordinary actions were imbued with a complex symbolism. This was the genesis of the idea of the spiritual east, and also, incidentally, the refuge of European intellectuals seeking to distance themselves from the changing patterns of their own societies. A dichotomy in values was maintained, Indian values being described as ‘spiritual’ and European values as ‘materialistic’, with little attempt to juxtapose these values with the reality of Indian society. This theme has been even more firmly endorsed by a section of Indian opinion during the last hundred years. It was a consolation to the Indian intelligentsia for its perceived inability to counter the technical superiority of the west, a superiority viewed as having enabled Europe to colonize Asia and other parts of the world. At the height of anti-colonial nationalism it acted as a salve for having been made a colony of Britain.
CAT/2022.3(RC)
Question. 46
Which one of the following styles of research is most similar to the Orientalist scholars’ method of understanding Indian history and culture?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Interpretations of the Indian past . . . were inevitably influenced by colonial concerns and interests, and also by prevalent European ideas about history, civilization and the Orient. Orientalist scholars studied the languages and the texts with selected Indian scholars, but made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them. The readings therefore are something of a disjuncture from the traditional ways of looking at the Indian past. . . . Orientalism [which we can understand broadly as Western perceptions of the Orient] fuelled the fantasy and the freedom sought by European Romanticism, particularly in its opposition to the more disciplined Neo-Classicism. The cultures of Asia were seen as bringing a new Romantic paradigm. Another Renaissance was anticipated through an acquaintance with the Orient, and this, it was thought, would be different from the earlier Greek Renaissance. It was believed that this Oriental Renaissance would liberate European thought and literature from the increasing focus on discipline and rationality that had followed from the earlier Enlightenment. . . . [The Romantic English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge,] were apprehensive of the changes introduced by industrialization and turned to nature and to fantasies of the Orient. However, this enthusiasm gradually changed, to conform with the emphasis later in the nineteenth century on the innate superiority of European civilization. Oriental civilizations were now seen as having once been great but currently in decline. The various phases of Orientalism tended to mould European understanding of the Indian past into a particular pattern. . . . There was an attempt to formulate Indian culture as uniform, such formulations being derived from texts that were given priority. The so-called ‘discovery’ of India was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit. This interpretation tended to emphasize non-historical aspects of Indian culture, for example the idea of an unchanging continuity of society and religion over 3,000 years; and it was believed that the Indian pattern of life was so concerned with metaphysics and the subtleties of religious belief that little attention was given to the more tangible aspects. German Romanticism endorsed this image of India, and it became the mystic land for many Europeans, where even the most ordinary actions were imbued with a complex symbolism. This was the genesis of the idea of the spiritual east, and also, incidentally, the refuge of European intellectuals seeking to distance themselves from the changing patterns of their own societies. A dichotomy in values was maintained, Indian values being described as ‘spiritual’ and European values as ‘materialistic’, with little attempt to juxtapose these values with the reality of Indian society. This theme has been even more firmly endorsed by a section of Indian opinion during the last hundred years. It was a consolation to the Indian intelligentsia for its perceived inability to counter the technical superiority of the west, a superiority viewed as having enabled Europe to colonize Asia and other parts of the world. At the height of anti-colonial nationalism it acted as a salve for having been made a colony of Britain.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Interpretations of the Indian past . . . were inevitably influenced by colonial concerns and interests, and also by prevalent European ideas about history, civilization and the Orient. Orientalist scholars studied the languages and the texts with selected Indian scholars, but made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them. The readings therefore are something of a disjuncture from the traditional ways of looking at the Indian past. . . . Orientalism [which we can understand broadly as Western perceptions of the Orient] fuelled the fantasy and the freedom sought by European Romanticism, particularly in its opposition to the more disciplined Neo-Classicism. The cultures of Asia were seen as bringing a new Romantic paradigm. Another Renaissance was anticipated through an acquaintance with the Orient, and this, it was thought, would be different from the earlier Greek Renaissance. It was believed that this Oriental Renaissance would liberate European thought and literature from the increasing focus on discipline and rationality that had followed from the earlier Enlightenment. . . . [The Romantic English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge,] were apprehensive of the changes introduced by industrialization and turned to nature and to fantasies of the Orient. However, this enthusiasm gradually changed, to conform with the emphasis later in the nineteenth century on the innate superiority of European civilization. Oriental civilizations were now seen as having once been great but currently in decline. The various phases of Orientalism tended to mould European understanding of the Indian past into a particular pattern. . . . There was an attempt to formulate Indian culture as uniform, such formulations being derived from texts that were given priority. The so-called ‘discovery’ of India was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit. This interpretation tended to emphasize non-historical aspects of Indian culture, for example the idea of an unchanging continuity of society and religion over 3,000 years; and it was believed that the Indian pattern of life was so concerned with metaphysics and the subtleties of religious belief that little attention was given to the more tangible aspects. German Romanticism endorsed this image of India, and it became the mystic land for many Europeans, where even the most ordinary actions were imbued with a complex symbolism. This was the genesis of the idea of the spiritual east, and also, incidentally, the refuge of European intellectuals seeking to distance themselves from the changing patterns of their own societies. A dichotomy in values was maintained, Indian values being described as ‘spiritual’ and European values as ‘materialistic’, with little attempt to juxtapose these values with the reality of Indian society. This theme has been even more firmly endorsed by a section of Indian opinion during the last hundred years. It was a consolation to the Indian intelligentsia for its perceived inability to counter the technical superiority of the west, a superiority viewed as having enabled Europe to colonize Asia and other parts of the world. At the height of anti-colonial nationalism it acted as a salve for having been made a colony of Britain.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single “best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process. Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical code of engineering. In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences. . . . Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials. Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity. Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are working on this. . . . Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that challenge our ways of thinking. Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical selfreflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.
CAT/2022.2(RC)
Question. 49
All of the following are examples of the negative outcomes of focusing on technical ideals in the medical sphere EXCEPT the:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single “best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process. Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical code of engineering. In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences. . . . Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials. Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity. Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are working on this. . . . Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that challenge our ways of thinking. Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical selfreflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single “best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process. Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical code of engineering. In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences. . . . Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials. Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity. Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are working on this. . . . Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that challenge our ways of thinking. Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical selfreflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.
CAT/2022.2(RC)
Question. 51
The author gives all of the following reasons for why marginalised people are systematically discriminated against in technology-related interventions EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single “best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process. Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical code of engineering. In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences. . . . Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials. Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity. Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are working on this. . . . Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that challenge our ways of thinking. Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical selfreflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.
CAT/2022.2(RC)
Question. 52
We can infer that the author would approve of a more evolved engineering pedagogy that includes all of the following EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined. It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . . Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate.
CAT/2022.2(RC)
Question. 53
Which of the following statements best represents the essence of the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined. It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . . Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate.
CAT/2022.2(RC)
Question. 54
“Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not.” Which one of the following statements best explains this quote, in the context of the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined. It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . . Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined. It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . . Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Critical theory of technology is a political theory of modernity with a normative dimension. It belongs to a tradition extending from Marx to Foucault and Habermas according to which advances in the formal claims of human rights take center stage while in the background centralization of ever more powerful public institutions and private organizations imposes an authoritarian social order. Marx attributed this trajectory to the capitalist rationalization of production. Today it marks many institutions besides the factory and every modern political system, including so-called socialist systems. This trajectory arose from the problems of command over a disempowered and deskilled labor force; but everywhere [that] masses are organized – whether it be Foucault’s prisons or Habermas’s public sphere – the same pattern prevails. Technological design and development is shaped by this pattern as the material base of a distinctive social order. Marcuse would later point to a “project” as the basis of what he called rather confusingly “technological rationality.” Releasing technology from this project is a democratic political task. In accordance with this general line of thought, critical theory of technology regards technologies as an environment rather than as a collection of tools. We live today with and even within technologies that determine our way of life. Along with the constant pressures to build centers of power, many other social values and meanings are inscribed in technological design. A hermeneutics of technology must make explicit the meanings implicit in the devices we use and the rituals they script. Social histories of technologies such as the bicycle, artificial lighting or firearms have made important contributions to this type of analysis. Critical theory of technology attempts to build a methodological approach on the lessons of these histories. As an environment, technologies shape their inhabitants. In this respect, they are comparable to laws and customs. Each of these institutions can be said to represent those who live under their sway through privileging certain dimensions of their human nature. Laws of property represent the interest in ownership and control. Customs such as parental authority represent the interest of childhood in safety and growth. Similarly, the automobile represents its users in so far as they are interested in mobility. Interests such as these constitute the version of human nature sanctioned by society. This notion of representation does not imply an eternal human nature. The concept of nature as non-identity in the Frankfurt School suggests an alternative. On these terms, nature is what lies at the limit of history, at the point at which society loses the capacity to imprint its meanings on things and control them effectively. The reference here is, of course, not to the nature of natural science, but to the lived nature in which we find ourselves and which we are. This nature reveals itself as that which cannot be totally encompassed by the machinery of society. For the Frankfurt School, human nature, in all its transcending force, emerges out of a historical context as that context is [depicted] in illicit joys, struggles and pathologies. We can perhaps admit a less romantic . . . conception in which those dimensions of human nature recognized by society are also granted theoretical legitimacy.
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 57
Which one of the following statements best reflects the main argument of the fourth paragraph of the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Critical theory of technology is a political theory of modernity with a normative dimension. It belongs to a tradition extending from Marx to Foucault and Habermas according to which advances in the formal claims of human rights take center stage while in the background centralization of ever more powerful public institutions and private organizations imposes an authoritarian social order. Marx attributed this trajectory to the capitalist rationalization of production. Today it marks many institutions besides the factory and every modern political system, including so-called socialist systems. This trajectory arose from the problems of command over a disempowered and deskilled labor force; but everywhere [that] masses are organized – whether it be Foucault’s prisons or Habermas’s public sphere – the same pattern prevails. Technological design and development is shaped by this pattern as the material base of a distinctive social order. Marcuse would later point to a “project” as the basis of what he called rather confusingly “technological rationality.” Releasing technology from this project is a democratic political task. In accordance with this general line of thought, critical theory of technology regards technologies as an environment rather than as a collection of tools. We live today with and even within technologies that determine our way of life. Along with the constant pressures to build centers of power, many other social values and meanings are inscribed in technological design. A hermeneutics of technology must make explicit the meanings implicit in the devices we use and the rituals they script. Social histories of technologies such as the bicycle, artificial lighting or firearms have made important contributions to this type of analysis. Critical theory of technology attempts to build a methodological approach on the lessons of these histories. As an environment, technologies shape their inhabitants. In this respect, they are comparable to laws and customs. Each of these institutions can be said to represent those who live under their sway through privileging certain dimensions of their human nature. Laws of property represent the interest in ownership and control. Customs such as parental authority represent the interest of childhood in safety and growth. Similarly, the automobile represents its users in so far as they are interested in mobility. Interests such as these constitute the version of human nature sanctioned by society. This notion of representation does not imply an eternal human nature. The concept of nature as non-identity in the Frankfurt School suggests an alternative. On these terms, nature is what lies at the limit of history, at the point at which society loses the capacity to imprint its meanings on things and control them effectively. The reference here is, of course, not to the nature of natural science, but to the lived nature in which we find ourselves and which we are. This nature reveals itself as that which cannot be totally encompassed by the machinery of society. For the Frankfurt School, human nature, in all its transcending force, emerges out of a historical context as that context is [depicted] in illicit joys, struggles and pathologies. We can perhaps admit a less romantic . . . conception in which those dimensions of human nature recognized by society are also granted theoretical legitimacy.
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 58
Which one of the following statements could be inferred as supporting the arguments of the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Critical theory of technology is a political theory of modernity with a normative dimension. It belongs to a tradition extending from Marx to Foucault and Habermas according to which advances in the formal claims of human rights take center stage while in the background centralization of ever more powerful public institutions and private organizations imposes an authoritarian social order. Marx attributed this trajectory to the capitalist rationalization of production. Today it marks many institutions besides the factory and every modern political system, including so-called socialist systems. This trajectory arose from the problems of command over a disempowered and deskilled labor force; but everywhere [that] masses are organized – whether it be Foucault’s prisons or Habermas’s public sphere – the same pattern prevails. Technological design and development is shaped by this pattern as the material base of a distinctive social order. Marcuse would later point to a “project” as the basis of what he called rather confusingly “technological rationality.” Releasing technology from this project is a democratic political task. In accordance with this general line of thought, critical theory of technology regards technologies as an environment rather than as a collection of tools. We live today with and even within technologies that determine our way of life. Along with the constant pressures to build centers of power, many other social values and meanings are inscribed in technological design. A hermeneutics of technology must make explicit the meanings implicit in the devices we use and the rituals they script. Social histories of technologies such as the bicycle, artificial lighting or firearms have made important contributions to this type of analysis. Critical theory of technology attempts to build a methodological approach on the lessons of these histories. As an environment, technologies shape their inhabitants. In this respect, they are comparable to laws and customs. Each of these institutions can be said to represent those who live under their sway through privileging certain dimensions of their human nature. Laws of property represent the interest in ownership and control. Customs such as parental authority represent the interest of childhood in safety and growth. Similarly, the automobile represents its users in so far as they are interested in mobility. Interests such as these constitute the version of human nature sanctioned by society. This notion of representation does not imply an eternal human nature. The concept of nature as non-identity in the Frankfurt School suggests an alternative. On these terms, nature is what lies at the limit of history, at the point at which society loses the capacity to imprint its meanings on things and control them effectively. The reference here is, of course, not to the nature of natural science, but to the lived nature in which we find ourselves and which we are. This nature reveals itself as that which cannot be totally encompassed by the machinery of society. For the Frankfurt School, human nature, in all its transcending force, emerges out of a historical context as that context is [depicted] in illicit joys, struggles and pathologies. We can perhaps admit a less romantic . . . conception in which those dimensions of human nature recognized by society are also granted theoretical legitimacy.
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 59
Which one of the following statements contradicts the arguments of the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Critical theory of technology is a political theory of modernity with a normative dimension. It belongs to a tradition extending from Marx to Foucault and Habermas according to which advances in the formal claims of human rights take center stage while in the background centralization of ever more powerful public institutions and private organizations imposes an authoritarian social order. Marx attributed this trajectory to the capitalist rationalization of production. Today it marks many institutions besides the factory and every modern political system, including so-called socialist systems. This trajectory arose from the problems of command over a disempowered and deskilled labor force; but everywhere [that] masses are organized – whether it be Foucault’s prisons or Habermas’s public sphere – the same pattern prevails. Technological design and development is shaped by this pattern as the material base of a distinctive social order. Marcuse would later point to a “project” as the basis of what he called rather confusingly “technological rationality.” Releasing technology from this project is a democratic political task. In accordance with this general line of thought, critical theory of technology regards technologies as an environment rather than as a collection of tools. We live today with and even within technologies that determine our way of life. Along with the constant pressures to build centers of power, many other social values and meanings are inscribed in technological design. A hermeneutics of technology must make explicit the meanings implicit in the devices we use and the rituals they script. Social histories of technologies such as the bicycle, artificial lighting or firearms have made important contributions to this type of analysis. Critical theory of technology attempts to build a methodological approach on the lessons of these histories. As an environment, technologies shape their inhabitants. In this respect, they are comparable to laws and customs. Each of these institutions can be said to represent those who live under their sway through privileging certain dimensions of their human nature. Laws of property represent the interest in ownership and control. Customs such as parental authority represent the interest of childhood in safety and growth. Similarly, the automobile represents its users in so far as they are interested in mobility. Interests such as these constitute the version of human nature sanctioned by society. This notion of representation does not imply an eternal human nature. The concept of nature as non-identity in the Frankfurt School suggests an alternative. On these terms, nature is what lies at the limit of history, at the point at which society loses the capacity to imprint its meanings on things and control them effectively. The reference here is, of course, not to the nature of natural science, but to the lived nature in which we find ourselves and which we are. This nature reveals itself as that which cannot be totally encompassed by the machinery of society. For the Frankfurt School, human nature, in all its transcending force, emerges out of a historical context as that context is [depicted] in illicit joys, struggles and pathologies. We can perhaps admit a less romantic . . . conception in which those dimensions of human nature recognized by society are also granted theoretical legitimacy.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Chinese have two different concepts of a copy. Fangzhipin . . . are imitations where the difference from the original is obvious. These are small models or copies that can be purchased in a museum shop, for example. The second concept for a copy is fuzhipin . . . They are exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original. It has absolutely no negative connotations. The discrepancy with regard to the understanding of what a copy is has often led to misunderstandings and arguments between China and Western museums. The Chinese often send copies abroad instead of originals, in the firm belief that they are not essentially different from the originals. The rejection that then comes from the Western museums is perceived by the Chinese as an insult. . . . The Far Eastern notion of identity is also very confusing to the Western observer. The Ise Grand Shrine [in Japan] is 1,300 years old for the millions of Japanese people who go there on pilgrimage every year. But in reality this temple complex is completely rebuilt from scratch every 20 years. . . . The cathedral of Freiburg Minster in southwest Germany is covered in scaffolding almost all year round. The sandstone from which it is built is a very soft, porous material that does not withstand natural erosion by rain and wind. After a while, it crumbles. As a result, the cathedral is continually being examined for damage, and eroded stones are replaced. And in the cathedral’s dedicated workshop, copies of the damaged sandstone figures are constantly being produced. Of course, attempts are made to preserve the stones from the Middle Ages for as long as possible. But at some point they, too, are removed and replaced with new stones. Fundamentally, this is the same operation as with the Japanese shrine, except in this case the production of a replica takes place very slowly and over long periods of time. . . . In the field of art as well, the idea of an unassailable original developed historically in the Western world. Back in the 17th century [in the West], excavated artworks from antiquity were treated quite differently from today. They were not restored in a way that was faithful to the original. Instead, there was massive intervention in these works, changing their appearance. . . . It is probably this intellectual position that explains why Asians have far fewer scruples about cloning than Europeans. The South Korean cloning researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who attracted worldwide attention with his cloning experiments in 2004, is a Buddhist. He found a great deal of support and followers among Buddhists, while Christians called for a ban on human cloning. . . . Hwang legitimised his cloning experiments with his religious affiliation: ‘I am Buddhist, and I have no philosophical problem with cloning. And as you know, the basis of Buddhism is that life is recycled through reincarnation. In some ways, I think, therapeutic cloning restarts the circle of life.’
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 61
Based on the passage, which one of the following copies would a Chinese museum be unlikely to consider as having less value than the original?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Chinese have two different concepts of a copy. Fangzhipin . . . are imitations where the difference from the original is obvious. These are small models or copies that can be purchased in a museum shop, for example. The second concept for a copy is fuzhipin . . . They are exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original. It has absolutely no negative connotations. The discrepancy with regard to the understanding of what a copy is has often led to misunderstandings and arguments between China and Western museums. The Chinese often send copies abroad instead of originals, in the firm belief that they are not essentially different from the originals. The rejection that then comes from the Western museums is perceived by the Chinese as an insult. . . . The Far Eastern notion of identity is also very confusing to the Western observer. The Ise Grand Shrine [in Japan] is 1,300 years old for the millions of Japanese people who go there on pilgrimage every year. But in reality this temple complex is completely rebuilt from scratch every 20 years. . . . The cathedral of Freiburg Minster in southwest Germany is covered in scaffolding almost all year round. The sandstone from which it is built is a very soft, porous material that does not withstand natural erosion by rain and wind. After a while, it crumbles. As a result, the cathedral is continually being examined for damage, and eroded stones are replaced. And in the cathedral’s dedicated workshop, copies of the damaged sandstone figures are constantly being produced. Of course, attempts are made to preserve the stones from the Middle Ages for as long as possible. But at some point they, too, are removed and replaced with new stones. Fundamentally, this is the same operation as with the Japanese shrine, except in this case the production of a replica takes place very slowly and over long periods of time. . . . In the field of art as well, the idea of an unassailable original developed historically in the Western world. Back in the 17th century [in the West], excavated artworks from antiquity were treated quite differently from today. They were not restored in a way that was faithful to the original. Instead, there was massive intervention in these works, changing their appearance. . . . It is probably this intellectual position that explains why Asians have far fewer scruples about cloning than Europeans. The South Korean cloning researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who attracted worldwide attention with his cloning experiments in 2004, is a Buddhist. He found a great deal of support and followers among Buddhists, while Christians called for a ban on human cloning. . . . Hwang legitimised his cloning experiments with his religious affiliation: ‘I am Buddhist, and I have no philosophical problem with cloning. And as you know, the basis of Buddhism is that life is recycled through reincarnation. In some ways, I think, therapeutic cloning restarts the circle of life.’
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 62
Which one of the following scenarios is unlikely to follow from the arguments in the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Chinese have two different concepts of a copy. Fangzhipin . . . are imitations where the difference from the original is obvious. These are small models or copies that can be purchased in a museum shop, for example. The second concept for a copy is fuzhipin . . . They are exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original. It has absolutely no negative connotations. The discrepancy with regard to the understanding of what a copy is has often led to misunderstandings and arguments between China and Western museums. The Chinese often send copies abroad instead of originals, in the firm belief that they are not essentially different from the originals. The rejection that then comes from the Western museums is perceived by the Chinese as an insult. . . . The Far Eastern notion of identity is also very confusing to the Western observer. The Ise Grand Shrine [in Japan] is 1,300 years old for the millions of Japanese people who go there on pilgrimage every year. But in reality this temple complex is completely rebuilt from scratch every 20 years. . . . The cathedral of Freiburg Minster in southwest Germany is covered in scaffolding almost all year round. The sandstone from which it is built is a very soft, porous material that does not withstand natural erosion by rain and wind. After a while, it crumbles. As a result, the cathedral is continually being examined for damage, and eroded stones are replaced. And in the cathedral’s dedicated workshop, copies of the damaged sandstone figures are constantly being produced. Of course, attempts are made to preserve the stones from the Middle Ages for as long as possible. But at some point they, too, are removed and replaced with new stones. Fundamentally, this is the same operation as with the Japanese shrine, except in this case the production of a replica takes place very slowly and over long periods of time. . . . In the field of art as well, the idea of an unassailable original developed historically in the Western world. Back in the 17th century [in the West], excavated artworks from antiquity were treated quite differently from today. They were not restored in a way that was faithful to the original. Instead, there was massive intervention in these works, changing their appearance. . . . It is probably this intellectual position that explains why Asians have far fewer scruples about cloning than Europeans. The South Korean cloning researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who attracted worldwide attention with his cloning experiments in 2004, is a Buddhist. He found a great deal of support and followers among Buddhists, while Christians called for a ban on human cloning. . . . Hwang legitimised his cloning experiments with his religious affiliation: ‘I am Buddhist, and I have no philosophical problem with cloning. And as you know, the basis of Buddhism is that life is recycled through reincarnation. In some ways, I think, therapeutic cloning restarts the circle of life.’
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The Chinese have two different concepts of a copy. Fangzhipin . . . are imitations where the difference from the original is obvious. These are small models or copies that can be purchased in a museum shop, for example. The second concept for a copy is fuzhipin . . . They are exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original. It has absolutely no negative connotations. The discrepancy with regard to the understanding of what a copy is has often led to misunderstandings and arguments between China and Western museums. The Chinese often send copies abroad instead of originals, in the firm belief that they are not essentially different from the originals. The rejection that then comes from the Western museums is perceived by the Chinese as an insult. . . . The Far Eastern notion of identity is also very confusing to the Western observer. The Ise Grand Shrine [in Japan] is 1,300 years old for the millions of Japanese people who go there on pilgrimage every year. But in reality this temple complex is completely rebuilt from scratch every 20 years. . . . The cathedral of Freiburg Minster in southwest Germany is covered in scaffolding almost all year round. The sandstone from which it is built is a very soft, porous material that does not withstand natural erosion by rain and wind. After a while, it crumbles. As a result, the cathedral is continually being examined for damage, and eroded stones are replaced. And in the cathedral’s dedicated workshop, copies of the damaged sandstone figures are constantly being produced. Of course, attempts are made to preserve the stones from the Middle Ages for as long as possible. But at some point they, too, are removed and replaced with new stones. Fundamentally, this is the same operation as with the Japanese shrine, except in this case the production of a replica takes place very slowly and over long periods of time. . . . In the field of art as well, the idea of an unassailable original developed historically in the Western world. Back in the 17th century [in the West], excavated artworks from antiquity were treated quite differently from today. They were not restored in a way that was faithful to the original. Instead, there was massive intervention in these works, changing their appearance. . . . It is probably this intellectual position that explains why Asians have far fewer scruples about cloning than Europeans. The South Korean cloning researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who attracted worldwide attention with his cloning experiments in 2004, is a Buddhist. He found a great deal of support and followers among Buddhists, while Christians called for a ban on human cloning. . . . Hwang legitimised his cloning experiments with his religious affiliation: ‘I am Buddhist, and I have no philosophical problem with cloning. And as you know, the basis of Buddhism is that life is recycled through reincarnation. In some ways, I think, therapeutic cloning restarts the circle of life.’
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Stoicism was founded in 300 BC by the Greek philosopher Zeno and survived into the Roman era until about AD 300. According to the Stoics, emotions consist of two movements. The first movement is the immediate feeling and other reactions (e.g., physiological response) that occur when a stimulus or event occurs. For instance, consider what could have happened if an army general accused Marcus Aurelius of treason in front of other officers. The first movement for Marcus may have been (internal) surprise and anger in response to this insult, accompanied perhaps by some involuntary physiological and expressive responses such as face flushing and a movement of the eyebrows. The second movement is what one does next about the emotion. Second movement behaviors occur after thinking and are under one’s control. Examples of second movements for Marcus might have included a plot to seek revenge, actions signifying deference and appeasement, or perhaps proceeding as he would have proceeded whether or not this event occurred: continuing to lead the Romans in a way that Marcus Aurelius believed best benefited them. In the Stoic view, choosing a reasoned, unemotional response as the second movement is the only appropriate response. The Stoics believed that to live the good life and be a good person, we need to free ourselves of nearly all desires such as too much desire for money, power, or sexual gratification. Prior to second movements, we can consider what is important in life. Money, power, and excessive sexual gratification are not important. Character, rationality, and kindness are important. The Epicureans, first associated with the Greek philosopher Epicurus . . . held a similar view, believing that people should enjoy simple pleasures, such as good conversation, friendship, food, and wine, but not be indulgent in these pursuits and not follow passion for those things that hold no real value like power and money. As Oatley (2004) states, “the Epicureans articulated a view—enjoyment of relationship with friends, of things that are real rather than illusory, simple rather than artificially inflated, possible rather than vanishingly unlikely—that is certainly relevant today” . . . In sum, these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers saw emotions, especially strong ones, as potentially dangerous. They viewed emotions as experiences that needed to be [reined] in and controlled. As Oatley (2004) points out, the Stoic idea bears some similarity to Buddhism. Buddha, living in India in the 6th century BC, argued for cultivating a certain attitude that decreases the probability of (in Stoic terms) destructive second movements. Through meditation and the right attitude, one allows emotions to happen to oneself (it is impossible to prevent this), but one is advised to observe the emotions without necessarily acting on them; one achieves some distance and decides what has value and what does not have value. Additionally, the Stoic idea of developing virtue in oneself, of becoming a good person, which the Stoics believed we could do because we have a touch of the divine, laid the foundation for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam . . . As with Stoicism, tenets of these religions include controlling our emotions lest we engage in sinful behavior.
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 65
Which one of the following statements would be an accurate inference from the example of Marcus Aurelius?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Stoicism was founded in 300 BC by the Greek philosopher Zeno and survived into the Roman era until about AD 300. According to the Stoics, emotions consist of two movements. The first movement is the immediate feeling and other reactions (e.g., physiological response) that occur when a stimulus or event occurs. For instance, consider what could have happened if an army general accused Marcus Aurelius of treason in front of other officers. The first movement for Marcus may have been (internal) surprise and anger in response to this insult, accompanied perhaps by some involuntary physiological and expressive responses such as face flushing and a movement of the eyebrows. The second movement is what one does next about the emotion. Second movement behaviors occur after thinking and are under one’s control. Examples of second movements for Marcus might have included a plot to seek revenge, actions signifying deference and appeasement, or perhaps proceeding as he would have proceeded whether or not this event occurred: continuing to lead the Romans in a way that Marcus Aurelius believed best benefited them. In the Stoic view, choosing a reasoned, unemotional response as the second movement is the only appropriate response. The Stoics believed that to live the good life and be a good person, we need to free ourselves of nearly all desires such as too much desire for money, power, or sexual gratification. Prior to second movements, we can consider what is important in life. Money, power, and excessive sexual gratification are not important. Character, rationality, and kindness are important. The Epicureans, first associated with the Greek philosopher Epicurus . . . held a similar view, believing that people should enjoy simple pleasures, such as good conversation, friendship, food, and wine, but not be indulgent in these pursuits and not follow passion for those things that hold no real value like power and money. As Oatley (2004) states, “the Epicureans articulated a view—enjoyment of relationship with friends, of things that are real rather than illusory, simple rather than artificially inflated, possible rather than vanishingly unlikely—that is certainly relevant today” . . . In sum, these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers saw emotions, especially strong ones, as potentially dangerous. They viewed emotions as experiences that needed to be [reined] in and controlled. As Oatley (2004) points out, the Stoic idea bears some similarity to Buddhism. Buddha, living in India in the 6th century BC, argued for cultivating a certain attitude that decreases the probability of (in Stoic terms) destructive second movements. Through meditation and the right attitude, one allows emotions to happen to oneself (it is impossible to prevent this), but one is advised to observe the emotions without necessarily acting on them; one achieves some distance and decides what has value and what does not have value. Additionally, the Stoic idea of developing virtue in oneself, of becoming a good person, which the Stoics believed we could do because we have a touch of the divine, laid the foundation for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam . . . As with Stoicism, tenets of these religions include controlling our emotions lest we engage in sinful behavior.
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 66
Which one of the following statements, if false, could be seen as contradicting the facts/arguments in the passage?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Stoicism was founded in 300 BC by the Greek philosopher Zeno and survived into the Roman era until about AD 300. According to the Stoics, emotions consist of two movements. The first movement is the immediate feeling and other reactions (e.g., physiological response) that occur when a stimulus or event occurs. For instance, consider what could have happened if an army general accused Marcus Aurelius of treason in front of other officers. The first movement for Marcus may have been (internal) surprise and anger in response to this insult, accompanied perhaps by some involuntary physiological and expressive responses such as face flushing and a movement of the eyebrows. The second movement is what one does next about the emotion. Second movement behaviors occur after thinking and are under one’s control. Examples of second movements for Marcus might have included a plot to seek revenge, actions signifying deference and appeasement, or perhaps proceeding as he would have proceeded whether or not this event occurred: continuing to lead the Romans in a way that Marcus Aurelius believed best benefited them. In the Stoic view, choosing a reasoned, unemotional response as the second movement is the only appropriate response. The Stoics believed that to live the good life and be a good person, we need to free ourselves of nearly all desires such as too much desire for money, power, or sexual gratification. Prior to second movements, we can consider what is important in life. Money, power, and excessive sexual gratification are not important. Character, rationality, and kindness are important. The Epicureans, first associated with the Greek philosopher Epicurus . . . held a similar view, believing that people should enjoy simple pleasures, such as good conversation, friendship, food, and wine, but not be indulgent in these pursuits and not follow passion for those things that hold no real value like power and money. As Oatley (2004) states, “the Epicureans articulated a view—enjoyment of relationship with friends, of things that are real rather than illusory, simple rather than artificially inflated, possible rather than vanishingly unlikely—that is certainly relevant today” . . . In sum, these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers saw emotions, especially strong ones, as potentially dangerous. They viewed emotions as experiences that needed to be [reined] in and controlled. As Oatley (2004) points out, the Stoic idea bears some similarity to Buddhism. Buddha, living in India in the 6th century BC, argued for cultivating a certain attitude that decreases the probability of (in Stoic terms) destructive second movements. Through meditation and the right attitude, one allows emotions to happen to oneself (it is impossible to prevent this), but one is advised to observe the emotions without necessarily acting on them; one achieves some distance and decides what has value and what does not have value. Additionally, the Stoic idea of developing virtue in oneself, of becoming a good person, which the Stoics believed we could do because we have a touch of the divine, laid the foundation for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam . . . As with Stoicism, tenets of these religions include controlling our emotions lest we engage in sinful behavior.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Stoicism was founded in 300 BC by the Greek philosopher Zeno and survived into the Roman era until about AD 300. According to the Stoics, emotions consist of two movements. The first movement is the immediate feeling and other reactions (e.g., physiological response) that occur when a stimulus or event occurs. For instance, consider what could have happened if an army general accused Marcus Aurelius of treason in front of other officers. The first movement for Marcus may have been (internal) surprise and anger in response to this insult, accompanied perhaps by some involuntary physiological and expressive responses such as face flushing and a movement of the eyebrows. The second movement is what one does next about the emotion. Second movement behaviors occur after thinking and are under one’s control. Examples of second movements for Marcus might have included a plot to seek revenge, actions signifying deference and appeasement, or perhaps proceeding as he would have proceeded whether or not this event occurred: continuing to lead the Romans in a way that Marcus Aurelius believed best benefited them. In the Stoic view, choosing a reasoned, unemotional response as the second movement is the only appropriate response. The Stoics believed that to live the good life and be a good person, we need to free ourselves of nearly all desires such as too much desire for money, power, or sexual gratification. Prior to second movements, we can consider what is important in life. Money, power, and excessive sexual gratification are not important. Character, rationality, and kindness are important. The Epicureans, first associated with the Greek philosopher Epicurus . . . held a similar view, believing that people should enjoy simple pleasures, such as good conversation, friendship, food, and wine, but not be indulgent in these pursuits and not follow passion for those things that hold no real value like power and money. As Oatley (2004) states, “the Epicureans articulated a view—enjoyment of relationship with friends, of things that are real rather than illusory, simple rather than artificially inflated, possible rather than vanishingly unlikely—that is certainly relevant today” . . . In sum, these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers saw emotions, especially strong ones, as potentially dangerous. They viewed emotions as experiences that needed to be [reined] in and controlled. As Oatley (2004) points out, the Stoic idea bears some similarity to Buddhism. Buddha, living in India in the 6th century BC, argued for cultivating a certain attitude that decreases the probability of (in Stoic terms) destructive second movements. Through meditation and the right attitude, one allows emotions to happen to oneself (it is impossible to prevent this), but one is advised to observe the emotions without necessarily acting on them; one achieves some distance and decides what has value and what does not have value. Additionally, the Stoic idea of developing virtue in oneself, of becoming a good person, which the Stoics believed we could do because we have a touch of the divine, laid the foundation for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam . . . As with Stoicism, tenets of these religions include controlling our emotions lest we engage in sinful behavior.
CAT/2022.1(RC)
Question. 68
“Through meditation and the right attitude, one allows emotions to happen to oneself (it is impossible to prevent this), but one is advised to observe the emotions without necessarily acting on them; one achieves some distance and decides what has value and what does not have value.” In the context of the passage, which one of the following is not a possible implication of the quoted statement?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Cuttlefish are full of personality, as behavioral ecologist Alexandra Schnell found out while researching the cephalopod's potential to display self-control. . . . “Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decisionmaking and planning for the future,” says Schnell . . .
[Schnell's] study used a modified version of the “marshmallow test” . . . During the original marshmallow test, psychologist Walter Mischel presented children between age four and six with one marshmallow. He told them that if they waited 15 minutes and didn’t eat it, he would give them a second marshmallow. A long-term follow-up study showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had more success later in life. . . . The cuttlefish version of the experiment looked a lot different. The researchers worked with six cuttlefish under nine months old and presented them with seafood instead of sweets. (Preliminary experiments showed that cuttlefishes’ favorite food is live grass shrimp, while raw prawns are so-so and Asian shore crab is nearly unacceptable.) Since the researchers couldn’t explain to the cuttlefish that they would need to wait for their shrimp, they trained them to recognize certain shapes that indicated when a food item would become available. The symbols were pasted on transparent drawers so that the cuttlefish could see the food that was stored inside. One drawer, labeled with a circle to mean “immediate,” held raw king prawn. Another drawer, labeled with a triangle to mean “delayed,” held live grass shrimp. During a control experiment, square labels meant “never.”
“If their self-control is flexible and I hadn’t just trained them to wait in any context, you would expect the cuttlefish to take the immediate reward [in the control], even if it’s their second preference,” says Schnell . . . and that’s what they did. That showed the researchers that cuttlefish wouldn’t reject the prawns if it was the only food available. In the experimental trials, the cuttlefish didn’t jump on the prawns if the live grass shrimp were labeled with a triangle— many waited for the shrimp drawer to open up. Each time the cuttlefish showed it could wait, the researchers tacked another ten seconds on to the next round of waiting before releasing
the shrimp. The longest that a cuttlefish waited was 130 seconds.
Schnell [says] that the cuttlefish usually sat at the bottom of the tank and looked at the two food items while they waited, but sometimes, they would turn away from the king prawn “as if to distract themselves from the temptation of the immediate reward.” In past studies, humans, chimpanzees, parrots and dogs also tried to distract themselves while waiting for a reward.
Not every species can use self-control, but most of the animals that can share another trait in common: long, social lives. Cuttlefish, on the other hand, are solitary creatures that don’t form relationships even with mates or young. . . . “We don’t know if living in a social group is important for complex cognition unless we also show those abilities are lacking in less social species,” says . . . comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Cuttlefish are full of personality, as behavioral ecologist Alexandra Schnell found out while researching the cephalopod's potential to display self-control. . . . “Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decisionmaking and planning for the future,” says Schnell . . .
[Schnell's] study used a modified version of the “marshmallow test” . . . During the original marshmallow test, psychologist Walter Mischel presented children between age four and six with one marshmallow. He told them that if they waited 15 minutes and didn’t eat it, he would give them a second marshmallow. A long-term follow-up study showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had more success later in life. . . . The cuttlefish version of the experiment looked a lot different. The researchers worked with six cuttlefish under nine months old and presented them with seafood instead of sweets. (Preliminary experiments showed that cuttlefishes’ favorite food is live grass shrimp, while raw prawns are so-so and Asian shore crab is nearly unacceptable.) Since the researchers couldn’t explain to the cuttlefish that they would need to wait for their shrimp, they trained them to recognize certain shapes that indicated when a food item would become available. The symbols were pasted on transparent drawers so that the cuttlefish could see the food that was stored inside. One drawer, labeled with a circle to mean “immediate,” held raw king prawn. Another drawer, labeled with a triangle to mean “delayed,” held live grass shrimp. During a control experiment, square labels meant “never.”
“If their self-control is flexible and I hadn’t just trained them to wait in any context, you would expect the cuttlefish to take the immediate reward [in the control], even if it’s their second preference,” says Schnell . . . and that’s what they did. That showed the researchers that cuttlefish wouldn’t reject the prawns if it was the only food available. In the experimental trials, the cuttlefish didn’t jump on the prawns if the live grass shrimp were labeled with a triangle— many waited for the shrimp drawer to open up. Each time the cuttlefish showed it could wait, the researchers tacked another ten seconds on to the next round of waiting before releasing
the shrimp. The longest that a cuttlefish waited was 130 seconds.
Schnell [says] that the cuttlefish usually sat at the bottom of the tank and looked at the two food items while they waited, but sometimes, they would turn away from the king prawn “as if to distract themselves from the temptation of the immediate reward.” In past studies, humans, chimpanzees, parrots and dogs also tried to distract themselves while waiting for a reward.
Not every species can use self-control, but most of the animals that can share another trait in common: long, social lives. Cuttlefish, on the other hand, are solitary creatures that don’t form relationships even with mates or young. . . . “We don’t know if living in a social group is important for complex cognition unless we also show those abilities are lacking in less social species,” says . . . comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Cuttlefish are full of personality, as behavioral ecologist Alexandra Schnell found out while researching the cephalopod's potential to display self-control. . . . “Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decisionmaking and planning for the future,” says Schnell . . .
[Schnell's] study used a modified version of the “marshmallow test” . . . During the original marshmallow test, psychologist Walter Mischel presented children between age four and six with one marshmallow. He told them that if they waited 15 minutes and didn’t eat it, he would give them a second marshmallow. A long-term follow-up study showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had more success later in life. . . . The cuttlefish version of the experiment looked a lot different. The researchers worked with six cuttlefish under nine months old and presented them with seafood instead of sweets. (Preliminary experiments showed that cuttlefishes’ favorite food is live grass shrimp, while raw prawns are so-so and Asian shore crab is nearly unacceptable.) Since the researchers couldn’t explain to the cuttlefish that they would need to wait for their shrimp, they trained them to recognize certain shapes that indicated when a food item would become available. The symbols were pasted on transparent drawers so that the cuttlefish could see the food that was stored inside. One drawer, labeled with a circle to mean “immediate,” held raw king prawn. Another drawer, labeled with a triangle to mean “delayed,” held live grass shrimp. During a control experiment, square labels meant “never.”
“If their self-control is flexible and I hadn’t just trained them to wait in any context, you would expect the cuttlefish to take the immediate reward [in the control], even if it’s their second preference,” says Schnell . . . and that’s what they did. That showed the researchers that cuttlefish wouldn’t reject the prawns if it was the only food available. In the experimental trials, the cuttlefish didn’t jump on the prawns if the live grass shrimp were labeled with a triangle— many waited for the shrimp drawer to open up. Each time the cuttlefish showed it could wait, the researchers tacked another ten seconds on to the next round of waiting before releasing
the shrimp. The longest that a cuttlefish waited was 130 seconds.
Schnell [says] that the cuttlefish usually sat at the bottom of the tank and looked at the two food items while they waited, but sometimes, they would turn away from the king prawn “as if to distract themselves from the temptation of the immediate reward.” In past studies, humans, chimpanzees, parrots and dogs also tried to distract themselves while waiting for a reward.
Not every species can use self-control, but most of the animals that can share another trait in common: long, social lives. Cuttlefish, on the other hand, are solitary creatures that don’t form relationships even with mates or young. . . . “We don’t know if living in a social group is important for complex cognition unless we also show those abilities are lacking in less social species,” says . . . comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk.
CAT/2021.1(RC)
Question. 71
In which one of the following scenarios would the cuttlefish’s behaviour demonstrate self-control?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Cuttlefish are full of personality, as behavioral ecologist Alexandra Schnell found out while researching the cephalopod's potential to display self-control. . . . “Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decisionmaking and planning for the future,” says Schnell . . .
[Schnell's] study used a modified version of the “marshmallow test” . . . During the original marshmallow test, psychologist Walter Mischel presented children between age four and six with one marshmallow. He told them that if they waited 15 minutes and didn’t eat it, he would give them a second marshmallow. A long-term follow-up study showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had more success later in life. . . . The cuttlefish version of the experiment looked a lot different. The researchers worked with six cuttlefish under nine months old and presented them with seafood instead of sweets. (Preliminary experiments showed that cuttlefishes’ favorite food is live grass shrimp, while raw prawns are so-so and Asian shore crab is nearly unacceptable.) Since the researchers couldn’t explain to the cuttlefish that they would need to wait for their shrimp, they trained them to recognize certain shapes that indicated when a food item would become available. The symbols were pasted on transparent drawers so that the cuttlefish could see the food that was stored inside. One drawer, labeled with a circle to mean “immediate,” held raw king prawn. Another drawer, labeled with a triangle to mean “delayed,” held live grass shrimp. During a control experiment, square labels meant “never.”
“If their self-control is flexible and I hadn’t just trained them to wait in any context, you would expect the cuttlefish to take the immediate reward [in the control], even if it’s their second preference,” says Schnell . . . and that’s what they did. That showed the researchers that cuttlefish wouldn’t reject the prawns if it was the only food available. In the experimental trials, the cuttlefish didn’t jump on the prawns if the live grass shrimp were labeled with a triangle— many waited for the shrimp drawer to open up. Each time the cuttlefish showed it could wait, the researchers tacked another ten seconds on to the next round of waiting before releasing
the shrimp. The longest that a cuttlefish waited was 130 seconds.
Schnell [says] that the cuttlefish usually sat at the bottom of the tank and looked at the two food items while they waited, but sometimes, they would turn away from the king prawn “as if to distract themselves from the temptation of the immediate reward.” In past studies, humans, chimpanzees, parrots and dogs also tried to distract themselves while waiting for a reward.
Not every species can use self-control, but most of the animals that can share another trait in common: long, social lives. Cuttlefish, on the other hand, are solitary creatures that don’t form relationships even with mates or young. . . . “We don’t know if living in a social group is important for complex cognition unless we also show those abilities are lacking in less social species,” says . . . comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk.
CAT/2021.1(RC)
Question. 72
All of the following constitute a point of difference between the “original” and “modified” versions of the marshmallow test EXCEPT that:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The sleights of hand that conflate consumption with virtue are a central theme in A Thirst for Empire, a sweeping and richly detailed history of tea by the historian Erika Rappaport. How did tea evolve from an obscure “China drink” to a universal beverage imbued with civilising properties? The answer, in brief, revolves around this conflation, not only by profit-motivated marketers but by a wide variety of interest groups. While abundant historical records have allowed the study of how tea itself moved from east to west, Rappaport is focused on the movement of the idea of tea to suit particular purposes.
Beginning in the 1700s, the temperance movement advocated for tea as a pleasure that cheered but did not inebriate, and industrialists soon borrowed this moral argument in advancing their case for free trade in tea (and hence more open markets for their textiles). Factory owners joined in, compelled by the cause of a sober workforce, while Christian missionaries discovered that tea “would soothe any colonial encounter”. During the Second World War, tea service was presented as a social and patriotic activity that uplifted soldiers and calmed refugees.
But it was tea’s consumer-directed marketing by importers and retailers – and later by brands – that most closely portends current trade debates. An early version of the “farm to table” movement was sparked by anti-Chinese sentiment and concerns over trade deficits, as well as by the reality and threat of adulterated tea containing dirt and hedge clippings. Lipton was soon advertising “from the Garden to Tea Cup” supply chains originating in British India and supervised by “educated Englishmen”. While tea marketing always presented direct consumer benefits (health, energy, relaxation), tea drinkers were also assured that they were participating in a larger noble project that advanced the causes of family, nation and civilization. . . .
Rappaport’s treatment of her subject is refreshingly apolitical. Indeed, it is a virtue that readers will be unable to guess her political orientation: both the miracle of markets and capitalism’s dark underbelly are evident in tea’s complex story, as are the complicated effects of British colonialism. . . . Commodity histories are now themselves commodities: recent works investigate cotton, salt, cod, sugar, chocolate, paper and milk. And morality marketing is now a commodity as well, applied to food, “fair trade” apparel and eco-tourism. Yet tea is, Rappaport makes clear, a world apart – an astonishing success story in which tea marketers not only succeeded in conveying a sense of moral elevation to the consumer but also arguably did advance the cause of civilisation and community.
I have been offered tea at a British garden party, a Bedouin campfire, a Turkish carpet shop and a Japanese chashitsu, to name a few settings. In each case the offering was more an idea – friendship, community, respect – than a drink, and in each case the idea then created a reality. It is not a stretch to say that tea marketers have advanced the particularly noble cause of human dialogue and friendship.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The sleights of hand that conflate consumption with virtue are a central theme in A Thirst for Empire, a sweeping and richly detailed history of tea by the historian Erika Rappaport. How did tea evolve from an obscure “China drink” to a universal beverage imbued with civilising properties? The answer, in brief, revolves around this conflation, not only by profit-motivated marketers but by a wide variety of interest groups. While abundant historical records have allowed the study of how tea itself moved from east to west, Rappaport is focused on the movement of the idea of tea to suit particular purposes.
Beginning in the 1700s, the temperance movement advocated for tea as a pleasure that cheered but did not inebriate, and industrialists soon borrowed this moral argument in advancing their case for free trade in tea (and hence more open markets for their textiles). Factory owners joined in, compelled by the cause of a sober workforce, while Christian missionaries discovered that tea “would soothe any colonial encounter”. During the Second World War, tea service was presented as a social and patriotic activity that uplifted soldiers and calmed refugees.
But it was tea’s consumer-directed marketing by importers and retailers – and later by brands – that most closely portends current trade debates. An early version of the “farm to table” movement was sparked by anti-Chinese sentiment and concerns over trade deficits, as well as by the reality and threat of adulterated tea containing dirt and hedge clippings. Lipton was soon advertising “from the Garden to Tea Cup” supply chains originating in British India and supervised by “educated Englishmen”. While tea marketing always presented direct consumer benefits (health, energy, relaxation), tea drinkers were also assured that they were participating in a larger noble project that advanced the causes of family, nation and civilization. . . .
Rappaport’s treatment of her subject is refreshingly apolitical. Indeed, it is a virtue that readers will be unable to guess her political orientation: both the miracle of markets and capitalism’s dark underbelly are evident in tea’s complex story, as are the complicated effects of British colonialism. . . . Commodity histories are now themselves commodities: recent works investigate cotton, salt, cod, sugar, chocolate, paper and milk. And morality marketing is now a commodity as well, applied to food, “fair trade” apparel and eco-tourism. Yet tea is, Rappaport makes clear, a world apart – an astonishing success story in which tea marketers not only succeeded in conveying a sense of moral elevation to the consumer but also arguably did advance the cause of civilisation and community.
I have been offered tea at a British garden party, a Bedouin campfire, a Turkish carpet shop and a Japanese chashitsu, to name a few settings. In each case the offering was more an idea – friendship, community, respect – than a drink, and in each case the idea then created a reality. It is not a stretch to say that tea marketers have advanced the particularly noble cause of human dialogue and friendship.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The sleights of hand that conflate consumption with virtue are a central theme in A Thirst for Empire, a sweeping and richly detailed history of tea by the historian Erika Rappaport. How did tea evolve from an obscure “China drink” to a universal beverage imbued with civilising properties? The answer, in brief, revolves around this conflation, not only by profit-motivated marketers but by a wide variety of interest groups. While abundant historical records have allowed the study of how tea itself moved from east to west, Rappaport is focused on the movement of the idea of tea to suit particular purposes.
Beginning in the 1700s, the temperance movement advocated for tea as a pleasure that cheered but did not inebriate, and industrialists soon borrowed this moral argument in advancing their case for free trade in tea (and hence more open markets for their textiles). Factory owners joined in, compelled by the cause of a sober workforce, while Christian missionaries discovered that tea “would soothe any colonial encounter”. During the Second World War, tea service was presented as a social and patriotic activity that uplifted soldiers and calmed refugees.
But it was tea’s consumer-directed marketing by importers and retailers – and later by brands – that most closely portends current trade debates. An early version of the “farm to table” movement was sparked by anti-Chinese sentiment and concerns over trade deficits, as well as by the reality and threat of adulterated tea containing dirt and hedge clippings. Lipton was soon advertising “from the Garden to Tea Cup” supply chains originating in British India and supervised by “educated Englishmen”. While tea marketing always presented direct consumer benefits (health, energy, relaxation), tea drinkers were also assured that they were participating in a larger noble project that advanced the causes of family, nation and civilization. . . .
Rappaport’s treatment of her subject is refreshingly apolitical. Indeed, it is a virtue that readers will be unable to guess her political orientation: both the miracle of markets and capitalism’s dark underbelly are evident in tea’s complex story, as are the complicated effects of British colonialism. . . . Commodity histories are now themselves commodities: recent works investigate cotton, salt, cod, sugar, chocolate, paper and milk. And morality marketing is now a commodity as well, applied to food, “fair trade” apparel and eco-tourism. Yet tea is, Rappaport makes clear, a world apart – an astonishing success story in which tea marketers not only succeeded in conveying a sense of moral elevation to the consumer but also arguably did advance the cause of civilisation and community.
I have been offered tea at a British garden party, a Bedouin campfire, a Turkish carpet shop and a Japanese chashitsu, to name a few settings. In each case the offering was more an idea – friendship, community, respect – than a drink, and in each case the idea then created a reality. It is not a stretch to say that tea marketers have advanced the particularly noble cause of human dialogue and friendship.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
The sleights of hand that conflate consumption with virtue are a central theme in A Thirst for Empire, a sweeping and richly detailed history of tea by the historian Erika Rappaport. How did tea evolve from an obscure “China drink” to a universal beverage imbued with civilising properties? The answer, in brief, revolves around this conflation, not only by profit-motivated marketers but by a wide variety of interest groups. While abundant historical records have allowed the study of how tea itself moved from east to west, Rappaport is focused on the movement of the idea of tea to suit particular purposes.
Beginning in the 1700s, the temperance movement advocated for tea as a pleasure that cheered but did not inebriate, and industrialists soon borrowed this moral argument in advancing their case for free trade in tea (and hence more open markets for their textiles). Factory owners joined in, compelled by the cause of a sober workforce, while Christian missionaries discovered that tea “would soothe any colonial encounter”. During the Second World War, tea service was presented as a social and patriotic activity that uplifted soldiers and calmed refugees.
But it was tea’s consumer-directed marketing by importers and retailers – and later by brands – that most closely portends current trade debates. An early version of the “farm to table” movement was sparked by anti-Chinese sentiment and concerns over trade deficits, as well as by the reality and threat of adulterated tea containing dirt and hedge clippings. Lipton was soon advertising “from the Garden to Tea Cup” supply chains originating in British India and supervised by “educated Englishmen”. While tea marketing always presented direct consumer benefits (health, energy, relaxation), tea drinkers were also assured that they were participating in a larger noble project that advanced the causes of family, nation and civilization. . . .
Rappaport’s treatment of her subject is refreshingly apolitical. Indeed, it is a virtue that readers will be unable to guess her political orientation: both the miracle of markets and capitalism’s dark underbelly are evident in tea’s complex story, as are the complicated effects of British colonialism. . . . Commodity histories are now themselves commodities: recent works investigate cotton, salt, cod, sugar, chocolate, paper and milk. And morality marketing is now a commodity as well, applied to food, “fair trade” apparel and eco-tourism. Yet tea is, Rappaport makes clear, a world apart – an astonishing success story in which tea marketers not only succeeded in conveying a sense of moral elevation to the consumer but also arguably did advance the cause of civilisation and community.
I have been offered tea at a British garden party, a Bedouin campfire, a Turkish carpet shop and a Japanese chashitsu, to name a few settings. In each case the offering was more an idea – friendship, community, respect – than a drink, and in each case the idea then created a reality. It is not a stretch to say that tea marketers have advanced the particularly noble cause of human dialogue and friendship.
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Today we can hardly conceive of ourselves without an unconscious. Yet between 1700 and 1900, this notion developed as a genuinely original thought. The “unconscious” burst the shell of conventional language, coined as it had been to embody the fleeting ideas and the shifting conceptions of several generations until, finally, it became fixed and defined in specialized terms within the realm of medical psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis.
The vocabulary concerning the soul and the mind increased enormously in the course of the nineteenth century. The enrichments of literary and intellectual language led to an altered understanding of the meanings that underlie time-honored expressions and traditional catchwords. At the same time, once coined, powerful new ideas attracted to themselves a whole host of seemingly unrelated issues, practices, and experiences, creating a peculiar network of preoccupations that as a group had not existed before. The drawn-out attempt to approach and define the unconscious brought together the spiritualist and the psychical researcher of borderline phenomena (such as apparitions, spectral illusions, haunted houses, mediums, trance, automatic writing); the psychiatrist or alienist probing the nature of mental disease, of abnormal ideation, hallucination, delirium, melancholia, mania; the surgeon performing operations with the aid of hypnotism; the magnetizer claiming to correct the disequilibrium in the universal flow of magnetic fluids but who soon came to be regarded as a clever manipulator of the imagination; the physiologist and the physician who puzzled over sleep, dreams, sleepwalking, anesthesia, the influence of the mind on the body in health and disease; the neurologist concerned with the functions of the brain and the physiological basis of mental life; the philosopher interested in the will, the emotions, consciousness, knowledge, imagination and the creative genius; and, last but not least, the psychologist.
Significantly, most if not all of these practices (for example, hypnotism in surgery or psychological magnetism) originated in the waning years of the eighteenth century and during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as did some of the disciplines (such as psychology and psychical research). The majority of topics too were either new or assumed hitherto unknown colors. Thus, before 1790, few if any spoke, in medical terms, of the affinity between creative genius and the hallucinations of the insane . . .
Striving vaguely and independently to give expression to a latent conception, various lines of thought can be brought together by some novel term. The new concept then serves as a kind of resting place or stocktaking in the development of ideas, giving satisfaction and a stimulus for further discussion or speculation. Thus, the massive introduction of the term unconscious by Hartmann in 1869 appeared to focalize many stray thoughts, affording a temporary feeling that a crucial step had been taken forward, a comprehensive knowledge gained, a knowledge that required only further elaboration, explication, and unfolding in order to bring in a bounty of higher understanding. Ultimately, Hartmann’s attempt at defining the unconscious proved fruitless because he extended its reach into every realm of organic and inorganic, spiritual, intellectual, and instinctive existence, severely diluting the precision and compromising the impact of the concept.
CAT/2021.3(RC)
Question. 77
Which one of the following statements best describes what the passage is about?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Today we can hardly conceive of ourselves without an unconscious. Yet between 1700 and 1900, this notion developed as a genuinely original thought. The “unconscious” burst the shell of conventional language, coined as it had been to embody the fleeting ideas and the shifting conceptions of several generations until, finally, it became fixed and defined in specialized terms within the realm of medical psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis.
The vocabulary concerning the soul and the mind increased enormously in the course of the nineteenth century. The enrichments of literary and intellectual language led to an altered understanding of the meanings that underlie time-honored expressions and traditional catchwords. At the same time, once coined, powerful new ideas attracted to themselves a whole host of seemingly unrelated issues, practices, and experiences, creating a peculiar network of preoccupations that as a group had not existed before. The drawn-out attempt to approach and define the unconscious brought together the spiritualist and the psychical researcher of borderline phenomena (such as apparitions, spectral illusions, haunted houses, mediums, trance, automatic writing); the psychiatrist or alienist probing the nature of mental disease, of abnormal ideation, hallucination, delirium, melancholia, mania; the surgeon performing operations with the aid of hypnotism; the magnetizer claiming to correct the disequilibrium in the universal flow of magnetic fluids but who soon came to be regarded as a clever manipulator of the imagination; the physiologist and the physician who puzzled over sleep, dreams, sleepwalking, anesthesia, the influence of the mind on the body in health and disease; the neurologist concerned with the functions of the brain and the physiological basis of mental life; the philosopher interested in the will, the emotions, consciousness, knowledge, imagination and the creative genius; and, last but not least, the psychologist.
Significantly, most if not all of these practices (for example, hypnotism in surgery or psychological magnetism) originated in the waning years of the eighteenth century and during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as did some of the disciplines (such as psychology and psychical research). The majority of topics too were either new or assumed hitherto unknown colors. Thus, before 1790, few if any spoke, in medical terms, of the affinity between creative genius and the hallucinations of the insane . . .
Striving vaguely and independently to give expression to a latent conception, various lines of thought can be brought together by some novel term. The new concept then serves as a kind of resting place or stocktaking in the development of ideas, giving satisfaction and a stimulus for further discussion or speculation. Thus, the massive introduction of the term unconscious by Hartmann in 1869 appeared to focalize many stray thoughts, affording a temporary feeling that a crucial step had been taken forward, a comprehensive knowledge gained, a knowledge that required only further elaboration, explication, and unfolding in order to bring in a bounty of higher understanding. Ultimately, Hartmann’s attempt at defining the unconscious proved fruitless because he extended its reach into every realm of organic and inorganic, spiritual, intellectual, and instinctive existence, severely diluting the precision and compromising the impact of the concept.
CAT/2021.3(RC)
Question. 78
“The enrichments of literary and intellectual language led to an altered understanding of the meanings that underlie time-honored expressions and traditional catchwords.” Which one of the following interpretations of this sentence would be closest in meaning to the original?
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Today we can hardly conceive of ourselves without an unconscious. Yet between 1700 and 1900, this notion developed as a genuinely original thought. The “unconscious” burst the shell of conventional language, coined as it had been to embody the fleeting ideas and the shifting conceptions of several generations until, finally, it became fixed and defined in specialized terms within the realm of medical psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis.
The vocabulary concerning the soul and the mind increased enormously in the course of the nineteenth century. The enrichments of literary and intellectual language led to an altered understanding of the meanings that underlie time-honored expressions and traditional catchwords. At the same time, once coined, powerful new ideas attracted to themselves a whole host of seemingly unrelated issues, practices, and experiences, creating a peculiar network of preoccupations that as a group had not existed before. The drawn-out attempt to approach and define the unconscious brought together the spiritualist and the psychical researcher of borderline phenomena (such as apparitions, spectral illusions, haunted houses, mediums, trance, automatic writing); the psychiatrist or alienist probing the nature of mental disease, of abnormal ideation, hallucination, delirium, melancholia, mania; the surgeon performing operations with the aid of hypnotism; the magnetizer claiming to correct the disequilibrium in the universal flow of magnetic fluids but who soon came to be regarded as a clever manipulator of the imagination; the physiologist and the physician who puzzled over sleep, dreams, sleepwalking, anesthesia, the influence of the mind on the body in health and disease; the neurologist concerned with the functions of the brain and the physiological basis of mental life; the philosopher interested in the will, the emotions, consciousness, knowledge, imagination and the creative genius; and, last but not least, the psychologist.
Significantly, most if not all of these practices (for example, hypnotism in surgery or psychological magnetism) originated in the waning years of the eighteenth century and during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as did some of the disciplines (such as psychology and psychical research). The majority of topics too were either new or assumed hitherto unknown colors. Thus, before 1790, few if any spoke, in medical terms, of the affinity between creative genius and the hallucinations of the insane . . .
Striving vaguely and independently to give expression to a latent conception, various lines of thought can be brought together by some novel term. The new concept then serves as a kind of resting place or stocktaking in the development of ideas, giving satisfaction and a stimulus for further discussion or speculation. Thus, the massive introduction of the term unconscious by Hartmann in 1869 appeared to focalize many stray thoughts, affording a temporary feeling that a crucial step had been taken forward, a comprehensive knowledge gained, a knowledge that required only further elaboration, explication, and unfolding in order to bring in a bounty of higher understanding. Ultimately, Hartmann’s attempt at defining the unconscious proved fruitless because he extended its reach into every realm of organic and inorganic, spiritual, intellectual, and instinctive existence, severely diluting the precision and compromising the impact of the concept.
CAT/2021.3(RC)
Question. 79
All of the following statements may be considered valid inferences from the passage, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Today we can hardly conceive of ourselves without an unconscious. Yet between 1700 and 1900, this notion developed as a genuinely original thought. The “unconscious” burst the shell of conventional language, coined as it had been to embody the fleeting ideas and the shifting conceptions of several generations until, finally, it became fixed and defined in specialized terms within the realm of medical psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis.
The vocabulary concerning the soul and the mind increased enormously in the course of the nineteenth century. The enrichments of literary and intellectual language led to an altered understanding of the meanings that underlie time-honored expressions and traditional catchwords. At the same time, once coined, powerful new ideas attracted to themselves a whole host of seemingly unrelated issues, practices, and experiences, creating a peculiar network of preoccupations that as a group had not existed before. The drawn-out attempt to approach and define the unconscious brought together the spiritualist and the psychical researcher of borderline phenomena (such as apparitions, spectral illusions, haunted houses, mediums, trance, automatic writing); the psychiatrist or alienist probing the nature of mental disease, of abnormal ideation, hallucination, delirium, melancholia, mania; the surgeon performing operations with the aid of hypnotism; the magnetizer claiming to correct the disequilibrium in the universal flow of magnetic fluids but who soon came to be regarded as a clever manipulator of the imagination; the physiologist and the physician who puzzled over sleep, dreams, sleepwalking, anesthesia, the influence of the mind on the body in health and disease; the neurologist concerned with the functions of the brain and the physiological basis of mental life; the philosopher interested in the will, the emotions, consciousness, knowledge, imagination and the creative genius; and, last but not least, the psychologist.
Significantly, most if not all of these practices (for example, hypnotism in surgery or psychological magnetism) originated in the waning years of the eighteenth century and during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as did some of the disciplines (such as psychology and psychical research). The majority of topics too were either new or assumed hitherto unknown colors. Thus, before 1790, few if any spoke, in medical terms, of the affinity between creative genius and the hallucinations of the insane . . .
Striving vaguely and independently to give expression to a latent conception, various lines of thought can be brought together by some novel term. The new concept then serves as a kind of resting place or stocktaking in the development of ideas, giving satisfaction and a stimulus for further discussion or speculation. Thus, the massive introduction of the term unconscious by Hartmann in 1869 appeared to focalize many stray thoughts, affording a temporary feeling that a crucial step had been taken forward, a comprehensive knowledge gained, a knowledge that required only further elaboration, explication, and unfolding in order to bring in a bounty of higher understanding. Ultimately, Hartmann’s attempt at defining the unconscious proved fruitless because he extended its reach into every realm of organic and inorganic, spiritual, intellectual, and instinctive existence, severely diluting the precision and compromising the impact of the concept.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Few realise that the government of China, governing an empire of some 60 million people during the Tang dynasty (618–907), implemented a complex financial system that recognised grain, coins and textiles as money. . . . Coins did have certain advantages: they were durable, recognisable and provided a convenient medium of exchange, especially for smaller transactions. However, there were also disadvantages. A continuing shortage of copper meant that government mints could not produce enough coins for the entire empire, to the extent that for most of the dynasty’s history, coins constituted only a tenth of the money supply. One of the main objections to calls for taxes to be paid in coin was that peasant producers who could weave cloth or grow grain – the other two major currencies of the Tang – would not be able to produce coins, and therefore would not be able to pay their taxes. . . .
As coins had advantages and disadvantages, so too did textiles. If in circulation for a long period of time, they could show signs of wear and tear. Stained, faded and torn bolts of textiles had less value than a brand new bolt. Furthermore, a full bolt had a particular value. If consumers cut textiles into smaller pieces to buy or sell something worth less than a full bolt, that, too, greatly lessened the value of the textiles. Unlike coins, textiles could not be used for small transactions; as [an official] noted, textiles could not “be exchanged by the foot and the inch” . . .
But textiles had some advantages over coins. For a start, textile production was widespread and there were fewer problems with the supply of textiles. For large transactions, textiles weighed less than their equivalent in coins since a string of coins . . . could weigh as much as 4 kg. Furthermore, the dimensions of a bolt of silk held remarkably steady from the third to the tenth century: 56 cm wide and 12 m long . . . The values of different textiles were also more stable than the fluctuating values of coins. . . .
The government also required the use of textiles for large transactions. Coins, on the other hand, were better suited for smaller transactions, and possibly, given the costs of transporting coins, for a more local usage. Grain, because it rotted easily, was not used nearly as much as coins and textiles, but taxpayers were required to pay grain to the government as a share of their annual tax obligations, and official salaries were expressed in weights of grain. . . .
In actuality, our own currency system today has some similarities even as it is changing in front of our eyes. . . . We have cash – coins for small transactions like paying for parking at a meter, and banknotes for other items; cheques and debit/credit cards for other, often larger, types of payments. At the same time, we are shifting to electronic banking and making payments online. Some young people never use cash [and] do not know how to write a cheque . . .
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Few realise that the government of China, governing an empire of some 60 million people during the Tang dynasty (618–907), implemented a complex financial system that recognised grain, coins and textiles as money. . . . Coins did have certain advantages: they were durable, recognisable and provided a convenient medium of exchange, especially for smaller transactions. However, there were also disadvantages. A continuing shortage of copper meant that government mints could not produce enough coins for the entire empire, to the extent that for most of the dynasty’s history, coins constituted only a tenth of the money supply. One of the main objections to calls for taxes to be paid in coin was that peasant producers who could weave cloth or grow grain – the other two major currencies of the Tang – would not be able to produce coins, and therefore would not be able to pay their taxes. . . .
As coins had advantages and disadvantages, so too did textiles. If in circulation for a long period of time, they could show signs of wear and tear. Stained, faded and torn bolts of textiles had less value than a brand new bolt. Furthermore, a full bolt had a particular value. If consumers cut textiles into smaller pieces to buy or sell something worth less than a full bolt, that, too, greatly lessened the value of the textiles. Unlike coins, textiles could not be used for small transactions; as [an official] noted, textiles could not “be exchanged by the foot and the inch” . . .
But textiles had some advantages over coins. For a start, textile production was widespread and there were fewer problems with the supply of textiles. For large transactions, textiles weighed less than their equivalent in coins since a string of coins . . . could weigh as much as 4 kg. Furthermore, the dimensions of a bolt of silk held remarkably steady from the third to the tenth century: 56 cm wide and 12 m long . . . The values of different textiles were also more stable than the fluctuating values of coins. . . .
The government also required the use of textiles for large transactions. Coins, on the other hand, were better suited for smaller transactions, and possibly, given the costs of transporting coins, for a more local usage. Grain, because it rotted easily, was not used nearly as much as coins and textiles, but taxpayers were required to pay grain to the government as a share of their annual tax obligations, and official salaries were expressed in weights of grain. . . .
In actuality, our own currency system today has some similarities even as it is changing in front of our eyes. . . . We have cash – coins for small transactions like paying for parking at a meter, and banknotes for other items; cheques and debit/credit cards for other, often larger, types of payments. At the same time, we are shifting to electronic banking and making payments online. Some young people never use cash [and] do not know how to write a cheque . . .
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Few realise that the government of China, governing an empire of some 60 million people during the Tang dynasty (618–907), implemented a complex financial system that recognised grain, coins and textiles as money. . . . Coins did have certain advantages: they were durable, recognisable and provided a convenient medium of exchange, especially for smaller transactions. However, there were also disadvantages. A continuing shortage of copper meant that government mints could not produce enough coins for the entire empire, to the extent that for most of the dynasty’s history, coins constituted only a tenth of the money supply. One of the main objections to calls for taxes to be paid in coin was that peasant producers who could weave cloth or grow grain – the other two major currencies of the Tang – would not be able to produce coins, and therefore would not be able to pay their taxes. . . .
As coins had advantages and disadvantages, so too did textiles. If in circulation for a long period of time, they could show signs of wear and tear. Stained, faded and torn bolts of textiles had less value than a brand new bolt. Furthermore, a full bolt had a particular value. If consumers cut textiles into smaller pieces to buy or sell something worth less than a full bolt, that, too, greatly lessened the value of the textiles. Unlike coins, textiles could not be used for small transactions; as [an official] noted, textiles could not “be exchanged by the foot and the inch” . . .
But textiles had some advantages over coins. For a start, textile production was widespread and there were fewer problems with the supply of textiles. For large transactions, textiles weighed less than their equivalent in coins since a string of coins . . . could weigh as much as 4 kg. Furthermore, the dimensions of a bolt of silk held remarkably steady from the third to the tenth century: 56 cm wide and 12 m long . . . The values of different textiles were also more stable than the fluctuating values of coins. . . .
The government also required the use of textiles for large transactions. Coins, on the other hand, were better suited for smaller transactions, and possibly, given the costs of transporting coins, for a more local usage. Grain, because it rotted easily, was not used nearly as much as coins and textiles, but taxpayers were required to pay grain to the government as a share of their annual tax obligations, and official salaries were expressed in weights of grain. . . .
In actuality, our own currency system today has some similarities even as it is changing in front of our eyes. . . . We have cash – coins for small transactions like paying for parking at a meter, and banknotes for other items; cheques and debit/credit cards for other, often larger, types of payments. At the same time, we are shifting to electronic banking and making payments online. Some young people never use cash [and] do not know how to write a cheque . . .
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Few realise that the government of China, governing an empire of some 60 million people during the Tang dynasty (618–907), implemented a complex financial system that recognised grain, coins and textiles as money. . . . Coins did have certain advantages: they were durable, recognisable and provided a convenient medium of exchange, especially for smaller transactions. However, there were also disadvantages. A continuing shortage of copper meant that government mints could not produce enough coins for the entire empire, to the extent that for most of the dynasty’s history, coins constituted only a tenth of the money supply. One of the main objections to calls for taxes to be paid in coin was that peasant producers who could weave cloth or grow grain – the other two major currencies of the Tang – would not be able to produce coins, and therefore would not be able to pay their taxes. . . .
As coins had advantages and disadvantages, so too did textiles. If in circulation for a long period of time, they could show signs of wear and tear. Stained, faded and torn bolts of textiles had less value than a brand new bolt. Furthermore, a full bolt had a particular value. If consumers cut textiles into smaller pieces to buy or sell something worth less than a full bolt, that, too, greatly lessened the value of the textiles. Unlike coins, textiles could not be used for small transactions; as [an official] noted, textiles could not “be exchanged by the foot and the inch” . . .
But textiles had some advantages over coins. For a start, textile production was widespread and there were fewer problems with the supply of textiles. For large transactions, textiles weighed less than their equivalent in coins since a string of coins . . . could weigh as much as 4 kg. Furthermore, the dimensions of a bolt of silk held remarkably steady from the third to the tenth century: 56 cm wide and 12 m long . . . The values of different textiles were also more stable than the fluctuating values of coins. . . .
The government also required the use of textiles for large transactions. Coins, on the other hand, were better suited for smaller transactions, and possibly, given the costs of transporting coins, for a more local usage. Grain, because it rotted easily, was not used nearly as much as coins and textiles, but taxpayers were required to pay grain to the government as a share of their annual tax obligations, and official salaries were expressed in weights of grain. . . .
In actuality, our own currency system today has some similarities even as it is changing in front of our eyes. . . . We have cash – coins for small transactions like paying for parking at a meter, and banknotes for other items; cheques and debit/credit cards for other, often larger, types of payments. At the same time, we are shifting to electronic banking and making payments online. Some young people never use cash [and] do not know how to write a cheque . . .
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
174 incidents of piracy were reported to the International Maritime Bureau last year, with Somali pirates responsible for only three. The rest ranged from the discreet theft of coils of rope in the Yellow Sea to the notoriously ferocious Nigerian gunmen attacking and hijacking oil tankers in the Gulf of Guinea, as well as armed robbery off Singapore and the Venezuelan coast and kidnapping in the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal. For [Dr. Peter] Lehr, an expert on modern-day piracy, the phenomenon’s history should be a source of instruction rather than entertainment, piracy past offering lessons for piracy present. . . .
But . . . where does piracy begin or end? According to St Augustine, a corsair captain once told Alexander the Great that in the forceful acquisition of power and wealth at sea, the difference between an emperor and a pirate was simply one of scale. By this logic, European empire-builders were the most successful pirates of all time. A more eclectic history might have included the conquistadors, Vasco da Gama and the East India Company. But Lehr sticks to the disorganised small fry, making comparisons with the renegades of today possible.
The main motive for piracy has always been a combination of need and greed. Why toil away as a starving peasant in the 16th century when a successful pirate made up to £4,000 on each raid? Anyone could turn to freebooting if the rewards were worth the risk . . . .
Increased globalisation has done more to encourage piracy than suppress it. European colonialism weakened delicate balances of power, leading to an influx of opportunists on the high seas. A rise in global shipping has meant rich pickings for freebooters. Lehr writes: “It quickly becomes clear that in those parts of the world that have not profited from globalisation and modernisation, and where abject poverty and the daily struggle for survival are still a reality, the root causes of piracy are still the same as they were a couple of hundred years ago.” . . .
Modern pirate prevention has failed. After the French yacht Le Gonant was ransomed for $2 million in 2008, opportunists from all over Somalia flocked to the coast for a piece of the action. . . . A consistent rule, even today, is there are never enough warships to patrol pirate-infested waters. Such ships are costly and only solve the problem temporarily; Somali piracy is bound to return as soon as the warships are withdrawn. Robot shipping, eliminating hostages, has been proposed as a possible solution; but as Lehr points out, this will only make pirates switch their targets to smaller carriers unable to afford the technology.
His advice isn’t new. Proposals to end illegal fishing are often advanced but they are difficult to enforce. Investment in local welfare put a halt to Malaysian piracy in the 1970s, but was dependent on money somehow filtering through a corrupt bureaucracy to the poor on the periphery. Diplomatic initiatives against piracy are plagued by mutual distrust: the Russians execute pirates, while the EU and US are reluctant to capture them for fear they’ll claim asylum.
CAT/2020.2(RC)
Question. 85
“A more eclectic history might have included the conquistadors, Vasco da Gama and the East India Company. But Lehr sticks to the disorganised small fry . . .” From this statement we can infer that the author believes that:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
174 incidents of piracy were reported to the International Maritime Bureau last year, with Somali pirates responsible for only three. The rest ranged from the discreet theft of coils of rope in the Yellow Sea to the notoriously ferocious Nigerian gunmen attacking and hijacking oil tankers in the Gulf of Guinea, as well as armed robbery off Singapore and the Venezuelan coast and kidnapping in the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal. For [Dr. Peter] Lehr, an expert on modern-day piracy, the phenomenon’s history should be a source of instruction rather than entertainment, piracy past offering lessons for piracy present. . . .
But . . . where does piracy begin or end? According to St Augustine, a corsair captain once told Alexander the Great that in the forceful acquisition of power and wealth at sea, the difference between an emperor and a pirate was simply one of scale. By this logic, European empire-builders were the most successful pirates of all time. A more eclectic history might have included the conquistadors, Vasco da Gama and the East India Company. But Lehr sticks to the disorganised small fry, making comparisons with the renegades of today possible.
The main motive for piracy has always been a combination of need and greed. Why toil away as a starving peasant in the 16th century when a successful pirate made up to £4,000 on each raid? Anyone could turn to freebooting if the rewards were worth the risk . . . .
Increased globalisation has done more to encourage piracy than suppress it. European colonialism weakened delicate balances of power, leading to an influx of opportunists on the high seas. A rise in global shipping has meant rich pickings for freebooters. Lehr writes: “It quickly becomes clear that in those parts of the world that have not profited from globalisation and modernisation, and where abject poverty and the daily struggle for survival are still a reality, the root causes of piracy are still the same as they were a couple of hundred years ago.” . . .
Modern pirate prevention has failed. After the French yacht Le Gonant was ransomed for $2 million in 2008, opportunists from all over Somalia flocked to the coast for a piece of the action. . . . A consistent rule, even today, is there are never enough warships to patrol pirate-infested waters. Such ships are costly and only solve the problem temporarily; Somali piracy is bound to return as soon as the warships are withdrawn. Robot shipping, eliminating hostages, has been proposed as a possible solution; but as Lehr points out, this will only make pirates switch their targets to smaller carriers unable to afford the technology.
His advice isn’t new. Proposals to end illegal fishing are often advanced but they are difficult to enforce. Investment in local welfare put a halt to Malaysian piracy in the 1970s, but was dependent on money somehow filtering through a corrupt bureaucracy to the poor on the periphery. Diplomatic initiatives against piracy are plagued by mutual distrust: the Russians execute pirates, while the EU and US are reluctant to capture them for fear they’ll claim asylum.
CAT/2020.2(RC)
Question. 86
We can deduce that the author believes that piracy can best be controlled in the long run:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
174 incidents of piracy were reported to the International Maritime Bureau last year, with Somali pirates responsible for only three. The rest ranged from the discreet theft of coils of rope in the Yellow Sea to the notoriously ferocious Nigerian gunmen attacking and hijacking oil tankers in the Gulf of Guinea, as well as armed robbery off Singapore and the Venezuelan coast and kidnapping in the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal. For [Dr. Peter] Lehr, an expert on modern-day piracy, the phenomenon’s history should be a source of instruction rather than entertainment, piracy past offering lessons for piracy present. . . .
But . . . where does piracy begin or end? According to St Augustine, a corsair captain once told Alexander the Great that in the forceful acquisition of power and wealth at sea, the difference between an emperor and a pirate was simply one of scale. By this logic, European empire-builders were the most successful pirates of all time. A more eclectic history might have included the conquistadors, Vasco da Gama and the East India Company. But Lehr sticks to the disorganised small fry, making comparisons with the renegades of today possible.
The main motive for piracy has always been a combination of need and greed. Why toil away as a starving peasant in the 16th century when a successful pirate made up to £4,000 on each raid? Anyone could turn to freebooting if the rewards were worth the risk . . . .
Increased globalisation has done more to encourage piracy than suppress it. European colonialism weakened delicate balances of power, leading to an influx of opportunists on the high seas. A rise in global shipping has meant rich pickings for freebooters. Lehr writes: “It quickly becomes clear that in those parts of the world that have not profited from globalisation and modernisation, and where abject poverty and the daily struggle for survival are still a reality, the root causes of piracy are still the same as they were a couple of hundred years ago.” . . .
Modern pirate prevention has failed. After the French yacht Le Gonant was ransomed for $2 million in 2008, opportunists from all over Somalia flocked to the coast for a piece of the action. . . . A consistent rule, even today, is there are never enough warships to patrol pirate-infested waters. Such ships are costly and only solve the problem temporarily; Somali piracy is bound to return as soon as the warships are withdrawn. Robot shipping, eliminating hostages, has been proposed as a possible solution; but as Lehr points out, this will only make pirates switch their targets to smaller carriers unable to afford the technology.
His advice isn’t new. Proposals to end illegal fishing are often advanced but they are difficult to enforce. Investment in local welfare put a halt to Malaysian piracy in the 1970s, but was dependent on money somehow filtering through a corrupt bureaucracy to the poor on the periphery. Diplomatic initiatives against piracy are plagued by mutual distrust: the Russians execute pirates, while the EU and US are reluctant to capture them for fear they’ll claim asylum.
CAT/2020.2(RC)
Question. 87
“Why toil away as a starving peasant in the 16th century when a successful pirate made up to £4,000 on each raid?” In this sentence, the author’s tone can best be described as being:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
174 incidents of piracy were reported to the International Maritime Bureau last year, with Somali pirates responsible for only three. The rest ranged from the discreet theft of coils of rope in the Yellow Sea to the notoriously ferocious Nigerian gunmen attacking and hijacking oil tankers in the Gulf of Guinea, as well as armed robbery off Singapore and the Venezuelan coast and kidnapping in the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal. For [Dr. Peter] Lehr, an expert on modern-day piracy, the phenomenon’s history should be a source of instruction rather than entertainment, piracy past offering lessons for piracy present. . . .
But . . . where does piracy begin or end? According to St Augustine, a corsair captain once told Alexander the Great that in the forceful acquisition of power and wealth at sea, the difference between an emperor and a pirate was simply one of scale. By this logic, European empire-builders were the most successful pirates of all time. A more eclectic history might have included the conquistadors, Vasco da Gama and the East India Company. But Lehr sticks to the disorganised small fry, making comparisons with the renegades of today possible.
The main motive for piracy has always been a combination of need and greed. Why toil away as a starving peasant in the 16th century when a successful pirate made up to £4,000 on each raid? Anyone could turn to freebooting if the rewards were worth the risk . . . .
Increased globalisation has done more to encourage piracy than suppress it. European colonialism weakened delicate balances of power, leading to an influx of opportunists on the high seas. A rise in global shipping has meant rich pickings for freebooters. Lehr writes: “It quickly becomes clear that in those parts of the world that have not profited from globalisation and modernisation, and where abject poverty and the daily struggle for survival are still a reality, the root causes of piracy are still the same as they were a couple of hundred years ago.” . . .
Modern pirate prevention has failed. After the French yacht Le Gonant was ransomed for $2 million in 2008, opportunists from all over Somalia flocked to the coast for a piece of the action. . . . A consistent rule, even today, is there are never enough warships to patrol pirate-infested waters. Such ships are costly and only solve the problem temporarily; Somali piracy is bound to return as soon as the warships are withdrawn. Robot shipping, eliminating hostages, has been proposed as a possible solution; but as Lehr points out, this will only make pirates switch their targets to smaller carriers unable to afford the technology.
His advice isn’t new. Proposals to end illegal fishing are often advanced but they are difficult to enforce. Investment in local welfare put a halt to Malaysian piracy in the 1970s, but was dependent on money somehow filtering through a corrupt bureaucracy to the poor on the periphery. Diplomatic initiatives against piracy are plagued by mutual distrust: the Russians execute pirates, while the EU and US are reluctant to capture them for fear they’ll claim asylum.
Comprehension
Directions for questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Mode of transportation affects the travel experience and thus can produce new types of travel writing and perhaps even new “identities.” Modes of transportation determine the types and duration of social encounters; affect the organization and passage of space and time; . . . and also affect perception and knowledge—how and what the traveler comes to know and write about. The completion of the first U.S. transcontinental highway during the 1920s . . . for example, inaugurated a new genre of travel literature about the United States—the automotive or road narrative. Such narratives highlight the experiences of mostly male protagonists “discovering themselves” on their journeys, emphasizing the independence of road travel and the value of rural folk traditions.
Travel writing’s relationship to empire building— as a type of “colonialist discourse”—has drawn the most attention from academicians. Close connections have been observed between European (and American) political, economic, and administrative goals for the colonies and their manifestations in the cultural practice of writing travel books. Travel writers’ descriptions of foreign places have been analyzed as attempts to validate, promote, or challenge the ideologies and practices of colonial or imperial domination and expansion. Mary Louise Pratt’s study of the genres and conventions of 18th- and 19th-century exploration narratives about South America and Africa (e.g., the “monarch of all I survey” trope) offered ways of thinking about travel writing as embedded within relations of power between metropole and periphery, as did Edward Said’s theories of representation and cultural imperialism. Particularly Said’s book, Orientalism, helped scholars understand ways in which representations of people in travel texts were intimately bound up with notions of self, in this case, that the Occident defined itself through essentialist, ethnocentric, and racist representations of the Orient. Said’s work became a model for demonstrating cultural forms of imperialism in travel texts, showing how the political, economic, or administrative fact of dominance relies on legitimating discourses such as those articulated through travel writing. . . .
Feminist geographers’ studies of travel writing challenge the masculinist history of geography by questioning who and what are relevant subjects of geographic study and, indeed, what counts as geographic knowledge itself. Such questions are worked through ideological constructs that posit men as explorers and women as travelers—or, conversely, men as travelers and women as tied to the home. Studies of Victorian women who were professional travel writers, tourists, wives of colonial administrators, and other (mostly) elite women who wrote narratives about their experiences abroad during the 19th century have been particularly revealing. From a “liberal” feminist perspective, travel presented one means toward female liberation for middle- and upper-class Victorian women. Many studies from the 1970s onward demonstrated the ways in which women’s gendered identities were negotiated differently “at home” than they were “away,” thereby showing women’s self-development through travel. The more recent poststructural turn in studies of Victorian travel writing has focused attention on women’s diverse and fragmented identities as they narrated their travel experiences, emphasizing women’s sense of themselves as women in new locations, but only as they worked through their ties to nation, class, whiteness, and colonial and imperial power structures.
Comprehension
Directions for questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Mode of transportation affects the travel experience and thus can produce new types of travel writing and perhaps even new “identities.” Modes of transportation determine the types and duration of social encounters; affect the organization and passage of space and time; . . . and also affect perception and knowledge—how and what the traveler comes to know and write about. The completion of the first U.S. transcontinental highway during the 1920s . . . for example, inaugurated a new genre of travel literature about the United States—the automotive or road narrative. Such narratives highlight the experiences of mostly male protagonists “discovering themselves” on their journeys, emphasizing the independence of road travel and the value of rural folk traditions.
Travel writing’s relationship to empire building— as a type of “colonialist discourse”—has drawn the most attention from academicians. Close connections have been observed between European (and American) political, economic, and administrative goals for the colonies and their manifestations in the cultural practice of writing travel books. Travel writers’ descriptions of foreign places have been analyzed as attempts to validate, promote, or challenge the ideologies and practices of colonial or imperial domination and expansion. Mary Louise Pratt’s study of the genres and conventions of 18th- and 19th-century exploration narratives about South America and Africa (e.g., the “monarch of all I survey” trope) offered ways of thinking about travel writing as embedded within relations of power between metropole and periphery, as did Edward Said’s theories of representation and cultural imperialism. Particularly Said’s book, Orientalism, helped scholars understand ways in which representations of people in travel texts were intimately bound up with notions of self, in this case, that the Occident defined itself through essentialist, ethnocentric, and racist representations of the Orient. Said’s work became a model for demonstrating cultural forms of imperialism in travel texts, showing how the political, economic, or administrative fact of dominance relies on legitimating discourses such as those articulated through travel writing. . . .
Feminist geographers’ studies of travel writing challenge the masculinist history of geography by questioning who and what are relevant subjects of geographic study and, indeed, what counts as geographic knowledge itself. Such questions are worked through ideological constructs that posit men as explorers and women as travelers—or, conversely, men as travelers and women as tied to the home. Studies of Victorian women who were professional travel writers, tourists, wives of colonial administrators, and other (mostly) elite women who wrote narratives about their experiences abroad during the 19th century have been particularly revealing. From a “liberal” feminist perspective, travel presented one means toward female liberation for middle- and upper-class Victorian women. Many studies from the 1970s onward demonstrated the ways in which women’s gendered identities were negotiated differently “at home” than they were “away,” thereby showing women’s self-development through travel. The more recent poststructural turn in studies of Victorian travel writing has focused attention on women’s diverse and fragmented identities as they narrated their travel experiences, emphasizing women’s sense of themselves as women in new locations, but only as they worked through their ties to nation, class, whiteness, and colonial and imperial power structures.
Comprehension
Directions for questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Mode of transportation affects the travel experience and thus can produce new types of travel writing and perhaps even new “identities.” Modes of transportation determine the types and duration of social encounters; affect the organization and passage of space and time; . . . and also affect perception and knowledge—how and what the traveler comes to know and write about. The completion of the first U.S. transcontinental highway during the 1920s . . . for example, inaugurated a new genre of travel literature about the United States—the automotive or road narrative. Such narratives highlight the experiences of mostly male protagonists “discovering themselves” on their journeys, emphasizing the independence of road travel and the value of rural folk traditions.
Travel writing’s relationship to empire building— as a type of “colonialist discourse”—has drawn the most attention from academicians. Close connections have been observed between European (and American) political, economic, and administrative goals for the colonies and their manifestations in the cultural practice of writing travel books. Travel writers’ descriptions of foreign places have been analyzed as attempts to validate, promote, or challenge the ideologies and practices of colonial or imperial domination and expansion. Mary Louise Pratt’s study of the genres and conventions of 18th- and 19th-century exploration narratives about South America and Africa (e.g., the “monarch of all I survey” trope) offered ways of thinking about travel writing as embedded within relations of power between metropole and periphery, as did Edward Said’s theories of representation and cultural imperialism. Particularly Said’s book, Orientalism, helped scholars understand ways in which representations of people in travel texts were intimately bound up with notions of self, in this case, that the Occident defined itself through essentialist, ethnocentric, and racist representations of the Orient. Said’s work became a model for demonstrating cultural forms of imperialism in travel texts, showing how the political, economic, or administrative fact of dominance relies on legitimating discourses such as those articulated through travel writing. . . .
Feminist geographers’ studies of travel writing challenge the masculinist history of geography by questioning who and what are relevant subjects of geographic study and, indeed, what counts as geographic knowledge itself. Such questions are worked through ideological constructs that posit men as explorers and women as travelers—or, conversely, men as travelers and women as tied to the home. Studies of Victorian women who were professional travel writers, tourists, wives of colonial administrators, and other (mostly) elite women who wrote narratives about their experiences abroad during the 19th century have been particularly revealing. From a “liberal” feminist perspective, travel presented one means toward female liberation for middle- and upper-class Victorian women. Many studies from the 1970s onward demonstrated the ways in which women’s gendered identities were negotiated differently “at home” than they were “away,” thereby showing women’s self-development through travel. The more recent poststructural turn in studies of Victorian travel writing has focused attention on women’s diverse and fragmented identities as they narrated their travel experiences, emphasizing women’s sense of themselves as women in new locations, but only as they worked through their ties to nation, class, whiteness, and colonial and imperial power structures.
Comprehension
Directions for questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Mode of transportation affects the travel experience and thus can produce new types of travel writing and perhaps even new “identities.” Modes of transportation determine the types and duration of social encounters; affect the organization and passage of space and time; . . . and also affect perception and knowledge—how and what the traveler comes to know and write about. The completion of the first U.S. transcontinental highway during the 1920s . . . for example, inaugurated a new genre of travel literature about the United States—the automotive or road narrative. Such narratives highlight the experiences of mostly male protagonists “discovering themselves” on their journeys, emphasizing the independence of road travel and the value of rural folk traditions.
Travel writing’s relationship to empire building— as a type of “colonialist discourse”—has drawn the most attention from academicians. Close connections have been observed between European (and American) political, economic, and administrative goals for the colonies and their manifestations in the cultural practice of writing travel books. Travel writers’ descriptions of foreign places have been analyzed as attempts to validate, promote, or challenge the ideologies and practices of colonial or imperial domination and expansion. Mary Louise Pratt’s study of the genres and conventions of 18th- and 19th-century exploration narratives about South America and Africa (e.g., the “monarch of all I survey” trope) offered ways of thinking about travel writing as embedded within relations of power between metropole and periphery, as did Edward Said’s theories of representation and cultural imperialism. Particularly Said’s book, Orientalism, helped scholars understand ways in which representations of people in travel texts were intimately bound up with notions of self, in this case, that the Occident defined itself through essentialist, ethnocentric, and racist representations of the Orient. Said’s work became a model for demonstrating cultural forms of imperialism in travel texts, showing how the political, economic, or administrative fact of dominance relies on legitimating discourses such as those articulated through travel writing. . . .
Feminist geographers’ studies of travel writing challenge the masculinist history of geography by questioning who and what are relevant subjects of geographic study and, indeed, what counts as geographic knowledge itself. Such questions are worked through ideological constructs that posit men as explorers and women as travelers—or, conversely, men as travelers and women as tied to the home. Studies of Victorian women who were professional travel writers, tourists, wives of colonial administrators, and other (mostly) elite women who wrote narratives about their experiences abroad during the 19th century have been particularly revealing. From a “liberal” feminist perspective, travel presented one means toward female liberation for middle- and upper-class Victorian women. Many studies from the 1970s onward demonstrated the ways in which women’s gendered identities were negotiated differently “at home” than they were “away,” thereby showing women’s self-development through travel. The more recent poststructural turn in studies of Victorian travel writing has focused attention on women’s diverse and fragmented identities as they narrated their travel experiences, emphasizing women’s sense of themselves as women in new locations, but only as they worked through their ties to nation, class, whiteness, and colonial and imperial power structures.
Comprehension
Directions for questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Mode of transportation affects the travel experience and thus can produce new types of travel writing and perhaps even new “identities.” Modes of transportation determine the types and duration of social encounters; affect the organization and passage of space and time; . . . and also affect perception and knowledge—how and what the traveler comes to know and write about. The completion of the first U.S. transcontinental highway during the 1920s . . . for example, inaugurated a new genre of travel literature about the United States—the automotive or road narrative. Such narratives highlight the experiences of mostly male protagonists “discovering themselves” on their journeys, emphasizing the independence of road travel and the value of rural folk traditions.
Travel writing’s relationship to empire building— as a type of “colonialist discourse”—has drawn the most attention from academicians. Close connections have been observed between European (and American) political, economic, and administrative goals for the colonies and their manifestations in the cultural practice of writing travel books. Travel writers’ descriptions of foreign places have been analyzed as attempts to validate, promote, or challenge the ideologies and practices of colonial or imperial domination and expansion. Mary Louise Pratt’s study of the genres and conventions of 18th- and 19th-century exploration narratives about South America and Africa (e.g., the “monarch of all I survey” trope) offered ways of thinking about travel writing as embedded within relations of power between metropole and periphery, as did Edward Said’s theories of representation and cultural imperialism. Particularly Said’s book, Orientalism, helped scholars understand ways in which representations of people in travel texts were intimately bound up with notions of self, in this case, that the Occident defined itself through essentialist, ethnocentric, and racist representations of the Orient. Said’s work became a model for demonstrating cultural forms of imperialism in travel texts, showing how the political, economic, or administrative fact of dominance relies on legitimating discourses such as those articulated through travel writing. . . .
Feminist geographers’ studies of travel writing challenge the masculinist history of geography by questioning who and what are relevant subjects of geographic study and, indeed, what counts as geographic knowledge itself. Such questions are worked through ideological constructs that posit men as explorers and women as travelers—or, conversely, men as travelers and women as tied to the home. Studies of Victorian women who were professional travel writers, tourists, wives of colonial administrators, and other (mostly) elite women who wrote narratives about their experiences abroad during the 19th century have been particularly revealing. From a “liberal” feminist perspective, travel presented one means toward female liberation for middle- and upper-class Victorian women. Many studies from the 1970s onward demonstrated the ways in which women’s gendered identities were negotiated differently “at home” than they were “away,” thereby showing women’s self-development through travel. The more recent poststructural turn in studies of Victorian travel writing has focused attention on women’s diverse and fragmented identities as they narrated their travel experiences, emphasizing women’s sense of themselves as women in new locations, but only as they worked through their ties to nation, class, whiteness, and colonial and imperial power structures.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.
My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.
CAT/2020.3(RC)
Question. 94
Which one of the following, if false, could be seen as supporting the author’s claims?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.
My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.
CAT/2020.3(RC)
Question. 95
Which one of the following, if true, would be an accurate inference from the first sentence of the passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.
My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.
CAT/2020.3(RC)
Question. 96
Which one of the following best captures the main argument of the last paragraph of the passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.
My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.
CAT/2020.3(RC)
Question. 97
All of the following, if true, could be seen as supporting the arguments in the passage, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.
My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.
CAT/2020.3(RC)
Question. 98
According to the passage, the author is likely to be supportive of which one of the following programmes?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety. Research has consistently held that people who are presented with a few options make better, easier decisions than those presented with many. . . . Helping consumers figure out what to buy amid an endless sea of choice online has become a cottage industry unto itself. Many brands and retailers now wield marketing buzzwords such as curation, differentiation, and discovery as they attempt to sell an assortment of stuff targeted to their ideal customer. Companies find such shoppers through the data gold mine of digital advertising, which can catalog people by gender, income level, personal interests, and more. Since Americans have lost the ability to sort through the sheer volume of the consumer choices available to them, a ghost now has to be in the retail machine, whether it’s an algorithm, an influencer, or some snazzy ad tech to help a product follow you around the internet. Indeed, choice fatigue is one reason so many people gravitate toward lifestyle influencers on Instagram—the relentlessly chic young moms and perpetually vacationing 20-somethings—who present an aspirational worldview, and then recommend the products and services that help achieve it. . . .
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race. . . .
One-thousand-dollar mattresses and $300 suitcases might solve choice anxiety for a certain tier of consumer, but the companies that sell them, along with those that attempt to massage the larger stuff economy into something navigable, are still just working within a consumer market that’s broken in systemic ways. The presence of so much stuff in America might be more valuable if it were more evenly distributed, but stuff’s creators tend to focus their energy on those who already have plenty. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
For start-ups that promise accessible simplicity, their very structure still might eventually push them toward overwhelming variety. Most of these companies are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the investors of which tend to expect a steep growth rate that can’t be achieved by selling one great mattress or one great sneaker. Casper has expanded into bedroom furniture and bed linens. Glossier, after years of marketing itself as no-makeup makeup that requires little skill to apply, recently launched a full line of glittering color cosmetics. There may be no way to opt out of stuff by buying into the right thing.
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 99
Which of the following hypothetical statements would add the least depth to the author’s prediction of the fate of start-ups offering few product options?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety. Research has consistently held that people who are presented with a few options make better, easier decisions than those presented with many. . . . Helping consumers figure out what to buy amid an endless sea of choice online has become a cottage industry unto itself. Many brands and retailers now wield marketing buzzwords such as curation, differentiation, and discovery as they attempt to sell an assortment of stuff targeted to their ideal customer. Companies find such shoppers through the data gold mine of digital advertising, which can catalog people by gender, income level, personal interests, and more. Since Americans have lost the ability to sort through the sheer volume of the consumer choices available to them, a ghost now has to be in the retail machine, whether it’s an algorithm, an influencer, or some snazzy ad tech to help a product follow you around the internet. Indeed, choice fatigue is one reason so many people gravitate toward lifestyle influencers on Instagram—the relentlessly chic young moms and perpetually vacationing 20-somethings—who present an aspirational worldview, and then recommend the products and services that help achieve it. . . .
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race. . . .
One-thousand-dollar mattresses and $300 suitcases might solve choice anxiety for a certain tier of consumer, but the companies that sell them, along with those that attempt to massage the larger stuff economy into something navigable, are still just working within a consumer market that’s broken in systemic ways. The presence of so much stuff in America might be more valuable if it were more evenly distributed, but stuff’s creators tend to focus their energy on those who already have plenty. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
For start-ups that promise accessible simplicity, their very structure still might eventually push them toward overwhelming variety. Most of these companies are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the investors of which tend to expect a steep growth rate that can’t be achieved by selling one great mattress or one great sneaker. Casper has expanded into bedroom furniture and bed linens. Glossier, after years of marketing itself as no-makeup makeup that requires little skill to apply, recently launched a full line of glittering color cosmetics. There may be no way to opt out of stuff by buying into the right thing.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety. Research has consistently held that people who are presented with a few options make better, easier decisions than those presented with many. . . . Helping consumers figure out what to buy amid an endless sea of choice online has become a cottage industry unto itself. Many brands and retailers now wield marketing buzzwords such as curation, differentiation, and discovery as they attempt to sell an assortment of stuff targeted to their ideal customer. Companies find such shoppers through the data gold mine of digital advertising, which can catalog people by gender, income level, personal interests, and more. Since Americans have lost the ability to sort through the sheer volume of the consumer choices available to them, a ghost now has to be in the retail machine, whether it’s an algorithm, an influencer, or some snazzy ad tech to help a product follow you around the internet. Indeed, choice fatigue is one reason so many people gravitate toward lifestyle influencers on Instagram—the relentlessly chic young moms and perpetually vacationing 20-somethings—who present an aspirational worldview, and then recommend the products and services that help achieve it. . . .
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race. . . .
One-thousand-dollar mattresses and $300 suitcases might solve choice anxiety for a certain tier of consumer, but the companies that sell them, along with those that attempt to massage the larger stuff economy into something navigable, are still just working within a consumer market that’s broken in systemic ways. The presence of so much stuff in America might be more valuable if it were more evenly distributed, but stuff’s creators tend to focus their energy on those who already have plenty. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
For start-ups that promise accessible simplicity, their very structure still might eventually push them toward overwhelming variety. Most of these companies are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the investors of which tend to expect a steep growth rate that can’t be achieved by selling one great mattress or one great sneaker. Casper has expanded into bedroom furniture and bed linens. Glossier, after years of marketing itself as no-makeup makeup that requires little skill to apply, recently launched a full line of glittering color cosmetics. There may be no way to opt out of stuff by buying into the right thing.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety. Research has consistently held that people who are presented with a few options make better, easier decisions than those presented with many. . . . Helping consumers figure out what to buy amid an endless sea of choice online has become a cottage industry unto itself. Many brands and retailers now wield marketing buzzwords such as curation, differentiation, and discovery as they attempt to sell an assortment of stuff targeted to their ideal customer. Companies find such shoppers through the data gold mine of digital advertising, which can catalog people by gender, income level, personal interests, and more. Since Americans have lost the ability to sort through the sheer volume of the consumer choices available to them, a ghost now has to be in the retail machine, whether it’s an algorithm, an influencer, or some snazzy ad tech to help a product follow you around the internet. Indeed, choice fatigue is one reason so many people gravitate toward lifestyle influencers on Instagram—the relentlessly chic young moms and perpetually vacationing 20-somethings—who present an aspirational worldview, and then recommend the products and services that help achieve it. . . .
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race. . . .
One-thousand-dollar mattresses and $300 suitcases might solve choice anxiety for a certain tier of consumer, but the companies that sell them, along with those that attempt to massage the larger stuff economy into something navigable, are still just working within a consumer market that’s broken in systemic ways. The presence of so much stuff in America might be more valuable if it were more evenly distributed, but stuff’s creators tend to focus their energy on those who already have plenty. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
For start-ups that promise accessible simplicity, their very structure still might eventually push them toward overwhelming variety. Most of these companies are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the investors of which tend to expect a steep growth rate that can’t be achieved by selling one great mattress or one great sneaker. Casper has expanded into bedroom furniture and bed linens. Glossier, after years of marketing itself as no-makeup makeup that requires little skill to apply, recently launched a full line of glittering color cosmetics. There may be no way to opt out of stuff by buying into the right thing.
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 102
All of the following, IF TRUE, would weaken the author’s claims EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety. Research has consistently held that people who are presented with a few options make better, easier decisions than those presented with many. . . . Helping consumers figure out what to buy amid an endless sea of choice online has become a cottage industry unto itself. Many brands and retailers now wield marketing buzzwords such as curation, differentiation, and discovery as they attempt to sell an assortment of stuff targeted to their ideal customer. Companies find such shoppers through the data gold mine of digital advertising, which can catalog people by gender, income level, personal interests, and more. Since Americans have lost the ability to sort through the sheer volume of the consumer choices available to them, a ghost now has to be in the retail machine, whether it’s an algorithm, an influencer, or some snazzy ad tech to help a product follow you around the internet. Indeed, choice fatigue is one reason so many people gravitate toward lifestyle influencers on Instagram—the relentlessly chic young moms and perpetually vacationing 20-somethings—who present an aspirational worldview, and then recommend the products and services that help achieve it. . . .
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race. . . .
One-thousand-dollar mattresses and $300 suitcases might solve choice anxiety for a certain tier of consumer, but the companies that sell them, along with those that attempt to massage the larger stuff economy into something navigable, are still just working within a consumer market that’s broken in systemic ways. The presence of so much stuff in America might be more valuable if it were more evenly distributed, but stuff’s creators tend to focus their energy on those who already have plenty. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
For start-ups that promise accessible simplicity, their very structure still might eventually push them toward overwhelming variety. Most of these companies are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the investors of which tend to expect a steep growth rate that can’t be achieved by selling one great mattress or one great sneaker. Casper has expanded into bedroom furniture and bed linens. Glossier, after years of marketing itself as no-makeup makeup that requires little skill to apply, recently launched a full line of glittering color cosmetics. There may be no way to opt out of stuff by buying into the right thing.
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 103
Based on the passage, all of the following can be inferred about consumer behaviour EXCEPT that:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
"Free of the taint of manufacture" – that phrase, in particular, is heavily loaded with the ideology of what the Victorian socialist William Morris called the "anti-scrape", or an anti- capitalist conservationism (not conservatism) that solaced itself with the vision of a pre- industrial golden age. In Britain, folk may often appear a cosy, fossilised form, but when you look more closely, the idea of folk – who has the right to sing it, dance it, invoke it, collect it, belong to it or appropriate it for political or cultural ends – has always been contested territory. . . .
In our own time, though, the word "folk" . . . has achieved the rare distinction of occupying fashionable and unfashionable status simultaneously. Just as the effusive floral prints of the radical William Morris now cover genteel sofas, so the revolutionary intentions of many folk historians and revivalists have led to music that is commonly regarded as parochial and conservative. And yet – as newspaper columns periodically rejoice – folk is hip again, influencing artists, clothing and furniture designers, celebrated at music festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV, reissued on countless record labels. Folk is a sonic "shabby chic", containing elements of the uncanny and eerie, as well as an antique veneer, a whiff of Britain's heathen dark ages. The very obscurity and anonymity of folk music's origins open up space for rampant imaginative fancies. . . .
[Cecil Sharp, who wrote about this subject, believed that] folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a perpetual state of renewal. "One man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like" is the most concise summary of his conclusions on its origins. He compared each rendition of a ballad to an acorn falling from an oak tree; every subsequent iteration sows the song anew. But there is tension in newness. In the late 1960s, purists were suspicious of folk songs recast in rock idioms. Electrification, however, comes in many forms. For the early-20th-century composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, there were thunderbolts of inspiration from oriental mysticism, angular modernism and the body blow of the first world war, as well as input from the rediscovered folk tradition itself.
For the second wave of folk revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd, starting in the 40s, the vital spark was communism's dream of a post-revolutionary New Jerusalem. For their younger successors in the 60s, who thronged the folk clubs set up by the old guard, the lyrical freedom of Dylan and the unchained melodies of psychedelia created the conditions for folk- rock's own golden age, a brief Indian summer that lasted from about 1969 to 1971. . . . Four decades on, even that progressive period has become just one more era ripe for fashionable emulation and pastiche. The idea of a folk tradition being exclusively confined to oral transmission has become a much looser, less severely guarded concept. Recorded music and television, for today's metropolitan generation, are where the equivalent of folk memories are seeded. . . .
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
"Free of the taint of manufacture" – that phrase, in particular, is heavily loaded with the ideology of what the Victorian socialist William Morris called the "anti-scrape", or an anti- capitalist conservationism (not conservatism) that solaced itself with the vision of a pre- industrial golden age. In Britain, folk may often appear a cosy, fossilised form, but when you look more closely, the idea of folk – who has the right to sing it, dance it, invoke it, collect it, belong to it or appropriate it for political or cultural ends – has always been contested territory. . . .
In our own time, though, the word "folk" . . . has achieved the rare distinction of occupying fashionable and unfashionable status simultaneously. Just as the effusive floral prints of the radical William Morris now cover genteel sofas, so the revolutionary intentions of many folk historians and revivalists have led to music that is commonly regarded as parochial and conservative. And yet – as newspaper columns periodically rejoice – folk is hip again, influencing artists, clothing and furniture designers, celebrated at music festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV, reissued on countless record labels. Folk is a sonic "shabby chic", containing elements of the uncanny and eerie, as well as an antique veneer, a whiff of Britain's heathen dark ages. The very obscurity and anonymity of folk music's origins open up space for rampant imaginative fancies. . . .
[Cecil Sharp, who wrote about this subject, believed that] folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a perpetual state of renewal. "One man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like" is the most concise summary of his conclusions on its origins. He compared each rendition of a ballad to an acorn falling from an oak tree; every subsequent iteration sows the song anew. But there is tension in newness. In the late 1960s, purists were suspicious of folk songs recast in rock idioms. Electrification, however, comes in many forms. For the early-20th-century composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, there were thunderbolts of inspiration from oriental mysticism, angular modernism and the body blow of the first world war, as well as input from the rediscovered folk tradition itself.
For the second wave of folk revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd, starting in the 40s, the vital spark was communism's dream of a post-revolutionary New Jerusalem. For their younger successors in the 60s, who thronged the folk clubs set up by the old guard, the lyrical freedom of Dylan and the unchained melodies of psychedelia created the conditions for folk- rock's own golden age, a brief Indian summer that lasted from about 1969 to 1971. . . . Four decades on, even that progressive period has become just one more era ripe for fashionable emulation and pastiche. The idea of a folk tradition being exclusively confined to oral transmission has become a much looser, less severely guarded concept. Recorded music and television, for today's metropolitan generation, are where the equivalent of folk memories are seeded. . . .
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 105
All of the following are causes for plurality and diversity within the British folk tradition EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
"Free of the taint of manufacture" – that phrase, in particular, is heavily loaded with the ideology of what the Victorian socialist William Morris called the "anti-scrape", or an anti- capitalist conservationism (not conservatism) that solaced itself with the vision of a pre- industrial golden age. In Britain, folk may often appear a cosy, fossilised form, but when you look more closely, the idea of folk – who has the right to sing it, dance it, invoke it, collect it, belong to it or appropriate it for political or cultural ends – has always been contested territory. . . .
In our own time, though, the word "folk" . . . has achieved the rare distinction of occupying fashionable and unfashionable status simultaneously. Just as the effusive floral prints of the radical William Morris now cover genteel sofas, so the revolutionary intentions of many folk historians and revivalists have led to music that is commonly regarded as parochial and conservative. And yet – as newspaper columns periodically rejoice – folk is hip again, influencing artists, clothing and furniture designers, celebrated at music festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV, reissued on countless record labels. Folk is a sonic "shabby chic", containing elements of the uncanny and eerie, as well as an antique veneer, a whiff of Britain's heathen dark ages. The very obscurity and anonymity of folk music's origins open up space for rampant imaginative fancies. . . .
[Cecil Sharp, who wrote about this subject, believed that] folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a perpetual state of renewal. "One man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like" is the most concise summary of his conclusions on its origins. He compared each rendition of a ballad to an acorn falling from an oak tree; every subsequent iteration sows the song anew. But there is tension in newness. In the late 1960s, purists were suspicious of folk songs recast in rock idioms. Electrification, however, comes in many forms. For the early-20th-century composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, there were thunderbolts of inspiration from oriental mysticism, angular modernism and the body blow of the first world war, as well as input from the rediscovered folk tradition itself.
For the second wave of folk revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd, starting in the 40s, the vital spark was communism's dream of a post-revolutionary New Jerusalem. For their younger successors in the 60s, who thronged the folk clubs set up by the old guard, the lyrical freedom of Dylan and the unchained melodies of psychedelia created the conditions for folk- rock's own golden age, a brief Indian summer that lasted from about 1969 to 1971. . . . Four decades on, even that progressive period has become just one more era ripe for fashionable emulation and pastiche. The idea of a folk tradition being exclusively confined to oral transmission has become a much looser, less severely guarded concept. Recorded music and television, for today's metropolitan generation, are where the equivalent of folk memories are seeded. . . .
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 106
At a conference on folk forms, the author of the passage is least likely to agree with which one of the following views?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
"Free of the taint of manufacture" – that phrase, in particular, is heavily loaded with the ideology of what the Victorian socialist William Morris called the "anti-scrape", or an anti- capitalist conservationism (not conservatism) that solaced itself with the vision of a pre- industrial golden age. In Britain, folk may often appear a cosy, fossilised form, but when you look more closely, the idea of folk – who has the right to sing it, dance it, invoke it, collect it, belong to it or appropriate it for political or cultural ends – has always been contested territory. . . .
In our own time, though, the word "folk" . . . has achieved the rare distinction of occupying fashionable and unfashionable status simultaneously. Just as the effusive floral prints of the radical William Morris now cover genteel sofas, so the revolutionary intentions of many folk historians and revivalists have led to music that is commonly regarded as parochial and conservative. And yet – as newspaper columns periodically rejoice – folk is hip again, influencing artists, clothing and furniture designers, celebrated at music festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV, reissued on countless record labels. Folk is a sonic "shabby chic", containing elements of the uncanny and eerie, as well as an antique veneer, a whiff of Britain's heathen dark ages. The very obscurity and anonymity of folk music's origins open up space for rampant imaginative fancies. . . .
[Cecil Sharp, who wrote about this subject, believed that] folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a perpetual state of renewal. "One man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like" is the most concise summary of his conclusions on its origins. He compared each rendition of a ballad to an acorn falling from an oak tree; every subsequent iteration sows the song anew. But there is tension in newness. In the late 1960s, purists were suspicious of folk songs recast in rock idioms. Electrification, however, comes in many forms. For the early-20th-century composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, there were thunderbolts of inspiration from oriental mysticism, angular modernism and the body blow of the first world war, as well as input from the rediscovered folk tradition itself.
For the second wave of folk revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd, starting in the 40s, the vital spark was communism's dream of a post-revolutionary New Jerusalem. For their younger successors in the 60s, who thronged the folk clubs set up by the old guard, the lyrical freedom of Dylan and the unchained melodies of psychedelia created the conditions for folk- rock's own golden age, a brief Indian summer that lasted from about 1969 to 1971. . . . Four decades on, even that progressive period has become just one more era ripe for fashionable emulation and pastiche. The idea of a folk tradition being exclusively confined to oral transmission has become a much looser, less severely guarded concept. Recorded music and television, for today's metropolitan generation, are where the equivalent of folk memories are seeded. . . .
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 107
The primary purpose of the reference to William Morris and his floral prints is to show:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
"Free of the taint of manufacture" – that phrase, in particular, is heavily loaded with the ideology of what the Victorian socialist William Morris called the "anti-scrape", or an anti- capitalist conservationism (not conservatism) that solaced itself with the vision of a pre- industrial golden age. In Britain, folk may often appear a cosy, fossilised form, but when you look more closely, the idea of folk – who has the right to sing it, dance it, invoke it, collect it, belong to it or appropriate it for political or cultural ends – has always been contested territory. . . .
In our own time, though, the word "folk" . . . has achieved the rare distinction of occupying fashionable and unfashionable status simultaneously. Just as the effusive floral prints of the radical William Morris now cover genteel sofas, so the revolutionary intentions of many folk historians and revivalists have led to music that is commonly regarded as parochial and conservative. And yet – as newspaper columns periodically rejoice – folk is hip again, influencing artists, clothing and furniture designers, celebrated at music festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV, reissued on countless record labels. Folk is a sonic "shabby chic", containing elements of the uncanny and eerie, as well as an antique veneer, a whiff of Britain's heathen dark ages. The very obscurity and anonymity of folk music's origins open up space for rampant imaginative fancies. . . .
[Cecil Sharp, who wrote about this subject, believed that] folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a perpetual state of renewal. "One man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like" is the most concise summary of his conclusions on its origins. He compared each rendition of a ballad to an acorn falling from an oak tree; every subsequent iteration sows the song anew. But there is tension in newness. In the late 1960s, purists were suspicious of folk songs recast in rock idioms. Electrification, however, comes in many forms. For the early-20th-century composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, there were thunderbolts of inspiration from oriental mysticism, angular modernism and the body blow of the first world war, as well as input from the rediscovered folk tradition itself.
For the second wave of folk revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd, starting in the 40s, the vital spark was communism's dream of a post-revolutionary New Jerusalem. For their younger successors in the 60s, who thronged the folk clubs set up by the old guard, the lyrical freedom of Dylan and the unchained melodies of psychedelia created the conditions for folk- rock's own golden age, a brief Indian summer that lasted from about 1969 to 1971. . . . Four decades on, even that progressive period has become just one more era ripe for fashionable emulation and pastiche. The idea of a folk tradition being exclusively confined to oral transmission has become a much looser, less severely guarded concept. Recorded music and television, for today's metropolitan generation, are where the equivalent of folk memories are seeded. . . .
CAT/2019.1(RC)
Question. 108
Which of the following statements about folk revivalism of the 1940s and 1960s cannot be inferred from the passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Around the world, capital cities are disgorging bureaucrats. In the post-colonial fervour of the 20th century, coastal capitals picked by trade-focused empires were spurned for “regionally neutral” new ones . . . . But decamping wholesale is costly and unpopular; governments these days prefer piecemeal dispersal. The trend reflects how the world has changed. In past eras, when information travelled at a snail’s pace, civil servants had to cluster together. But now desk-workers can ping emails and video-chat around the world. Travel for face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable, but transport links, too, have improved. . . .
Proponents of moving civil servants around promise countless benefits. It disperses the risk that a terrorist attack or natural disaster will cripple an entire government. Wonks in the sticks will be inspired by new ideas that walled-off capitals cannot conjure up. Autonomous regulators perform best far from the pressure and lobbying of the big city. Some even hail a cure for ascendant cynicism and populism. The unloved bureaucrats of faraway capitals will become as popular as firefighters once they mix with regular folk.
Beyond these sunny visions, dispersing central-government functions usually has three specific aims: to improve the lives of both civil servants and those living in clogged capitals; to save money; and to redress regional imbalances. The trouble is that these goals are not always realised.
The first aim—improving living conditions—has a long pedigree. After the second world war Britain moved thousands of civil servants to “agreeable English country towns” as London was rebuilt. But swapping the capital for somewhere smaller is not always agreeable. Attrition rates can exceed 80%. . . . The second reason to pack bureaucrats off is to save money. Office space costs far more in capitals. . . . Agencies that are moved elsewhere can often recruit better workers on lower salaries than in capitals, where well-paying multinationals mop up talent.
The third reason to shift is to rebalance regional inequality. . . . Norway treats federal jobs as a resource every region deserves to enjoy, like profits from oil. Where government jobs go, private ones follow. . . . Sometimes the aim is to fulfil the potential of a country’s second-tier cities. Unlike poor, remote places, bigger cities can make the most of relocated government agencies, linking them to local universities and businesses and supplying a better-educated workforce. The decision in 1946 to set up America’s Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta rather than Washington, D.C., has transformed the city into a hub for health-sector research and business.
The dilemma is obvious. Pick small, poor towns, and areas of high unemployment get new jobs, but it is hard to attract the most qualified workers; opt for larger cities with infrastructure and better-qualified residents, and the country’s most deprived areas see little benefit. . . .
Others contend that decentralisation begets corruption by making government agencies less accountable. . . . A study in America found that state-government corruption is worse when the state capital is isolated—journalists, who tend to live in the bigger cities, become less watchful of those in power.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Around the world, capital cities are disgorging bureaucrats. In the post-colonial fervour of the 20th century, coastal capitals picked by trade-focused empires were spurned for “regionally neutral” new ones . . . . But decamping wholesale is costly and unpopular; governments these days prefer piecemeal dispersal. The trend reflects how the world has changed. In past eras, when information travelled at a snail’s pace, civil servants had to cluster together. But now desk-workers can ping emails and video-chat around the world. Travel for face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable, but transport links, too, have improved. . . .
Proponents of moving civil servants around promise countless benefits. It disperses the risk that a terrorist attack or natural disaster will cripple an entire government. Wonks in the sticks will be inspired by new ideas that walled-off capitals cannot conjure up. Autonomous regulators perform best far from the pressure and lobbying of the big city. Some even hail a cure for ascendant cynicism and populism. The unloved bureaucrats of faraway capitals will become as popular as firefighters once they mix with regular folk.
Beyond these sunny visions, dispersing central-government functions usually has three specific aims: to improve the lives of both civil servants and those living in clogged capitals; to save money; and to redress regional imbalances. The trouble is that these goals are not always realised.
The first aim—improving living conditions—has a long pedigree. After the second world war Britain moved thousands of civil servants to “agreeable English country towns” as London was rebuilt. But swapping the capital for somewhere smaller is not always agreeable. Attrition rates can exceed 80%. . . . The second reason to pack bureaucrats off is to save money. Office space costs far more in capitals. . . . Agencies that are moved elsewhere can often recruit better workers on lower salaries than in capitals, where well-paying multinationals mop up talent.
The third reason to shift is to rebalance regional inequality. . . . Norway treats federal jobs as a resource every region deserves to enjoy, like profits from oil. Where government jobs go, private ones follow. . . . Sometimes the aim is to fulfil the potential of a country’s second-tier cities. Unlike poor, remote places, bigger cities can make the most of relocated government agencies, linking them to local universities and businesses and supplying a better-educated workforce. The decision in 1946 to set up America’s Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta rather than Washington, D.C., has transformed the city into a hub for health-sector research and business.
The dilemma is obvious. Pick small, poor towns, and areas of high unemployment get new jobs, but it is hard to attract the most qualified workers; opt for larger cities with infrastructure and better-qualified residents, and the country’s most deprived areas see little benefit. . . .
Others contend that decentralisation begets corruption by making government agencies less accountable. . . . A study in America found that state-government corruption is worse when the state capital is isolated—journalists, who tend to live in the bigger cities, become less watchful of those in power.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Around the world, capital cities are disgorging bureaucrats. In the post-colonial fervour of the 20th century, coastal capitals picked by trade-focused empires were spurned for “regionally neutral” new ones . . . . But decamping wholesale is costly and unpopular; governments these days prefer piecemeal dispersal. The trend reflects how the world has changed. In past eras, when information travelled at a snail’s pace, civil servants had to cluster together. But now desk-workers can ping emails and video-chat around the world. Travel for face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable, but transport links, too, have improved. . . .
Proponents of moving civil servants around promise countless benefits. It disperses the risk that a terrorist attack or natural disaster will cripple an entire government. Wonks in the sticks will be inspired by new ideas that walled-off capitals cannot conjure up. Autonomous regulators perform best far from the pressure and lobbying of the big city. Some even hail a cure for ascendant cynicism and populism. The unloved bureaucrats of faraway capitals will become as popular as firefighters once they mix with regular folk.
Beyond these sunny visions, dispersing central-government functions usually has three specific aims: to improve the lives of both civil servants and those living in clogged capitals; to save money; and to redress regional imbalances. The trouble is that these goals are not always realised.
The first aim—improving living conditions—has a long pedigree. After the second world war Britain moved thousands of civil servants to “agreeable English country towns” as London was rebuilt. But swapping the capital for somewhere smaller is not always agreeable. Attrition rates can exceed 80%. . . . The second reason to pack bureaucrats off is to save money. Office space costs far more in capitals. . . . Agencies that are moved elsewhere can often recruit better workers on lower salaries than in capitals, where well-paying multinationals mop up talent.
The third reason to shift is to rebalance regional inequality. . . . Norway treats federal jobs as a resource every region deserves to enjoy, like profits from oil. Where government jobs go, private ones follow. . . . Sometimes the aim is to fulfil the potential of a country’s second-tier cities. Unlike poor, remote places, bigger cities can make the most of relocated government agencies, linking them to local universities and businesses and supplying a better-educated workforce. The decision in 1946 to set up America’s Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta rather than Washington, D.C., has transformed the city into a hub for health-sector research and business.
The dilemma is obvious. Pick small, poor towns, and areas of high unemployment get new jobs, but it is hard to attract the most qualified workers; opt for larger cities with infrastructure and better-qualified residents, and the country’s most deprived areas see little benefit. . . .
Others contend that decentralisation begets corruption by making government agencies less accountable. . . . A study in America found that state-government corruption is worse when the state capital is isolated—journalists, who tend to live in the bigger cities, become less watchful of those in power.
CAT/2019.2(RC)
Question. 111
People who support decentralising central government functions are LEAST likely to cite which of the following reasons for their view?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Around the world, capital cities are disgorging bureaucrats. In the post-colonial fervour of the 20th century, coastal capitals picked by trade-focused empires were spurned for “regionally neutral” new ones . . . . But decamping wholesale is costly and unpopular; governments these days prefer piecemeal dispersal. The trend reflects how the world has changed. In past eras, when information travelled at a snail’s pace, civil servants had to cluster together. But now desk-workers can ping emails and video-chat around the world. Travel for face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable, but transport links, too, have improved. . . .
Proponents of moving civil servants around promise countless benefits. It disperses the risk that a terrorist attack or natural disaster will cripple an entire government. Wonks in the sticks will be inspired by new ideas that walled-off capitals cannot conjure up. Autonomous regulators perform best far from the pressure and lobbying of the big city. Some even hail a cure for ascendant cynicism and populism. The unloved bureaucrats of faraway capitals will become as popular as firefighters once they mix with regular folk.
Beyond these sunny visions, dispersing central-government functions usually has three specific aims: to improve the lives of both civil servants and those living in clogged capitals; to save money; and to redress regional imbalances. The trouble is that these goals are not always realised.
The first aim—improving living conditions—has a long pedigree. After the second world war Britain moved thousands of civil servants to “agreeable English country towns” as London was rebuilt. But swapping the capital for somewhere smaller is not always agreeable. Attrition rates can exceed 80%. . . . The second reason to pack bureaucrats off is to save money. Office space costs far more in capitals. . . . Agencies that are moved elsewhere can often recruit better workers on lower salaries than in capitals, where well-paying multinationals mop up talent.
The third reason to shift is to rebalance regional inequality. . . . Norway treats federal jobs as a resource every region deserves to enjoy, like profits from oil. Where government jobs go, private ones follow. . . . Sometimes the aim is to fulfil the potential of a country’s second-tier cities. Unlike poor, remote places, bigger cities can make the most of relocated government agencies, linking them to local universities and businesses and supplying a better-educated workforce. The decision in 1946 to set up America’s Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta rather than Washington, D.C., has transformed the city into a hub for health-sector research and business.
The dilemma is obvious. Pick small, poor towns, and areas of high unemployment get new jobs, but it is hard to attract the most qualified workers; opt for larger cities with infrastructure and better-qualified residents, and the country’s most deprived areas see little benefit. . . .
Others contend that decentralisation begets corruption by making government agencies less accountable. . . . A study in America found that state-government corruption is worse when the state capital is isolated—journalists, who tend to live in the bigger cities, become less watchful of those in power.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Around the world, capital cities are disgorging bureaucrats. In the post-colonial fervour of the 20th century, coastal capitals picked by trade-focused empires were spurned for “regionally neutral” new ones . . . . But decamping wholesale is costly and unpopular; governments these days prefer piecemeal dispersal. The trend reflects how the world has changed. In past eras, when information travelled at a snail’s pace, civil servants had to cluster together. But now desk-workers can ping emails and video-chat around the world. Travel for face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable, but transport links, too, have improved. . . .
Proponents of moving civil servants around promise countless benefits. It disperses the risk that a terrorist attack or natural disaster will cripple an entire government. Wonks in the sticks will be inspired by new ideas that walled-off capitals cannot conjure up. Autonomous regulators perform best far from the pressure and lobbying of the big city. Some even hail a cure for ascendant cynicism and populism. The unloved bureaucrats of faraway capitals will become as popular as firefighters once they mix with regular folk.
Beyond these sunny visions, dispersing central-government functions usually has three specific aims: to improve the lives of both civil servants and those living in clogged capitals; to save money; and to redress regional imbalances. The trouble is that these goals are not always realised.
The first aim—improving living conditions—has a long pedigree. After the second world war Britain moved thousands of civil servants to “agreeable English country towns” as London was rebuilt. But swapping the capital for somewhere smaller is not always agreeable. Attrition rates can exceed 80%. . . . The second reason to pack bureaucrats off is to save money. Office space costs far more in capitals. . . . Agencies that are moved elsewhere can often recruit better workers on lower salaries than in capitals, where well-paying multinationals mop up talent.
The third reason to shift is to rebalance regional inequality. . . . Norway treats federal jobs as a resource every region deserves to enjoy, like profits from oil. Where government jobs go, private ones follow. . . . Sometimes the aim is to fulfil the potential of a country’s second-tier cities. Unlike poor, remote places, bigger cities can make the most of relocated government agencies, linking them to local universities and businesses and supplying a better-educated workforce. The decision in 1946 to set up America’s Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta rather than Washington, D.C., has transformed the city into a hub for health-sector research and business.
The dilemma is obvious. Pick small, poor towns, and areas of high unemployment get new jobs, but it is hard to attract the most qualified workers; opt for larger cities with infrastructure and better-qualified residents, and the country’s most deprived areas see little benefit. . . .
Others contend that decentralisation begets corruption by making government agencies less accountable. . . . A study in America found that state-government corruption is worse when the state capital is isolated—journalists, who tend to live in the bigger cities, become less watchful of those in power.
CAT/2019.2(RC)
Question. 113
According to the author, relocating government agencies has not always been a success for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
For two years, I tracked down dozens of . . . Chinese in Upper Egypt [who were] selling lingerie. In a deeply conservative region, where Egyptian families rarely allow women to work or own businesses, the Chinese flourished because of their status as outsiders. They didn’t gossip, and they kept their opinions to themselves. In a New Yorker article entitled “Learning to Speak Lingerie,” I described the Chinese use of Arabic as another non-threatening characteristic. I wrote, “Unlike Mandarin, Arabic is inflected for gender, and Chinese dealers, who learn the language strictly by ear, often pick up speech patterns from female customers. I’ve come to think of it as the lingerie dialect, and there’s something disarming about these Chinese men speaking in the feminine voice.” . . .
When I wrote about the Chinese in the New Yorker, most readers seemed to appreciate the unusual perspective. But as I often find with topics that involve the Middle East, some people had trouble getting past the black-and-white quality of a byline. “This piece is so orientalist I don’t know what to do,” Aisha Gani, a reporter who worked at The Guardian, tweeted. Another colleague at the British paper, Iman Amrani, agreed: “I wouldn’t have minded an article on the subject written by an Egyptian woman—probably would have had better insight.” . . .
As an MOL (man of language), I also take issue with this kind of essentialism. Empathy and understanding are not inherited traits, and they are not strictly tied to gender and race. An individual who wrestles with a difficult language can learn to be more sympathetic to outsiders and open to different experiences of the world. This learning process—the embarrassments, the frustrations, the gradual sense of understanding and connection—is invariably transformative. In Upper Egypt, the Chinese experience of struggling to learn Arabic and local culture had made them much more thoughtful. In the same way, I was interested in their lives not because of some kind of voyeurism, but because I had also experienced Egypt and Arabic as an outsider. And both the Chinese and the Egyptians welcomed me because I spoke their languages. My identity as a white male was far less important than my ability to communicate.
And that easily lobbed word—“Orientalist”—hardly captures the complexity of our interactions. What exactly is the dynamic when a man from Missouri observes a Zhejiang native selling lingerie to an Upper Egyptian woman? . . . If all of us now stand beside the same river, speaking in ways we all understand, who’s looking east and who’s looking west? Which way is Oriental?
For all of our current interest in identity politics, there’s no corresponding sense of identity linguistics. You are what you speak—the words that run throughout your mind are at least as fundamental to your selfhood as is your ethnicity or your gender. And sometimes it’s healthy to consider human characteristics that are not inborn, rigid, and outwardly defined. After all, you can always learn another language and change who you are.
CAT/2019.2(RC)
Question. 114
Which of the following can be inferred from the author’s claim, “Which way is Oriental?”
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
For two years, I tracked down dozens of . . . Chinese in Upper Egypt [who were] selling lingerie. In a deeply conservative region, where Egyptian families rarely allow women to work or own businesses, the Chinese flourished because of their status as outsiders. They didn’t gossip, and they kept their opinions to themselves. In a New Yorker article entitled “Learning to Speak Lingerie,” I described the Chinese use of Arabic as another non-threatening characteristic. I wrote, “Unlike Mandarin, Arabic is inflected for gender, and Chinese dealers, who learn the language strictly by ear, often pick up speech patterns from female customers. I’ve come to think of it as the lingerie dialect, and there’s something disarming about these Chinese men speaking in the feminine voice.” . . .
When I wrote about the Chinese in the New Yorker, most readers seemed to appreciate the unusual perspective. But as I often find with topics that involve the Middle East, some people had trouble getting past the black-and-white quality of a byline. “This piece is so orientalist I don’t know what to do,” Aisha Gani, a reporter who worked at The Guardian, tweeted. Another colleague at the British paper, Iman Amrani, agreed: “I wouldn’t have minded an article on the subject written by an Egyptian woman—probably would have had better insight.” . . .
As an MOL (man of language), I also take issue with this kind of essentialism. Empathy and understanding are not inherited traits, and they are not strictly tied to gender and race. An individual who wrestles with a difficult language can learn to be more sympathetic to outsiders and open to different experiences of the world. This learning process—the embarrassments, the frustrations, the gradual sense of understanding and connection—is invariably transformative. In Upper Egypt, the Chinese experience of struggling to learn Arabic and local culture had made them much more thoughtful. In the same way, I was interested in their lives not because of some kind of voyeurism, but because I had also experienced Egypt and Arabic as an outsider. And both the Chinese and the Egyptians welcomed me because I spoke their languages. My identity as a white male was far less important than my ability to communicate.
And that easily lobbed word—“Orientalist”—hardly captures the complexity of our interactions. What exactly is the dynamic when a man from Missouri observes a Zhejiang native selling lingerie to an Upper Egyptian woman? . . . If all of us now stand beside the same river, speaking in ways we all understand, who’s looking east and who’s looking west? Which way is Oriental?
For all of our current interest in identity politics, there’s no corresponding sense of identity linguistics. You are what you speak—the words that run throughout your mind are at least as fundamental to your selfhood as is your ethnicity or your gender. And sometimes it’s healthy to consider human characteristics that are not inborn, rigid, and outwardly defined. After all, you can always learn another language and change who you are.
CAT/2019.2(RC)
Question. 115
A French ethnographer decides to study the culture of a Nigerian tribe. Which of the following is most likely to be the view of the author of the passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
For two years, I tracked down dozens of . . . Chinese in Upper Egypt [who were] selling lingerie. In a deeply conservative region, where Egyptian families rarely allow women to work or own businesses, the Chinese flourished because of their status as outsiders. They didn’t gossip, and they kept their opinions to themselves. In a New Yorker article entitled “Learning to Speak Lingerie,” I described the Chinese use of Arabic as another non-threatening characteristic. I wrote, “Unlike Mandarin, Arabic is inflected for gender, and Chinese dealers, who learn the language strictly by ear, often pick up speech patterns from female customers. I’ve come to think of it as the lingerie dialect, and there’s something disarming about these Chinese men speaking in the feminine voice.” . . .
When I wrote about the Chinese in the New Yorker, most readers seemed to appreciate the unusual perspective. But as I often find with topics that involve the Middle East, some people had trouble getting past the black-and-white quality of a byline. “This piece is so orientalist I don’t know what to do,” Aisha Gani, a reporter who worked at The Guardian, tweeted. Another colleague at the British paper, Iman Amrani, agreed: “I wouldn’t have minded an article on the subject written by an Egyptian woman—probably would have had better insight.” . . .
As an MOL (man of language), I also take issue with this kind of essentialism. Empathy and understanding are not inherited traits, and they are not strictly tied to gender and race. An individual who wrestles with a difficult language can learn to be more sympathetic to outsiders and open to different experiences of the world. This learning process—the embarrassments, the frustrations, the gradual sense of understanding and connection—is invariably transformative. In Upper Egypt, the Chinese experience of struggling to learn Arabic and local culture had made them much more thoughtful. In the same way, I was interested in their lives not because of some kind of voyeurism, but because I had also experienced Egypt and Arabic as an outsider. And both the Chinese and the Egyptians welcomed me because I spoke their languages. My identity as a white male was far less important than my ability to communicate.
And that easily lobbed word—“Orientalist”—hardly captures the complexity of our interactions. What exactly is the dynamic when a man from Missouri observes a Zhejiang native selling lingerie to an Upper Egyptian woman? . . . If all of us now stand beside the same river, speaking in ways we all understand, who’s looking east and who’s looking west? Which way is Oriental?
For all of our current interest in identity politics, there’s no corresponding sense of identity linguistics. You are what you speak—the words that run throughout your mind are at least as fundamental to your selfhood as is your ethnicity or your gender. And sometimes it’s healthy to consider human characteristics that are not inborn, rigid, and outwardly defined. After all, you can always learn another language and change who you are.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
For two years, I tracked down dozens of . . . Chinese in Upper Egypt [who were] selling lingerie. In a deeply conservative region, where Egyptian families rarely allow women to work or own businesses, the Chinese flourished because of their status as outsiders. They didn’t gossip, and they kept their opinions to themselves. In a New Yorker article entitled “Learning to Speak Lingerie,” I described the Chinese use of Arabic as another non-threatening characteristic. I wrote, “Unlike Mandarin, Arabic is inflected for gender, and Chinese dealers, who learn the language strictly by ear, often pick up speech patterns from female customers. I’ve come to think of it as the lingerie dialect, and there’s something disarming about these Chinese men speaking in the feminine voice.” . . .
When I wrote about the Chinese in the New Yorker, most readers seemed to appreciate the unusual perspective. But as I often find with topics that involve the Middle East, some people had trouble getting past the black-and-white quality of a byline. “This piece is so orientalist I don’t know what to do,” Aisha Gani, a reporter who worked at The Guardian, tweeted. Another colleague at the British paper, Iman Amrani, agreed: “I wouldn’t have minded an article on the subject written by an Egyptian woman—probably would have had better insight.” . . .
As an MOL (man of language), I also take issue with this kind of essentialism. Empathy and understanding are not inherited traits, and they are not strictly tied to gender and race. An individual who wrestles with a difficult language can learn to be more sympathetic to outsiders and open to different experiences of the world. This learning process—the embarrassments, the frustrations, the gradual sense of understanding and connection—is invariably transformative. In Upper Egypt, the Chinese experience of struggling to learn Arabic and local culture had made them much more thoughtful. In the same way, I was interested in their lives not because of some kind of voyeurism, but because I had also experienced Egypt and Arabic as an outsider. And both the Chinese and the Egyptians welcomed me because I spoke their languages. My identity as a white male was far less important than my ability to communicate.
And that easily lobbed word—“Orientalist”—hardly captures the complexity of our interactions. What exactly is the dynamic when a man from Missouri observes a Zhejiang native selling lingerie to an Upper Egyptian woman? . . . If all of us now stand beside the same river, speaking in ways we all understand, who’s looking east and who’s looking west? Which way is Oriental?
For all of our current interest in identity politics, there’s no corresponding sense of identity linguistics. You are what you speak—the words that run throughout your mind are at least as fundamental to your selfhood as is your ethnicity or your gender. And sometimes it’s healthy to consider human characteristics that are not inborn, rigid, and outwardly defined. After all, you can always learn another language and change who you are.
CAT/2019.2(RC)
Question. 117
According to the passage, which of the following is not responsible for language’s ability to change us?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
“Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.”
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But, Bradshaw and several colleagues argue that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. young elephants are raised within an extended, multi-tiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults.
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw "and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.”
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant researchers weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyper-aggression.
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.”
CAT/2018.1(RC)
Question. 118
Which of the following statements best expresses the overall argument of this passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
“Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.”
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But, Bradshaw and several colleagues argue that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. young elephants are raised within an extended, multi-tiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults.
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw "and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.”
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant researchers weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyper-aggression.
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.”
CAT/2018.1(RC)
Question. 119
In the first paragraph, Bradshaw uses the term "violence" to describe the recent change in the human-elephant relationship because, according to him:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
“Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.”
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But, Bradshaw and several colleagues argue that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. young elephants are raised within an extended, multi-tiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults.
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw "and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.”
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant researchers weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyper-aggression.
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.”
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
“Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.”
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But, Bradshaw and several colleagues argue that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. young elephants are raised within an extended, multi-tiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults.
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw "and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.”
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant researchers weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyper-aggression.
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.”
CAT/2018.1(RC)
Question. 121
Which of the following measures is Bradshaw most likely to support to address the problem of elephant aggression?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
“Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.”
Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But, Bradshaw and several colleagues argue that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. young elephants are raised within an extended, multi-tiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults.
This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw "and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.”
What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant researchers weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyper-aggression.
[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.”
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Will a day come when India’s poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? No country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or dispute resolution as easy as an ATM, because the nature of these activities requires individuals to use their discretion in a positive way. Technology can certainly facilitate this in a variety of ways if it is seen as one part of an overall approach, but the evidence so far in education, for instance, is that just adding computers alone doesn’t make education any better.
The dangerous illusion of technology is that it can create stronger, top down accountability of service providers in implementation-intensive services within existing public sector organisations. One notion is that electronic management information systems (EMIS) keep better track of inputs and those aspects of personnel that are ‘EMIS visible’ can lead to better services. A recent study examined attempts to increase attendance of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) at clinics in Rajasthan, which involved high-tech time clocks to monitor attendance. The study’s title says it all: Band-Aids on a Corpse. E-governance can be just as bad as any other governance when the real issue is people and their motivation.
For services to improve, the people providing the services have to want to do a better job with the skills they have. A study of medical care in Delhi found that even though providers, in the public sector had much better skills than private sector providers their provision of care in actual practice was much worse.
In implementation-intensive services the key to success is face-to-face interactions between a teacher, a nurse, a policeman, an extension agent and a citizen. This relationship is about power. Amartya Sen’s report on education in West Bengal had a supremely telling anecdote in which the villagers forced the teacher to attend school, but then, when the parents went off to work, the teacher did not teach, but forced the children to massage his feet. As long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.
The answer to successfully providing basic services is to create systems that provide both autonomy and accountability. In basic education for instance, the answer to poor teaching is not controlling teachers more. The key is to hire teachers who want to teach and let them teach, expressing their professionalism and vocation as a teacher through autonomy in the classroom. This autonomy has to be matched with accountability for results—not just narrowly measured through test scores, but broadly for the quality of the education they provide.
A recent study in Uttar Pradesh showed that if, somehow, all civil service teachers could be replaced with contract teachers, the state could save a billion dollars a year in revenue and double student learning. Just the additional autonomy and accountability of contracts through local groups—even without complementary system changes in information and empowerment—led to that much improvement. The first step to being part of the solution is to create performance information accessible to those outside of the government.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 123
In the context of the passage, we can infer that the title “Band Aids on a Corpse” (in paragraph 2) suggests that:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Will a day come when India’s poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? No country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or dispute resolution as easy as an ATM, because the nature of these activities requires individuals to use their discretion in a positive way. Technology can certainly facilitate this in a variety of ways if it is seen as one part of an overall approach, but the evidence so far in education, for instance, is that just adding computers alone doesn’t make education any better.
The dangerous illusion of technology is that it can create stronger, top down accountability of service providers in implementation-intensive services within existing public sector organisations. One notion is that electronic management information systems (EMIS) keep better track of inputs and those aspects of personnel that are ‘EMIS visible’ can lead to better services. A recent study examined attempts to increase attendance of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) at clinics in Rajasthan, which involved high-tech time clocks to monitor attendance. The study’s title says it all: Band-Aids on a Corpse. E-governance can be just as bad as any other governance when the real issue is people and their motivation.
For services to improve, the people providing the services have to want to do a better job with the skills they have. A study of medical care in Delhi found that even though providers, in the public sector had much better skills than private sector providers their provision of care in actual practice was much worse.
In implementation-intensive services the key to success is face-to-face interactions between a teacher, a nurse, a policeman, an extension agent and a citizen. This relationship is about power. Amartya Sen’s report on education in West Bengal had a supremely telling anecdote in which the villagers forced the teacher to attend school, but then, when the parents went off to work, the teacher did not teach, but forced the children to massage his feet. As long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.
The answer to successfully providing basic services is to create systems that provide both autonomy and accountability. In basic education for instance, the answer to poor teaching is not controlling teachers more. The key is to hire teachers who want to teach and let them teach, expressing their professionalism and vocation as a teacher through autonomy in the classroom. This autonomy has to be matched with accountability for results—not just narrowly measured through test scores, but broadly for the quality of the education they provide.
A recent study in Uttar Pradesh showed that if, somehow, all civil service teachers could be replaced with contract teachers, the state could save a billion dollars a year in revenue and double student learning. Just the additional autonomy and accountability of contracts through local groups—even without complementary system changes in information and empowerment—led to that much improvement. The first step to being part of the solution is to create performance information accessible to those outside of the government.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Will a day come when India’s poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? No country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or dispute resolution as easy as an ATM, because the nature of these activities requires individuals to use their discretion in a positive way. Technology can certainly facilitate this in a variety of ways if it is seen as one part of an overall approach, but the evidence so far in education, for instance, is that just adding computers alone doesn’t make education any better.
The dangerous illusion of technology is that it can create stronger, top down accountability of service providers in implementation-intensive services within existing public sector organisations. One notion is that electronic management information systems (EMIS) keep better track of inputs and those aspects of personnel that are ‘EMIS visible’ can lead to better services. A recent study examined attempts to increase attendance of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) at clinics in Rajasthan, which involved high-tech time clocks to monitor attendance. The study’s title says it all: Band-Aids on a Corpse. E-governance can be just as bad as any other governance when the real issue is people and their motivation.
For services to improve, the people providing the services have to want to do a better job with the skills they have. A study of medical care in Delhi found that even though providers, in the public sector had much better skills than private sector providers their provision of care in actual practice was much worse.
In implementation-intensive services the key to success is face-to-face interactions between a teacher, a nurse, a policeman, an extension agent and a citizen. This relationship is about power. Amartya Sen’s report on education in West Bengal had a supremely telling anecdote in which the villagers forced the teacher to attend school, but then, when the parents went off to work, the teacher did not teach, but forced the children to massage his feet. As long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.
The answer to successfully providing basic services is to create systems that provide both autonomy and accountability. In basic education for instance, the answer to poor teaching is not controlling teachers more. The key is to hire teachers who want to teach and let them teach, expressing their professionalism and vocation as a teacher through autonomy in the classroom. This autonomy has to be matched with accountability for results—not just narrowly measured through test scores, but broadly for the quality of the education they provide.
A recent study in Uttar Pradesh showed that if, somehow, all civil service teachers could be replaced with contract teachers, the state could save a billion dollars a year in revenue and double student learning. Just the additional autonomy and accountability of contracts through local groups—even without complementary system changes in information and empowerment—led to that much improvement. The first step to being part of the solution is to create performance information accessible to those outside of the government.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 125
Which of the following, IF TRUE, would undermine the passage’s main argument?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Will a day come when India’s poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? No country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or dispute resolution as easy as an ATM, because the nature of these activities requires individuals to use their discretion in a positive way. Technology can certainly facilitate this in a variety of ways if it is seen as one part of an overall approach, but the evidence so far in education, for instance, is that just adding computers alone doesn’t make education any better.
The dangerous illusion of technology is that it can create stronger, top down accountability of service providers in implementation-intensive services within existing public sector organisations. One notion is that electronic management information systems (EMIS) keep better track of inputs and those aspects of personnel that are ‘EMIS visible’ can lead to better services. A recent study examined attempts to increase attendance of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) at clinics in Rajasthan, which involved high-tech time clocks to monitor attendance. The study’s title says it all: Band-Aids on a Corpse. E-governance can be just as bad as any other governance when the real issue is people and their motivation.
For services to improve, the people providing the services have to want to do a better job with the skills they have. A study of medical care in Delhi found that even though providers, in the public sector had much better skills than private sector providers their provision of care in actual practice was much worse.
In implementation-intensive services the key to success is face-to-face interactions between a teacher, a nurse, a policeman, an extension agent and a citizen. This relationship is about power. Amartya Sen’s report on education in West Bengal had a supremely telling anecdote in which the villagers forced the teacher to attend school, but then, when the parents went off to work, the teacher did not teach, but forced the children to massage his feet. As long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.
The answer to successfully providing basic services is to create systems that provide both autonomy and accountability. In basic education for instance, the answer to poor teaching is not controlling teachers more. The key is to hire teachers who want to teach and let them teach, expressing their professionalism and vocation as a teacher through autonomy in the classroom. This autonomy has to be matched with accountability for results—not just narrowly measured through test scores, but broadly for the quality of the education they provide.
A recent study in Uttar Pradesh showed that if, somehow, all civil service teachers could be replaced with contract teachers, the state could save a billion dollars a year in revenue and double student learning. Just the additional autonomy and accountability of contracts through local groups—even without complementary system changes in information and empowerment—led to that much improvement. The first step to being part of the solution is to create performance information accessible to those outside of the government.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 126
The author questions the use of monitoring systems in services that involve face-to-face interaction between service providers and clients because such systems:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Will a day come when India’s poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? No country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or dispute resolution as easy as an ATM, because the nature of these activities requires individuals to use their discretion in a positive way. Technology can certainly facilitate this in a variety of ways if it is seen as one part of an overall approach, but the evidence so far in education, for instance, is that just adding computers alone doesn’t make education any better.
The dangerous illusion of technology is that it can create stronger, top down accountability of service providers in implementation-intensive services within existing public sector organisations. One notion is that electronic management information systems (EMIS) keep better track of inputs and those aspects of personnel that are ‘EMIS visible’ can lead to better services. A recent study examined attempts to increase attendance of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) at clinics in Rajasthan, which involved high-tech time clocks to monitor attendance. The study’s title says it all: Band-Aids on a Corpse. E-governance can be just as bad as any other governance when the real issue is people and their motivation.
For services to improve, the people providing the services have to want to do a better job with the skills they have. A study of medical care in Delhi found that even though providers, in the public sector had much better skills than private sector providers their provision of care in actual practice was much worse.
In implementation-intensive services the key to success is face-to-face interactions between a teacher, a nurse, a policeman, an extension agent and a citizen. This relationship is about power. Amartya Sen’s report on education in West Bengal had a supremely telling anecdote in which the villagers forced the teacher to attend school, but then, when the parents went off to work, the teacher did not teach, but forced the children to massage his feet. As long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.
The answer to successfully providing basic services is to create systems that provide both autonomy and accountability. In basic education for instance, the answer to poor teaching is not controlling teachers more. The key is to hire teachers who want to teach and let them teach, expressing their professionalism and vocation as a teacher through autonomy in the classroom. This autonomy has to be matched with accountability for results—not just narrowly measured through test scores, but broadly for the quality of the education they provide.
A recent study in Uttar Pradesh showed that if, somehow, all civil service teachers could be replaced with contract teachers, the state could save a billion dollars a year in revenue and double student learning. Just the additional autonomy and accountability of contracts through local groups—even without complementary system changes in information and empowerment—led to that much improvement. The first step to being part of the solution is to create performance information accessible to those outside of the government.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
More and more companies, government agencies, educational institutions and philanthropic organisations are today in the grip of a new phenomenon: ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.
The rewards can be monetary, in the form of pay for performance, say, or reputational, in the form of college rankings, hospital ratings, surgical report cards and so on. But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity to incentivise gaming: that is, encouraging professionals to maximise the metrics in ways that are at odds with the larger purpose of the organisation. If the rate of major crimes in a district becomes the metric according to which police officers are promoted, then some officers will respond by simply not recording crimes or downgrading them from major offences to misdemeanours. Or take the case of surgeons. When the metrics of success and failure are made public – affecting their reputation and income – some surgeons will improve their metric scores by refusing to operate on patients with more complex problems, whose surgical outcomes are more likely to be negative. Who suffers? The patients who don’t get operated upon.
When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a pay rise or raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people focus on satisfying those measures – often at the expense of other, more important organisational goals that are not measured. The best-known example is ‘teaching to the test’, a widespread phenomenon that has distorted primary and secondary education in the United States since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Short-termism is another negative. Measured performance encourages what the US sociologist Robert K Merton in 1936 called ‘the imperious immediacy of interests where the actor’s paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes consideration of further or other consequences’. In short, advancing short-term goals at the expense of long-range considerations. This problem is endemic to publicly traded corporations that sacrifice long-term research and development, and the development of their staff, to the perceived imperatives of the quarterly report.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 128
Of the following, which would have added the least depth to the author’s argument?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
More and more companies, government agencies, educational institutions and philanthropic organisations are today in the grip of a new phenomenon: ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.
The rewards can be monetary, in the form of pay for performance, say, or reputational, in the form of college rankings, hospital ratings, surgical report cards and so on. But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity to incentivise gaming: that is, encouraging professionals to maximise the metrics in ways that are at odds with the larger purpose of the organisation. If the rate of major crimes in a district becomes the metric according to which police officers are promoted, then some officers will respond by simply not recording crimes or downgrading them from major offences to misdemeanours. Or take the case of surgeons. When the metrics of success and failure are made public – affecting their reputation and income – some surgeons will improve their metric scores by refusing to operate on patients with more complex problems, whose surgical outcomes are more likely to be negative. Who suffers? The patients who don’t get operated upon.
When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a pay rise or raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people focus on satisfying those measures – often at the expense of other, more important organisational goals that are not measured. The best-known example is ‘teaching to the test’, a widespread phenomenon that has distorted primary and secondary education in the United States since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Short-termism is another negative. Measured performance encourages what the US sociologist Robert K Merton in 1936 called ‘the imperious immediacy of interests where the actor’s paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes consideration of further or other consequences’. In short, advancing short-term goals at the expense of long-range considerations. This problem is endemic to publicly traded corporations that sacrifice long-term research and development, and the development of their staff, to the perceived imperatives of the quarterly report.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 129
Which of the following is NOT a consequence of the 'metric fixation' phenomenon mentioned in the passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
More and more companies, government agencies, educational institutions and philanthropic organisations are today in the grip of a new phenomenon: ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.
The rewards can be monetary, in the form of pay for performance, say, or reputational, in the form of college rankings, hospital ratings, surgical report cards and so on. But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity to incentivise gaming: that is, encouraging professionals to maximise the metrics in ways that are at odds with the larger purpose of the organisation. If the rate of major crimes in a district becomes the metric according to which police officers are promoted, then some officers will respond by simply not recording crimes or downgrading them from major offences to misdemeanours. Or take the case of surgeons. When the metrics of success and failure are made public – affecting their reputation and income – some surgeons will improve their metric scores by refusing to operate on patients with more complex problems, whose surgical outcomes are more likely to be negative. Who suffers? The patients who don’t get operated upon.
When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a pay rise or raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people focus on satisfying those measures – often at the expense of other, more important organisational goals that are not measured. The best-known example is ‘teaching to the test’, a widespread phenomenon that has distorted primary and secondary education in the United States since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Short-termism is another negative. Measured performance encourages what the US sociologist Robert K Merton in 1936 called ‘the imperious immediacy of interests where the actor’s paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes consideration of further or other consequences’. In short, advancing short-term goals at the expense of long-range considerations. This problem is endemic to publicly traded corporations that sacrifice long-term research and development, and the development of their staff, to the perceived imperatives of the quarterly report.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 130
What main point does the author want to convey through the examples of the police officer and the surgeon?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
More and more companies, government agencies, educational institutions and philanthropic organisations are today in the grip of a new phenomenon: ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.
The rewards can be monetary, in the form of pay for performance, say, or reputational, in the form of college rankings, hospital ratings, surgical report cards and so on. But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity to incentivise gaming: that is, encouraging professionals to maximise the metrics in ways that are at odds with the larger purpose of the organisation. If the rate of major crimes in a district becomes the metric according to which police officers are promoted, then some officers will respond by simply not recording crimes or downgrading them from major offences to misdemeanours. Or take the case of surgeons. When the metrics of success and failure are made public – affecting their reputation and income – some surgeons will improve their metric scores by refusing to operate on patients with more complex problems, whose surgical outcomes are more likely to be negative. Who suffers? The patients who don’t get operated upon.
When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a pay rise or raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people focus on satisfying those measures – often at the expense of other, more important organisational goals that are not measured. The best-known example is ‘teaching to the test’, a widespread phenomenon that has distorted primary and secondary education in the United States since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Short-termism is another negative. Measured performance encourages what the US sociologist Robert K Merton in 1936 called ‘the imperious immediacy of interests where the actor’s paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes consideration of further or other consequences’. In short, advancing short-term goals at the expense of long-range considerations. This problem is endemic to publicly traded corporations that sacrifice long-term research and development, and the development of their staff, to the perceived imperatives of the quarterly report.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 131
All of the following can be a possible feature of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, EXCEPT:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
More and more companies, government agencies, educational institutions and philanthropic organisations are today in the grip of a new phenomenon: ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.
The rewards can be monetary, in the form of pay for performance, say, or reputational, in the form of college rankings, hospital ratings, surgical report cards and so on. But the most dramatic negative effect of metric fixation is its propensity to incentivise gaming: that is, encouraging professionals to maximise the metrics in ways that are at odds with the larger purpose of the organisation. If the rate of major crimes in a district becomes the metric according to which police officers are promoted, then some officers will respond by simply not recording crimes or downgrading them from major offences to misdemeanours. Or take the case of surgeons. When the metrics of success and failure are made public – affecting their reputation and income – some surgeons will improve their metric scores by refusing to operate on patients with more complex problems, whose surgical outcomes are more likely to be negative. Who suffers? The patients who don’t get operated upon.
When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a pay rise or raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people focus on satisfying those measures – often at the expense of other, more important organisational goals that are not measured. The best-known example is ‘teaching to the test’, a widespread phenomenon that has distorted primary and secondary education in the United States since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Short-termism is another negative. Measured performance encourages what the US sociologist Robert K Merton in 1936 called ‘the imperious immediacy of interests where the actor’s paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes consideration of further or other consequences’. In short, advancing short-term goals at the expense of long-range considerations. This problem is endemic to publicly traded corporations that sacrifice long-term research and development, and the development of their staff, to the perceived imperatives of the quarterly report.
CAT/2018.2(RC)
Question. 132
What is the main idea that the author is trying to highlight in the passage?
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand -name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings—which owns Kmart—said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the ecommerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers. Air Jordans....
A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. ' Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand -name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings—which owns Kmart—said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the ecommerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers. Air Jordans....
A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. ' Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand -name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings—which owns Kmart—said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the ecommerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers. Air Jordans....
A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. ' Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand -name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings—which owns Kmart—said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the ecommerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers. Air Jordans....
A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. ' Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand -name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings—which owns Kmart—said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the ecommerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers. Air Jordans....
A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. ' Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand -name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings—which owns Kmart—said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the ecommerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers. Air Jordans....
A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. ' Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Do sports mega events like the summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting...several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the Games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the summer Olympic Games themselves generate total revenue of $4 billion to $5 billion, but the lion's share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International Sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefit is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the Bird's Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic Stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities — not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?
Further, cities must consider the human cost. Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Do sports mega events like the summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting...several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the Games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the summer Olympic Games themselves generate total revenue of $4 billion to $5 billion, but the lion's share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International Sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefit is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the Bird's Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic Stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities — not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?
Further, cities must consider the human cost. Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Do sports mega events like the summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting...several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the Games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the summer Olympic Games themselves generate total revenue of $4 billion to $5 billion, but the lion's share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International Sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefit is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the Bird's Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic Stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities — not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?
Further, cities must consider the human cost. Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
CAT/2017.1(RC)
Question. 141
The author feels that the Games place a burden on the host city for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and the U.K. hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for LiveScience. Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers.... Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don't live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it's more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on Great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called "Viking Age" began with these raids in 793 and ended with the Norman conquest of Great Britain in l066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Vikings had experience with long maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as wela: It' s possible that the antler combs represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and the U.K. hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for LiveScience. Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers.... Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don't live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it's more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on Great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called "Viking Age" began with these raids in 793 and ended with the Norman conquest of Great Britain in l066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Vikings had experience with long maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as wela: It' s possible that the antler combs represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
CAT/2017.2(RC)
Question. 143
The evidence - "Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725" — has been used in the passage to argue that:
Comprehension
Directions for question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and the U.K. hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for LiveScience. Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers.... Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don't live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it's more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on Great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called "Viking Age" began with these raids in 793 and ended with the Norman conquest of Great Britain in l066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Vikings had experience with long maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as wela: It' s possible that the antler combs represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves - in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests.
With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape." Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of usable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.
The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man's lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.
As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them. Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we mustalready be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise heads. Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster - reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.
CAT/2008(RC)
Question. 145
According to the passage, which of the following best represents the factor that has been cited by the author in the context of Rwanda and Haiti?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves - in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests.
With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape." Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of usable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.
The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man's lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.
As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them. Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we mustalready be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise heads. Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster - reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves - in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests.
With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape." Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of usable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.
The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man's lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.
As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them. Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we mustalready be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise heads. Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster - reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.
CAT/2008(RC)
Question. 147
According to the passage, the drought at the time of Maya collapse had a different impact compared to the droughts earlier because
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves - in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests.
With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape." Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of usable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.
The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man's lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.
As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them. Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we mustalready be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise heads. Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster - reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.
CAT/2008(RC)
Question. 148
According to the author, why is it difficult to explain the reasons for Maya collapse?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves - in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests.
With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape." Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of usable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.
The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man's lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.
As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them. Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we mustalready be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise heads. Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster - reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct". It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spidersknow how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature's talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.
Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature's engineering marvels - an organ with "that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration," in Darwin's words - gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist's point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school - as Oscar Wilde said, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax - fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct". It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spidersknow how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature's talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.
Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature's engineering marvels - an organ with "that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration," in Darwin's words - gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist's point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school - as Oscar Wilde said, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax - fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct". It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spidersknow how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature's talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.
Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature's engineering marvels - an organ with "that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration," in Darwin's words - gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist's point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school - as Oscar Wilde said, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax - fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct". It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spidersknow how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature's talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.
Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature's engineering marvels - an organ with "that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration," in Darwin's words - gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist's point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school - as Oscar Wilde said, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax - fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct". It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spidersknow how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature's talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.
Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature's engineering marvels - an organ with "that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration," in Darwin's words - gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist's point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school - as Oscar Wilde said, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax - fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The difficulties historians face in establishing cause-and-effect relations in the history of human societies are broadly similar to the difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and paleontologists. To varying degrees each of these fields is plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, controlled experimental interventions, the complexity arising from enormous numbers of variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the consequent impossibility of formulating universal laws, and the difficulties of predicting emergent properties and future behaviour. Prediction in history, as in other historical sciences, is most feasible on large spatial scales and over long times, when the unique features of millions of small-scale brief’ events become averaged out. Just as I could predict the sex ratio of the next 1,000 newborns but not the sexes of my own two children, the historian can recognize factors that made inevitable the broad outcome of the collision between American and Eurasian societies after 13,000 years of separate developments, but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential election. The details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in October 1960 could have given the electoral victory to Nixon instead of to Kennedy, but no details of who said what could have blocked the European conquest of Native Americans.
How can students of human history profit from the experience of scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments. While neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ greatly in their salt intake; and cultural anthropologists, unable to provide human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances for many centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on human societies by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on islands differing naturally in resource abundance.
The student of human history can draw on many more natural experiments than just comparisons among the five inhabited continents. Comparisons can also utilize large islands that have developed complex societies in a considerable degree of isolation (such as Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola, New Guinea, Hawaii, and many others), as well as societies on hundreds of smaller islands and regional societies within each of the continents. Natural experiments in any field, whether in ecology or human history, are inherently open to potential methodological criticisms. Those include confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed correlations between variables. Such methodological problems have been discussed in great detail for some of the historical sciences. In particular, epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with problems similar to those facing historians of human societies.
In short, I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in fields of science where history is unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Nevertheless, successful methodologies for analyzing historical problems have been worked out in several fields. As a result, the histories of dinosaurs, nebulae, and glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of science rather than to the humanities.
CAT/2007(RC)
Question. 155
Why do islands with considerable degree of isolation provide valuable insights into human history?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The difficulties historians face in establishing cause-and-effect relations in the history of human societies are broadly similar to the difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and paleontologists. To varying degrees each of these fields is plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, controlled experimental interventions, the complexity arising from enormous numbers of variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the consequent impossibility of formulating universal laws, and the difficulties of predicting emergent properties and future behaviour. Prediction in history, as in other historical sciences, is most feasible on large spatial scales and over long times, when the unique features of millions of small-scale brief’ events become averaged out. Just as I could predict the sex ratio of the next 1,000 newborns but not the sexes of my own two children, the historian can recognize factors that made inevitable the broad outcome of the collision between American and Eurasian societies after 13,000 years of separate developments, but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential election. The details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in October 1960 could have given the electoral victory to Nixon instead of to Kennedy, but no details of who said what could have blocked the European conquest of Native Americans.
How can students of human history profit from the experience of scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments. While neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ greatly in their salt intake; and cultural anthropologists, unable to provide human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances for many centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on human societies by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on islands differing naturally in resource abundance.
The student of human history can draw on many more natural experiments than just comparisons among the five inhabited continents. Comparisons can also utilize large islands that have developed complex societies in a considerable degree of isolation (such as Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola, New Guinea, Hawaii, and many others), as well as societies on hundreds of smaller islands and regional societies within each of the continents. Natural experiments in any field, whether in ecology or human history, are inherently open to potential methodological criticisms. Those include confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed correlations between variables. Such methodological problems have been discussed in great detail for some of the historical sciences. In particular, epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with problems similar to those facing historians of human societies.
In short, I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in fields of science where history is unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Nevertheless, successful methodologies for analyzing historical problems have been worked out in several fields. As a result, the histories of dinosaurs, nebulae, and glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of science rather than to the humanities.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Human Biology does nothing to structure human society. Age may enfeeble us all, but cultures vary considerably in the prestige and power they accord to the elderly. Giving birth is a necessary condition for being a mother, but it is not sufficient. We expect mothers to behave in maternal ways and to display appropriately maternal sentiments. We prescribe a clutch of norms or rules that govern the role of a mother. That the social role is independent of the biological base can be demonstrated by going back three sentences. Giving birth is certainly not sufficient to be a mother but, as adoption and fostering show, it is not even necessary!
The fine detail of what is expected of a mother or a father or a dutiful son differs from culture to culture, but everywhere behaviour is coordinated by the reciprocal nature of roles. Husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, waiters and customers, teachers and pupils, warlords and followers; each makes sense only in its relation to the other. The term ‘role’ is an appropriate one, because the metaphor of an actor in a play neatly expresses the rule-governed nature or scripted nature of much of social life and the sense that society is a joint production. Social life occurs only because people play their parts (and that is as true for war and conflicts as for peace and love) and those parts make sense only in the context of the overall show. The drama metaphor also reminds us of the artistic licence available to the players. We can play a part straight or, as the following from J. P. Sartre conveys, we can ham it up.
Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker.... All his behaviour seems to us a game....But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café.
The American sociologist Erving Goffman built an influential body of social analysis on elaborations of the metaphor of social life as drama. Perhaps his most telling point was that it is only through acting out a part that we express character. It is not enough to be evil or virtuous; we have to be seen to be evil or virtuous.
There is distinction between the roles we play and some underlying self. Here we might note that some roles are more absorbing than others. We would not be surprised by the waitress who plays the part in such a way as to signal to us that she is much more than her occupation. We would be surprised and offended by the father who played his part ‘tongue in cheek’. Some roles are broader and more far-reaching than others. Describing someone as a clergyman or faith healer would say far more about that person than describing someone as a bus driver.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Human Biology does nothing to structure human society. Age may enfeeble us all, but cultures vary considerably in the prestige and power they accord to the elderly. Giving birth is a necessary condition for being a mother, but it is not sufficient. We expect mothers to behave in maternal ways and to display appropriately maternal sentiments. We prescribe a clutch of norms or rules that govern the role of a mother. That the social role is independent of the biological base can be demonstrated by going back three sentences. Giving birth is certainly not sufficient to be a mother but, as adoption and fostering show, it is not even necessary!
The fine detail of what is expected of a mother or a father or a dutiful son differs from culture to culture, but everywhere behaviour is coordinated by the reciprocal nature of roles. Husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, waiters and customers, teachers and pupils, warlords and followers; each makes sense only in its relation to the other. The term ‘role’ is an appropriate one, because the metaphor of an actor in a play neatly expresses the rule-governed nature or scripted nature of much of social life and the sense that society is a joint production. Social life occurs only because people play their parts (and that is as true for war and conflicts as for peace and love) and those parts make sense only in the context of the overall show. The drama metaphor also reminds us of the artistic licence available to the players. We can play a part straight or, as the following from J. P. Sartre conveys, we can ham it up.
Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker.... All his behaviour seems to us a game....But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café.
The American sociologist Erving Goffman built an influential body of social analysis on elaborations of the metaphor of social life as drama. Perhaps his most telling point was that it is only through acting out a part that we express character. It is not enough to be evil or virtuous; we have to be seen to be evil or virtuous.
There is distinction between the roles we play and some underlying self. Here we might note that some roles are more absorbing than others. We would not be surprised by the waitress who plays the part in such a way as to signal to us that she is much more than her occupation. We would be surprised and offended by the father who played his part ‘tongue in cheek’. Some roles are broader and more far-reaching than others. Describing someone as a clergyman or faith healer would say far more about that person than describing someone as a bus driver.
CAT/2007(RC)
Question. 158
Which of the following would have been true if biological linkages structured human society?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Human Biology does nothing to structure human society. Age may enfeeble us all, but cultures vary considerably in the prestige and power they accord to the elderly. Giving birth is a necessary condition for being a mother, but it is not sufficient. We expect mothers to behave in maternal ways and to display appropriately maternal sentiments. We prescribe a clutch of norms or rules that govern the role of a mother. That the social role is independent of the biological base can be demonstrated by going back three sentences. Giving birth is certainly not sufficient to be a mother but, as adoption and fostering show, it is not even necessary!
The fine detail of what is expected of a mother or a father or a dutiful son differs from culture to culture, but everywhere behaviour is coordinated by the reciprocal nature of roles. Husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, waiters and customers, teachers and pupils, warlords and followers; each makes sense only in its relation to the other. The term ‘role’ is an appropriate one, because the metaphor of an actor in a play neatly expresses the rule-governed nature or scripted nature of much of social life and the sense that society is a joint production. Social life occurs only because people play their parts (and that is as true for war and conflicts as for peace and love) and those parts make sense only in the context of the overall show. The drama metaphor also reminds us of the artistic licence available to the players. We can play a part straight or, as the following from J. P. Sartre conveys, we can ham it up.
Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker.... All his behaviour seems to us a game....But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café.
The American sociologist Erving Goffman built an influential body of social analysis on elaborations of the metaphor of social life as drama. Perhaps his most telling point was that it is only through acting out a part that we express character. It is not enough to be evil or virtuous; we have to be seen to be evil or virtuous.
There is distinction between the roles we play and some underlying self. Here we might note that some roles are more absorbing than others. We would not be surprised by the waitress who plays the part in such a way as to signal to us that she is much more than her occupation. We would be surprised and offended by the father who played his part ‘tongue in cheek’. Some roles are broader and more far-reaching than others. Describing someone as a clergyman or faith healer would say far more about that person than describing someone as a bus driver.
CAT/2007(RC)
Question. 159
It has been claimed in the passage that “some roles are more absorbing than others”. According to the passage, which of the following seem(s) appropriate reason(s) for such a claim?
Some roles carry great expectations from the society preventing manifestation of the true self.
B. Society ascribes so much importance to some roles that the conception of self may get aligned with the roles being performed.
C. Some roles require development of skill and expertise leaving little time for manifestation of self.
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 31 to 35: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behavior: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of ‘background noise’; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.
It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume’s theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.
My logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them - to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision - in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.
Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.
The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 160
In the context of science, according to the passage, the interaction of dogmatic beliefs and critical attitude can be best described as:
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 31 to 35: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behavior: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of ‘background noise’; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.
It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume’s theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.
My logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them - to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision - in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.
Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.
The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 161
According to the passage, the role of a dogmatic attitude or dogmatic behavior in the development of science is
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 31 to 35: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behavior: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of ‘background noise’; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.
It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume’s theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.
My logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them - to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision - in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.
Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.
The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 162
Dogmatic behaviour, in this passage, has been associated with primitives and children. Which of the following best describes the reason why the author compares primitives with children?
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 31 to 35: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behavior: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of ‘background noise’; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.
It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume’s theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.
My logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them - to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision - in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.
Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.
The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 163
Which of the following statements best supports the argument in the passage that a critical attitude leads to a weaker belief than a dogmatic attitude does?
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 31 to 35: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behavior: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of ‘background noise’; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.
It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume’s theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.
My logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them - to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision - in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.
Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.
The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 164
According to the passage, which of the following statements best describes the difference between science and pseudoscience?
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 36 to 40: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the “crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,” linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still “legal and active in some countries.” Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Mr. Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained “different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many” and “a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive.” Perhaps the real problem for Mr. Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those “killed by communist regimes” (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe’s condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin’s time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party..
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 165
Among all the apprehensions that Mr. Goran Lindblad expresses against communism, which one gets admitted, although indirectly, by the author?
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 36 to 40: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the “crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,” linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still “legal and active in some countries.” Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Mr. Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained “different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many” and “a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive.” Perhaps the real problem for Mr. Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those “killed by communist regimes” (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe’s condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin’s time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party..
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 166
What, according to the author, is the real reason for a renewed attack against communism?
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 36 to 40: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the “crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,” linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still “legal and active in some countries.” Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Mr. Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained “different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many” and “a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive.” Perhaps the real problem for Mr. Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those “killed by communist regimes” (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe’s condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin’s time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party..
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 167
The author cites examples of atrocities perpetrated by European colonial regimes in order to
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 36 to 40: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the “crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,” linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still “legal and active in some countries.” Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Mr. Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained “different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many” and “a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive.” Perhaps the real problem for Mr. Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those “killed by communist regimes” (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe’s condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin’s time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party..
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 168
Why, according to the author, is Nazism closer to colonialism than it is to communism?
Comprehension
Directions for Questions 36 to 40: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the “crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,” linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still “legal and active in some countries.” Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Mr. Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained “different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many” and “a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive.” Perhaps the real problem for Mr. Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those “killed by communist regimes” (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe’s condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin’s time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party..
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today’s Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.
CAT/2006(RC)
Question. 169
Which of the following cannot be inferred as a compelling reason for the silence of the Council of Europe on colonial atrocities?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, same historians can spat the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change. It is a period when the dominance of the world’s superpower is coming under threat. It is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain. And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation.
Spare a moment to take stock of what’s been happening in the past few months. Let’s start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Cooper used to say, ‘just like that’.
Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution, seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modern world. What the French needed to realise, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners. An alternative way of looking at the French “non” is that our neighbours translate “flexibility” as “you’re fired”.
Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britain a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America’s wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence of a new scramble for Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well. Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world’s biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 percent of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.
In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is taken from the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-74, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 percent. Yet the idea that higher oil prices are of little consequence is fanciful. If people are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less. The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways - through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits.
There are those who point out, rightly, that modem industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything - a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices - that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasons for concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own. There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free trade, and in the power of the market. It was a time of massive income inequality and unprecedented migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy.
Second, the world is traditionally at its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain’s role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline. Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India - which together account for half the world’s population - will flex their muscles. Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.
CAT/2005(RC)
Question. 170
Which of the following best represents the key argument made by the author?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, same historians can spat the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change. It is a period when the dominance of the world’s superpower is coming under threat. It is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain. And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation.
Spare a moment to take stock of what’s been happening in the past few months. Let’s start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Cooper used to say, ‘just like that’.
Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution, seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modern world. What the French needed to realise, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners. An alternative way of looking at the French “non” is that our neighbours translate “flexibility” as “you’re fired”.
Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britain a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America’s wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence of a new scramble for Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well. Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world’s biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 percent of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.
In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is taken from the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-74, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 percent. Yet the idea that higher oil prices are of little consequence is fanciful. If people are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less. The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways - through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits.
There are those who point out, rightly, that modem industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything - a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices - that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasons for concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own. There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free trade, and in the power of the market. It was a time of massive income inequality and unprecedented migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy.
Second, the world is traditionally at its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain’s role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline. Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India - which together account for half the world’s population - will flex their muscles. Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.
CAT/2005(RC)
Question. 171
What can be inferred about the author’s view when he states, ‘As Tommy Cooper used to say “just like that”’?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, same historians can spat the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change. It is a period when the dominance of the world’s superpower is coming under threat. It is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain. And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation.
Spare a moment to take stock of what’s been happening in the past few months. Let’s start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Cooper used to say, ‘just like that’.
Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution, seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modern world. What the French needed to realise, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners. An alternative way of looking at the French “non” is that our neighbours translate “flexibility” as “you’re fired”.
Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britain a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America’s wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence of a new scramble for Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well. Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world’s biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 percent of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.
In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is taken from the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-74, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 percent. Yet the idea that higher oil prices are of little consequence is fanciful. If people are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less. The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways - through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits.
There are those who point out, rightly, that modem industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything - a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices - that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasons for concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own. There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free trade, and in the power of the market. It was a time of massive income inequality and unprecedented migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy.
Second, the world is traditionally at its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain’s role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline. Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India - which together account for half the world’s population - will flex their muscles. Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.
CAT/2005(RC)
Question. 172
What, according to the author, has resulted in a widespread belief in the resilience of modem capitalism?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, same historians can spat the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change. It is a period when the dominance of the world’s superpower is coming under threat. It is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain. And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation.
Spare a moment to take stock of what’s been happening in the past few months. Let’s start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Cooper used to say, ‘just like that’.
Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution, seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modern world. What the French needed to realise, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners. An alternative way of looking at the French “non” is that our neighbours translate “flexibility” as “you’re fired”.
Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britain a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America’s wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence of a new scramble for Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well. Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world’s biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 percent of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.
In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is taken from the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-74, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 percent. Yet the idea that higher oil prices are of little consequence is fanciful. If people are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less. The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways - through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits.
There are those who point out, rightly, that modem industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything - a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices - that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasons for concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own. There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free trade, and in the power of the market. It was a time of massive income inequality and unprecedented migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy.
Second, the world is traditionally at its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain’s role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline. Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India - which together account for half the world’s population - will flex their muscles. Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The viability of the multinational corporate system depends upon the degree to which people will tolerate the unevenness it creates. It is well to remember that the ‘New Imperialism’ which began after 1870 in a spirit of Capitalism Triumphant, soon became seriously troubled and after 1914 was characterised by war, depression, breakdown of the international economic system and war again, rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica and Material Improvement. A major reason was Britain’s inability to cope with the byproducts of its own rapid accumulation of capital; i.e., a class-conscious labour force at home; a middle class in the hinterland; and rival centres of capital on the Continent and in America. Britain’s policy tended to be atavistic and defensive rather than progressive --- more concerned with warding off new threats than creating new areas of expansion. Ironically, Edwardian England revived the paraphernalia of the landed aristocracy it had just destroyed. Instead of embarking on a ‘big push’ to develop the vast hinterland of the Empire, colonial administrators often adopted policies to arrest the development of either a native capitalist class or a native proletariat which could overthrow them.
As time went on, the centre had to devote an increasing share of government activity to military and other unproductive expenditures, they had to rely on alliances with an inefficient class of landlords, officials and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the cost of development. A great part of the surplus extracted from the population was thus wasted locally.
The New Mercantilism (as the Multinational Corporate System of Special alliances and privileges, aid and tariff concessions is sometimes called) faces similar problems of internal and external division. The centre is troubled excluded groups revolt and even some of the affluent are dissatisfied with the roles. Nationalistic rivalry between major capitalist countries remains an important divisive factor. Finally, there is the threat presented by the middle classes and the excluded groups of the undeveloped countries.
The national middle classes in the underdeveloped countries came to power when the centre weakened but could not, through their policy of import substitution manufacturing, establish a viable basis for sustained growth. They now face a foreign exchange crisis and an unemployment (or population) crisis --- the first indicating their inability to function in the international economy and the second indicating their alienation from the people they are supposed to lead. In the immediate future, these national middle classes will gain a new lease of life as they take advantage of the spaces created by the rivalry between American and non-American oligopolists striving to establish global market positions.
The native capitalists will again become the champions of national independence as they bargain with multinational corporations. But the conflict at this level is more apparent than real, for in the end the fervent nationalism of the middle class asks only for promotion within the corporate structure and not for a break with that structure. In the last analysis their power derives from the metropolis and they cannot easily afford to challenge the international system. They do not command the loyalty of their own population and connot really compete with the large, powerful, aggregate capitals from the centre. They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumptions standards set at the centre.
The main threat comes from the excluded groups. It is not unusual in underdeveloped countries for the top 5 percent to obtain between 30 and 40 percent of the total national income, and for the top one-third to obtain anywhere from 60 to 70 percent. At most, one -third of the population can be said to benefit in some sense from the dualistic growth that characterizes development in the hinterland. The remaining two-thirds, who together get only one-third of the income, are outsider, not because they do not contribute to the economy, but because they do not share in the benefits. They provide a source of cheap labour which helps keep exports to the developed world at a low price and which has financed the urban-biased growth of recent years. In fact, it is difficult to see how the system in most underdeveloped could survive without cheap labour since removing it (e.g. diverting it to public works projects as is done in socialist counties) would raise consumption costs to capitalists and professional elites.
CAT/2004(RC)
Question. 174
The author is in a position to draw parallels between New Imperialism and New Mercantilism because
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The viability of the multinational corporate system depends upon the degree to which people will tolerate the unevenness it creates. It is well to remember that the ‘New Imperialism’ which began after 1870 in a spirit of Capitalism Triumphant, soon became seriously troubled and after 1914 was characterised by war, depression, breakdown of the international economic system and war again, rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica and Material Improvement. A major reason was Britain’s inability to cope with the byproducts of its own rapid accumulation of capital; i.e., a class-conscious labour force at home; a middle class in the hinterland; and rival centres of capital on the Continent and in America. Britain’s policy tended to be atavistic and defensive rather than progressive --- more concerned with warding off new threats than creating new areas of expansion. Ironically, Edwardian England revived the paraphernalia of the landed aristocracy it had just destroyed. Instead of embarking on a ‘big push’ to develop the vast hinterland of the Empire, colonial administrators often adopted policies to arrest the development of either a native capitalist class or a native proletariat which could overthrow them.
As time went on, the centre had to devote an increasing share of government activity to military and other unproductive expenditures, they had to rely on alliances with an inefficient class of landlords, officials and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the cost of development. A great part of the surplus extracted from the population was thus wasted locally.
The New Mercantilism (as the Multinational Corporate System of Special alliances and privileges, aid and tariff concessions is sometimes called) faces similar problems of internal and external division. The centre is troubled excluded groups revolt and even some of the affluent are dissatisfied with the roles. Nationalistic rivalry between major capitalist countries remains an important divisive factor. Finally, there is the threat presented by the middle classes and the excluded groups of the undeveloped countries.
The national middle classes in the underdeveloped countries came to power when the centre weakened but could not, through their policy of import substitution manufacturing, establish a viable basis for sustained growth. They now face a foreign exchange crisis and an unemployment (or population) crisis --- the first indicating their inability to function in the international economy and the second indicating their alienation from the people they are supposed to lead. In the immediate future, these national middle classes will gain a new lease of life as they take advantage of the spaces created by the rivalry between American and non-American oligopolists striving to establish global market positions.
The native capitalists will again become the champions of national independence as they bargain with multinational corporations. But the conflict at this level is more apparent than real, for in the end the fervent nationalism of the middle class asks only for promotion within the corporate structure and not for a break with that structure. In the last analysis their power derives from the metropolis and they cannot easily afford to challenge the international system. They do not command the loyalty of their own population and connot really compete with the large, powerful, aggregate capitals from the centre. They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumptions standards set at the centre.
The main threat comes from the excluded groups. It is not unusual in underdeveloped countries for the top 5 percent to obtain between 30 and 40 percent of the total national income, and for the top one-third to obtain anywhere from 60 to 70 percent. At most, one -third of the population can be said to benefit in some sense from the dualistic growth that characterizes development in the hinterland. The remaining two-thirds, who together get only one-third of the income, are outsider, not because they do not contribute to the economy, but because they do not share in the benefits. They provide a source of cheap labour which helps keep exports to the developed world at a low price and which has financed the urban-biased growth of recent years. In fact, it is difficult to see how the system in most underdeveloped could survive without cheap labour since removing it (e.g. diverting it to public works projects as is done in socialist counties) would raise consumption costs to capitalists and professional elites.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The viability of the multinational corporate system depends upon the degree to which people will tolerate the unevenness it creates. It is well to remember that the ‘New Imperialism’ which began after 1870 in a spirit of Capitalism Triumphant, soon became seriously troubled and after 1914 was characterised by war, depression, breakdown of the international economic system and war again, rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica and Material Improvement. A major reason was Britain’s inability to cope with the byproducts of its own rapid accumulation of capital; i.e., a class-conscious labour force at home; a middle class in the hinterland; and rival centres of capital on the Continent and in America. Britain’s policy tended to be atavistic and defensive rather than progressive --- more concerned with warding off new threats than creating new areas of expansion. Ironically, Edwardian England revived the paraphernalia of the landed aristocracy it had just destroyed. Instead of embarking on a ‘big push’ to develop the vast hinterland of the Empire, colonial administrators often adopted policies to arrest the development of either a native capitalist class or a native proletariat which could overthrow them.
As time went on, the centre had to devote an increasing share of government activity to military and other unproductive expenditures, they had to rely on alliances with an inefficient class of landlords, officials and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the cost of development. A great part of the surplus extracted from the population was thus wasted locally.
The New Mercantilism (as the Multinational Corporate System of Special alliances and privileges, aid and tariff concessions is sometimes called) faces similar problems of internal and external division. The centre is troubled excluded groups revolt and even some of the affluent are dissatisfied with the roles. Nationalistic rivalry between major capitalist countries remains an important divisive factor. Finally, there is the threat presented by the middle classes and the excluded groups of the undeveloped countries.
The national middle classes in the underdeveloped countries came to power when the centre weakened but could not, through their policy of import substitution manufacturing, establish a viable basis for sustained growth. They now face a foreign exchange crisis and an unemployment (or population) crisis --- the first indicating their inability to function in the international economy and the second indicating their alienation from the people they are supposed to lead. In the immediate future, these national middle classes will gain a new lease of life as they take advantage of the spaces created by the rivalry between American and non-American oligopolists striving to establish global market positions.
The native capitalists will again become the champions of national independence as they bargain with multinational corporations. But the conflict at this level is more apparent than real, for in the end the fervent nationalism of the middle class asks only for promotion within the corporate structure and not for a break with that structure. In the last analysis their power derives from the metropolis and they cannot easily afford to challenge the international system. They do not command the loyalty of their own population and connot really compete with the large, powerful, aggregate capitals from the centre. They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumptions standards set at the centre.
The main threat comes from the excluded groups. It is not unusual in underdeveloped countries for the top 5 percent to obtain between 30 and 40 percent of the total national income, and for the top one-third to obtain anywhere from 60 to 70 percent. At most, one -third of the population can be said to benefit in some sense from the dualistic growth that characterizes development in the hinterland. The remaining two-thirds, who together get only one-third of the income, are outsider, not because they do not contribute to the economy, but because they do not share in the benefits. They provide a source of cheap labour which helps keep exports to the developed world at a low price and which has financed the urban-biased growth of recent years. In fact, it is difficult to see how the system in most underdeveloped could survive without cheap labour since removing it (e.g. diverting it to public works projects as is done in socialist counties) would raise consumption costs to capitalists and professional elites.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The viability of the multinational corporate system depends upon the degree to which people will tolerate the unevenness it creates. It is well to remember that the ‘New Imperialism’ which began after 1870 in a spirit of Capitalism Triumphant, soon became seriously troubled and after 1914 was characterised by war, depression, breakdown of the international economic system and war again, rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica and Material Improvement. A major reason was Britain’s inability to cope with the byproducts of its own rapid accumulation of capital; i.e., a class-conscious labour force at home; a middle class in the hinterland; and rival centres of capital on the Continent and in America. Britain’s policy tended to be atavistic and defensive rather than progressive --- more concerned with warding off new threats than creating new areas of expansion. Ironically, Edwardian England revived the paraphernalia of the landed aristocracy it had just destroyed. Instead of embarking on a ‘big push’ to develop the vast hinterland of the Empire, colonial administrators often adopted policies to arrest the development of either a native capitalist class or a native proletariat which could overthrow them.
As time went on, the centre had to devote an increasing share of government activity to military and other unproductive expenditures, they had to rely on alliances with an inefficient class of landlords, officials and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the cost of development. A great part of the surplus extracted from the population was thus wasted locally.
The New Mercantilism (as the Multinational Corporate System of Special alliances and privileges, aid and tariff concessions is sometimes called) faces similar problems of internal and external division. The centre is troubled excluded groups revolt and even some of the affluent are dissatisfied with the roles. Nationalistic rivalry between major capitalist countries remains an important divisive factor. Finally, there is the threat presented by the middle classes and the excluded groups of the undeveloped countries.
The national middle classes in the underdeveloped countries came to power when the centre weakened but could not, through their policy of import substitution manufacturing, establish a viable basis for sustained growth. They now face a foreign exchange crisis and an unemployment (or population) crisis --- the first indicating their inability to function in the international economy and the second indicating their alienation from the people they are supposed to lead. In the immediate future, these national middle classes will gain a new lease of life as they take advantage of the spaces created by the rivalry between American and non-American oligopolists striving to establish global market positions.
The native capitalists will again become the champions of national independence as they bargain with multinational corporations. But the conflict at this level is more apparent than real, for in the end the fervent nationalism of the middle class asks only for promotion within the corporate structure and not for a break with that structure. In the last analysis their power derives from the metropolis and they cannot easily afford to challenge the international system. They do not command the loyalty of their own population and connot really compete with the large, powerful, aggregate capitals from the centre. They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumptions standards set at the centre.
The main threat comes from the excluded groups. It is not unusual in underdeveloped countries for the top 5 percent to obtain between 30 and 40 percent of the total national income, and for the top one-third to obtain anywhere from 60 to 70 percent. At most, one -third of the population can be said to benefit in some sense from the dualistic growth that characterizes development in the hinterland. The remaining two-thirds, who together get only one-third of the income, are outsider, not because they do not contribute to the economy, but because they do not share in the benefits. They provide a source of cheap labour which helps keep exports to the developed world at a low price and which has financed the urban-biased growth of recent years. In fact, it is difficult to see how the system in most underdeveloped could survive without cheap labour since removing it (e.g. diverting it to public works projects as is done in socialist counties) would raise consumption costs to capitalists and professional elites.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more “players” make choices among available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players. Thus the “interests” of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game.
Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players. Each is torn between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests.
Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call “interesting” psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict. Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel, reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story, on the other hand, depicts only external conflict; that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, at any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict.
The detective story, the “adult” analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict. However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itself not a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective’s path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict. But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal’s part or the detective’s insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western. For example, Tic-tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe.
In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more “players” make choices among available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players. Thus the “interests” of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game.
Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players. Each is torn between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests.
Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call “interesting” psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict. Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel, reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story, on the other hand, depicts only external conflict; that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, at any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict.
The detective story, the “adult” analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict. However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itself not a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective’s path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict. But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal’s part or the detective’s insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western. For example, Tic-tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe.
In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.
CAT/2004(RC)
Question. 179
The problem solving process of a scientist is different from that of a detective because
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more “players” make choices among available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players. Thus the “interests” of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game.
Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players. Each is torn between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests.
Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call “interesting” psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict. Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel, reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story, on the other hand, depicts only external conflict; that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, at any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict.
The detective story, the “adult” analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict. However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itself not a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective’s path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict. But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal’s part or the detective’s insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western. For example, Tic-tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe.
In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.
CAT/2004(RC)
Question. 180
According to the passage, internal conflicts are psychologically more interesting than external conflicts because
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more “players” make choices among available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players. Thus the “interests” of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game.
Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players. Each is torn between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests.
Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call “interesting” psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict. Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel, reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story, on the other hand, depicts only external conflict; that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, at any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict.
The detective story, the “adult” analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict. However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itself not a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective’s path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict. But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal’s part or the detective’s insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western. For example, Tic-tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe.
In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentlemen wine merchants in wing collars to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one’s butler, the ordinary drinker didn’t get a look of wine. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only get flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn’t just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the consumption of wine if it wasn’t to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.
Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines- like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don’t even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow
It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumer are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fusse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.
The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States : the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.
In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend-not because they think their wine isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that? ) but because they don’t traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru- Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren’t about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a speciality source of old- fashioned wines for old-fashioned connoisseurs.
Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly, the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentlemen wine merchants in wing collars to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one’s butler, the ordinary drinker didn’t get a look of wine. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only get flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn’t just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the consumption of wine if it wasn’t to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.
Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines- like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don’t even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow
It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumer are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fusse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.
The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States : the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.
In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend-not because they think their wine isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that? ) but because they don’t traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru- Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren’t about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a speciality source of old- fashioned wines for old-fashioned connoisseurs.
Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly, the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 183
The development which has created fear among winemakers in the wine heartlands of France is the
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentlemen wine merchants in wing collars to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one’s butler, the ordinary drinker didn’t get a look of wine. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only get flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn’t just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the consumption of wine if it wasn’t to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.
Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines- like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don’t even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow
It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumer are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fusse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.
The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States : the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.
In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend-not because they think their wine isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that? ) but because they don’t traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru- Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren’t about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a speciality source of old- fashioned wines for old-fashioned connoisseurs.
Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly, the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 184
Which one of the following, if true, would provide most support for Dr. Renaud’s findings about the effect of tannins?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentlemen wine merchants in wing collars to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one’s butler, the ordinary drinker didn’t get a look of wine. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only get flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn’t just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the consumption of wine if it wasn’t to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.
Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines- like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don’t even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow
It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumer are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fusse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.
The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States : the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.
In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend-not because they think their wine isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that? ) but because they don’t traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru- Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren’t about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a speciality source of old- fashioned wines for old-fashioned connoisseurs.
Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly, the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 185
Which one of the following CANNOT be reasonably attributed to the labelling strategy followed by wine producers in Englishspeaking countries ?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentlemen wine merchants in wing collars to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one’s butler, the ordinary drinker didn’t get a look of wine. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only get flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn’t just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the consumption of wine if it wasn’t to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.
Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines- like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don’t even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow
It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumer are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fusse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.
The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States : the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.
In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend-not because they think their wine isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that? ) but because they don’t traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru- Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren’t about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a speciality source of old- fashioned wines for old-fashioned connoisseurs.
Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly, the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man’s burden. Provincial selfrule since 1935 paved the way for full self-rule, Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was antiimperialist by ideology. Finally, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully. But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshal Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constituted a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.
Empire building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns. The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered.
No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the more the plunderer was admired. This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man’s burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest. It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen loot impossible.
An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals. After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly to promote the notion of the white man’s burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites. This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 percent of Indian Gross National Product in the 19th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit for the British Empire.
Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain’s finances. But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible. Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by these countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded. Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was over-ruled by Indian hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India,, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts whether to pay the fare. Thus, World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man’s burden. Provincial selfrule since 1935 paved the way for full self-rule, Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was antiimperialist by ideology. Finally, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully. But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshal Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constituted a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.
Empire building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns. The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered.
No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the more the plunderer was admired. This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man’s burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest. It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen loot impossible.
An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals. After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly to promote the notion of the white man’s burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites. This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 percent of Indian Gross National Product in the 19th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit for the British Empire.
Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain’s finances. But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible. Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by these countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded. Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was over-ruled by Indian hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India,, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts whether to pay the fare. Thus, World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man’s burden. Provincial selfrule since 1935 paved the way for full self-rule, Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was antiimperialist by ideology. Finally, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully. But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshal Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constituted a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.
Empire building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns. The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered.
No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the more the plunderer was admired. This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man’s burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest. It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen loot impossible.
An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals. After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly to promote the notion of the white man’s burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites. This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 percent of Indian Gross National Product in the 19th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit for the British Empire.
Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain’s finances. But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible. Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by these countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded. Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was over-ruled by Indian hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India,, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts whether to pay the fare. Thus, World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 189
Which of the following best captures the meaning of the ‘white man’s burden’, as it is used by the author?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man’s burden. Provincial selfrule since 1935 paved the way for full self-rule, Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was antiimperialist by ideology. Finally, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully. But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshal Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constituted a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.
Empire building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns. The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered.
No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the more the plunderer was admired. This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man’s burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest. It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen loot impossible.
An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals. After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly to promote the notion of the white man’s burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites. This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 percent of Indian Gross National Product in the 19th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit for the British Empire.
Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain’s finances. But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible. Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by these countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded. Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was over-ruled by Indian hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India,, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts whether to pay the fare. Thus, World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 190
Which of the following was NOT a reason for the emergence of the ‘white man’s burden as a new rationale for empire building in India?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man’s burden. Provincial selfrule since 1935 paved the way for full self-rule, Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was antiimperialist by ideology. Finally, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully. But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshal Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constituted a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.
Empire building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns. The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered.
No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the more the plunderer was admired. This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man’s burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest. It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen loot impossible.
An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals. After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly to promote the notion of the white man’s burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites. This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 percent of Indian Gross National Product in the 19th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit for the British Empire.
Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain’s finances. But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible. Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by these countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded. Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was over-ruled by Indian hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India,, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts whether to pay the fare. Thus, World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 191
Which one of the following best expresses the main purpose of the author?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character, temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest. This aspect, to my thinking, is realized as much in large parties composed of casual acquaintances of even strangers, as in intimate meetings of old friends. I am not one of those superior persons who hold cocktail parties in contempt, looking upon them as barren or at best as very tryingly kaleidoscopic places for gathering, because of the strangers one has to meet in them ; which is no argument, for even our most intimate friends must at one time have been strangers to us. These large gatherings will be only what we make of them–if not anything better, they can be as good places to collect new friends form as the slavemarkets of Istanbul were for beautiful slaves or New Market for race horses.
But they do offer more immediate enjoyment. For one thing, in them one can see the external expression of social life in appearance and behaviour at its widest and most varied – where on can admire beauty of body or air, hear voices remarkable either for sweetness or refinement, look on elegance of clothes or deportment. What is more these parties are schools for training in sociability, for in them we have to treat strangers as friends. So, in them we see social sympathy in widest commonality spread, or at least should. We show an atrophy of the natural human instinct of getting pleasure and happiness out of other human beings if we cannot treat strangers as friends for the moment. And I would go further and paraphrase Pater to say that not to be able to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us. Even when we meet them casually, is on this short day of frost and sun which our life is, to sleep before evening
So, it will be seen that my conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated, We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends, In sum, social life is a function of vitality.
It is tragic, however to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow-feeling for human beings as such in our society–and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought a sinister addition-class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack and snarl or’ howl at people who are better off than they.
Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.
The situation is differently in human, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third class position.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character, temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest. This aspect, to my thinking, is realized as much in large parties composed of casual acquaintances of even strangers, as in intimate meetings of old friends. I am not one of those superior persons who hold cocktail parties in contempt, looking upon them as barren or at best as very tryingly kaleidoscopic places for gathering, because of the strangers one has to meet in them ; which is no argument, for even our most intimate friends must at one time have been strangers to us. These large gatherings will be only what we make of them–if not anything better, they can be as good places to collect new friends form as the slavemarkets of Istanbul were for beautiful slaves or New Market for race horses.
But they do offer more immediate enjoyment. For one thing, in them one can see the external expression of social life in appearance and behaviour at its widest and most varied – where on can admire beauty of body or air, hear voices remarkable either for sweetness or refinement, look on elegance of clothes or deportment. What is more these parties are schools for training in sociability, for in them we have to treat strangers as friends. So, in them we see social sympathy in widest commonality spread, or at least should. We show an atrophy of the natural human instinct of getting pleasure and happiness out of other human beings if we cannot treat strangers as friends for the moment. And I would go further and paraphrase Pater to say that not to be able to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us. Even when we meet them casually, is on this short day of frost and sun which our life is, to sleep before evening
So, it will be seen that my conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated, We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends, In sum, social life is a function of vitality.
It is tragic, however to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow-feeling for human beings as such in our society–and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought a sinister addition-class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack and snarl or’ howl at people who are better off than they.
Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.
The situation is differently in human, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third class position.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 193
What is the author trying to show through the two incidents in the paragraph beginning, “Their most innocent exhibition of sociability .....”?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character, temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest. This aspect, to my thinking, is realized as much in large parties composed of casual acquaintances of even strangers, as in intimate meetings of old friends. I am not one of those superior persons who hold cocktail parties in contempt, looking upon them as barren or at best as very tryingly kaleidoscopic places for gathering, because of the strangers one has to meet in them ; which is no argument, for even our most intimate friends must at one time have been strangers to us. These large gatherings will be only what we make of them–if not anything better, they can be as good places to collect new friends form as the slavemarkets of Istanbul were for beautiful slaves or New Market for race horses.
But they do offer more immediate enjoyment. For one thing, in them one can see the external expression of social life in appearance and behaviour at its widest and most varied – where on can admire beauty of body or air, hear voices remarkable either for sweetness or refinement, look on elegance of clothes or deportment. What is more these parties are schools for training in sociability, for in them we have to treat strangers as friends. So, in them we see social sympathy in widest commonality spread, or at least should. We show an atrophy of the natural human instinct of getting pleasure and happiness out of other human beings if we cannot treat strangers as friends for the moment. And I would go further and paraphrase Pater to say that not to be able to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us. Even when we meet them casually, is on this short day of frost and sun which our life is, to sleep before evening
So, it will be seen that my conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated, We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends, In sum, social life is a function of vitality.
It is tragic, however to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow-feeling for human beings as such in our society–and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought a sinister addition-class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack and snarl or’ howl at people who are better off than they.
Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.
The situation is differently in human, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third class position.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character, temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest. This aspect, to my thinking, is realized as much in large parties composed of casual acquaintances of even strangers, as in intimate meetings of old friends. I am not one of those superior persons who hold cocktail parties in contempt, looking upon them as barren or at best as very tryingly kaleidoscopic places for gathering, because of the strangers one has to meet in them ; which is no argument, for even our most intimate friends must at one time have been strangers to us. These large gatherings will be only what we make of them–if not anything better, they can be as good places to collect new friends form as the slavemarkets of Istanbul were for beautiful slaves or New Market for race horses.
But they do offer more immediate enjoyment. For one thing, in them one can see the external expression of social life in appearance and behaviour at its widest and most varied – where on can admire beauty of body or air, hear voices remarkable either for sweetness or refinement, look on elegance of clothes or deportment. What is more these parties are schools for training in sociability, for in them we have to treat strangers as friends. So, in them we see social sympathy in widest commonality spread, or at least should. We show an atrophy of the natural human instinct of getting pleasure and happiness out of other human beings if we cannot treat strangers as friends for the moment. And I would go further and paraphrase Pater to say that not to be able to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us. Even when we meet them casually, is on this short day of frost and sun which our life is, to sleep before evening
So, it will be seen that my conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated, We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends, In sum, social life is a function of vitality.
It is tragic, however to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow-feeling for human beings as such in our society–and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought a sinister addition-class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack and snarl or’ howl at people who are better off than they.
Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.
The situation is differently in human, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third class position.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character, temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest. This aspect, to my thinking, is realized as much in large parties composed of casual acquaintances of even strangers, as in intimate meetings of old friends. I am not one of those superior persons who hold cocktail parties in contempt, looking upon them as barren or at best as very tryingly kaleidoscopic places for gathering, because of the strangers one has to meet in them ; which is no argument, for even our most intimate friends must at one time have been strangers to us. These large gatherings will be only what we make of them–if not anything better, they can be as good places to collect new friends form as the slavemarkets of Istanbul were for beautiful slaves or New Market for race horses.
But they do offer more immediate enjoyment. For one thing, in them one can see the external expression of social life in appearance and behaviour at its widest and most varied – where on can admire beauty of body or air, hear voices remarkable either for sweetness or refinement, look on elegance of clothes or deportment. What is more these parties are schools for training in sociability, for in them we have to treat strangers as friends. So, in them we see social sympathy in widest commonality spread, or at least should. We show an atrophy of the natural human instinct of getting pleasure and happiness out of other human beings if we cannot treat strangers as friends for the moment. And I would go further and paraphrase Pater to say that not to be able to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us. Even when we meet them casually, is on this short day of frost and sun which our life is, to sleep before evening
So, it will be seen that my conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated, We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends, In sum, social life is a function of vitality.
It is tragic, however to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow-feeling for human beings as such in our society–and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought a sinister addition-class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack and snarl or’ howl at people who are better off than they.
Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.
The situation is differently in human, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third class position.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity have exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many cause. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long -term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s,
many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which Statelevel parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India’s panchayati raj system, inaugurated with fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre’s encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to by-pass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the state administration and given the upper hand to Sate Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant state capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The “foreign aid” syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of “grass roots development”.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 197
Which of the following best captures the current state of Indian federalism as described in the passage ?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity have exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many cause. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long -term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s,
many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which Statelevel parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India’s panchayati raj system, inaugurated with fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre’s encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to by-pass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the state administration and given the upper hand to Sate Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant state capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The “foreign aid” syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of “grass roots development”.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity have exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many cause. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long -term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s,
many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which Statelevel parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India’s panchayati raj system, inaugurated with fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre’s encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to by-pass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the state administration and given the upper hand to Sate Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant state capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The “foreign aid” syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of “grass roots development”.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 199
The sentence in the last paragraph, “And their own volition has been further circumscribed ..........”, refers to
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity have exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many cause. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long -term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s,
many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which Statelevel parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India’s panchayati raj system, inaugurated with fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre’s encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to by-pass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the state administration and given the upper hand to Sate Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant state capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The “foreign aid” syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of “grass roots development”.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 200
What is the “dilemma” at the intra-State level mentioned in the first paragraph of the passage?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
At first sight, it looks as though panchayati raj, the lower layer of federalism in our polity, is as firmly entrenched in our system as is the older and higher layer comprising the Union government and the States. Like the democratic institutions at the higher level, those at the panchayat level, the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), are written into and protected by the Constitution. All the essential features, which distinguish a unitary system from a federal one, are as much enshrined at the lower as at the upper level of our federal system. But look closely and you will discover a fatal flaw. The letter of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the present polity have exposed the intra-State level of our federal system to a dilemma of which the inter-State and Union-State layers are free. The flaw has many cause. But all of them are rooted in an historical anomaly, that while the dynamics of federalism and democracy have given added strength to the rights given to the States in the Constitution, they have worked against the rights of panchayats.
At both levels of our federal system there is the same tussle between those who have certain rights and those who try to encroach upon them if they believe they can. Thus the Union Government was able to encroach upon certain rights given to the States by the Constitution. It got away with that because the single dominant party system, which characterised Centre-State relations for close upon two decades, gave the party in power at the Union level many extra-constitutional political levers. Second, the Supreme Court had not yet begun to extend the limits of its power. But all that has changed in recent times. The spurt given to multi-party democracy by the overthrow of the Emergency in 1977 became a long -term trend later on because of the ways in which a vigorously democratic multi-party system works in a political society which is as assertively pluralistic as Indian society is. It gives political clout to all the various segments which constitute that society. Secondly, because of the linguistic reorganisation of States in the 1950s,
many of the most assertive segments have found their most assertive expression as States. Thirdly, with single-party dominance becoming a thing of the past at the Union level, governments can be formed at that level only by multi-party coalitions in which Statelevel parties are major players. This has made it impossible for the Union government to do much about anything unless it also carries a sufficient number of State-level parties with it. Indian federalism is now more real than it used to be, but an unfortunate side-effect is that India’s panchayati raj system, inaugurated with fanfare in the early 1980s, has become less real.
By the time the PRIs came on the scene, most of the political space in our federal system had been occupied by the Centre in the first 30 years of Independence, and most of what was still left after that was occupied by the States in the next 20. PRIs might have hoped to wrest some space from their immediate neighbour, the States, just as the States had wrested some from the Centre. But having at last managed to checkmate the Centre’s encroachments on their rights, the States were not about to allow the PRIs to do some encroaching of their own.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, the only national party left, the congress, had gone deeper into a siege mentality. Finding itself surrounded by State-level parties, it had built walls against them instead of winning them over. Next, the States retaliated by blocking Congress proposals for panchayati raj in Parliament, suspecting that the Centre would try to use panchayats to by-pass State Governments. The suspicion fed on the fact that the powers proposed by the Congress for panchayats were very similar to many of the more lucrative powers of State Governments. State-level leaders also feared, perhaps, that if panchayat-level leaders captured some of the larger PRIs, such as district-level panchayats, they would exert pressure on State-level leaders through intra-State multi-party federalism.
It soon became obvious to Congress leaders that there was no way the panchayati raj amendments they wanted to write into the Constitution would pass muster unless State-level parties were given their pound of flesh. The amendments were allowed only after it was agreed that the powers of panchayats could be listed in the Constitution. Illustratively, they would be defined and endowed on PRIs by the State Legislature acting at its discretion.
This left the door wide open for the States to exert the power of the new political fact that while the Union and State Governments could afford to ignore panchayats as long as the MLAs were happy, the Union Government had to be sensitive to the demands of State-level parties. This has given State-level actors strong beachheads on the shores of both inter-State and intra-State federalism. By using various administrative devices and non-elected parallel structures, State Governments have subordinated their PRIs to the state administration and given the upper hand to Sate Government officials against the elected heads of PRIs. Panchayats have become local agencies for implementing schemes drawn up in distant state capitals. And their own volition has been further circumscribed by a plethora of “Centrally-sponsored schemes”. These are drawn up by even more distant Central authorities but at the same time tie up local staff and resources on pain of the schemes being switched off in the absence of matching local contribution. The “foreign aid” syndrome can be clearly seen at work behind this kind of “grass roots development”.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 201
Which of the following most closely describes the ‘fatal flaw’ that the passage refers to?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home – he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York city he can’t get into : colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew ? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and antiintellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddles. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing : the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-andpop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the whitecollar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and creme brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks : someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suits. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives.
This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates - universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no bluecollar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on-and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instruction. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm – the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home – he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York city he can’t get into : colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew ? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and antiintellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddles. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing : the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-andpop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the whitecollar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and creme brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks : someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suits. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives.
This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates - universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no bluecollar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on-and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instruction. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm – the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home – he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York city he can’t get into : colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew ? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and antiintellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddles. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing : the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-andpop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the whitecollar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and creme brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks : someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suits. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives.
This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates - universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no bluecollar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on-and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instruction. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm – the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home – he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York city he can’t get into : colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew ? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and antiintellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddles. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing : the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-andpop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the whitecollar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and creme brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks : someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suits. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives.
This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates - universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no bluecollar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on-and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instruction. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm – the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home – he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York city he can’t get into : colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew ? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and antiintellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddles. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing : the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-andpop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the whitecollar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and creme brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks : someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suits. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives.
This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates - universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no bluecollar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on-and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instruction. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm – the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 206
Which of the following statements about Straddlers does the passage NOT support explicitly?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain position at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “ Christians educate their sons... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education : To what degree was it still a clerical preserve ? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institution, staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century school were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often use to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed form a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic Philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writing of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of Zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain position at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “ Christians educate their sons... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education : To what degree was it still a clerical preserve ? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institution, staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century school were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often use to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed form a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic Philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writing of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of Zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 208
What does the sentence “Christians educate their sons .............. will be our and the other brother’s” imply?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain position at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “ Christians educate their sons... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education : To what degree was it still a clerical preserve ? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institution, staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century school were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often use to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed form a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic Philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writing of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of Zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
CAT/2003(RC)
Question. 209
According to the passage, twelfth century schools were clerical and yet secular because
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain position at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “ Christians educate their sons... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education : To what degree was it still a clerical preserve ? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institution, staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century school were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often use to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed form a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic Philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writing of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of Zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain position at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “ Christians educate their sons... for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.
The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education : To what degree was it still a clerical preserve ? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institution, staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century school were clerical and yet “secular”?
Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often use to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual
Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed form a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.
Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic Philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writing of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of Zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed “guardians” of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty percent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 percent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in 1987. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.
Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They observe that the definition and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have “given” women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, the right has been absent. Until the nineteenth century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a “quickening”, when the first movements of the foetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by the medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sanctity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practice abortion.
The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and Upper class. Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.
The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed “flipper-like” hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy lead a number of states to pass abortion-permitting legislation.
lation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves “pro-life”. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalized abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves “pro-choice”. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of “backroom” abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.
To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and pro-life activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual behaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identifies “pro-choice” women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts “pro-life” women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Police documents and newspaper accounts over a twenty-year period were analyzed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender, Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement by having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the “women’s sphere”. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or “natural” role.
In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that center around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represents the battleground for the justification of their respective views.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed “guardians” of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty percent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 percent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in 1987. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.
Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They observe that the definition and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have “given” women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, the right has been absent. Until the nineteenth century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a “quickening”, when the first movements of the foetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by the medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sanctity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practice abortion.
The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and Upper class. Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.
The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed “flipper-like” hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy lead a number of states to pass abortion-permitting legislation.
lation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves “pro-life”. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalized abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves “pro-choice”. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of “backroom” abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.
To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and pro-life activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual behaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identifies “pro-choice” women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts “pro-life” women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Police documents and newspaper accounts over a twenty-year period were analyzed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender, Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement by having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the “women’s sphere”. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or “natural” role.
In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that center around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represents the battleground for the justification of their respective views.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed “guardians” of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty percent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 percent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in 1987. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.
Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They observe that the definition and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have “given” women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, the right has been absent. Until the nineteenth century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a “quickening”, when the first movements of the foetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by the medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sanctity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practice abortion.
The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and Upper class. Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.
The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed “flipper-like” hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy lead a number of states to pass abortion-permitting legislation.
lation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves “pro-life”. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalized abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves “pro-choice”. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of “backroom” abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.
To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and pro-life activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual behaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identifies “pro-choice” women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts “pro-life” women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Police documents and newspaper accounts over a twenty-year period were analyzed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender, Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement by having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the “women’s sphere”. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or “natural” role.
In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that center around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represents the battleground for the justification of their respective views.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed “guardians” of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty percent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 percent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in 1987. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.
Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They observe that the definition and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have “given” women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, the right has been absent. Until the nineteenth century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a “quickening”, when the first movements of the foetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by the medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sanctity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practice abortion.
The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and Upper class. Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.
The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed “flipper-like” hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy lead a number of states to pass abortion-permitting legislation.
lation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves “pro-life”. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalized abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves “pro-choice”. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of “backroom” abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.
To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and pro-life activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual behaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identifies “pro-choice” women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts “pro-life” women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Police documents and newspaper accounts over a twenty-year period were analyzed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender, Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement by having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the “women’s sphere”. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or “natural” role.
In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that center around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represents the battleground for the justification of their respective views.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed “guardians” of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty percent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 percent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in 1987. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.
Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They observe that the definition and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have “given” women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, the right has been absent. Until the nineteenth century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a “quickening”, when the first movements of the foetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by the medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sanctity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practice abortion.
The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and Upper class. Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.
The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed “flipper-like” hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy lead a number of states to pass abortion-permitting legislation.
lation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves “pro-life”. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalized abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves “pro-choice”. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of “backroom” abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.
To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and pro-life activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual behaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identifies “pro-choice” women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts “pro-life” women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Police documents and newspaper accounts over a twenty-year period were analyzed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender, Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement by having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the “women’s sphere”. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or “natural” role.
In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that center around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represents the battleground for the justification of their respective views.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed “guardians” of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty percent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 percent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in 1987. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.
Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They observe that the definition and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have “given” women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, the right has been absent. Until the nineteenth century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a “quickening”, when the first movements of the foetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by the medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sanctity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practice abortion.
The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and Upper class. Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.
The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed “flipper-like” hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy lead a number of states to pass abortion-permitting legislation.
lation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves “pro-life”. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalized abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves “pro-choice”. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of “backroom” abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.
To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and pro-life activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual behaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identifies “pro-choice” women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts “pro-life” women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Police documents and newspaper accounts over a twenty-year period were analyzed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender, Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement by having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the “women’s sphere”. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or “natural” role.
In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that center around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represents the battleground for the justification of their respective views.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, business people, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere-among boat designers and baseball fans, say - the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economist’s favorite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien. They may be seen as figures of speech-metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority.
Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an “invisible hand” and the organization of work as a “production function” and his coefficients as being “significant”, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language.
If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data. Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks.
The paying of attention to one’s audience is called “rhetoric”, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the president’s “heated rhetoric” in a press conference or the “mere rhetoric” to which our enemies stoop. Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse.
The question is whether the scholar - who usually fancies himself an announcer of “results” or a stater of “conclusions” free of rhetoric - speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesn’t speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honored, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means.
Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech. Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard. It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners whey they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office on the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship.
The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economist’s role in the economy. The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last come rank upon rank of people in gray business suits. A bystander asks, “Who are those?” “Aha!” comes the reply, “those are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!” Their conversations do it.
CAT/2002(RC)
Question. 218
According to the passage, which of the following is the best set of reasons for which one needs to “look hard” at an economist’s language?
A. Economists accomplish a great deal through their language
B. Economics is an opinion-based subject
C. Economics has a great impact on other’s lives
D. Economics is damaging
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, business people, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere-among boat designers and baseball fans, say - the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economist’s favorite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien. They may be seen as figures of speech-metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority.
Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an “invisible hand” and the organization of work as a “production function” and his coefficients as being “significant”, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language.
If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data. Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks.
The paying of attention to one’s audience is called “rhetoric”, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the president’s “heated rhetoric” in a press conference or the “mere rhetoric” to which our enemies stoop. Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse.
The question is whether the scholar - who usually fancies himself an announcer of “results” or a stater of “conclusions” free of rhetoric - speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesn’t speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honored, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means.
Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech. Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard. It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners whey they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office on the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship.
The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economist’s role in the economy. The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last come rank upon rank of people in gray business suits. A bystander asks, “Who are those?” “Aha!” comes the reply, “those are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!” Their conversations do it.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, business people, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere-among boat designers and baseball fans, say - the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economist’s favorite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien. They may be seen as figures of speech-metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority.
Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an “invisible hand” and the organization of work as a “production function” and his coefficients as being “significant”, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language.
If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data. Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks.
The paying of attention to one’s audience is called “rhetoric”, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the president’s “heated rhetoric” in a press conference or the “mere rhetoric” to which our enemies stoop. Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse.
The question is whether the scholar - who usually fancies himself an announcer of “results” or a stater of “conclusions” free of rhetoric - speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesn’t speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honored, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means.
Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech. Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard. It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners whey they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office on the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship.
The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economist’s role in the economy. The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last come rank upon rank of people in gray business suits. A bystander asks, “Who are those?” “Aha!” comes the reply, “those are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!” Their conversations do it.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, business people, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere-among boat designers and baseball fans, say - the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economist’s favorite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien. They may be seen as figures of speech-metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority.
Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an “invisible hand” and the organization of work as a “production function” and his coefficients as being “significant”, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language.
If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data. Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks.
The paying of attention to one’s audience is called “rhetoric”, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the president’s “heated rhetoric” in a press conference or the “mere rhetoric” to which our enemies stoop. Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse.
The question is whether the scholar - who usually fancies himself an announcer of “results” or a stater of “conclusions” free of rhetoric - speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesn’t speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honored, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means.
Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech. Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard. It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners whey they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office on the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship.
The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economist’s role in the economy. The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last come rank upon rank of people in gray business suits. A bystander asks, “Who are those?” “Aha!” comes the reply, “those are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!” Their conversations do it.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, business people, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere-among boat designers and baseball fans, say - the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economist’s favorite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien. They may be seen as figures of speech-metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority.
Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an “invisible hand” and the organization of work as a “production function” and his coefficients as being “significant”, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language.
If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data. Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks.
The paying of attention to one’s audience is called “rhetoric”, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the president’s “heated rhetoric” in a press conference or the “mere rhetoric” to which our enemies stoop. Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse.
The question is whether the scholar - who usually fancies himself an announcer of “results” or a stater of “conclusions” free of rhetoric - speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesn’t speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honored, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means.
Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech. Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard. It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners whey they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office on the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship.
The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economist’s role in the economy. The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last come rank upon rank of people in gray business suits. A bystander asks, “Who are those?” “Aha!” comes the reply, “those are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!” Their conversations do it.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The union government’s present position vis-a-vis the upcoming United Nations conference on racial and related discrimination world-wide seems to be the following : discuss race please, not caste; caste is our very own and not at all as bad as you think. The gross hypocrisy of that position has been lucidly underscored by Kancha Ilaiah. Explicitly ,the world community is to be cheated out of considering the matter on the technicality that caste is not, as a concept, tantamount to a racial category. Internally, however, allowing the issue to be put on agenda at the said conference would, we are patriotically admonished, damage the country’s image. Somehow, India’s virtual beliefs elbow out concrete actualities. Inverted representations, as we know, have often been deployed in human histories as balm for the forsaken - religion being the most persistent of such inversions. Yet, we would humbly submit that if globalising our markets are thought good for the ‘national ‘pocket, globalising our social inequities might not be so bad for the mass of our people. After all, racism was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been within our society; why then can’t we permit the world community to express itself on the latter with a fraction of the zeal with which, through the years, we pronounced on the former?
As to the technicality about whether or not caste is admissible into an agenda about race (that the conference is also about ‘related discriminations’ tends to be forgotten ), a reputed sociologist has recently argued that where race is a ‘biological’ category caste is a ‘social’ one. Having earlier fiercely opposed implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, the said sociologist is at least to be complemented now for admitting, however tangentially, that caste discrimination is a reality, although, in his view ,incompatible with racial discrimination. One would like quickly to offer the hypothesis that biology ,in important ways that affect the lives of many millions, is in itself perhaps a social construction .But let us look at the matter in another way.
If it is agreed - as per the position today at which anthropological and allied scientific determinations rest -that the entire race of homo sapiens derived from an originary black African female (called ‘Eve’) then one is hard put to understand how, on some subsequent ground ,ontological distinctions are to drawn either between races or castes. Let us also underline the distinction between the supposition that we are all god’s children and the rather more substantiated argument about our descent from ‘Eve’ lest both positions are thought to be equally diversionary. It than stands to reason that all subsequent distinctions are, in modern parlance, ‘constructed’ ones, and, like all ideological constructions, attributable to changing equations between knowledge and power among human communities contested histories here, there elsewhere.
This line of thought receives ,thankfully ,extremely consequential butters from the findings of the Human Genome project. Contrary to earlier (chiefly 19th century colonial) persuasions on the subject of race, as well as, one might add, the somewhat infamous Jensen offerings in the 20th century from America ,those findings deny genetic difference between ‘races’ .If anything, they suggest that environmental factors impinge on gene-function, as a dialectic seems to unfold between nature and culture. It would thus seem that ‘biology’ as the constitution of pigmentation enters the picture first only as a part of that dialectic. Taken together, the originary mother stipulations the Genome findings ought indeed to furnish ground for human equality across the board, as well as yield policy initiatives towards equitable material dispensations aimed at building a global order where, in Hegel’s stirring formulation, only the rational constitutes the right. Such ,sadly, is not the case as everyday fresh arbitrary grounds for discrimination are constructed in the interests of sectional dominance.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The union government’s present position vis-a-vis the upcoming United Nations conference on racial and related discrimination world-wide seems to be the following : discuss race please, not caste; caste is our very own and not at all as bad as you think. The gross hypocrisy of that position has been lucidly underscored by Kancha Ilaiah. Explicitly ,the world community is to be cheated out of considering the matter on the technicality that caste is not, as a concept, tantamount to a racial category. Internally, however, allowing the issue to be put on agenda at the said conference would, we are patriotically admonished, damage the country’s image. Somehow, India’s virtual beliefs elbow out concrete actualities. Inverted representations, as we know, have often been deployed in human histories as balm for the forsaken - religion being the most persistent of such inversions. Yet, we would humbly submit that if globalising our markets are thought good for the ‘national ‘pocket, globalising our social inequities might not be so bad for the mass of our people. After all, racism was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been within our society; why then can’t we permit the world community to express itself on the latter with a fraction of the zeal with which, through the years, we pronounced on the former?
As to the technicality about whether or not caste is admissible into an agenda about race (that the conference is also about ‘related discriminations’ tends to be forgotten ), a reputed sociologist has recently argued that where race is a ‘biological’ category caste is a ‘social’ one. Having earlier fiercely opposed implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, the said sociologist is at least to be complemented now for admitting, however tangentially, that caste discrimination is a reality, although, in his view ,incompatible with racial discrimination. One would like quickly to offer the hypothesis that biology ,in important ways that affect the lives of many millions, is in itself perhaps a social construction .But let us look at the matter in another way.
If it is agreed - as per the position today at which anthropological and allied scientific determinations rest -that the entire race of homo sapiens derived from an originary black African female (called ‘Eve’) then one is hard put to understand how, on some subsequent ground ,ontological distinctions are to drawn either between races or castes. Let us also underline the distinction between the supposition that we are all god’s children and the rather more substantiated argument about our descent from ‘Eve’ lest both positions are thought to be equally diversionary. It than stands to reason that all subsequent distinctions are, in modern parlance, ‘constructed’ ones, and, like all ideological constructions, attributable to changing equations between knowledge and power among human communities contested histories here, there elsewhere.
This line of thought receives ,thankfully ,extremely consequential butters from the findings of the Human Genome project. Contrary to earlier (chiefly 19th century colonial) persuasions on the subject of race, as well as, one might add, the somewhat infamous Jensen offerings in the 20th century from America ,those findings deny genetic difference between ‘races’ .If anything, they suggest that environmental factors impinge on gene-function, as a dialectic seems to unfold between nature and culture. It would thus seem that ‘biology’ as the constitution of pigmentation enters the picture first only as a part of that dialectic. Taken together, the originary mother stipulations the Genome findings ought indeed to furnish ground for human equality across the board, as well as yield policy initiatives towards equitable material dispensations aimed at building a global order where, in Hegel’s stirring formulation, only the rational constitutes the right. Such ,sadly, is not the case as everyday fresh arbitrary grounds for discrimination are constructed in the interests of sectional dominance.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The union government’s present position vis-a-vis the upcoming United Nations conference on racial and related discrimination world-wide seems to be the following : discuss race please, not caste; caste is our very own and not at all as bad as you think. The gross hypocrisy of that position has been lucidly underscored by Kancha Ilaiah. Explicitly ,the world community is to be cheated out of considering the matter on the technicality that caste is not, as a concept, tantamount to a racial category. Internally, however, allowing the issue to be put on agenda at the said conference would, we are patriotically admonished, damage the country’s image. Somehow, India’s virtual beliefs elbow out concrete actualities. Inverted representations, as we know, have often been deployed in human histories as balm for the forsaken - religion being the most persistent of such inversions. Yet, we would humbly submit that if globalising our markets are thought good for the ‘national ‘pocket, globalising our social inequities might not be so bad for the mass of our people. After all, racism was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been within our society; why then can’t we permit the world community to express itself on the latter with a fraction of the zeal with which, through the years, we pronounced on the former?
As to the technicality about whether or not caste is admissible into an agenda about race (that the conference is also about ‘related discriminations’ tends to be forgotten ), a reputed sociologist has recently argued that where race is a ‘biological’ category caste is a ‘social’ one. Having earlier fiercely opposed implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, the said sociologist is at least to be complemented now for admitting, however tangentially, that caste discrimination is a reality, although, in his view ,incompatible with racial discrimination. One would like quickly to offer the hypothesis that biology ,in important ways that affect the lives of many millions, is in itself perhaps a social construction .But let us look at the matter in another way.
If it is agreed - as per the position today at which anthropological and allied scientific determinations rest -that the entire race of homo sapiens derived from an originary black African female (called ‘Eve’) then one is hard put to understand how, on some subsequent ground ,ontological distinctions are to drawn either between races or castes. Let us also underline the distinction between the supposition that we are all god’s children and the rather more substantiated argument about our descent from ‘Eve’ lest both positions are thought to be equally diversionary. It than stands to reason that all subsequent distinctions are, in modern parlance, ‘constructed’ ones, and, like all ideological constructions, attributable to changing equations between knowledge and power among human communities contested histories here, there elsewhere.
This line of thought receives ,thankfully ,extremely consequential butters from the findings of the Human Genome project. Contrary to earlier (chiefly 19th century colonial) persuasions on the subject of race, as well as, one might add, the somewhat infamous Jensen offerings in the 20th century from America ,those findings deny genetic difference between ‘races’ .If anything, they suggest that environmental factors impinge on gene-function, as a dialectic seems to unfold between nature and culture. It would thus seem that ‘biology’ as the constitution of pigmentation enters the picture first only as a part of that dialectic. Taken together, the originary mother stipulations the Genome findings ought indeed to furnish ground for human equality across the board, as well as yield policy initiatives towards equitable material dispensations aimed at building a global order where, in Hegel’s stirring formulation, only the rational constitutes the right. Such ,sadly, is not the case as everyday fresh arbitrary grounds for discrimination are constructed in the interests of sectional dominance.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The union government’s present position vis-a-vis the upcoming United Nations conference on racial and related discrimination world-wide seems to be the following : discuss race please, not caste; caste is our very own and not at all as bad as you think. The gross hypocrisy of that position has been lucidly underscored by Kancha Ilaiah. Explicitly ,the world community is to be cheated out of considering the matter on the technicality that caste is not, as a concept, tantamount to a racial category. Internally, however, allowing the issue to be put on agenda at the said conference would, we are patriotically admonished, damage the country’s image. Somehow, India’s virtual beliefs elbow out concrete actualities. Inverted representations, as we know, have often been deployed in human histories as balm for the forsaken - religion being the most persistent of such inversions. Yet, we would humbly submit that if globalising our markets are thought good for the ‘national ‘pocket, globalising our social inequities might not be so bad for the mass of our people. After all, racism was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been within our society; why then can’t we permit the world community to express itself on the latter with a fraction of the zeal with which, through the years, we pronounced on the former?
As to the technicality about whether or not caste is admissible into an agenda about race (that the conference is also about ‘related discriminations’ tends to be forgotten ), a reputed sociologist has recently argued that where race is a ‘biological’ category caste is a ‘social’ one. Having earlier fiercely opposed implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, the said sociologist is at least to be complemented now for admitting, however tangentially, that caste discrimination is a reality, although, in his view ,incompatible with racial discrimination. One would like quickly to offer the hypothesis that biology ,in important ways that affect the lives of many millions, is in itself perhaps a social construction .But let us look at the matter in another way.
If it is agreed - as per the position today at which anthropological and allied scientific determinations rest -that the entire race of homo sapiens derived from an originary black African female (called ‘Eve’) then one is hard put to understand how, on some subsequent ground ,ontological distinctions are to drawn either between races or castes. Let us also underline the distinction between the supposition that we are all god’s children and the rather more substantiated argument about our descent from ‘Eve’ lest both positions are thought to be equally diversionary. It than stands to reason that all subsequent distinctions are, in modern parlance, ‘constructed’ ones, and, like all ideological constructions, attributable to changing equations between knowledge and power among human communities contested histories here, there elsewhere.
This line of thought receives ,thankfully ,extremely consequential butters from the findings of the Human Genome project. Contrary to earlier (chiefly 19th century colonial) persuasions on the subject of race, as well as, one might add, the somewhat infamous Jensen offerings in the 20th century from America ,those findings deny genetic difference between ‘races’ .If anything, they suggest that environmental factors impinge on gene-function, as a dialectic seems to unfold between nature and culture. It would thus seem that ‘biology’ as the constitution of pigmentation enters the picture first only as a part of that dialectic. Taken together, the originary mother stipulations the Genome findings ought indeed to furnish ground for human equality across the board, as well as yield policy initiatives towards equitable material dispensations aimed at building a global order where, in Hegel’s stirring formulation, only the rational constitutes the right. Such ,sadly, is not the case as everyday fresh arbitrary grounds for discrimination are constructed in the interests of sectional dominance.
CAT/2001(RC)
Question. 226
According to the author, the sociologist who argued that race is a ‘biological’ category and caste is a ‘social’ one:
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The union government’s present position vis-a-vis the upcoming United Nations conference on racial and related discrimination world-wide seems to be the following : discuss race please, not caste; caste is our very own and not at all as bad as you think. The gross hypocrisy of that position has been lucidly underscored by Kancha Ilaiah. Explicitly ,the world community is to be cheated out of considering the matter on the technicality that caste is not, as a concept, tantamount to a racial category. Internally, however, allowing the issue to be put on agenda at the said conference would, we are patriotically admonished, damage the country’s image. Somehow, India’s virtual beliefs elbow out concrete actualities. Inverted representations, as we know, have often been deployed in human histories as balm for the forsaken - religion being the most persistent of such inversions. Yet, we would humbly submit that if globalising our markets are thought good for the ‘national ‘pocket, globalising our social inequities might not be so bad for the mass of our people. After all, racism was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been within our society; why then can’t we permit the world community to express itself on the latter with a fraction of the zeal with which, through the years, we pronounced on the former?
As to the technicality about whether or not caste is admissible into an agenda about race (that the conference is also about ‘related discriminations’ tends to be forgotten ), a reputed sociologist has recently argued that where race is a ‘biological’ category caste is a ‘social’ one. Having earlier fiercely opposed implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, the said sociologist is at least to be complemented now for admitting, however tangentially, that caste discrimination is a reality, although, in his view ,incompatible with racial discrimination. One would like quickly to offer the hypothesis that biology ,in important ways that affect the lives of many millions, is in itself perhaps a social construction .But let us look at the matter in another way.
If it is agreed - as per the position today at which anthropological and allied scientific determinations rest -that the entire race of homo sapiens derived from an originary black African female (called ‘Eve’) then one is hard put to understand how, on some subsequent ground ,ontological distinctions are to drawn either between races or castes. Let us also underline the distinction between the supposition that we are all god’s children and the rather more substantiated argument about our descent from ‘Eve’ lest both positions are thought to be equally diversionary. It than stands to reason that all subsequent distinctions are, in modern parlance, ‘constructed’ ones, and, like all ideological constructions, attributable to changing equations between knowledge and power among human communities contested histories here, there elsewhere.
This line of thought receives ,thankfully ,extremely consequential butters from the findings of the Human Genome project. Contrary to earlier (chiefly 19th century colonial) persuasions on the subject of race, as well as, one might add, the somewhat infamous Jensen offerings in the 20th century from America ,those findings deny genetic difference between ‘races’ .If anything, they suggest that environmental factors impinge on gene-function, as a dialectic seems to unfold between nature and culture. It would thus seem that ‘biology’ as the constitution of pigmentation enters the picture first only as a part of that dialectic. Taken together, the originary mother stipulations the Genome findings ought indeed to furnish ground for human equality across the board, as well as yield policy initiatives towards equitable material dispensations aimed at building a global order where, in Hegel’s stirring formulation, only the rational constitutes the right. Such ,sadly, is not the case as everyday fresh arbitrary grounds for discrimination are constructed in the interests of sectional dominance.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Democracy rests on a tension between two different principles. There is, on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law, or, more generally, of equality, and, on the other, what may be described as the leadership principle. The first fives priority to rules and the second to persons. No matter how skilfully we contrive our schemes, there is a point beyond which the one principle cannot be promoted without some sacrifice of the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great nineteenth century writer on democracy, maintained that the age of democracy, whose birth he was witnessing would also be the age of mediocrity: in saying this he was thinking primarily of a regime of equality governed by impersonal rules. Despite his strong attachment to democracy, he took great pains to point out what he believed to be its negative side: a dead level plane of achievement in practically every sphere of life. The age of democracy would, in his view be an unheroic age, there would not be room in it for either heroes or hero-worshippers.
But modern democracies have not been able to do without heroes: this too was foreseen, with much misgiving, by Tocqueville. Tocqueville viewed this with misgiving because he believed, rightly, that unlike in aristocratic societies there was no proper place in a democracy for heroes and, hence, when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Whether they require heroes or not, democracies certainly require leaders, and, in the contemporary age, breed them in great profusion; the problem is to know what to do with them.
In a world preoccupied with scientific rationality the advantages of a system based on an impersonal rule of law should be a recommendation with everybody. There is something orderly and predictable about such a system. When life is lived mainly in small self-contained communities, men are able to take finer personal distinctions into account in dealing with their fellow men. They are unable to do this in a large and amorphous society, and organised living would be impossible here without a system of impersonal rules. Above all, such a system guarantees a kind of equality to the extent that everybody, no matter in what station of life, is bound by the same explicit, often written, rules and nobody is above them.
But a system governed solely by impersonal rules can at best ensure order and stability; it cannot create any shinning vision of a future in which mere formal equality will be replaced by real equality and fellowship. A world governed by impersonal rules cannot easily change itself, or when it does, the change is so gradual as to make the basic and fundamental feature of society appear unchanged. For any kind of basic or fundamental change, a push is needed from within, a kind of individual initiative which will create new rules, new terms and conditions of life.
The issue of leadership thus acquires crucial significance in the context of change. If the modern age is preoccupied with scientific rationality, it is no less preoccupied with change. To accept what exists on its own terms is traditional not modern and it may be all very well to appreciate tradition in music, dance and drama, but for society as a whole the choice has already been made in favour of modernisation and development. Moreover, in some countries the gap between ideal and reality has become so great that the argument for development change is now irresistible.
In these countries no argument for development has greater appeal or urgency than the one which shows development to be the condition for the mitigation, if not the elimination, of inequality. There is something contradictory about the very presence of large inequalities in a society which professes to be democratic foes not take people too long to realise that democracy by itself can guarantee only formal equality; beyond this, it can only whet people’s appetite for real or substantive equality. From this arises their continued preoccupation with plans and schemes that will help to bridge the gap between the ideal of equality and the reality which is so contrary to it .
When preexisting rules give no clear directions of change, leadership comes into its own. Every democracy invests its leadership with a measure of charisma’ and expects from it a corresponding measure of energy and vitality. Now, the greater the urge for change in a society the stronger the appeal of a dynamic leadership in it. A dynamic leadership seeks to free itself from the constraints of existing rules; in a sense that is the test of its dynamism .In this process it may take a turn at which a turn at which it ceases to regard itself as being bound by these rules, placing itself above them. There is always a tension between ‘charisma’ and ‘discipline’ in the case of a democratic leadership, and when this leadership puts forward revolutionary claims, the tension tends to be resolved at the expense of discipline.
Characteristically, the legitimacy of such a leadership rests on its claim to be able to abolish or at least substantially reduce the existing inequalities in society. From the argument that formal equality or equality before the law is but a limited good, it is often one short step to the argument that it is a hindrance or an obstacle to the establishment of real or substantive equality. The conflict between a ‘progressive’ executive and a ‘conservative’ judiciary is but one aspect of this larger problem. This conflict naturally acquires added piquancy when the executive is elected and the judiciary appointed.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Democracy rests on a tension between two different principles. There is, on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law, or, more generally, of equality, and, on the other, what may be described as the leadership principle. The first fives priority to rules and the second to persons. No matter how skilfully we contrive our schemes, there is a point beyond which the one principle cannot be promoted without some sacrifice of the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great nineteenth century writer on democracy, maintained that the age of democracy, whose birth he was witnessing would also be the age of mediocrity: in saying this he was thinking primarily of a regime of equality governed by impersonal rules. Despite his strong attachment to democracy, he took great pains to point out what he believed to be its negative side: a dead level plane of achievement in practically every sphere of life. The age of democracy would, in his view be an unheroic age, there would not be room in it for either heroes or hero-worshippers.
But modern democracies have not been able to do without heroes: this too was foreseen, with much misgiving, by Tocqueville. Tocqueville viewed this with misgiving because he believed, rightly, that unlike in aristocratic societies there was no proper place in a democracy for heroes and, hence, when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Whether they require heroes or not, democracies certainly require leaders, and, in the contemporary age, breed them in great profusion; the problem is to know what to do with them.
In a world preoccupied with scientific rationality the advantages of a system based on an impersonal rule of law should be a recommendation with everybody. There is something orderly and predictable about such a system. When life is lived mainly in small self-contained communities, men are able to take finer personal distinctions into account in dealing with their fellow men. They are unable to do this in a large and amorphous society, and organised living would be impossible here without a system of impersonal rules. Above all, such a system guarantees a kind of equality to the extent that everybody, no matter in what station of life, is bound by the same explicit, often written, rules and nobody is above them.
But a system governed solely by impersonal rules can at best ensure order and stability; it cannot create any shinning vision of a future in which mere formal equality will be replaced by real equality and fellowship. A world governed by impersonal rules cannot easily change itself, or when it does, the change is so gradual as to make the basic and fundamental feature of society appear unchanged. For any kind of basic or fundamental change, a push is needed from within, a kind of individual initiative which will create new rules, new terms and conditions of life.
The issue of leadership thus acquires crucial significance in the context of change. If the modern age is preoccupied with scientific rationality, it is no less preoccupied with change. To accept what exists on its own terms is traditional not modern and it may be all very well to appreciate tradition in music, dance and drama, but for society as a whole the choice has already been made in favour of modernisation and development. Moreover, in some countries the gap between ideal and reality has become so great that the argument for development change is now irresistible.
In these countries no argument for development has greater appeal or urgency than the one which shows development to be the condition for the mitigation, if not the elimination, of inequality. There is something contradictory about the very presence of large inequalities in a society which professes to be democratic foes not take people too long to realise that democracy by itself can guarantee only formal equality; beyond this, it can only whet people’s appetite for real or substantive equality. From this arises their continued preoccupation with plans and schemes that will help to bridge the gap between the ideal of equality and the reality which is so contrary to it .
When preexisting rules give no clear directions of change, leadership comes into its own. Every democracy invests its leadership with a measure of charisma’ and expects from it a corresponding measure of energy and vitality. Now, the greater the urge for change in a society the stronger the appeal of a dynamic leadership in it. A dynamic leadership seeks to free itself from the constraints of existing rules; in a sense that is the test of its dynamism .In this process it may take a turn at which a turn at which it ceases to regard itself as being bound by these rules, placing itself above them. There is always a tension between ‘charisma’ and ‘discipline’ in the case of a democratic leadership, and when this leadership puts forward revolutionary claims, the tension tends to be resolved at the expense of discipline.
Characteristically, the legitimacy of such a leadership rests on its claim to be able to abolish or at least substantially reduce the existing inequalities in society. From the argument that formal equality or equality before the law is but a limited good, it is often one short step to the argument that it is a hindrance or an obstacle to the establishment of real or substantive equality. The conflict between a ‘progressive’ executive and a ‘conservative’ judiciary is but one aspect of this larger problem. This conflict naturally acquires added piquancy when the executive is elected and the judiciary appointed.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Democracy rests on a tension between two different principles. There is, on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law, or, more generally, of equality, and, on the other, what may be described as the leadership principle. The first fives priority to rules and the second to persons. No matter how skilfully we contrive our schemes, there is a point beyond which the one principle cannot be promoted without some sacrifice of the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great nineteenth century writer on democracy, maintained that the age of democracy, whose birth he was witnessing would also be the age of mediocrity: in saying this he was thinking primarily of a regime of equality governed by impersonal rules. Despite his strong attachment to democracy, he took great pains to point out what he believed to be its negative side: a dead level plane of achievement in practically every sphere of life. The age of democracy would, in his view be an unheroic age, there would not be room in it for either heroes or hero-worshippers.
But modern democracies have not been able to do without heroes: this too was foreseen, with much misgiving, by Tocqueville. Tocqueville viewed this with misgiving because he believed, rightly, that unlike in aristocratic societies there was no proper place in a democracy for heroes and, hence, when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Whether they require heroes or not, democracies certainly require leaders, and, in the contemporary age, breed them in great profusion; the problem is to know what to do with them.
In a world preoccupied with scientific rationality the advantages of a system based on an impersonal rule of law should be a recommendation with everybody. There is something orderly and predictable about such a system. When life is lived mainly in small self-contained communities, men are able to take finer personal distinctions into account in dealing with their fellow men. They are unable to do this in a large and amorphous society, and organised living would be impossible here without a system of impersonal rules. Above all, such a system guarantees a kind of equality to the extent that everybody, no matter in what station of life, is bound by the same explicit, often written, rules and nobody is above them.
But a system governed solely by impersonal rules can at best ensure order and stability; it cannot create any shinning vision of a future in which mere formal equality will be replaced by real equality and fellowship. A world governed by impersonal rules cannot easily change itself, or when it does, the change is so gradual as to make the basic and fundamental feature of society appear unchanged. For any kind of basic or fundamental change, a push is needed from within, a kind of individual initiative which will create new rules, new terms and conditions of life.
The issue of leadership thus acquires crucial significance in the context of change. If the modern age is preoccupied with scientific rationality, it is no less preoccupied with change. To accept what exists on its own terms is traditional not modern and it may be all very well to appreciate tradition in music, dance and drama, but for society as a whole the choice has already been made in favour of modernisation and development. Moreover, in some countries the gap between ideal and reality has become so great that the argument for development change is now irresistible.
In these countries no argument for development has greater appeal or urgency than the one which shows development to be the condition for the mitigation, if not the elimination, of inequality. There is something contradictory about the very presence of large inequalities in a society which professes to be democratic foes not take people too long to realise that democracy by itself can guarantee only formal equality; beyond this, it can only whet people’s appetite for real or substantive equality. From this arises their continued preoccupation with plans and schemes that will help to bridge the gap between the ideal of equality and the reality which is so contrary to it .
When preexisting rules give no clear directions of change, leadership comes into its own. Every democracy invests its leadership with a measure of charisma’ and expects from it a corresponding measure of energy and vitality. Now, the greater the urge for change in a society the stronger the appeal of a dynamic leadership in it. A dynamic leadership seeks to free itself from the constraints of existing rules; in a sense that is the test of its dynamism .In this process it may take a turn at which a turn at which it ceases to regard itself as being bound by these rules, placing itself above them. There is always a tension between ‘charisma’ and ‘discipline’ in the case of a democratic leadership, and when this leadership puts forward revolutionary claims, the tension tends to be resolved at the expense of discipline.
Characteristically, the legitimacy of such a leadership rests on its claim to be able to abolish or at least substantially reduce the existing inequalities in society. From the argument that formal equality or equality before the law is but a limited good, it is often one short step to the argument that it is a hindrance or an obstacle to the establishment of real or substantive equality. The conflict between a ‘progressive’ executive and a ‘conservative’ judiciary is but one aspect of this larger problem. This conflict naturally acquires added piquancy when the executive is elected and the judiciary appointed.
CAT/2001(RC)
Question. 230
Which of the following four statements can be inferred from the above passage?
A. Scientific rationality is an essential feature of modernity
B. Scientific rationality result in the development of impersonal rules
C. Modernisation and development have been chosen over traditional music, dance and drama.
D. Democracies aspire to achieve substantive equality
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Democracy rests on a tension between two different principles. There is, on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law, or, more generally, of equality, and, on the other, what may be described as the leadership principle. The first fives priority to rules and the second to persons. No matter how skilfully we contrive our schemes, there is a point beyond which the one principle cannot be promoted without some sacrifice of the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great nineteenth century writer on democracy, maintained that the age of democracy, whose birth he was witnessing would also be the age of mediocrity: in saying this he was thinking primarily of a regime of equality governed by impersonal rules. Despite his strong attachment to democracy, he took great pains to point out what he believed to be its negative side: a dead level plane of achievement in practically every sphere of life. The age of democracy would, in his view be an unheroic age, there would not be room in it for either heroes or hero-worshippers.
But modern democracies have not been able to do without heroes: this too was foreseen, with much misgiving, by Tocqueville. Tocqueville viewed this with misgiving because he believed, rightly, that unlike in aristocratic societies there was no proper place in a democracy for heroes and, hence, when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Whether they require heroes or not, democracies certainly require leaders, and, in the contemporary age, breed them in great profusion; the problem is to know what to do with them.
In a world preoccupied with scientific rationality the advantages of a system based on an impersonal rule of law should be a recommendation with everybody. There is something orderly and predictable about such a system. When life is lived mainly in small self-contained communities, men are able to take finer personal distinctions into account in dealing with their fellow men. They are unable to do this in a large and amorphous society, and organised living would be impossible here without a system of impersonal rules. Above all, such a system guarantees a kind of equality to the extent that everybody, no matter in what station of life, is bound by the same explicit, often written, rules and nobody is above them.
But a system governed solely by impersonal rules can at best ensure order and stability; it cannot create any shinning vision of a future in which mere formal equality will be replaced by real equality and fellowship. A world governed by impersonal rules cannot easily change itself, or when it does, the change is so gradual as to make the basic and fundamental feature of society appear unchanged. For any kind of basic or fundamental change, a push is needed from within, a kind of individual initiative which will create new rules, new terms and conditions of life.
The issue of leadership thus acquires crucial significance in the context of change. If the modern age is preoccupied with scientific rationality, it is no less preoccupied with change. To accept what exists on its own terms is traditional not modern and it may be all very well to appreciate tradition in music, dance and drama, but for society as a whole the choice has already been made in favour of modernisation and development. Moreover, in some countries the gap between ideal and reality has become so great that the argument for development change is now irresistible.
In these countries no argument for development has greater appeal or urgency than the one which shows development to be the condition for the mitigation, if not the elimination, of inequality. There is something contradictory about the very presence of large inequalities in a society which professes to be democratic foes not take people too long to realise that democracy by itself can guarantee only formal equality; beyond this, it can only whet people’s appetite for real or substantive equality. From this arises their continued preoccupation with plans and schemes that will help to bridge the gap between the ideal of equality and the reality which is so contrary to it .
When preexisting rules give no clear directions of change, leadership comes into its own. Every democracy invests its leadership with a measure of charisma’ and expects from it a corresponding measure of energy and vitality. Now, the greater the urge for change in a society the stronger the appeal of a dynamic leadership in it. A dynamic leadership seeks to free itself from the constraints of existing rules; in a sense that is the test of its dynamism .In this process it may take a turn at which a turn at which it ceases to regard itself as being bound by these rules, placing itself above them. There is always a tension between ‘charisma’ and ‘discipline’ in the case of a democratic leadership, and when this leadership puts forward revolutionary claims, the tension tends to be resolved at the expense of discipline.
Characteristically, the legitimacy of such a leadership rests on its claim to be able to abolish or at least substantially reduce the existing inequalities in society. From the argument that formal equality or equality before the law is but a limited good, it is often one short step to the argument that it is a hindrance or an obstacle to the establishment of real or substantive equality. The conflict between a ‘progressive’ executive and a ‘conservative’ judiciary is but one aspect of this larger problem. This conflict naturally acquires added piquancy when the executive is elected and the judiciary appointed.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Democracy rests on a tension between two different principles. There is, on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law, or, more generally, of equality, and, on the other, what may be described as the leadership principle. The first fives priority to rules and the second to persons. No matter how skilfully we contrive our schemes, there is a point beyond which the one principle cannot be promoted without some sacrifice of the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great nineteenth century writer on democracy, maintained that the age of democracy, whose birth he was witnessing would also be the age of mediocrity: in saying this he was thinking primarily of a regime of equality governed by impersonal rules. Despite his strong attachment to democracy, he took great pains to point out what he believed to be its negative side: a dead level plane of achievement in practically every sphere of life. The age of democracy would, in his view be an unheroic age, there would not be room in it for either heroes or hero-worshippers.
But modern democracies have not been able to do without heroes: this too was foreseen, with much misgiving, by Tocqueville. Tocqueville viewed this with misgiving because he believed, rightly, that unlike in aristocratic societies there was no proper place in a democracy for heroes and, hence, when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Whether they require heroes or not, democracies certainly require leaders, and, in the contemporary age, breed them in great profusion; the problem is to know what to do with them.
In a world preoccupied with scientific rationality the advantages of a system based on an impersonal rule of law should be a recommendation with everybody. There is something orderly and predictable about such a system. When life is lived mainly in small self-contained communities, men are able to take finer personal distinctions into account in dealing with their fellow men. They are unable to do this in a large and amorphous society, and organised living would be impossible here without a system of impersonal rules. Above all, such a system guarantees a kind of equality to the extent that everybody, no matter in what station of life, is bound by the same explicit, often written, rules and nobody is above them.
But a system governed solely by impersonal rules can at best ensure order and stability; it cannot create any shinning vision of a future in which mere formal equality will be replaced by real equality and fellowship. A world governed by impersonal rules cannot easily change itself, or when it does, the change is so gradual as to make the basic and fundamental feature of society appear unchanged. For any kind of basic or fundamental change, a push is needed from within, a kind of individual initiative which will create new rules, new terms and conditions of life.
The issue of leadership thus acquires crucial significance in the context of change. If the modern age is preoccupied with scientific rationality, it is no less preoccupied with change. To accept what exists on its own terms is traditional not modern and it may be all very well to appreciate tradition in music, dance and drama, but for society as a whole the choice has already been made in favour of modernisation and development. Moreover, in some countries the gap between ideal and reality has become so great that the argument for development change is now irresistible.
In these countries no argument for development has greater appeal or urgency than the one which shows development to be the condition for the mitigation, if not the elimination, of inequality. There is something contradictory about the very presence of large inequalities in a society which professes to be democratic foes not take people too long to realise that democracy by itself can guarantee only formal equality; beyond this, it can only whet people’s appetite for real or substantive equality. From this arises their continued preoccupation with plans and schemes that will help to bridge the gap between the ideal of equality and the reality which is so contrary to it .
When preexisting rules give no clear directions of change, leadership comes into its own. Every democracy invests its leadership with a measure of charisma’ and expects from it a corresponding measure of energy and vitality. Now, the greater the urge for change in a society the stronger the appeal of a dynamic leadership in it. A dynamic leadership seeks to free itself from the constraints of existing rules; in a sense that is the test of its dynamism .In this process it may take a turn at which a turn at which it ceases to regard itself as being bound by these rules, placing itself above them. There is always a tension between ‘charisma’ and ‘discipline’ in the case of a democratic leadership, and when this leadership puts forward revolutionary claims, the tension tends to be resolved at the expense of discipline.
Characteristically, the legitimacy of such a leadership rests on its claim to be able to abolish or at least substantially reduce the existing inequalities in society. From the argument that formal equality or equality before the law is but a limited good, it is often one short step to the argument that it is a hindrance or an obstacle to the establishment of real or substantive equality. The conflict between a ‘progressive’ executive and a ‘conservative’ judiciary is but one aspect of this larger problem. This conflict naturally acquires added piquancy when the executive is elected and the judiciary appointed.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Democracy rests on a tension between two different principles. There is, on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law, or, more generally, of equality, and, on the other, what may be described as the leadership principle. The first fives priority to rules and the second to persons. No matter how skilfully we contrive our schemes, there is a point beyond which the one principle cannot be promoted without some sacrifice of the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great nineteenth century writer on democracy, maintained that the age of democracy, whose birth he was witnessing would also be the age of mediocrity: in saying this he was thinking primarily of a regime of equality governed by impersonal rules. Despite his strong attachment to democracy, he took great pains to point out what he believed to be its negative side: a dead level plane of achievement in practically every sphere of life. The age of democracy would, in his view be an unheroic age, there would not be room in it for either heroes or hero-worshippers.
But modern democracies have not been able to do without heroes: this too was foreseen, with much misgiving, by Tocqueville. Tocqueville viewed this with misgiving because he believed, rightly, that unlike in aristocratic societies there was no proper place in a democracy for heroes and, hence, when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Whether they require heroes or not, democracies certainly require leaders, and, in the contemporary age, breed them in great profusion; the problem is to know what to do with them.
In a world preoccupied with scientific rationality the advantages of a system based on an impersonal rule of law should be a recommendation with everybody. There is something orderly and predictable about such a system. When life is lived mainly in small self-contained communities, men are able to take finer personal distinctions into account in dealing with their fellow men. They are unable to do this in a large and amorphous society, and organised living would be impossible here without a system of impersonal rules. Above all, such a system guarantees a kind of equality to the extent that everybody, no matter in what station of life, is bound by the same explicit, often written, rules and nobody is above them.
But a system governed solely by impersonal rules can at best ensure order and stability; it cannot create any shinning vision of a future in which mere formal equality will be replaced by real equality and fellowship. A world governed by impersonal rules cannot easily change itself, or when it does, the change is so gradual as to make the basic and fundamental feature of society appear unchanged. For any kind of basic or fundamental change, a push is needed from within, a kind of individual initiative which will create new rules, new terms and conditions of life.
The issue of leadership thus acquires crucial significance in the context of change. If the modern age is preoccupied with scientific rationality, it is no less preoccupied with change. To accept what exists on its own terms is traditional not modern and it may be all very well to appreciate tradition in music, dance and drama, but for society as a whole the choice has already been made in favour of modernisation and development. Moreover, in some countries the gap between ideal and reality has become so great that the argument for development change is now irresistible.
In these countries no argument for development has greater appeal or urgency than the one which shows development to be the condition for the mitigation, if not the elimination, of inequality. There is something contradictory about the very presence of large inequalities in a society which professes to be democratic foes not take people too long to realise that democracy by itself can guarantee only formal equality; beyond this, it can only whet people’s appetite for real or substantive equality. From this arises their continued preoccupation with plans and schemes that will help to bridge the gap between the ideal of equality and the reality which is so contrary to it .
When preexisting rules give no clear directions of change, leadership comes into its own. Every democracy invests its leadership with a measure of charisma’ and expects from it a corresponding measure of energy and vitality. Now, the greater the urge for change in a society the stronger the appeal of a dynamic leadership in it. A dynamic leadership seeks to free itself from the constraints of existing rules; in a sense that is the test of its dynamism .In this process it may take a turn at which a turn at which it ceases to regard itself as being bound by these rules, placing itself above them. There is always a tension between ‘charisma’ and ‘discipline’ in the case of a democratic leadership, and when this leadership puts forward revolutionary claims, the tension tends to be resolved at the expense of discipline.
Characteristically, the legitimacy of such a leadership rests on its claim to be able to abolish or at least substantially reduce the existing inequalities in society. From the argument that formal equality or equality before the law is but a limited good, it is often one short step to the argument that it is a hindrance or an obstacle to the establishment of real or substantive equality. The conflict between a ‘progressive’ executive and a ‘conservative’ judiciary is but one aspect of this larger problem. This conflict naturally acquires added piquancy when the executive is elected and the judiciary appointed.
CAT/2001(RC)
Question. 233
Which of the following four statements can be inferred form the above passage?
A. There is conflict between the pursuit of equality and individuality
B. The disadvantages of impersonal rules can be overcome in small communities
C. Despite limitations, impersonal rules are essential in large systems
D. Inspired leadership, rather than plans and schemes, is more effective in bridging inequality
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
CAT/2000(RC)
Question. 236
Due to which of the following reasons, according to the author, will the bereavement counsellor find the deserts even in herself?
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
CAT/2000(RC)
Question. 240
According to the author, people will begin to utilise the service of the bereavement counsellor because;
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle in the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps and planted their crops in the rich, loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The European were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the ‘Great Desert”. It seemed untillable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could after a few years of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest.
In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the “sod buster’ that opened the great prairies to agricultural development.
Sauk County, Wisconsin is the part of that prairie where I have a home. It is name after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in regular patterns on a plain beside the Wisconsin river. He called the place Prairie du sac. The village was surrounded by field that had provided maize, beans and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into the unrecorded time.
When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi river. The settlers came with John Deere’s new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod-busting tool for planting wheat. Initially, the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only thirty years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming become uneconomic and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust.
It took the European and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And they even forgot about the techniques and tools that has sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created-Wisconsin, the reservation and the memories of a people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through the regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realise, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere’s plow.
The new technology is called ‘bereavement counselling. It is a tool forged at the great state university, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can “process” the grief of the people who now live on the prairie of the Sauk. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere’s plow, one can also imagine these final days, before the arrival of the first bereavement counsellor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the towns people mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbours and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer and song. They call upon the words of the clergy and surround themselves in community.
It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead.
It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counsellor arrives with the new grief technology. The counsellor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that the local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counsellor’s claim. However, the counsellor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved’s community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counsellor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Boards’s decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counselling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centres, who will seek out the bereavement counsellor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbour who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counsellor, he will probably have major psychological problems in later life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counsellor because since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they feel that to fail to be counselled is to waste their, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right.
Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbour will not drop by because he doesn’t want to interrupt the bereavement counsellor. The woman’s kin will stay home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counsellor known how to process grief the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance form the bereavement counsellor to learn the correct form of service to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the best bereavement counsellor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counsellor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk.
It will be only one generation between the bereavement counsellor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counsellor’s new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighbourly obligations and community ways of coming together and going on.
Like John Deere’s plow, the tools of bereavement counselling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counsellor will see this impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counsellor will find the deserts even in herself.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late into the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal factors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organisation, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and a more legal dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.
A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from the lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organisations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an oragnisation created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximise. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-right and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of cooperation, since operation, since without these values rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassi De Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognised as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. On means the court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘ the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty’. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.
In large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near- revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules form becoming sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late into the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal factors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organisation, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and a more legal dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.
A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from the lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organisations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an oragnisation created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximise. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-right and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of cooperation, since operation, since without these values rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassi De Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognised as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. On means the court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘ the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty’. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.
In large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near- revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules form becoming sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late into the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal factors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organisation, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and a more legal dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.
A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from the lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organisations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an oragnisation created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximise. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-right and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of cooperation, since operation, since without these values rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassi De Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognised as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. On means the court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘ the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty’. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.
In large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near- revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules form becoming sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
CAT/1999(RC)
Question. 244
According to the passage, WTO promoted the technical legal values partly through
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late into the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal factors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organisation, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and a more legal dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.
A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from the lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organisations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an oragnisation created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximise. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-right and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of cooperation, since operation, since without these values rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassi De Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognised as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. On means the court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘ the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty’. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.
In large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near- revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules form becoming sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late into the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal factors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organisation, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and a more legal dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.
A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from the lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organisations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an oragnisation created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximise. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-right and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of cooperation, since operation, since without these values rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassi De Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognised as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. On means the court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘ the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty’. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.
In large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near- revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules form becoming sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late into the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal factors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organisation, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and a more legal dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.
A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from the lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organisations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an oragnisation created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximise. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-right and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of cooperation, since operation, since without these values rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassi De Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognised as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. On means the court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘ the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty’. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.
In large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near- revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules form becoming sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and every ideology. In the name of modernisation in the West, or socialism in the Eastern Bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of people as societies. However, the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation-state tries to represent their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.
As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers an isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In reaction to this trend towards globalisation, individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.
There are two ways in which the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked at. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing-proclaiming that are different, rediscovering the rots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity-may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and make their cultural compartments even more water tight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self absorption and isolation, and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards ideas of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.
Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognise themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. The distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the group remained unchanged and talk for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same way of acting and thinking the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.
Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, from some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with others in the society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “ who we are “, where we come from”, and where we are going.
Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be potent source of violence and disruption. How can these contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with the view to eliminating all forms of identification which would be unrealistic since identity is cognitive necessity- but simply to remind ourselves that each of has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognise that culture is being constantly recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modern elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking a self perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally, the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist, Raymond Aron, called “peace through law”, That would guarantee justice to both the state as a whole and its parts, and respect the claims of both reasons and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with exercise of democracy.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and every ideology. In the name of modernisation in the West, or socialism in the Eastern Bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of people as societies. However, the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation-state tries to represent their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.
As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers an isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In reaction to this trend towards globalisation, individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.
There are two ways in which the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked at. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing-proclaiming that are different, rediscovering the rots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity-may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and make their cultural compartments even more water tight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self absorption and isolation, and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards ideas of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.
Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognise themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. The distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the group remained unchanged and talk for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same way of acting and thinking the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.
Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, from some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with others in the society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “ who we are “, where we come from”, and where we are going.
Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be potent source of violence and disruption. How can these contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with the view to eliminating all forms of identification which would be unrealistic since identity is cognitive necessity- but simply to remind ourselves that each of has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognise that culture is being constantly recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modern elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking a self perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally, the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist, Raymond Aron, called “peace through law”, That would guarantee justice to both the state as a whole and its parts, and respect the claims of both reasons and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with exercise of democracy.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and every ideology. In the name of modernisation in the West, or socialism in the Eastern Bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of people as societies. However, the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation-state tries to represent their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.
As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers an isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In reaction to this trend towards globalisation, individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.
There are two ways in which the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked at. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing-proclaiming that are different, rediscovering the rots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity-may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and make their cultural compartments even more water tight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self absorption and isolation, and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards ideas of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.
Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognise themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. The distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the group remained unchanged and talk for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same way of acting and thinking the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.
Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, from some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with others in the society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “ who we are “, where we come from”, and where we are going.
Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be potent source of violence and disruption. How can these contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with the view to eliminating all forms of identification which would be unrealistic since identity is cognitive necessity- but simply to remind ourselves that each of has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognise that culture is being constantly recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modern elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking a self perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally, the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist, Raymond Aron, called “peace through law”, That would guarantee justice to both the state as a whole and its parts, and respect the claims of both reasons and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with exercise of democracy.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and every ideology. In the name of modernisation in the West, or socialism in the Eastern Bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of people as societies. However, the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation-state tries to represent their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.
As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers an isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In reaction to this trend towards globalisation, individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.
There are two ways in which the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked at. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing-proclaiming that are different, rediscovering the rots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity-may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and make their cultural compartments even more water tight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self absorption and isolation, and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards ideas of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.
Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognise themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. The distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the group remained unchanged and talk for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same way of acting and thinking the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.
Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, from some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with others in the society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “ who we are “, where we come from”, and where we are going.
Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be potent source of violence and disruption. How can these contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with the view to eliminating all forms of identification which would be unrealistic since identity is cognitive necessity- but simply to remind ourselves that each of has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognise that culture is being constantly recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modern elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking a self perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally, the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist, Raymond Aron, called “peace through law”, That would guarantee justice to both the state as a whole and its parts, and respect the claims of both reasons and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with exercise of democracy.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Since World War II, the nation-state has been regarded with approval by every political system and every ideology. In the name of modernisation in the West, or socialism in the Eastern Bloc, and of development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of people as societies. However, the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world. It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Disturbed by the claims of communities within it, the nation-state tries to represent their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.
As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers an isolated regions but is one of integrated global systems. In reaction to this trend towards globalisation, individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.
There are two ways in which the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked at. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as “liberation movements”, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing-proclaiming that are different, rediscovering the rots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity-may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and make their cultural compartments even more water tight. The assertion of identity then starts turning into self absorption and isolation, and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards ideas of “ethnic cleansing”, xenophobia and violence.
Whereas continuous variations among peoples prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their group’s identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognise themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted. The distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the group remained unchanged and talk for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same way of acting and thinking the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.
Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, from some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with others in the society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know “ who we are “, where we come from”, and where we are going.
Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be potent source of violence and disruption. How can these contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with the view to eliminating all forms of identification which would be unrealistic since identity is cognitive necessity- but simply to remind ourselves that each of has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognise that culture is being constantly recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modern elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths. Such cults and movements are characterised by continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking a self perpetuating existence of their own and hold out hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally, the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist, Raymond Aron, called “peace through law”, That would guarantee justice to both the state as a whole and its parts, and respect the claims of both reasons and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with exercise of democracy.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
CAT/1998(RC)
Question. 257
According to the writer, one of the fallouts of the end of mutual funds is that
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
CAT/1998(RC)
Question. 260
The increase in the number of cell-phone subscriptions in the office of an Asset Management company
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The end of mutual funds, when it came, was sudden but not unexpected. For over 10 years mutual fund has been scripting its own growth demise, embarking on a reckless course of high risk, unhealthy pastimes, and unchecked maladies. Ironically but fittingly too, the very hand that had supported and sustained it through the turbulent early period of its existence was the one that, finally wielded the euthanasian syringe. The individual investor it was who had made the mutual fund post-liberalisation India’s most vibrant vehicle for individual investment. The individual investor it was who brought the curtain down on an act that had started with a virtuoso performance, only to putrefy into a show of ineptitude, imprudence, and irresponsibility.
The mutual fund, as we know it, may be dead. It died of many things. But primarily, of a cancer that ate away at its innards. A cancer that destroyed the value of he investments the mutual funds had made to service the Rs. 85,000 crore that India’s investors had entrusted them with ever since they began life way back in 1964 as the Unit Trust of India (UTI) now-disgraced Unit Scheme 64 (US64). A cancer that grew from the refusal of the men and women to manage the mutual fund to exercise a mixture of caution and aggression, but to adopt, instead, and indisciplined, unplanned, fire-from the hip approach to investment. A cancer that, ultimately, robbed the mutual funds of the resources they would have to use to pay back their investors, leaving them on Death Row.
Indeed, the scandal that US-64 had been brewing for years, was only one, but not the first, of the warning-bells that pointed to the near emptiness of many a mutual funds’ coffers. In quick succession have emerged reports of more and more fund-schemes that have been laid bare, their corpuses empty, their ability to meet their promises of assured returns-to investors demolished. At least 37% of the 235 fund schemes in operation in the country have promised investors assured returns of over 15% for 5 years, and repurchaseprices well above their Net Asset Values (NAVs).
According to a study conducted by the Delhi based Value Research, at least 18 big schemes due for redemption over the next 3 years will be unable to service their investors, or even return their money at the time of redemption. The shortfall? Rs 4,685.10 crore, Or, 75.87% of the amount handed over by trusting investors to fund managers. Worries Ajai Kaul, 38 President, Alliance Capital Asset Management. “When an assured-returns scheme runs into problems, investors view it as one more let-down by the mutual funds.”
Had they but known of the actual practices seen in the offices and hallways of the mutual funds, which have translated into these results, investors would have shown their disgust long ago. Take the case of a mutual fund company that manages more than a dozen schemes. According to an unwritten, but formalised, principle each scheme takes it in turn to sell some of its holdings to its sisterschemes, booking fat notional gains and posting NAVs. While investors responded by pouring in even more of their savings, the profits were, clearly, only on paper, In the offices of another asset management company half way across Mumbai, the demand for cellular phone peaked 6 months ago.
Its employees had, suddenly, realized that making their personal deals, using information gathered in the course of their professional work, was best done over cell phones so that the company’s records wouldn’t show the cell being made. Obviously, the hot tips went to fatten their - and not investors’-pockets. Earlier, quite a few merchant bankers entered the mutual funds industry to use the corpus to subscribe to the issues they were lead managing. It took a crash in the primary market-not ethics or investigation-for this practice to stop.
Filled with fear and loathing -and righteous anger- the investor has, therefore, decided to adjure the mutual fund. According to marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA) opinion poll of 342 investors conducted last fortnight in the 5 metros of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, mutual funds as an investment instrument now rank a lowly fourth on safety-after bank deposits, gold and real estate-and fifth on returns-ahead only of bank deposits and gold. And only 14.20% of the sample will even consider investing in a mutual fund in the future.
Still, it is the species that has died, not its every member. The ones that have survived are the bright performers who beat the market benchmark- the 100-scrip Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) National index- by the widest margins within their 3 genres, growth income and balance. However even their star turns have not been able to stave off the stench of death over the business. In fact, an autopsy of the late -- and, at the moment not particularly lamented -- mutual fund reveals a sordid saga of callousness and calumny.
Sheer disaster stares the mutual funds in the face, and a cataclysm could destroy the savings of lakhs of investors too. A Value Research estimate of probable shortfall that 18 assured-returns schemes will face at the time of their scheduled redemptions over the next 3 year adds up to a sense-numbing Rs. 4,685 crore. An independent audit of the 60 assured-returns schemes managed by the public sector mutual funds. Conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEB), estimated a shortfall of between Rs.2,500 crore and Rs.3,000 crore. In 1999 alone, judging from their present NAVs, the four schemes due for redemption-Canbank Asset Management Company’s Cantriple, IndBank Asset Management Company’s Ind Prakash, SBI Funds Managements’s Magnum Triple Plus, and BOI Mutual Funds’s (BOIMF) Double Square Plus---are heading for a collective shortfall of Rs. 1,639.55 crore.
As of June 30, 1998 the country’s 252 fund-schemes managed assets with a market value of Rs.69,599 crore, with the UTI alone controlling the fate of Rs. 50.000 crore. That is Rs. 11,000 crore less than the money invested in these schemes as of June 30, 1997 which means that the mutual funds have wiped out Rs.11,000 crore from the investors’ hard earned money in the intervening 12 months. Of course, every fund is paying for the sins of the black sheep. For, the villain of peace was the UTI and the 95 funds managed by the public sector banks and institutions, the value of whose corpuses fell from Rs. 66,748 crore to Rs. 57,350 crore in the past year. In fact these funds contributed 85.405 of the overall values-loss ,with the private sector funds boosting their corpuses form Rs. 4000 crore to lower the extent of the erosion.
For investors, that has translated into an option of either exiting at a loss- or holding on in vain hope. On Nov. 20,1998, a depressing 77% of the 58 listed fund schemes were quoting at discounts of between 5% and 40% to their NAVS. And what of the NAVs themselves? The units of a shoulder-slumping 15% of the schemes were worth less than their par values. And US-64 of course continued to languish, with an estimated NAV of Rs.9.68. Even if there are schemes that have performed individually well, that the mutual funds have collectively failed to deliver couldn’t be more obvious. So investors’ murderous mood can hardly be debated.
Their genesis and growth reveals just what blinded the mutual funds to the possibility of failure. 40 % of the banks-and - insurance companies promoted funds in operation were launched between 1987 and 1993, when the stock markets were bull-dominated. In a period that saw only one bear phase, the BSE Sensitivity index (a.k.a the Sensex) climbed by 346%. Being successful with equity investments required no skills; only investable funds. Nor was fund-raising a problem, as investors desperately sought ways to grab a piece of equity boom. Between 1984 and 1989, the mutual funds collected Rs. 13,455 crore as subscriptions, but in the next 5 years, they picked up Rs.45,573 crore.
In January, 1994, the UTI’s Mastergain mopped up a stunning Rs. 4,700 crore while the most awaited Morgan Stanley Growth-a showcase for the fabled fund-management metier of the foreign mutual funds-took in Rs. 1000 crore in just 3 days. Low entry barriers - a so called sound track record, a general reputation of fairness and integrity, an application-fee of Rs. 25,000 a registration fee of Rs. 25 lakh and an annual fee of Rs. 2.50 lakh-made entering the business a snap. Explains Ajay Srinivasan, 34 CEO, Prudential ICICI Mutual fund: “Mutual funds were misunderstood by investors. Everyone thought they were a one way ticket to a jackpot.”
Intoxicated fund-managers poured in more and more of their corpuses into equity, ignoring the down sides, confident that the boom would last forever. In the process, they ignored the very concept of risk-management. Blithely ignoring the safety net of fixed income instruments, and accusing those who advised caution of being cowards. In 1995, for instance, ABN estimated 70% of the money being managed by the mutual funds had been funneled into equity. Whether they knew it or not, they were breaking away from the trend set by the mutual funds in the US, where the industry began by investing primarily in the money market, with only 25% of their corpus set aside for stocks. Only in the past 15 years, after operating for more than 7 decades, have those funds ventured into equity.
Unfortunately, their success blinded the fund-mangers to the fact that they were riding a wave-not navigating the treacherous seas. As Vivek Reddy, 36, CEO, Kothari-Pioneer Mutual Fund, puts it: “It was the stock market conditions that helped the mutual funds deliver returns- not superior investment skills.” Then, the stock markets collapsed and never quite recovered. Between July, 1997 and October, 1998, the sensex free fell from 4306 to 2812 finally nullifying the theory that if you wait long enough, share-prices are always bound to rise. And the mutual fund, unused to a diet of falling equity indices, collapsed too.
The quantum of money mopped by the mutual fund may suggest that the reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated. In 1997-98, Indians entrusted Rs. 18,701 crore to the mutual funds, with new schemes alone mopping up Rs. 12,279 crore. Questions R G Sharma, 58, CEO LIC Mutual fund : “ How do you explain that Dhanvarsha 12 and Dhanvarsha 13, floated in April and September, 1998 managed to mop Rs.335 crore ?’ Not quite a loss of faith, would you say? Think again. In those 12 months, those very investors also took away Rs. 16,227 crore in the form of repurchases and redemptions, leaving only Rs. 2,474 crore more in the hands of fundmanagers. What’s more, since none of the withdrawals could have been made from the new schemes, the old schemes, obviously, gave it all up, effectively yielding Rs. 9,0805 crore to angry investors who took away their money. It is same story this year. In the first quarter of 1998-99, old schemes collected Rs. 2,340 crore, compared to the new schemes’ Rs. 1,735 crore but they gave up Rs. 2, 749 crore ending up Rs. 409 crore poorer.
Sure some people are still putting money into he mutual funds. The real reason : money is flowing in from two genres of investors-neither of whom is the quintessential urban. The first comprises people in the semi-urban and rural areas. For whom makes like LIC and GIC still represent safety and assured schemes of income importantly, this category investor isn’t clued into the financial markets, and is not, accordingly aware of the problems that confront the mutual funds. Confirms Nikhil Khatau, 38 Managing director, Sun F&C Asset Management: “That market is fairly stable.” However as soon as the fundamental problems hit their dividend paying ability, even the die hard mutual fund investor from India’s villages and small towns-who don’t forget, has already been singed by the disappearance of thousands of Non Banking Finance Companies-will swear off their favorite investment vehicle.
The second genre of investor explains why the private sector funds have been successful in soaking up large sums: 31.10% of the total takings in 1997-98, and 10.70% in the first quarter of 1998-99. They are the so called high net worth players-corporate and individuals who in Khatau’s terms,” While their fastidiousness has forced them to pick the private sector mutual funds., whose disclosures and performance have both been ahead of their public sector cousins, their interest does not represent every investor’s disillusionment.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
I think that it would be wrong to ask whether 50 years of India’s Independence is an achievement or a failure. It would be better to see things as evolving. It’s not an either-or question. My idea of the history of India is slightly contrary to the Indian idea. India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was ravaged and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions that began in about 1000 A.D. by forces and religions that India had no means of understanding.
The invasions are in all the school books. But I don’t think that people understand that every invasion, every war, every campaign, was accompanied by slaughter, a slaughter always of the most talented people in the country. So these wars, apart from everything else, led to a tremendous intellectual depletion of the country. I think that in the British period, and in the 50 years after the British period, there has been a kind of recruitment or recovery, a very slow revival of energy and intellect. This isn’t an idea that goes with the vision of the grandeur of old India and all that sort of rubbish. That idea is great simplification and it occurs because it is intellectually, philosophically and emotionally easier for Indians to manage.
What they cannot manage, and what they have not yet come to terms with, is that ravaging of all the north of India by various conquerors. That was ruin not by an act of nature, but by the hand of man. It is so painful that few Indians have begun to deal with it. It’s much easier to deal with British imperialism. That is the familiar topic, in India and Britain. What is much less familiar is the ravaging of India before the British.
What happened from 1000 AD on, really, is such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding from it. You retreat from reality. I do not think, for example, that the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever get over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places the head was cut off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that.
In the place of knowledge of history, you have various fantasies about the village republic and the Old Glory. There is one big fantasy that Indians have always found solace in: about India having the capacity for absorbing its conquerors. This is not so. India was laid low by its conquerors. I feel the past 150 years have been years of every kind of growth. I see the British period and what has continued after that as one period. In that time, there has been a very slow intellectual recruitment. I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of slaughter and plunder meant. War isn’t a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That’s where modern India starts from. The Vijayanagar capital was destroyed in 1565. It is only now that the surrounding region has begun to revive.
A great chance has been given to India to start up again, and I feel it has started up again. The questions about whether 50 years of India since Independence have been a failure or an achievement are not the questions to ask.
In fact, I think India is developing quite marvelously. People thought - even Mr. Nehru thought - that development and new institutions in a place like Bihar, for instance, would immediately lead to beauty. But it doesn’t happen like that. When a country as ravaged as India, with all its layers of cruelty, begins to extend justice to people lower down, it’s a very messy business. It’s not beautiful, it’s extremely messy. And that’s what you have now, all these small politicians with small reputations and small parties. But this is part of growth, this is part of development. You must remember that these people, and the people they represent, have never had rights before. When the oppressed have the power to assert themselves, they will behave badly. It will need a couple of generations of security, and knowledge of institutions, and the knowledge that you can trust institutions - it will take at least a couple of generations before people in that situation begin to behave well.
People in India have known only tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea. The rulers were tyrants. The tyrants were foreigners. And they were proud of being foreign. There’s a story that anybody could run and pull a bell and the emperor would appear at his window and give justice. The child’s idea of history. The slave’s idea of the ruler’s mercy. When the people at the bottom discover that they hold justice in their own hands, the earth moves a little. You have to expect these earth movements in India. It will be like this for a hundred years. But it is the only way. It’s painful and messy and primitive and petty, but it’s better that it should begin. It has to begin. If we were to rule people according to what we think fit, that takes us back to the past when people had no voices.
With self-awareness all else follows. People begin to make new demands on their leaders, their fellows, on themselves. They ask for more in everything. They have a higher idea of human possibilities. They are not content with what they did before or what their fathers did before. They want to move. That is marvelous. That is as it should be.
I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people.
It is important that self-criticism does not stop. The mind has to work, the mind has to be active, there has to be an exercise of the mind. I think it’s almost a definition of a living country that it looks at itself, analyses itself all times. Only countries that have ceased to live can say it’s all wonderful.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
When Deng Xiaoping died a few months ago, the Chinese leadership barely paused for a moment before getting on with the business of governing the country. Contrast that with the chaotic contortion on India’s political stage during the past month, and it is easy to conclude that democracy and democratic freedoms are serious obstacles to economic progress.
When the Chinese leadership wants a power plant to be set up, it just goes ahead. No fears of protracted litigation, of environmental protests, or of lobbying by interested parties. It — or the economy — is not held to ransom by striking truckers or air traffic controllers. Certainly there is much that is alluring about an enlightened dictatorship.
But there the trouble begins. First, there is no guarantee that a dictatorship will be an enlightened one. Myanmar has been ruled by a dictator for decades, and no one would claim that it is better off than even Bangladesh which has itself suffered long stretches of dictatorship. Nor can Mobuto Sese Seko, much in the news these days, be described as enlightened by any reckoning. The people of Israel, almost the only democracy in a region where dictatorships (unenlightened ones) are the norm, are much better off than their neighbours.
Second, dictatorships can easily reverse policies. China was socialist as long as Mao Zedong was around. When Deng xiaoping took over in what was essentially a palace coup, he took the country in the opposite direction. There is little to ensure that the process will not be repeated. In India such drastic reversals are unlikely.
Six years ago few Indian politicians agreed that industries should be delicensed, that imports should be freed or that investment decisions should be based on economic considerations. Now few think otherwise. Almost all politicians are convinced of the merits of liberalisation, though they may occasionally lose sight of the big picture in pandering to their constituencies. India has moved slower than China on liberalisation, but whatever moves it has made are more permanent.
Democracies are also less likely to get embroiled in destructive wars. Had Saddam Hussein been under the obligation of facing free elections every five years, he would have thought ten times before entangling his people in a long confrontation with the West. Germany, Italy and Japan were all dictatorships when they launched the Second World War. The price was paid by their economies. Democracies make many small mistakes. But dictatorships are more susceptible to making huge ones and risking everything on one decision - like going to war. Democracies are the political equivalent of free markets. Companies know they can’t fool the consumer too often; he will simply switch to the competition. The same goes for political parties. When they fail to live up to their promises in government, the political consumer opts for the competition.
Democratic freedoms too are important for the economy, especially now that information is supreme. Few doubt that the Internet will play an important part in the global economy in the decades to come. But China, by preventing free access to it, is already probably destroying its capabilities in this area. As service industries grow in importance, China may well be at a disadvantage though that may not be apparent today when its manufacturing juggernaut is rolling ahead.
India has stifled its entrepreneurs through its licensing policies. That was an example of how the absence of economic freedom can harm a country. But right-wing dictatorships like South Korea erred in the opposite direction. They forced their businesses to invest in industries which they (the dictators) felt had a golden future. Now many of those firms are trying to retreat from those investments. Statism is bad, no matter what the direction in which it applies pressure. At this moment, China and other dictatorships may be making foolish investment decisions. But as industries are subsidized and contrary voices not heard, the errors won’t be realised until the investments assume gargantuan proportions.
India’s hesitant ways may seem inferior to China’s confident moves. But at least we know what the costs are. That is not the case with China. It was only years after the Great Leap Forward and other such experiments that the cost in human lives (millions of them) became evident to the world. What the cost of China’s present experiment is we may not know for several years more. A 9 per cent rate of growth repeated year after year may seem compelling. But a 7 per cent rate of growth that will not falter is more desirable. India seems to be on such a growth curve, whatever the shenanigans of our politicians.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Of each of the great leaders, it is said by his followers, long after he has gone, he made us do it. If leadership is the art of persuading your people to follow your bidding, without their realising your involvement, the archetype of its practice is N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and managing director of the Rs. 143.81 crore Infosys Technologies (Infosys). For, the 52 year old CEO of the globalised software corporation - which he founded with seven friends, and a combined capital of Rs. 10,000, in 1981 and which how occupies the front ranks of the country’s most admired corporations - leads with the subtlest of weapons : personal example.
Infosys ranks only 578th among the country’s listed companies, and sixth in the software sector, in terms of its turnover. But it is setting new standards for India Inc. through its practices of inter alia awarding stock options to its employees, putting the value of its intellectual assets and its brands on its balance-sheet, and conforming to the disclosure standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US. Behind all this is the stubborn personal subscription of its CEO to the underlying causes of wealth-creation, people-power and transparency. “What were choices earlier are compulsions now,” asserts Murthy.
In fact, the mirror images of Murthy, The Man, can be found all over Infosys, His Company. His egalitarianism - which finds expression in such habits as using the same table and chair as anyone else in the organisation - is practiced firmly when it comes to charting a course for the company’s future: everyone has a voice. “We have no hierarchy just for the sake of control.”
Brimming with the conviction that customer satisfaction is the key to success, Murthy has built a fleet-footed human resource management system that treats employees as customers, using the resources of the organisation to meet their professional and personal needs. His instruments are not just top-of-the-market salaries, but also operational empowerment as well as every facility that an employee needs to focus on the job.
Just what methods does Murthy use to ensure that his DNA is replicated in his company? Not for him are the classical leadership genres - transactional or transformational, situational or visionary. His chosen style, instead, is to lead by example, ensuring that the CEO’s actions set the template for all Infoscions.
Murthy believes that the betterment of man can be brought about through the “creation of wealth, legally and ethically”. The personal example that he has set enabled his company to mirror those beliefs: tying his own rewards, and measuring his value to the company, to his ability to create wealth, and erecting systems for the company’s wealth to be shared by its people. Sums up Nandan Nilekani, 41, deputy managing director, Infosys: “this is the future model of the corporation. Run an excellent company, and let the market increase its value to create wealth.”
Although Murthy is one of the prime beneficiaries of the philosophy - his 10 percent stake in Infosys is worth Rs.130 crore today - in his book, the leader leads not by grabbing the booty but by teaching others to take what they deserve. That’s why, on the Infosys’ balance-sheet, the value of Murthy’s intellectual capital is nowhere near the top, on the rationale, that the CEO, at 52, is worth far less to his company than, say, a bright young programmer of 26. To spread the company’s wealth, Murthy has instituted stock options - the first to do so in the country - for employees, creating 300 millionaires already. By 2000, he wants the number to climb to 1000.
To act as a beacon for his version of the learning organisation, Murthy not only spends an hour a day trawling the Internet to learn about new technological developments in his field, he also makes as many luncheon appointments as he can with technical people and academicians - dons from the Indian Institutes of Technology for instance - systematically plumbing their depths for an understanding of new developments in infotech. Murthy’s objective is not just to stay abreast of the state of the art, but also to find a way to use that knowledge for the company.
Following Murthy’s example, Infosys has set up a technology advancement unit, whose mandate is to track, evaluate, and assimilate new techniques and methodologies. In fact, Murthy views learning not just as amassing data, but as a process that enables him to use the lessons from failure to achieve success. This self-corrective loop is what he demonstrates through his leadership during a crisis.
In 1995, for example, Infosys lost a Rs.15 crore account - then 20 per cent of its revenues - when the $69 billion GE yanked its business from it. Instead of recriminations, Murthy activated Infosys’ machinery to understand why the business was taken away, and to leverage the learning for getting new clients instead. Feeling determined instead of guilty, His employees went on to sign up high profile customers like the $20 billion Xerox, the $7 billion Levi Strauss, and the $14 billion Nynex.
“You must have a multi-dimensional view of paradigms,” says the multi-tasking leader. The objective is obvious: ensure that Infosys’ perspective on its business and the world comes from as many vantage points as possible so that corporate strategy can be synthesised not from a narrow vision, but from a wide angle lens. Infact Murthy still regrets that, in its initial years, Infosys didn’t distil a multi-pronged understanding of the environment into its strategies, which forced it onto an incremental path that led revenues to snake up from Rs. 0.02 crore to just Rs.5 crore in the first 10 years.
It was after looking around itself instead of focusing on its initial business of banking software, that Infosys managed to accelerate. Today the company operates with stretch targets, setting distance goals and working backwards to get to them. The crucial pillar on which Murthy bases his ethical leadership is openness. Transparency, he reckons, is the clearest signal that one has nothing to hide. The personal manifestations of that are inter alia the practice of always giving complete information whenever any employee, customer, or investor asks for it: the loudly proclaimed insistence that every Infoscion pay taxes and file returns; and a perpetually open office into which anyone can walk.
But even as he tries to lead Infosys into cloning is own approach to enterprise, is Murthy choosing the best future for it? If Infosys grows with the same lack of ambition, the same softness of style, and the same absence of aggression, is it not cutting off avenues of growth that others may seize? As Infosys approaches the 21st Century, it is obvious that Murthy’s leadership will have to set ever-improving role models for his ever-learning company. After all, men grow old; companies shouldn’t.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
CAT/1997(RC)
Question. 296
One of the reasons contributing to India’s poor performance on the education front is that ....
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Last fortnight, news of a significant development was tucked away in the inside pages of newspapers. The government finally tabled a bill in Parliament seeking to make education a fundamental right. A fortnight earlier, a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a report about a three-month interruption in the Delhi government’s “Education for All” programme. The report made for distressing reading. It said that literacy centres across the city were closed down, volunteers beaten up and enrollment registers burnt. All because the state government had, earlier this year, made participation in the programme mandatory for teachers in government schools. The routine denials were issued and there probably was a wee bit of exaggeration in the report. But it still is a pointer to the enormity of the task at hand.
That economic development will be inherently unstable unless it is built on a solid base of education, specially primary education, has been said so often that it’s in a danger of becoming a platitude. Nor does India’s abysmal record in the field need much reiteration. Nearly 30 million children in the six-ten age group do not go to school - reason enough to make primary education not only compulsory but a fundamental right. But is that the solution? More importantly, will it work? Or will it remain a mere token, like the laws providing for compulsory primary education? It is not widely known that 14 states and four Union territories have this law on their statute books. Believe it or not, the list actually includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan, where literacy and education levels are miles below the national average. A number of states have not even notified the compulsory education law.
This isn’t to belittle the decision to make education a fundamental right. As a statement of political will, a commitment by the decision-makers, its importance cannot be undervalued. Once this commitment is clear, a lot of other things like resource allocation will naturally fall into place. But the task of universalising elementary education (UEE) is complicated by various socio-economic and cultural factors which vary from region to region and within regions.
If India’s record continues to appall, it is because these intricacies have not been adequately understood by the planners and administrators. The trouble has been that education policy has been designed by grizzled mandarins ensconced in Delhi and is totally out of touch with the ground reality. The key, then, is to decentralise education planning and implementation. What’s also needed is greater community involvement in the whole process. Only then can school timings be adjusted for convenience, schoolchildren given a curriculum they can relate to and teachers made accountable.
For proof, one has only to look at the success of the district primary education programme, which was launched in 1994. It has met with a fair degree of success in the 122 districts it covers. Here the village community is involved in all aspects of education -- - allocating finances to supervising teachers to fixing school timings and developing curriculum and text books --- through district planning teams. Teachers are also involved in the planning and implementation process and are given small grants to develop teaching and learning materials, vastly improving motivational levels. The consequent improvement in the quality of education generates increased demand for education.
But for this demand to be generated, quality will first have to be improved. In MP, the village panchayats are responsible for not only constructing and maintaining primary schools but also managing scholarships, besides organising non-formal education. How well this works in practice remains to be seen (though the department of education claims the schemes are working very well) but the decision to empower panchayats with such powers is itself a significant development. Unfortunately, the Panchayat Raj Act has not been notified in many states. And delegating powers to the panchayats is not looked upon too kindly by vested interests. More specifically, by politicians, since decentralisation of educational administration takes away from them the power of transfer which they use to grant favours and build up a support base. But if the political leadership can push through the bill to make education a fundamental right, it should also be able to persuade the states to implement the laws on panchayat raj. For, UEE cannot be achieved without decentralisation. Of course, this will have to be accompanied by proper supervision and adequate training of those involved in the administration of education. But the devolution of powers to the local bodies has to come first.
Comprehension
Governments looking for easy popularity have frequently been tempted into announcing give-aways of all sorts; free electricity, virtually free water, subsidised food, cloth at half price, and so on. The subsidy culture has gone to extremes : cooking gas (used mostly by the top 10% of income-earners) has been sold at barely half its cost. The wealthiest people in the country have had access for years to subsidised sugar. The riches farmers in the country get subsidised fertiliser. University education, typically accessed by the wealthier sections, is charged at a fraction of cost. Postal services are subsidised, and so are railway passengers. Bus fares cannot be raised to economical levels because there will be violent protests, so bus travel subsidised too. In the past, price control on a variety of items, from steel to cement, meant that industrial consumers of these items got them at less than cost, while the losses of the public sector companies that produced them were borne by the taxpayer! One study, done a few years ago, came to the conclusion that subsidies in the Indian economy total as much as 14.5% of gross domestic product. At today’s level, that would work out to about Rs. 150,000 crore.
And who pays the bill? The theory — and the political fiction on the basis of which it is sold to unsuspecting voters — is that subsidies go to the poor, and are paid for by the rich. The fact is that most subsidies go to the “rich” (defined in the Indian context as those who are above the poverty line), and much of the tab goes indirectly to the poor. Because the hefty subsidy bill results in fiscal deficits, which in turn push up rates of inflation -- which, as everyone knows, hits the poor the hardest of all. Indeed, that is why taxation call inflation the most regressive form of taxation.
The entire subsidy system is built on the thesis that people cannot help themselves, therefore governments must do so. That people cannot afford to pay for a variety of goods and services, and therefore the government must step in. This thesis has been applied not just in the poor countries but in the rich ones as well; hence the birth of the welfare state in the West, and an almost Utopian social security system : free medical care, food aid, old age security, et al. But with the passage of time, most of the wealthy nations have discovered that their economies cannot sustain this social safety net, that it in fact reduces the desire among people to pay their own way, and takes away some of the incentive to work. In short, the bill was unaffordable, and their societies were simply not willing to pay. To the regret of many, but because the laws of economics are harsh, most Western societies have been busy pruning the welfare bill .
In India, the lessons of this experience — over several decades, and in many countries — do not seem to have been learnt. Or, they are simply ignored in the pursuit of immediate votes. People who are promised cheap food or clothing do not in most cases look beyond the gift horses — to the question of who picks up to the tab. The uproar over higher petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices ignored this basic question : if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its cost, who should pay? Diesel in the country is subsidised, and if the trucked or owner of a diesel generator does not want to pay for its full cost, who does he or she think should pay the balance of the cost? It is a simple question, nevertheless it remains unasked.
The Deve Gowda government has shown courage in biting the bullet when it comes to the price of petroleum products. But it has been bitten by a much bigger subsidy bug. It wants to offer food at half its cost to everyone below the poverty line, supposedly estimated at some 380 million people. What will this cost? And, of course, who will pick up the tab? The Andhra Pradesh government has been bankrupted by selling rice at Rs 2 per kg. Should the central government to bankrupted too before facing up to the question of what is affordable and what is not? Already, India is perennially short of power because the subsidy on electricity has bankrupted most electricity boards, and made private investment wary unless it gets all manner of state guarantees. Delhi subsidised bus fares have bankrupted the Delhi Transport Corp., whose buses have slowly disappeared from the capital’s streets. It is easy to be soft and sentimental, by looking at programmes that will be popular. After all, who doesn’t like a free lunch? But the evidence is surely mounting that the lunch isn’t free at all. Somebody is paying the bill. And if you want to know who, take a look at the country’s poor economic performance over the years.
Comprehension
Governments looking for easy popularity have frequently been tempted into announcing give-aways of all sorts; free electricity, virtually free water, subsidised food, cloth at half price, and so on. The subsidy culture has gone to extremes : cooking gas (used mostly by the top 10% of income-earners) has been sold at barely half its cost. The wealthiest people in the country have had access for years to subsidised sugar. The riches farmers in the country get subsidised fertiliser. University education, typically accessed by the wealthier sections, is charged at a fraction of cost. Postal services are subsidised, and so are railway passengers. Bus fares cannot be raised to economical levels because there will be violent protests, so bus travel subsidised too. In the past, price control on a variety of items, from steel to cement, meant that industrial consumers of these items got them at less than cost, while the losses of the public sector companies that produced them were borne by the taxpayer! One study, done a few years ago, came to the conclusion that subsidies in the Indian economy total as much as 14.5% of gross domestic product. At today’s level, that would work out to about Rs. 150,000 crore.
And who pays the bill? The theory — and the political fiction on the basis of which it is sold to unsuspecting voters — is that subsidies go to the poor, and are paid for by the rich. The fact is that most subsidies go to the “rich” (defined in the Indian context as those who are above the poverty line), and much of the tab goes indirectly to the poor. Because the hefty subsidy bill results in fiscal deficits, which in turn push up rates of inflation -- which, as everyone knows, hits the poor the hardest of all. Indeed, that is why taxation call inflation the most regressive form of taxation.
The entire subsidy system is built on the thesis that people cannot help themselves, therefore governments must do so. That people cannot afford to pay for a variety of goods and services, and therefore the government must step in. This thesis has been applied not just in the poor countries but in the rich ones as well; hence the birth of the welfare state in the West, and an almost Utopian social security system : free medical care, food aid, old age security, et al. But with the passage of time, most of the wealthy nations have discovered that their economies cannot sustain this social safety net, that it in fact reduces the desire among people to pay their own way, and takes away some of the incentive to work. In short, the bill was unaffordable, and their societies were simply not willing to pay. To the regret of many, but because the laws of economics are harsh, most Western societies have been busy pruning the welfare bill .
In India, the lessons of this experience — over several decades, and in many countries — do not seem to have been learnt. Or, they are simply ignored in the pursuit of immediate votes. People who are promised cheap food or clothing do not in most cases look beyond the gift horses — to the question of who picks up to the tab. The uproar over higher petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices ignored this basic question : if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its cost, who should pay? Diesel in the country is subsidised, and if the trucked or owner of a diesel generator does not want to pay for its full cost, who does he or she think should pay the balance of the cost? It is a simple question, nevertheless it remains unasked.
The Deve Gowda government has shown courage in biting the bullet when it comes to the price of petroleum products. But it has been bitten by a much bigger subsidy bug. It wants to offer food at half its cost to everyone below the poverty line, supposedly estimated at some 380 million people. What will this cost? And, of course, who will pick up the tab? The Andhra Pradesh government has been bankrupted by selling rice at Rs 2 per kg. Should the central government to bankrupted too before facing up to the question of what is affordable and what is not? Already, India is perennially short of power because the subsidy on electricity has bankrupted most electricity boards, and made private investment wary unless it gets all manner of state guarantees. Delhi subsidised bus fares have bankrupted the Delhi Transport Corp., whose buses have slowly disappeared from the capital’s streets. It is easy to be soft and sentimental, by looking at programmes that will be popular. After all, who doesn’t like a free lunch? But the evidence is surely mounting that the lunch isn’t free at all. Somebody is paying the bill. And if you want to know who, take a look at the country’s poor economic performance over the years.
Comprehension
Governments looking for easy popularity have frequently been tempted into announcing give-aways of all sorts; free electricity, virtually free water, subsidised food, cloth at half price, and so on. The subsidy culture has gone to extremes : cooking gas (used mostly by the top 10% of income-earners) has been sold at barely half its cost. The wealthiest people in the country have had access for years to subsidised sugar. The riches farmers in the country get subsidised fertiliser. University education, typically accessed by the wealthier sections, is charged at a fraction of cost. Postal services are subsidised, and so are railway passengers. Bus fares cannot be raised to economical levels because there will be violent protests, so bus travel subsidised too. In the past, price control on a variety of items, from steel to cement, meant that industrial consumers of these items got them at less than cost, while the losses of the public sector companies that produced them were borne by the taxpayer! One study, done a few years ago, came to the conclusion that subsidies in the Indian economy total as much as 14.5% of gross domestic product. At today’s level, that would work out to about Rs. 150,000 crore.
And who pays the bill? The theory — and the political fiction on the basis of which it is sold to unsuspecting voters — is that subsidies go to the poor, and are paid for by the rich. The fact is that most subsidies go to the “rich” (defined in the Indian context as those who are above the poverty line), and much of the tab goes indirectly to the poor. Because the hefty subsidy bill results in fiscal deficits, which in turn push up rates of inflation -- which, as everyone knows, hits the poor the hardest of all. Indeed, that is why taxation call inflation the most regressive form of taxation.
The entire subsidy system is built on the thesis that people cannot help themselves, therefore governments must do so. That people cannot afford to pay for a variety of goods and services, and therefore the government must step in. This thesis has been applied not just in the poor countries but in the rich ones as well; hence the birth of the welfare state in the West, and an almost Utopian social security system : free medical care, food aid, old age security, et al. But with the passage of time, most of the wealthy nations have discovered that their economies cannot sustain this social safety net, that it in fact reduces the desire among people to pay their own way, and takes away some of the incentive to work. In short, the bill was unaffordable, and their societies were simply not willing to pay. To the regret of many, but because the laws of economics are harsh, most Western societies have been busy pruning the welfare bill .
In India, the lessons of this experience — over several decades, and in many countries — do not seem to have been learnt. Or, they are simply ignored in the pursuit of immediate votes. People who are promised cheap food or clothing do not in most cases look beyond the gift horses — to the question of who picks up to the tab. The uproar over higher petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices ignored this basic question : if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its cost, who should pay? Diesel in the country is subsidised, and if the trucked or owner of a diesel generator does not want to pay for its full cost, who does he or she think should pay the balance of the cost? It is a simple question, nevertheless it remains unasked.
The Deve Gowda government has shown courage in biting the bullet when it comes to the price of petroleum products. But it has been bitten by a much bigger subsidy bug. It wants to offer food at half its cost to everyone below the poverty line, supposedly estimated at some 380 million people. What will this cost? And, of course, who will pick up the tab? The Andhra Pradesh government has been bankrupted by selling rice at Rs 2 per kg. Should the central government to bankrupted too before facing up to the question of what is affordable and what is not? Already, India is perennially short of power because the subsidy on electricity has bankrupted most electricity boards, and made private investment wary unless it gets all manner of state guarantees. Delhi subsidised bus fares have bankrupted the Delhi Transport Corp., whose buses have slowly disappeared from the capital’s streets. It is easy to be soft and sentimental, by looking at programmes that will be popular. After all, who doesn’t like a free lunch? But the evidence is surely mounting that the lunch isn’t free at all. Somebody is paying the bill. And if you want to know who, take a look at the country’s poor economic performance over the years.
Comprehension
Governments looking for easy popularity have frequently been tempted into announcing give-aways of all sorts; free electricity, virtually free water, subsidised food, cloth at half price, and so on. The subsidy culture has gone to extremes : cooking gas (used mostly by the top 10% of income-earners) has been sold at barely half its cost. The wealthiest people in the country have had access for years to subsidised sugar. The riches farmers in the country get subsidised fertiliser. University education, typically accessed by the wealthier sections, is charged at a fraction of cost. Postal services are subsidised, and so are railway passengers. Bus fares cannot be raised to economical levels because there will be violent protests, so bus travel subsidised too. In the past, price control on a variety of items, from steel to cement, meant that industrial consumers of these items got them at less than cost, while the losses of the public sector companies that produced them were borne by the taxpayer! One study, done a few years ago, came to the conclusion that subsidies in the Indian economy total as much as 14.5% of gross domestic product. At today’s level, that would work out to about Rs. 150,000 crore.
And who pays the bill? The theory — and the political fiction on the basis of which it is sold to unsuspecting voters — is that subsidies go to the poor, and are paid for by the rich. The fact is that most subsidies go to the “rich” (defined in the Indian context as those who are above the poverty line), and much of the tab goes indirectly to the poor. Because the hefty subsidy bill results in fiscal deficits, which in turn push up rates of inflation -- which, as everyone knows, hits the poor the hardest of all. Indeed, that is why taxation call inflation the most regressive form of taxation.
The entire subsidy system is built on the thesis that people cannot help themselves, therefore governments must do so. That people cannot afford to pay for a variety of goods and services, and therefore the government must step in. This thesis has been applied not just in the poor countries but in the rich ones as well; hence the birth of the welfare state in the West, and an almost Utopian social security system : free medical care, food aid, old age security, et al. But with the passage of time, most of the wealthy nations have discovered that their economies cannot sustain this social safety net, that it in fact reduces the desire among people to pay their own way, and takes away some of the incentive to work. In short, the bill was unaffordable, and their societies were simply not willing to pay. To the regret of many, but because the laws of economics are harsh, most Western societies have been busy pruning the welfare bill .
In India, the lessons of this experience — over several decades, and in many countries — do not seem to have been learnt. Or, they are simply ignored in the pursuit of immediate votes. People who are promised cheap food or clothing do not in most cases look beyond the gift horses — to the question of who picks up to the tab. The uproar over higher petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices ignored this basic question : if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its cost, who should pay? Diesel in the country is subsidised, and if the trucked or owner of a diesel generator does not want to pay for its full cost, who does he or she think should pay the balance of the cost? It is a simple question, nevertheless it remains unasked.
The Deve Gowda government has shown courage in biting the bullet when it comes to the price of petroleum products. But it has been bitten by a much bigger subsidy bug. It wants to offer food at half its cost to everyone below the poverty line, supposedly estimated at some 380 million people. What will this cost? And, of course, who will pick up the tab? The Andhra Pradesh government has been bankrupted by selling rice at Rs 2 per kg. Should the central government to bankrupted too before facing up to the question of what is affordable and what is not? Already, India is perennially short of power because the subsidy on electricity has bankrupted most electricity boards, and made private investment wary unless it gets all manner of state guarantees. Delhi subsidised bus fares have bankrupted the Delhi Transport Corp., whose buses have slowly disappeared from the capital’s streets. It is easy to be soft and sentimental, by looking at programmes that will be popular. After all, who doesn’t like a free lunch? But the evidence is surely mounting that the lunch isn’t free at all. Somebody is paying the bill. And if you want to know who, take a look at the country’s poor economic performance over the years.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The conventional wisdom has become that this is an issue-less election. There is no central personality of whom voters have to express approval or dislike; no central matter of concern that makes this a one-issue referendum like so many elections in the past; no central party around which everything else revolves -- the congress has been displaced from its customary pole position, and no one else has been able to take its place. Indeed, given that all-seeing video cameras of the Election Commission, and the detailed pictures they are putting together on campaign expenditure, there isn’t even much electioneering: no slogans on the walls, no loudspeakers blaring forth at all hours of the day and night, no cavalcades of cars heralding the arrival of a candidate at the local bazaar. Forget it being an issue-less election is this an election at all ?
Perhaps the “fun” of an election lies in its featuring someone whom you can love or hate. But Narasimha Rao has managed to reduce even a general election involving nearly 600 million voters, to the boring non-event that is the trademark of his election rallies, and indeed of everything else that he does. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi clan has disappeared from the political map, and the majority of voters will not even be able to name P. V. Narasimha Rao as India’s prime minister. There could be as many as a dozen prime ministerial candidates ranging from Jyoti Basu to Ramakrishna Hegde, and from Chandra Shekar to (believe it or not) K. R. Narayanan. The sole personality who stands out, therefore, is none of the players, but the umpire : T. N. Seshan.
As for the parties, they are like the blind men of Hindustan, trying in vain to gauge the contours of the animal they have to confront. But it doesn’t look as if it will be the mandir masjid, nor will it be Hindutva or economic nationalism. The Congress would like it to be stability, but what does that mean for the majority? Economic reform is a non-issue for most people and with inflation down to barely 4%, prices are not top of the mind either. In a strange twist, after the hawala scandal, corruption has been pushed off the map too.
But ponder for a moment. Isn’t this state of affairs astonishing, given the context? Consider that so many ministers have had to resign over the hawala issue; that a governor who was a cabinet minister has also had to quit, in the wake of judicial displeasure; that prime minister himself is under investigation for his involvement in not one scandal but two; that the main prime ministerial candidate from the opposition has had to bow out because he too has been charged in the hawala case; and that the head of the “third force” has his own little (or not so little) fodder scandal to face. Why then is corruption not an issue-not as a matter of competitive politics, but as an issue on which the contenders for power feel that they have to offer the prospect of genuine change ? If all this does not make the parties (almost all of whom have broken the law, in not submitting their audited accounts every year to the income tax authorities) realise that the country both needs -- and is ready for -- change in the Supreme Court; the assertiveness of the Election Commission, giving new life to a model code of conduct that has been ignored for a quarter century; the independence that has been thrust upon the Central Bureau of Investigation; and the fresh zeal on the part of tax collector out to nab corporate no-gooders. Think also that at no other point since the Emergency of 1975-77 have so many people in power been hounded by the system for their misdeeds.
This is just a case of a few individuals outside the political system doing their job, or is the country heading for a new era ? The seventies saw the collapse of the national consensus that marked the Nehruvian era, and ideology took over in the Indira Gandhi years. That too was buried by Rajiv Gandhi and his technocratic friends. And now, we have these issue-less elections. One possibility is that the country is heading for a period of constitutionalism, as the other arms of the state reclaim some of the powers they lost, or yielded to the political establishment. Economic reform freed on part of Indian society from the clutches of the political class. Now this could spread to other parts of the system. Against such a dramatic backdrop, it should be obvious that people (voters) are looking for accountability, for ways in which to make a corrupted system work again. And the astonishing thing is that no party has sought to ride this particular wave ; instead, all are on the defensive, desperately evading the real issues. No wonder this is an “issue -less” election.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The conventional wisdom has become that this is an issue-less election. There is no central personality of whom voters have to express approval or dislike; no central matter of concern that makes this a one-issue referendum like so many elections in the past; no central party around which everything else revolves -- the congress has been displaced from its customary pole position, and no one else has been able to take its place. Indeed, given that all-seeing video cameras of the Election Commission, and the detailed pictures they are putting together on campaign expenditure, there isn’t even much electioneering: no slogans on the walls, no loudspeakers blaring forth at all hours of the day and night, no cavalcades of cars heralding the arrival of a candidate at the local bazaar. Forget it being an issue-less election is this an election at all ?
Perhaps the “fun” of an election lies in its featuring someone whom you can love or hate. But Narasimha Rao has managed to reduce even a general election involving nearly 600 million voters, to the boring non-event that is the trademark of his election rallies, and indeed of everything else that he does. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi clan has disappeared from the political map, and the majority of voters will not even be able to name P. V. Narasimha Rao as India’s prime minister. There could be as many as a dozen prime ministerial candidates ranging from Jyoti Basu to Ramakrishna Hegde, and from Chandra Shekar to (believe it or not) K. R. Narayanan. The sole personality who stands out, therefore, is none of the players, but the umpire : T. N. Seshan.
As for the parties, they are like the blind men of Hindustan, trying in vain to gauge the contours of the animal they have to confront. But it doesn’t look as if it will be the mandir masjid, nor will it be Hindutva or economic nationalism. The Congress would like it to be stability, but what does that mean for the majority? Economic reform is a non-issue for most people and with inflation down to barely 4%, prices are not top of the mind either. In a strange twist, after the hawala scandal, corruption has been pushed off the map too.
But ponder for a moment. Isn’t this state of affairs astonishing, given the context? Consider that so many ministers have had to resign over the hawala issue; that a governor who was a cabinet minister has also had to quit, in the wake of judicial displeasure; that prime minister himself is under investigation for his involvement in not one scandal but two; that the main prime ministerial candidate from the opposition has had to bow out because he too has been charged in the hawala case; and that the head of the “third force” has his own little (or not so little) fodder scandal to face. Why then is corruption not an issue-not as a matter of competitive politics, but as an issue on which the contenders for power feel that they have to offer the prospect of genuine change ? If all this does not make the parties (almost all of whom have broken the law, in not submitting their audited accounts every year to the income tax authorities) realise that the country both needs -- and is ready for -- change in the Supreme Court; the assertiveness of the Election Commission, giving new life to a model code of conduct that has been ignored for a quarter century; the independence that has been thrust upon the Central Bureau of Investigation; and the fresh zeal on the part of tax collector out to nab corporate no-gooders. Think also that at no other point since the Emergency of 1975-77 have so many people in power been hounded by the system for their misdeeds.
This is just a case of a few individuals outside the political system doing their job, or is the country heading for a new era ? The seventies saw the collapse of the national consensus that marked the Nehruvian era, and ideology took over in the Indira Gandhi years. That too was buried by Rajiv Gandhi and his technocratic friends. And now, we have these issue-less elections. One possibility is that the country is heading for a period of constitutionalism, as the other arms of the state reclaim some of the powers they lost, or yielded to the political establishment. Economic reform freed on part of Indian society from the clutches of the political class. Now this could spread to other parts of the system. Against such a dramatic backdrop, it should be obvious that people (voters) are looking for accountability, for ways in which to make a corrupted system work again. And the astonishing thing is that no party has sought to ride this particular wave ; instead, all are on the defensive, desperately evading the real issues. No wonder this is an “issue -less” election.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The conventional wisdom has become that this is an issue-less election. There is no central personality of whom voters have to express approval or dislike; no central matter of concern that makes this a one-issue referendum like so many elections in the past; no central party around which everything else revolves -- the congress has been displaced from its customary pole position, and no one else has been able to take its place. Indeed, given that all-seeing video cameras of the Election Commission, and the detailed pictures they are putting together on campaign expenditure, there isn’t even much electioneering: no slogans on the walls, no loudspeakers blaring forth at all hours of the day and night, no cavalcades of cars heralding the arrival of a candidate at the local bazaar. Forget it being an issue-less election is this an election at all ?
Perhaps the “fun” of an election lies in its featuring someone whom you can love or hate. But Narasimha Rao has managed to reduce even a general election involving nearly 600 million voters, to the boring non-event that is the trademark of his election rallies, and indeed of everything else that he does. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi clan has disappeared from the political map, and the majority of voters will not even be able to name P. V. Narasimha Rao as India’s prime minister. There could be as many as a dozen prime ministerial candidates ranging from Jyoti Basu to Ramakrishna Hegde, and from Chandra Shekar to (believe it or not) K. R. Narayanan. The sole personality who stands out, therefore, is none of the players, but the umpire : T. N. Seshan.
As for the parties, they are like the blind men of Hindustan, trying in vain to gauge the contours of the animal they have to confront. But it doesn’t look as if it will be the mandir masjid, nor will it be Hindutva or economic nationalism. The Congress would like it to be stability, but what does that mean for the majority? Economic reform is a non-issue for most people and with inflation down to barely 4%, prices are not top of the mind either. In a strange twist, after the hawala scandal, corruption has been pushed off the map too.
But ponder for a moment. Isn’t this state of affairs astonishing, given the context? Consider that so many ministers have had to resign over the hawala issue; that a governor who was a cabinet minister has also had to quit, in the wake of judicial displeasure; that prime minister himself is under investigation for his involvement in not one scandal but two; that the main prime ministerial candidate from the opposition has had to bow out because he too has been charged in the hawala case; and that the head of the “third force” has his own little (or not so little) fodder scandal to face. Why then is corruption not an issue-not as a matter of competitive politics, but as an issue on which the contenders for power feel that they have to offer the prospect of genuine change ? If all this does not make the parties (almost all of whom have broken the law, in not submitting their audited accounts every year to the income tax authorities) realise that the country both needs -- and is ready for -- change in the Supreme Court; the assertiveness of the Election Commission, giving new life to a model code of conduct that has been ignored for a quarter century; the independence that has been thrust upon the Central Bureau of Investigation; and the fresh zeal on the part of tax collector out to nab corporate no-gooders. Think also that at no other point since the Emergency of 1975-77 have so many people in power been hounded by the system for their misdeeds.
This is just a case of a few individuals outside the political system doing their job, or is the country heading for a new era ? The seventies saw the collapse of the national consensus that marked the Nehruvian era, and ideology took over in the Indira Gandhi years. That too was buried by Rajiv Gandhi and his technocratic friends. And now, we have these issue-less elections. One possibility is that the country is heading for a period of constitutionalism, as the other arms of the state reclaim some of the powers they lost, or yielded to the political establishment. Economic reform freed on part of Indian society from the clutches of the political class. Now this could spread to other parts of the system. Against such a dramatic backdrop, it should be obvious that people (voters) are looking for accountability, for ways in which to make a corrupted system work again. And the astonishing thing is that no party has sought to ride this particular wave ; instead, all are on the defensive, desperately evading the real issues. No wonder this is an “issue -less” election.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The conventional wisdom has become that this is an issue-less election. There is no central personality of whom voters have to express approval or dislike; no central matter of concern that makes this a one-issue referendum like so many elections in the past; no central party around which everything else revolves -- the congress has been displaced from its customary pole position, and no one else has been able to take its place. Indeed, given that all-seeing video cameras of the Election Commission, and the detailed pictures they are putting together on campaign expenditure, there isn’t even much electioneering: no slogans on the walls, no loudspeakers blaring forth at all hours of the day and night, no cavalcades of cars heralding the arrival of a candidate at the local bazaar. Forget it being an issue-less election is this an election at all ?
Perhaps the “fun” of an election lies in its featuring someone whom you can love or hate. But Narasimha Rao has managed to reduce even a general election involving nearly 600 million voters, to the boring non-event that is the trademark of his election rallies, and indeed of everything else that he does. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi clan has disappeared from the political map, and the majority of voters will not even be able to name P. V. Narasimha Rao as India’s prime minister. There could be as many as a dozen prime ministerial candidates ranging from Jyoti Basu to Ramakrishna Hegde, and from Chandra Shekar to (believe it or not) K. R. Narayanan. The sole personality who stands out, therefore, is none of the players, but the umpire : T. N. Seshan.
As for the parties, they are like the blind men of Hindustan, trying in vain to gauge the contours of the animal they have to confront. But it doesn’t look as if it will be the mandir masjid, nor will it be Hindutva or economic nationalism. The Congress would like it to be stability, but what does that mean for the majority? Economic reform is a non-issue for most people and with inflation down to barely 4%, prices are not top of the mind either. In a strange twist, after the hawala scandal, corruption has been pushed off the map too.
But ponder for a moment. Isn’t this state of affairs astonishing, given the context? Consider that so many ministers have had to resign over the hawala issue; that a governor who was a cabinet minister has also had to quit, in the wake of judicial displeasure; that prime minister himself is under investigation for his involvement in not one scandal but two; that the main prime ministerial candidate from the opposition has had to bow out because he too has been charged in the hawala case; and that the head of the “third force” has his own little (or not so little) fodder scandal to face. Why then is corruption not an issue-not as a matter of competitive politics, but as an issue on which the contenders for power feel that they have to offer the prospect of genuine change ? If all this does not make the parties (almost all of whom have broken the law, in not submitting their audited accounts every year to the income tax authorities) realise that the country both needs -- and is ready for -- change in the Supreme Court; the assertiveness of the Election Commission, giving new life to a model code of conduct that has been ignored for a quarter century; the independence that has been thrust upon the Central Bureau of Investigation; and the fresh zeal on the part of tax collector out to nab corporate no-gooders. Think also that at no other point since the Emergency of 1975-77 have so many people in power been hounded by the system for their misdeeds.
This is just a case of a few individuals outside the political system doing their job, or is the country heading for a new era ? The seventies saw the collapse of the national consensus that marked the Nehruvian era, and ideology took over in the Indira Gandhi years. That too was buried by Rajiv Gandhi and his technocratic friends. And now, we have these issue-less elections. One possibility is that the country is heading for a period of constitutionalism, as the other arms of the state reclaim some of the powers they lost, or yielded to the political establishment. Economic reform freed on part of Indian society from the clutches of the political class. Now this could spread to other parts of the system. Against such a dramatic backdrop, it should be obvious that people (voters) are looking for accountability, for ways in which to make a corrupted system work again. And the astonishing thing is that no party has sought to ride this particular wave ; instead, all are on the defensive, desperately evading the real issues. No wonder this is an “issue -less” election.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The conventional wisdom has become that this is an issue-less election. There is no central personality of whom voters have to express approval or dislike; no central matter of concern that makes this a one-issue referendum like so many elections in the past; no central party around which everything else revolves -- the congress has been displaced from its customary pole position, and no one else has been able to take its place. Indeed, given that all-seeing video cameras of the Election Commission, and the detailed pictures they are putting together on campaign expenditure, there isn’t even much electioneering: no slogans on the walls, no loudspeakers blaring forth at all hours of the day and night, no cavalcades of cars heralding the arrival of a candidate at the local bazaar. Forget it being an issue-less election is this an election at all ?
Perhaps the “fun” of an election lies in its featuring someone whom you can love or hate. But Narasimha Rao has managed to reduce even a general election involving nearly 600 million voters, to the boring non-event that is the trademark of his election rallies, and indeed of everything else that he does. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi clan has disappeared from the political map, and the majority of voters will not even be able to name P. V. Narasimha Rao as India’s prime minister. There could be as many as a dozen prime ministerial candidates ranging from Jyoti Basu to Ramakrishna Hegde, and from Chandra Shekar to (believe it or not) K. R. Narayanan. The sole personality who stands out, therefore, is none of the players, but the umpire : T. N. Seshan.
As for the parties, they are like the blind men of Hindustan, trying in vain to gauge the contours of the animal they have to confront. But it doesn’t look as if it will be the mandir masjid, nor will it be Hindutva or economic nationalism. The Congress would like it to be stability, but what does that mean for the majority? Economic reform is a non-issue for most people and with inflation down to barely 4%, prices are not top of the mind either. In a strange twist, after the hawala scandal, corruption has been pushed off the map too.
But ponder for a moment. Isn’t this state of affairs astonishing, given the context? Consider that so many ministers have had to resign over the hawala issue; that a governor who was a cabinet minister has also had to quit, in the wake of judicial displeasure; that prime minister himself is under investigation for his involvement in not one scandal but two; that the main prime ministerial candidate from the opposition has had to bow out because he too has been charged in the hawala case; and that the head of the “third force” has his own little (or not so little) fodder scandal to face. Why then is corruption not an issue-not as a matter of competitive politics, but as an issue on which the contenders for power feel that they have to offer the prospect of genuine change ? If all this does not make the parties (almost all of whom have broken the law, in not submitting their audited accounts every year to the income tax authorities) realise that the country both needs -- and is ready for -- change in the Supreme Court; the assertiveness of the Election Commission, giving new life to a model code of conduct that has been ignored for a quarter century; the independence that has been thrust upon the Central Bureau of Investigation; and the fresh zeal on the part of tax collector out to nab corporate no-gooders. Think also that at no other point since the Emergency of 1975-77 have so many people in power been hounded by the system for their misdeeds.
This is just a case of a few individuals outside the political system doing their job, or is the country heading for a new era ? The seventies saw the collapse of the national consensus that marked the Nehruvian era, and ideology took over in the Indira Gandhi years. That too was buried by Rajiv Gandhi and his technocratic friends. And now, we have these issue-less elections. One possibility is that the country is heading for a period of constitutionalism, as the other arms of the state reclaim some of the powers they lost, or yielded to the political establishment. Economic reform freed on part of Indian society from the clutches of the political class. Now this could spread to other parts of the system. Against such a dramatic backdrop, it should be obvious that people (voters) are looking for accountability, for ways in which to make a corrupted system work again. And the astonishing thing is that no party has sought to ride this particular wave ; instead, all are on the defensive, desperately evading the real issues. No wonder this is an “issue -less” election.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The conventional wisdom has become that this is an issue-less election. There is no central personality of whom voters have to express approval or dislike; no central matter of concern that makes this a one-issue referendum like so many elections in the past; no central party around which everything else revolves -- the congress has been displaced from its customary pole position, and no one else has been able to take its place. Indeed, given that all-seeing video cameras of the Election Commission, and the detailed pictures they are putting together on campaign expenditure, there isn’t even much electioneering: no slogans on the walls, no loudspeakers blaring forth at all hours of the day and night, no cavalcades of cars heralding the arrival of a candidate at the local bazaar. Forget it being an issue-less election is this an election at all ?
Perhaps the “fun” of an election lies in its featuring someone whom you can love or hate. But Narasimha Rao has managed to reduce even a general election involving nearly 600 million voters, to the boring non-event that is the trademark of his election rallies, and indeed of everything else that he does. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi clan has disappeared from the political map, and the majority of voters will not even be able to name P. V. Narasimha Rao as India’s prime minister. There could be as many as a dozen prime ministerial candidates ranging from Jyoti Basu to Ramakrishna Hegde, and from Chandra Shekar to (believe it or not) K. R. Narayanan. The sole personality who stands out, therefore, is none of the players, but the umpire : T. N. Seshan.
As for the parties, they are like the blind men of Hindustan, trying in vain to gauge the contours of the animal they have to confront. But it doesn’t look as if it will be the mandir masjid, nor will it be Hindutva or economic nationalism. The Congress would like it to be stability, but what does that mean for the majority? Economic reform is a non-issue for most people and with inflation down to barely 4%, prices are not top of the mind either. In a strange twist, after the hawala scandal, corruption has been pushed off the map too.
But ponder for a moment. Isn’t this state of affairs astonishing, given the context? Consider that so many ministers have had to resign over the hawala issue; that a governor who was a cabinet minister has also had to quit, in the wake of judicial displeasure; that prime minister himself is under investigation for his involvement in not one scandal but two; that the main prime ministerial candidate from the opposition has had to bow out because he too has been charged in the hawala case; and that the head of the “third force” has his own little (or not so little) fodder scandal to face. Why then is corruption not an issue-not as a matter of competitive politics, but as an issue on which the contenders for power feel that they have to offer the prospect of genuine change ? If all this does not make the parties (almost all of whom have broken the law, in not submitting their audited accounts every year to the income tax authorities) realise that the country both needs -- and is ready for -- change in the Supreme Court; the assertiveness of the Election Commission, giving new life to a model code of conduct that has been ignored for a quarter century; the independence that has been thrust upon the Central Bureau of Investigation; and the fresh zeal on the part of tax collector out to nab corporate no-gooders. Think also that at no other point since the Emergency of 1975-77 have so many people in power been hounded by the system for their misdeeds.
This is just a case of a few individuals outside the political system doing their job, or is the country heading for a new era ? The seventies saw the collapse of the national consensus that marked the Nehruvian era, and ideology took over in the Indira Gandhi years. That too was buried by Rajiv Gandhi and his technocratic friends. And now, we have these issue-less elections. One possibility is that the country is heading for a period of constitutionalism, as the other arms of the state reclaim some of the powers they lost, or yielded to the political establishment. Economic reform freed on part of Indian society from the clutches of the political class. Now this could spread to other parts of the system. Against such a dramatic backdrop, it should be obvious that people (voters) are looking for accountability, for ways in which to make a corrupted system work again. And the astonishing thing is that no party has sought to ride this particular wave ; instead, all are on the defensive, desperately evading the real issues. No wonder this is an “issue -less” election.
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party needs votes, obviously, and constituencies. First however, it needs ideas. In 1994 -95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, then became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged.
Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘94 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal; dismantling the welfare state. Just about everything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check ).
The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools - civil society - were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth. Republicans were riding into Washington to slay it.
With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated - the government shutdown proved a disaster of Republicans - they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, “The era of Big Government is over,” the dominant theme of the Gingrich revolution.
It seems so long ago. Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire form the rear.
The first Republican renegade to cry “ Wrong” and charge was Steve Forbes. With his freelunch, tax -cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down than Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection. He too declared war on the party’s central ideology - in the name not supply-side theory but of class warfare, the democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism.
The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, or course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners - immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers - destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker
Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the big guy, not Big Government. It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens form life’s buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency. But an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough form that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a might government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant-repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that polices the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head.
Republicans have focused too much on the mere tactical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.
But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being ground to dust - by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan’s rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo-conservatism - a mix of nativism. protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s.
As the candidates’ debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan’s grounds, fending off his Smoot -Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee to? Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful ‘94 congressional campaign?
Well, yes but with a terrible loss of energy and focus- and support. Buchanan’s constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man’s issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on Election Day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats do class war very well.
Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party. Heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you’ve lost your wayand your mind .
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party needs votes, obviously, and constituencies. First however, it needs ideas. In 1994 -95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, then became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged.
Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘94 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal; dismantling the welfare state. Just about everything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check ).
The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools - civil society - were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth. Republicans were riding into Washington to slay it.
With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated - the government shutdown proved a disaster of Republicans - they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, “The era of Big Government is over,” the dominant theme of the Gingrich revolution.
It seems so long ago. Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire form the rear.
The first Republican renegade to cry “ Wrong” and charge was Steve Forbes. With his freelunch, tax -cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down than Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection. He too declared war on the party’s central ideology - in the name not supply-side theory but of class warfare, the democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism.
The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, or course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners - immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers - destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker
Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the big guy, not Big Government. It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens form life’s buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency. But an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough form that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a might government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant-repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that polices the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head.
Republicans have focused too much on the mere tactical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.
But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being ground to dust - by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan’s rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo-conservatism - a mix of nativism. protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s.
As the candidates’ debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan’s grounds, fending off his Smoot -Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee to? Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful ‘94 congressional campaign?
Well, yes but with a terrible loss of energy and focus- and support. Buchanan’s constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man’s issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on Election Day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats do class war very well.
Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party. Heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you’ve lost your wayand your mind .
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party needs votes, obviously, and constituencies. First however, it needs ideas. In 1994 -95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, then became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged.
Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘94 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal; dismantling the welfare state. Just about everything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check ).
The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools - civil society - were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth. Republicans were riding into Washington to slay it.
With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated - the government shutdown proved a disaster of Republicans - they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, “The era of Big Government is over,” the dominant theme of the Gingrich revolution.
It seems so long ago. Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire form the rear.
The first Republican renegade to cry “ Wrong” and charge was Steve Forbes. With his freelunch, tax -cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down than Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection. He too declared war on the party’s central ideology - in the name not supply-side theory but of class warfare, the democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism.
The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, or course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners - immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers - destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker
Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the big guy, not Big Government. It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens form life’s buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency. But an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough form that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a might government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant-repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that polices the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head.
Republicans have focused too much on the mere tactical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.
But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being ground to dust - by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan’s rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo-conservatism - a mix of nativism. protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s.
As the candidates’ debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan’s grounds, fending off his Smoot -Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee to? Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful ‘94 congressional campaign?
Well, yes but with a terrible loss of energy and focus- and support. Buchanan’s constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man’s issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on Election Day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats do class war very well.
Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party. Heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you’ve lost your wayand your mind .
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party needs votes, obviously, and constituencies. First however, it needs ideas. In 1994 -95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, then became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged.
Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘94 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal; dismantling the welfare state. Just about everything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check ).
The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools - civil society - were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth. Republicans were riding into Washington to slay it.
With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated - the government shutdown proved a disaster of Republicans - they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, “The era of Big Government is over,” the dominant theme of the Gingrich revolution.
It seems so long ago. Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire form the rear.
The first Republican renegade to cry “ Wrong” and charge was Steve Forbes. With his freelunch, tax -cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down than Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection. He too declared war on the party’s central ideology - in the name not supply-side theory but of class warfare, the democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism.
The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, or course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners - immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers - destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker
Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the big guy, not Big Government. It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens form life’s buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency. But an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough form that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a might government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant-repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that polices the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head.
Republicans have focused too much on the mere tactical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.
But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being ground to dust - by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan’s rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo-conservatism - a mix of nativism. protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s.
As the candidates’ debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan’s grounds, fending off his Smoot -Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee to? Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful ‘94 congressional campaign?
Well, yes but with a terrible loss of energy and focus- and support. Buchanan’s constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man’s issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on Election Day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats do class war very well.
Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party. Heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you’ve lost your wayand your mind .
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party needs votes, obviously, and constituencies. First however, it needs ideas. In 1994 -95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, then became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged.
Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘94 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal; dismantling the welfare state. Just about everything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check ).
The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools - civil society - were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth. Republicans were riding into Washington to slay it.
With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated - the government shutdown proved a disaster of Republicans - they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, “The era of Big Government is over,” the dominant theme of the Gingrich revolution.
It seems so long ago. Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire form the rear.
The first Republican renegade to cry “ Wrong” and charge was Steve Forbes. With his freelunch, tax -cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down than Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection. He too declared war on the party’s central ideology - in the name not supply-side theory but of class warfare, the democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism.
The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, or course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners - immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers - destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker
Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the big guy, not Big Government. It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens form life’s buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency. But an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough form that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a might government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant-repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that polices the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head.
Republicans have focused too much on the mere tactical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.
But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being ground to dust - by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan’s rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo-conservatism - a mix of nativism. protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s.
As the candidates’ debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan’s grounds, fending off his Smoot -Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee to? Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful ‘94 congressional campaign?
Well, yes but with a terrible loss of energy and focus- and support. Buchanan’s constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man’s issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on Election Day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats do class war very well.
Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party. Heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you’ve lost your wayand your mind .
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party needs votes, obviously, and constituencies. First however, it needs ideas. In 1994 -95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, then became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged.
Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘94 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal; dismantling the welfare state. Just about everything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check ).
The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools - civil society - were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth. Republicans were riding into Washington to slay it.
With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated - the government shutdown proved a disaster of Republicans - they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, “The era of Big Government is over,” the dominant theme of the Gingrich revolution.
It seems so long ago. Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire form the rear.
The first Republican renegade to cry “ Wrong” and charge was Steve Forbes. With his freelunch, tax -cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down than Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection. He too declared war on the party’s central ideology - in the name not supply-side theory but of class warfare, the democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism.
The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, or course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners - immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers - destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker
Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the big guy, not Big Government. It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens form life’s buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency. But an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough form that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a might government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant-repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that polices the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head.
Republicans have focused too much on the mere tactical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.
But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being ground to dust - by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan’s rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo-conservatism - a mix of nativism. protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s.
As the candidates’ debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan’s grounds, fending off his Smoot -Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee to? Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful ‘94 congressional campaign?
Well, yes but with a terrible loss of energy and focus- and support. Buchanan’s constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man’s issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on Election Day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats do class war very well.
Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party. Heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you’ve lost your wayand your mind .
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
CAT/1995(RC)
Question. 320
According to the author, the difference between the two kinds of socialists is that
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former, too has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other : the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realized under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings of the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promised to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations released in their own time and at a blow.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour’s lead in the days before the general election - which pointed to a hung parliament - many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was the turnaround of the century.
As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lackluster campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the conservative party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated ; its future as a national party is doubt.
For Kinnock the victory was sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable. Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates- threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two-or-three-term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made Chancellor ; Roy Hattersley became Home Secretary ; Gerald Kaufmann went to the Foreign office ; inveterate Euro- sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade. It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavy weight cabinet than any the Conservatives could have mustered.
But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon, The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound’s parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different ?
The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion - around a sixth of its total reserves - to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the governor of the bank of England led a deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates - by at least 2 percent. It would also help, added the officials, if the Government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Masstricht criteria for single currency. This would mean that both the taxation from Smith’s first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed.
Smith listened to Eddie-George-number two at the bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy - explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain’s reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the Government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the Government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.
Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury / Bank of England move to assert the canons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England’s ham-fisted intervention-almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound. In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the Prime Minister.
In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his Chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments - and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the Bank and Treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.
The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or it other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
If American policy towards Europe in the postwar years had been a conspicuous success, and towards Asia a disappointing balance between success and failure, it could be said that the most conspicuous thing about relations with Latin America was the absence of any policy. Franklin Roosevelt, to be sure, had launched a “Good Neighbour” policy, but being a good neighbour was, it seemed, a negative rather than a positive affair, a matter of keeping hands off, of making the Monroe Doctrine, in form at least, multilateral. All through the postwar years, the states of Latin America -- Mexico and Chile were partial exceptions -- were in the throes of major economic and social crises. Population was growing faster than in any other part of the globe, without a comparable increase in wealth or productivity; the gap between the poor and the rich was widening; and as the rich and powerful turned to the military for the preservation of order and privilege, the poor turned to revolution.
Deeply involved in other quarters of the globe, the United States paid little attention to the fortunes or misfortunes of her neighbours to the south, and when she did intervene, it appeared to be on the side of order and the status quo rather than on the side of reform. So frightened was the United States of “Communism” in Latin America that it preferred military dictatorship to reformers who might drift too far to the “left”, and sustained a Batista in Cuba, a Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, a Peron in Argentina, and a Jimenez in Venezuela.
In his last two years, President Eisenhower had tried to mend his Latin American fences. Though rejecting a Brazilian proposal of a Marshall Plan for Latin America, he did take the initiative in setting up an Inter-American development Bank with a capital of one billion dollars, almost half of it supplied by the United States. Other government investments in Latin America ran to some four billion dollars, while private investment exceeded nine billion. Yet, though to most Americans, all this seemed a form of economic aid, many Latin Americans regarded it as economic imperialism. In September 1960, came a co-operative plan that could not be regarded as other than enlightened: the Act of Bogota, which authorized a grant of half a billion dollars to subsidize not only economic but social and educational progress in Latin America. “We are not saints”, said President Eisenhower when he visited Santiago de Chile, “We know we make mistakes, but our heart is in the right place”.
But was it? President Kennedy was confronted by the same dilemma that had perplexed his predecessors. Clearly it was essential to provide a large-scale aid to the countries south of Rio Grande, but should this aid go to bolster up established regimes and thus help maintain status quo, or should it be used to speed up social reform, even at the risk of revolt? As early as 1958, the then Senator Kennedy has asserted that “the objective of our aid program in Latin America should not be to purchase allies, but to consolidate a free and democratic Western Hemisphere, alleviating those conditions which might foster opportunities for communistic infiltration and uniting our peoples on the basis of constantly increasing living standard”.
This conviction that raising the standards of living was the best method of checking Communism now inspired President Kennedy’s bold proposal for the creation of the Alliance for Progress -- a ten year plan designed to do for Latin America what Marshall Plan had done for Western Europe. It was to be “a peaceful revolution on a hemispheric scale, a vast co-operative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work, land, health and schools.” To achieve this, the United States pleaded an initial grant of one billion dollars, with the promise of additional billions for the future.
CAT/1994(RC)
Question. 337
A key reason why Latin America rejected the Inter-American development Bank was that
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
If American policy towards Europe in the postwar years had been a conspicuous success, and towards Asia a disappointing balance between success and failure, it could be said that the most conspicuous thing about relations with Latin America was the absence of any policy. Franklin Roosevelt, to be sure, had launched a “Good Neighbour” policy, but being a good neighbour was, it seemed, a negative rather than a positive affair, a matter of keeping hands off, of making the Monroe Doctrine, in form at least, multilateral. All through the postwar years, the states of Latin America -- Mexico and Chile were partial exceptions -- were in the throes of major economic and social crises. Population was growing faster than in any other part of the globe, without a comparable increase in wealth or productivity; the gap between the poor and the rich was widening; and as the rich and powerful turned to the military for the preservation of order and privilege, the poor turned to revolution.
Deeply involved in other quarters of the globe, the United States paid little attention to the fortunes or misfortunes of her neighbours to the south, and when she did intervene, it appeared to be on the side of order and the status quo rather than on the side of reform. So frightened was the United States of “Communism” in Latin America that it preferred military dictatorship to reformers who might drift too far to the “left”, and sustained a Batista in Cuba, a Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, a Peron in Argentina, and a Jimenez in Venezuela.
In his last two years, President Eisenhower had tried to mend his Latin American fences. Though rejecting a Brazilian proposal of a Marshall Plan for Latin America, he did take the initiative in setting up an Inter-American development Bank with a capital of one billion dollars, almost half of it supplied by the United States. Other government investments in Latin America ran to some four billion dollars, while private investment exceeded nine billion. Yet, though to most Americans, all this seemed a form of economic aid, many Latin Americans regarded it as economic imperialism. In September 1960, came a co-operative plan that could not be regarded as other than enlightened: the Act of Bogota, which authorized a grant of half a billion dollars to subsidize not only economic but social and educational progress in Latin America. “We are not saints”, said President Eisenhower when he visited Santiago de Chile, “We know we make mistakes, but our heart is in the right place”.
But was it? President Kennedy was confronted by the same dilemma that had perplexed his predecessors. Clearly it was essential to provide a large-scale aid to the countries south of Rio Grande, but should this aid go to bolster up established regimes and thus help maintain status quo, or should it be used to speed up social reform, even at the risk of revolt? As early as 1958, the then Senator Kennedy has asserted that “the objective of our aid program in Latin America should not be to purchase allies, but to consolidate a free and democratic Western Hemisphere, alleviating those conditions which might foster opportunities for communistic infiltration and uniting our peoples on the basis of constantly increasing living standard”.
This conviction that raising the standards of living was the best method of checking Communism now inspired President Kennedy’s bold proposal for the creation of the Alliance for Progress -- a ten year plan designed to do for Latin America what Marshall Plan had done for Western Europe. It was to be “a peaceful revolution on a hemispheric scale, a vast co-operative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work, land, health and schools.” To achieve this, the United States pleaded an initial grant of one billion dollars, with the promise of additional billions for the future.
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
If American policy towards Europe in the postwar years had been a conspicuous success, and towards Asia a disappointing balance between success and failure, it could be said that the most conspicuous thing about relations with Latin America was the absence of any policy. Franklin Roosevelt, to be sure, had launched a “Good Neighbour” policy, but being a good neighbour was, it seemed, a negative rather than a positive affair, a matter of keeping hands off, of making the Monroe Doctrine, in form at least, multilateral. All through the postwar years, the states of Latin America -- Mexico and Chile were partial exceptions -- were in the throes of major economic and social crises. Population was growing faster than in any other part of the globe, without a comparable increase in wealth or productivity; the gap between the poor and the rich was widening; and as the rich and powerful turned to the military for the preservation of order and privilege, the poor turned to revolution.
Deeply involved in other quarters of the globe, the United States paid little attention to the fortunes or misfortunes of her neighbours to the south, and when she did intervene, it appeared to be on the side of order and the status quo rather than on the side of reform. So frightened was the United States of “Communism” in Latin America that it preferred military dictatorship to reformers who might drift too far to the “left”, and sustained a Batista in Cuba, a Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, a Peron in Argentina, and a Jimenez in Venezuela.
In his last two years, President Eisenhower had tried to mend his Latin American fences. Though rejecting a Brazilian proposal of a Marshall Plan for Latin America, he did take the initiative in setting up an Inter-American development Bank with a capital of one billion dollars, almost half of it supplied by the United States. Other government investments in Latin America ran to some four billion dollars, while private investment exceeded nine billion. Yet, though to most Americans, all this seemed a form of economic aid, many Latin Americans regarded it as economic imperialism. In September 1960, came a co-operative plan that could not be regarded as other than enlightened: the Act of Bogota, which authorized a grant of half a billion dollars to subsidize not only economic but social and educational progress in Latin America. “We are not saints”, said President Eisenhower when he visited Santiago de Chile, “We know we make mistakes, but our heart is in the right place”.
But was it? President Kennedy was confronted by the same dilemma that had perplexed his predecessors. Clearly it was essential to provide a large-scale aid to the countries south of Rio Grande, but should this aid go to bolster up established regimes and thus help maintain status quo, or should it be used to speed up social reform, even at the risk of revolt? As early as 1958, the then Senator Kennedy has asserted that “the objective of our aid program in Latin America should not be to purchase allies, but to consolidate a free and democratic Western Hemisphere, alleviating those conditions which might foster opportunities for communistic infiltration and uniting our peoples on the basis of constantly increasing living standard”.
This conviction that raising the standards of living was the best method of checking Communism now inspired President Kennedy’s bold proposal for the creation of the Alliance for Progress -- a ten year plan designed to do for Latin America what Marshall Plan had done for Western Europe. It was to be “a peaceful revolution on a hemispheric scale, a vast co-operative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work, land, health and schools.” To achieve this, the United States pleaded an initial grant of one billion dollars, with the promise of additional billions for the future.
CAT/1994(RC)
Question. 339
According to the passage, the fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy directed toward Latin America
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
If American policy towards Europe in the postwar years had been a conspicuous success, and towards Asia a disappointing balance between success and failure, it could be said that the most conspicuous thing about relations with Latin America was the absence of any policy. Franklin Roosevelt, to be sure, had launched a “Good Neighbour” policy, but being a good neighbour was, it seemed, a negative rather than a positive affair, a matter of keeping hands off, of making the Monroe Doctrine, in form at least, multilateral. All through the postwar years, the states of Latin America -- Mexico and Chile were partial exceptions -- were in the throes of major economic and social crises. Population was growing faster than in any other part of the globe, without a comparable increase in wealth or productivity; the gap between the poor and the rich was widening; and as the rich and powerful turned to the military for the preservation of order and privilege, the poor turned to revolution.
Deeply involved in other quarters of the globe, the United States paid little attention to the fortunes or misfortunes of her neighbours to the south, and when she did intervene, it appeared to be on the side of order and the status quo rather than on the side of reform. So frightened was the United States of “Communism” in Latin America that it preferred military dictatorship to reformers who might drift too far to the “left”, and sustained a Batista in Cuba, a Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, a Peron in Argentina, and a Jimenez in Venezuela.
In his last two years, President Eisenhower had tried to mend his Latin American fences. Though rejecting a Brazilian proposal of a Marshall Plan for Latin America, he did take the initiative in setting up an Inter-American development Bank with a capital of one billion dollars, almost half of it supplied by the United States. Other government investments in Latin America ran to some four billion dollars, while private investment exceeded nine billion. Yet, though to most Americans, all this seemed a form of economic aid, many Latin Americans regarded it as economic imperialism. In September 1960, came a co-operative plan that could not be regarded as other than enlightened: the Act of Bogota, which authorized a grant of half a billion dollars to subsidize not only economic but social and educational progress in Latin America. “We are not saints”, said President Eisenhower when he visited Santiago de Chile, “We know we make mistakes, but our heart is in the right place”.
But was it? President Kennedy was confronted by the same dilemma that had perplexed his predecessors. Clearly it was essential to provide a large-scale aid to the countries south of Rio Grande, but should this aid go to bolster up established regimes and thus help maintain status quo, or should it be used to speed up social reform, even at the risk of revolt? As early as 1958, the then Senator Kennedy has asserted that “the objective of our aid program in Latin America should not be to purchase allies, but to consolidate a free and democratic Western Hemisphere, alleviating those conditions which might foster opportunities for communistic infiltration and uniting our peoples on the basis of constantly increasing living standard”.
This conviction that raising the standards of living was the best method of checking Communism now inspired President Kennedy’s bold proposal for the creation of the Alliance for Progress -- a ten year plan designed to do for Latin America what Marshall Plan had done for Western Europe. It was to be “a peaceful revolution on a hemispheric scale, a vast co-operative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work, land, health and schools.” To achieve this, the United States pleaded an initial grant of one billion dollars, with the promise of additional billions for the future.
Comprehension
Directions for Questions: This Section contains passages followed by questions based upon the contents of the passages. Read the passages and select the best option for the answers.
If American policy towards Europe in the postwar years had been a conspicuous success, and towards Asia a disappointing balance between success and failure, it could be said that the most conspicuous thing about relations with Latin America was the absence of any policy. Franklin Roosevelt, to be sure, had launched a “Good Neighbour” policy, but being a good neighbour was, it seemed, a negative rather than a positive affair, a matter of keeping hands off, of making the Monroe Doctrine, in form at least, multilateral. All through the postwar years, the states of Latin America -- Mexico and Chile were partial exceptions -- were in the throes of major economic and social crises. Population was growing faster than in any other part of the globe, without a comparable increase in wealth or productivity; the gap between the poor and the rich was widening; and as the rich and powerful turned to the military for the preservation of order and privilege, the poor turned to revolution.
Deeply involved in other quarters of the globe, the United States paid little attention to the fortunes or misfortunes of her neighbours to the south, and when she did intervene, it appeared to be on the side of order and the status quo rather than on the side of reform. So frightened was the United States of “Communism” in Latin America that it preferred military dictatorship to reformers who might drift too far to the “left”, and sustained a Batista in Cuba, a Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, a Peron in Argentina, and a Jimenez in Venezuela.
In his last two years, President Eisenhower had tried to mend his Latin American fences. Though rejecting a Brazilian proposal of a Marshall Plan for Latin America, he did take the initiative in setting up an Inter-American development Bank with a capital of one billion dollars, almost half of it supplied by the United States. Other government investments in Latin America ran to some four billion dollars, while private investment exceeded nine billion. Yet, though to most Americans, all this seemed a form of economic aid, many Latin Americans regarded it as economic imperialism. In September 1960, came a co-operative plan that could not be regarded as other than enlightened: the Act of Bogota, which authorized a grant of half a billion dollars to subsidize not only economic but social and educational progress in Latin America. “We are not saints”, said President Eisenhower when he visited Santiago de Chile, “We know we make mistakes, but our heart is in the right place”.
But was it? President Kennedy was confronted by the same dilemma that had perplexed his predecessors. Clearly it was essential to provide a large-scale aid to the countries south of Rio Grande, but should this aid go to bolster up established regimes and thus help maintain status quo, or should it be used to speed up social reform, even at the risk of revolt? As early as 1958, the then Senator Kennedy has asserted that “the objective of our aid program in Latin America should not be to purchase allies, but to consolidate a free and democratic Western Hemisphere, alleviating those conditions which might foster opportunities for communistic infiltration and uniting our peoples on the basis of constantly increasing living standard”.
This conviction that raising the standards of living was the best method of checking Communism now inspired President Kennedy’s bold proposal for the creation of the Alliance for Progress -- a ten year plan designed to do for Latin America what Marshall Plan had done for Western Europe. It was to be “a peaceful revolution on a hemispheric scale, a vast co-operative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work, land, health and schools.” To achieve this, the United States pleaded an initial grant of one billion dollars, with the promise of additional billions for the future.
CAT/1994(RC)
Question. 341
Which of the inferences can be drawn if everything said in the passage were assumed to be true?
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the question: Read the passage carefully and answer the given question accordingly
In order to better understand conservatism in China, it is essential that one has a grasp of what the term “Chinese conservatism” means. Chinese conservatism is markedly different from the conservatism of the modern West. The political term “conservative” came about during the French Revolution and inspired men who were determined to preserve Christian and aristocratic elements in European society. Chinese conservatism began around the time of the Taiping Rebellion and had as its primary objectives the preservation of both Confucian society and nonfeudal strains of pre-Opium War Chinese society. While western conservatism believes in sacredness of private property and distrust of cosmopolitanism, the Chinese conservatism is the defense of a rational cosmopolitan order. Thus, the only common area of agreement between European and Chinese conservatism is the intent to conserve.
During the Tung-chin Restoration, the great aim was the revival of Confucian values and institutions. But these aims had to be modified so that they might endure. Restoration statesmen had no desire to create a new society - they wanted to restore a society that they believed had been based on truth. The statesmen of the Restoration stretched the traditional ideology to its limits in an effort to make the Confucian system under new conditions. They were true conservatives in a great tradition, living in an age when revolutionary change was unavoidable. The aim of the Restoration was to restore to their original vitality the best of the ancient institutions. During the Restoration, the two immediate problems were the suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of foreign relations. In addition, the people were striving for a restoration of the system of government by superior civil officials.
The men in the hierarchy of the Restoration rose to prominence through proven ability in both civil and military affairs. They emphasized human and social training - that is, indoctrination, morality, and the art of leadership through the cultivation of character. The great majority of the officials rose through the examination system.
During the chaos of this period, the examination system had lost much of its effectiveness. This is important and must be noted because the examination system was the traditional avenue for selecting officials. The senior officials of Restoration realized that their policies would be ineffective unless the quality of the junior officials was improved, so it was their duty to weed out the officials who had attained office in irregular ways and to promote the examination system as the only way to high position. But these men of the Restoration had enough foresight to determine that it was impossible to select officials automatically on the basis of objective tests alone. As a result, the system of recommendation was ushered in, whereby, a high official sponsored the career of a promising young man. This acted as an important supplement to the examination system.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
Every state has a constitution, since every state functions on the basis of certain rules and principles. It has often been asserted that the United States has a written constitution, but that the constitution of Great Britain is unwritten. This is true only in the sense that, in the United States, there is a formal document called the Constitution, whereas there is no such document in Great Britain. In fact, however, many parts of the British constitution exist in written form, whereas important aspects of the American constitution are wholly unwritten. The British constitution includes the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700-01), the Parliament Act of 1911, the successive Representation of the People Acts (which extended the suffrage), the statutes dealing with the structure of the courts, the various local government acts, and many others. These are not ordinary statutes, even though they are adopted in the ordinary legislative way, and they are not codified within the structure of single orderly document. On the other hand, such institutions in the United States as the presidential cabinet and the system of political parties, though not even mentioned in the written constitution, are most certainly of constitutional significance. The presence or absence of a formal written document makes a difference, of course, but only one of degree. A single-document constitution has such advantages as greater precision, simplicity, and consistency. In a newly developing state as Israel, on the other hand, the balance of advantage has been found to lie with an uncodified constitution evolving through the growth of custom and the medium of statutes. Experience suggests that some codified constitutions are much too detailed. An overlong constitution invites disputes and litigation is rarely read or understood by the ordinary citizen, and injects too much rigidity in cases in which flexibility is often preferable. Since a very long constitution says too many things on too many subjects, it must be amended often, and this makes it still longer. The United States Constitution of 7,000 words is a model of brevity, whereas many of that country’s state constitutions are much too long -- the longest being that of the state of Louisiana, whose constitution now has about 255,000 words. The very new, modern constitutions of the recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have, significantly, very concise constitutions ranging from 9,000 to 15,000 words. The 1949 constitution of India, with 395 articles, is the wordiest of all national constitutions. In contrast, some of the world’s new constitutions, such as those of Japan and Indonesia, are very short indeed.
Some constitutions are buttressed by powerful institutions such as an independent judiciary, whereas others, though committed to lofty principles, are not supported by governmental institutions endowed with the authority to defend these principles in concrete situations. Accordingly, many juristic writers distinguish between “normative” and “nominal” constitutions. A normative constitution is the one that not only has the status of supreme law but is also fully activated and effective; it is habitually obeyed in the actual life of the state. A nominal constitution may express high aspirations, but it does not, in fact, reflect the political realities of the state. Article 125 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the article 87 of the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic of China both purport to guarantee freedom of speech, but in those countries, even mild expressions of dissent are likely to be swiftly and sternly repressed. Where the written constitution is only nominal, behind the verbal facade will be found the real constitution containing the basic principles according to which power is exercised in actual fact. Thus in the Soviet Union, the rules of the Communist Party describing its organs and functioning are more truly the constitution of that country than are the grand phrases of the 1936 Stalin constitution. Every state, in short has a constitution, but in some, real constitution operates behind the facade of a nominal constitution.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.
Comprehension
Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.
The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.
The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.
How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.