Comprehension

We generally talk about democracy but when it comes to any particular thing, we prefer a belonging to our caste or community or religion. So long as we have this kind of temptation, our democracy will remain a phoney kind of democracy. We must be in a position to respect a man as a man and to extend opportunities for development to those who deserve them and not to those who happen to belong to our community or race. This fact of favouritism has been responsible for much discontent and ill-will in our country.

Which one of the following statements best sums up the above passage?

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been of no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally 'exceeds the time-limit, ask for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

The author says that a thought less word hardly ever escapes his tongue or pen. Which one of the following is not a valid reason for this?

Our municipal corporations are understaffed. The issue of skills and competencies of the staff poses an even greater challenge. Urban services delivery and infrastructure are complex to plan and execute. They require a high degree of specialization and professionalism. The current framework within which municipal employees, including senior management, are recruited does not adequately factor in the technical and managerial competencies required. Cadre and recruitment rules only specify the bare minimum in academic qualifications. There is no mention of managerial or technical competencies, or of relevant work experience. This is the case with most municipal corporations. They also suffer from weak organization design and structure.

Which among the following is the most logical and rational assumption that can be made from the above passage?

By 2050, the Earth’s population will likely have swelled from seven to nine billion people. To fill all those stomachs – while accounting for shifting consumption patterns, climate change, and a finite amount of arable land and potable water – some experts say food production will have to double. How can we make the numbers add up? Experts say higher yielding crop varieties and more efficient farming methods will be crucial. So will waste reduction. Experts urge cities to reclaim nutrients and water from waste streams and preserve farmland. Poor countries, they say, can improve crop storage and packaging and rich nations could out back on resource-intensive food like meat.

Which one of the following statements best sums up the above passage?

No Right is absolute, exclusive or inviolable. The Right of personal property, similarly, has to be perceived in the larger context of its assumed legitimacy. The Right of personal property should unite the principle of liberty with that of equality, and both with the principle of cooperation.

In the light of the argument in the above passage, which one of the following statements is the most convincing explanation?

Vast numbers of Indian citizens without bank accounts live in rural areas. Are financially and functionally illiterate, and have little experience with technology. A research study was conducted in a particular area in which electronic wage payments in Mahatma Gandhi national Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are meant to go directly to the poor. It was observed that recipients often assume that the village leader needs to mediate the process, as was the case under the previous paper-based system. Among households under this research study area who claimed to have at least one bank account, over a third reported still receiving MGNREGS wages in cash directly from a village leader.
What is the most logical, rational and crucial message that is implied in the above passage?

Read the following passage and answer the item(s) that follow, your answers to these item(s) should be based on the passage only.

Individuals, groups and leaders who promote human development operate under strong institutional, structural and political constraints’ that affect policy options. But experience suggests broad principles for shaping an appropriate agenda for human development. One important finding from several decades of human development experience is that focusing exclusively on economic growth is problematic. While we have good knowledge about how to advance health and education, the causes of growth are much less certain and growth is often elusive. Further, an unbalanced emphasis on growth is often associated with negative environmental consequences and adverse distributional effects. The experience of China, with its impressive growth record, reflects these broader concerns and underlines the importance of balanced approaches that emphasize investments in the non-income aspects of human development. With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made:

Which of the above is/are valid assumption/assumptions?

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been of no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally 'exceeds the time-limit, ask for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.
For the author, silence is necessary in order to surmount

Climate change is already making many people hungry all over the world, by disrupting crop yields and pushing up prices. And it is not just food but nutrients that are becoming scarcer as the climate changes. It is the poorest communities that will suffer the worst effects of climate change, including increased hunger and malnutrition as crop production and livelihoods are threatened. On the other hand, poverty is a driver of climate change, as desperate communities resort to unsustainable use of resources to meet current needs.

Which among the following is the most logical corollary to the above passage?

Open defecation is disastrous when practiced in very densely populated areas, where it is impossible to keep away human faeces from crops, wells, food and children’s hands. Groundwater is also contaminated by open defecation. Many ingested germs and worms spread diseases. They prevent the body from absorbing calories and nutrients. Nearly one half of India’s children remain malnourished. Lakhs of them die from preventable conditions. Diarrhoea leaves Indians’ bodies smaller on average than those of people in some poorer countries where people eat fewer calories. Underweight mothers produce stunted babies prone to sickness who may fail to develop their full cognitive potential. The germs released into environment harm rich and poor alike, even those who use latrines.

Which among the following is the most critical inference that can be made from the above passage?

Set against a rural backdrop, ‘Stench of kerosene’ is the story of a couple, Guleri and Manak, who have been happily married for several years but do not have a child. Manak’s mother is desperate to have a grandchild to carry on the family name. Hence, she gets Manak remarried in Guleri’s absence. Manak, who acts as a reluctant but passive spectator, is meanwhile, informed by a friend that Guleri, on hearing about her husband’s second marriage, poured kerosene on her clothes and set fire to them. Manak is heartbroken and begins to live as if he were a dead man. When his second wife delivers a son, Mauak stares at the child for a long time and blurts out, ‘Take him away! He stinks of kerosene.’

This is a sensitive issue-based story which tries to sensitize the readers about

Read the following passage and answer the item(s) that follow, your answers to these item(s) should be based on the passage only.
The existence/establishment of formal financial institutions that offer safe, reliable, and alternative financial instruments is fundamental in mobilizing savings. To save, individuals need access to safe and reliable financial institutions, such as banks, and to appropriate financial instruments and reasonable financial incentives. Such access is not always available to all people in developing countries like India and more so, in rural areas. Savings help poor households manage volatility in cash flow, smoothen consumption, and build working capital. Poor households without access to a formal savings mechanism encourage immediate spending temptations.

With reference to the above passage, consider the following statements:

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Read the following passage and answer the item(s) that follow, your answers to these item(s) should be based on the passage only.

Climate change is a complex policy issue with major implications in terms of finance. All actions to address climate change ultimately involve costs. Funding is vital for countries like India to design and implement adaption and mitigation plans and projects. Lack of funding is a large impediment implementing adaptation plans. The scale and magnitude of the financial support required by magnitude of the financial support required by developing countries to enhance their domestic mitigation and adaptation actions are a matter of intense debate in the multilateral negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention squarely puts the responsibility for provision of financial support on the developed countries, taking into account their contribution to the stock of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. Given the magnitude of the task likely to fall short of the current and projected needs of the developing countries. Global funding through the multilateral mechanism of the Convention will enhance their domestic capacity to finance the mitigation efforts.
In this passage, the Convention puts the responsibility for the provision of financial support on the developed countries because of

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Human history abounds in claims and theories confining the right of governing to a few select citizens. Exclusion of the many is justified on the ground that human beings may be rightfully segregated for the good of society and viability of the political process.

Which one of the following statements is least essential as a part of the argument in the above passage?

Many people in India feel that if we cut our defence expenditure on weapon-building, we can create a climate of peace with our neighbours, subsequently reducing the conflict or creating a no-war situation. People who proclaim such ideas are either the victims of war or the propagators of false argument.

With reference to the above passage, which of the following is the most valid assumption?

The ultimate aim of government is not to rule or control by fear, nor to demand obedience, but conversely, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security. In other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others. The object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets. It should enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled.

Which among the following is the most logical and rational inference that can be made from the above passage?

The richer States have a responsibility to cut down carbon emissions and promote clean energy investments. These are the States that got electricity, grew faster and now have high per capita income, making them capable of sharing India’s burden of becoming eco-friendly. Delhi, for example, can help by generating its own clean electricity using solar rooftop panels or even help poor States finance their clean energy projects. It is no secret that State Electricity Boards, which control 95% of the distribution network, are neck-deep in losses. These losses further discourage State utilities from adopting renewable energy as it is more expensive than fossil fuels.

Which among the following is the most logical and rational assumption that can be made from the above passage?

Flamingos in large flocks in the wild are social and extremely loyal. The perform group mating dances. Parents are very fond of their chicks, gathering them into crèches for protection while both males and females fly off to search for food.

Which among the following is the most logical corollary to the above passage?

The conflict between man and State is as old as State history. Although attempts have been made for centuries to bring about a proper adjustment between the competing claims of State and the individual, the solution seems to be' still far off. This is primarily because of the dynamic nature of human society where old values and ideas constantly yield place to new ones. It is obvious that if individuals are allowed to have absolute freedom of speech and action, the result would be chaos, ruin and anarchy.

The author's viewpoint can be best summed up in which of the following statements?

Read the following passage and answer the item(s) that follow, your answers to these item(s) should be based on the passage only.

Climate change is a complex policy issue with major implications in terms of finance. All actions to address climate change ultimately involve costs. Funding is vital for countries like India to design and implement adaption and mitigation plans and projects. Lack of funding is a large impediment implementing adaptation plans. The scale and magnitude of the financial support required by magnitude of the financial support required by developing countries to enhance their domestic mitigation and adaptation actions are a matter of intense debate in the multilateral negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention squarely puts the responsibility for provision of financial support on the developed countries, taking into account their contribution to the stock of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. Given the magnitude of the task likely to fall short of the current and projected needs of the developing countries. Global funding through the multilateral mechanism of the Convention will enhance their domestic capacity to finance the mitigation efforts.

With regards to developing countries, it can be inferred from the passage that climate change is likely to have implications on their

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been of no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally 'exceeds the time-limit, ask for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.
The most appropriate reason for the author to be spared many a mishap is that

India has suffered from persistent high inflation. Increase in administered prices, demand and supply imbalances, imported inflation aggravated by rupee depreciation, and speculation – have combined to keep high inflation going. If there is an element common to all of them, it is that many of them are the outcomes of economic reforms. India’s vulnerability to the effects of changes in international prices has increased with trade liberalization. The effort to reduce subsidies has resulted in a continuous increase in the prices of commodities that are administered.

What is the most logical, rational and crucial message that is implied in the above passage?

Net profits are only 2.2 per cent of their total assets for central public sector undertakings, lower than for the private corporate sector. While the public sector or the state-led entrepreneurship played an important role in triggering India’s industrialization, our evolving development needs, comparatively less-than satisfactory performance of the public sector enterprises, the maturing of our private sector, a much larger social base now available for expanding entrepreneurship and the growing institutional capabilities to enforce completion policies would suggest that the time has come to review the role of public sector.

What should the portfolio composition of the government be? It should not remain static all times. The airline industry works well as a purely private affair. At the opposite end, rural roads, whose sparse traffic makes tolling unviable, have to be on the balance sheet of the state. If the government did not own rural roads, they would not exist. Similarly, public health capital in our towns and cities will need to come from the public sector. Equally, preservation and improvement, of forest cover will have to be a new priority for the public sector assets.

Take the example of steel. With near-zero tariffs, India is a globally competitive market for the metal. Indian firms export steel into the global market, which demonstrates there is no gap in technology. Indian companies are buying up global steel companies which show there is no gap in capital availability. Under these conditions, private ownership works best.

Private ownership is clearly desirable in regulated industries, ranging from finance to infrastructure, where a government agency performs the function of regulation and multiple competing firms are located in the private sector. Here, the simple and clean solution—government as the umpire and the private sector as the players is what works best. In many of these industries, we have a legacy of government ownership, where productivity tends to be lower, fear of bankruptcy is absent, and the risk of asking for money from the taxpayer is ever present. There is also the conflict of interest between government as an owner and as the regulator. The formulation and implementation of competition policy will be more vigorous and fair if government companies are out of action.

The portfolio composition of the government refers to:

Cynthia was a shy girl. She believed that she was plain and untalented. One day her teacher ordered the entire class to show up for audition for the school play. Cynthia nearly died of fright when she was told that she would have to stand on stage in front of the entire class and deliver dialogues. The mere thought of it made her feel sick. But a remarkable transformation occurred during the audition. A thin, shy girl, her knees quaking, her stomach churning in terror, began to stun everyone with her excellent performance. Her bored classmates suddenly stopped their noisy chat to stare at her slender figure on the stage. At the end of her audition, the entire room erupted in thunderous applause.
Cynthia's knees were quaking because

Net profits are only 2.2 per cent of their total assets for central public sector undertakings, lower than for the private corporate sector. While the public sector or the state-led entrepreneurship played an important role in triggering India’s industrialization, our evolving development needs, comparatively less-than satisfactory performance of the public sector enterprises, the maturing of our private sector, a much larger social base now available for expanding entrepreneurship and the growing institutional capabilities to enforce completion policies would suggest that the time has come to review the role of public sector.
What should the portfolio composition of the government be? It should not remain static all times. The airline industry works well as a purely private affair. At the opposite end, rural roads, whose sparse traffic makes tolling unviable, have to be on the balance sheet of the state. If the government did not own rural roads, they would not exist. Similarly, public health capital in our towns and cities will need to come from the public sector. Equally, preservation and improvement, of forest cover will have to be a new priority for the public sector assets.
Take the example of steel. With near-zero tariffs, India is a globally competitive market for the metal. Indian firms export steel into the global market, which demonstrates there is no gap in technology. Indian companies are buying up global steel companies which show there is no gap in capital availability. Under these conditions, private ownership works best.
Private ownership is clearly desirable in regulated industries, ranging from finance to infrastructure, where a government agency performs the function of regulation and multiple competing firms are located in the private sector. Here, the simple and clean solution—government as the umpire and the private sector as the players is what works best. In many of these industries, we have a legacy of government ownership, where productivity tends to be lower, fear of bankruptcy is absent, and the risk of asking for money from the taxpayer is ever present. There is also the conflict of interest between government as an owner and as the regulator. The formulation and implementation of competition policy will be more vigorous and fair if government companies are out of action.
The author prefers government as the umpire and private sector as players because:

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Many nations now place their faith in capitalism and governments choose it as the strategy to create wealth for their people. The spectacular economic growth seen in Brazil, China and India after the liberalization of their economies is proof of its enormous potential and success. However, the global banking crisis and the economic recession have left many bewildered. The debates tend to focus on free market operations and forces, their efficiency and their ability for self-correction. Issues of justice, integrity and honesty are rarely elaborated to highlight the failure of the global banking system. The apologists of the system continue to justify the success of capitalism and argue that the recent crisis was a blip. Their arguments betray an ideological bias with the assumptions that an unregulated market is fair and competent, and that the exercise of private greed will be in the larger public interest. Few recognize the bidirectional relationship between capitalism and greed: that each reinforces the other Surely, a more honest conceptualization of the conflicts of interest among the rich and powerful players who have benefited from the system, their biases and ideology is needed; the focus on the wealth creation should also highlight the resultant gross inequity. ‘The exercise of private greed will be in the larger public interest’ from the passage:

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

It is easy for the government to control state-owned companies through nods and winks. So, what really needs to be done as a first step is to be done as a first step is to put petrol pricing on a transparent formula—if the price of crude is x and the exchange rate y, then every month or fortnight, the government announces a maximum price of petrol, which anybody can work out from the x and y. The rule has to be worked out to make sure that the oil-marketing companies can, in general, cover their costs. This will mean that it one company can innovate and cut costs, it will make greater profits. Hence, firms will be more prone to innovate and be efficient under this system. Once the rule is announced, there should be no interference by the government. If this is done for a while, private companies will re-enter this market. And once a sufficient number of them are in the fray, we can remove the rule-based pricing and leave it truly to the market (subject to, of course, the usual regulations of anti-trust and other competition laws).

Consider the following statements:
According to the passage, an oil company can make greater profits, if a transparent, formula for petrol pricing is announced every fortnight or month by:

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Answers to these should be based on the passage only.

In recent times, India has grown fast not only compared to its own past but also in comparison with other nations. But there cannot be any room for complacency because it is possible for the Indian economy to develop even faster and also to spread the benefits of this growth more widely than has been done thus far. Before going into details of the kinds of microstructural changes that we need to conceptualize and then proceed to implement, it is worthwhile elaborating on the idea of inclusive growth that constitutes the defining concept behind this Government’s various economic policies and decisions. A nation interested in inclusive growth views the same growth differently depending on whether the gains of the growth are heaped primarily on a small segment or shared widely by the population. The latter is cause for celebration but not the former. In other words, growth must not be treated as an end in itself but as an instrument for spreading prosperity to all. India’s own past experience and the experience of other nations suggest that growth is necessary for eradicating poverty but it is not a sufficient condition. In other words, policies for promoting growth need to be complemented with policies to ensure that more and more people join the growth process and, further, that there are mechanisms in place to redistribute some of the gains to those who are unable to partake in the market process and, hence get left behind.

A simply way of giving this idea of inclusive growth a sharper form is to measure a nation’s progress in terms of the progress, of its poorest segment, for instance, the bottom 20 per cent of the population. One could measure the per capita income of the bottom quintile of the population and also calculate the growth rate of income, and evaluate our economic success in terms of these measures that pertain to the poorest segment. This approach is attractive because it does not ignore growth like some of the older heterodox criteria did. It simply looks at the growth of income of the poorest sections of the population. It also ensures that those who are outside of the bottom quintile do not get ignored. If that were done, then those people would, in all likelihood, drop down into the bottom quintile and so would automatically become a direct target of our policies. Hence, the criterion being suggested here is a statistical summing up of the idea of inclusive growth, which in turn, leads to two corollaries: to wish that India must strive to achieve high growth and that we must work to ensure that the weakest segments benefit from the growth.

The author’s central focus is on:

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

The Himalayan ecosystem is highly vulnerable to damage, both due to geological reasons and on account of the stress caused by increased pressure of population, exploitation of natural resources and other related challenges. These aspects may be exacerbated due to the impact of climate change. It is possible that climate change may adversely impact the Himalayan ecosystem through increased temperature, altered precipitation patterns, episodes of drought and biotic influence. This would impact not only the very sustenance of the indigenous communities in uplands but also the life of downstream dwellers across the country and beyond. Therefore, there is an urgent need for giving special attention to sustain the Himalayan ecosystem. This would require conscious efforts for conserving all the representative systems.

Further, it needs to be emphasized that the endemics with restricted distribution, and most often with specialized habitat requirements, are among the most vulnerable elements. In this respect the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, with rich endemic diversity, is vulnerable to climate change. The threats include possible loss of genetic resources and species, habitats and concomitantly a decrease in ecosystem services. Therefore, conservation of endemic elements in representative ecosystems/habitats assumes a great significance while drawing conservation plans for the region.

Towards achieving the above, we will have to shift towards contemporary conservation approaches, which include a paradigm of landscape level interconnectivity between protected area systems. The concept advocates a shift from the species-habitat focus to an inclusive focus on expanding the biogeographic range so that natural adjustments to climate change can proceed without being restrictive.

With reference to the passage, the following assumptions have been made:

1. To maintain natural ecosystems, exploitation of natural resources should be completely avoided.
2. Not only anthropogenic but also natural reasons can adversely affect ecosystems.
3. Loss of endemic diversity leads to the extinction of ecosystems.

Which of the above assumptions is/are correct?

Read the following passage and answer the item that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Climate change poses potentially devastating effects on India’s agriculture. While the overall parameters of climate change are increasingly accepted—a 1 °C average temperature increase over the next 30 years, sea level rise of less than 10 cm in the same period, and regional monsoon variations and corresponding droughts—the impacts in India are likely to be quite site and crop-specific. Some crops may respond favourably to the changing conditions, others may not. This emphasizes the need to promote agricultural research and create maximum flexibility in the system to permit adaptations.
The key ingredient for ‘drought proofing’ is the managed recharge of aquifers. To ensure continued yields of important staple crops (e.g., wheat), it may also be necessary to shift the locations where these crops are grown, in response to temperature changes as well as to water availability. The latter will be a key factor in a making long-term investment decisions.
For example, water run-off from the Himalayas is predicted to increase over the next 30 years as glaciers melt but then decline substantially thereafter. It will be critical to provide incentives to plan for these large-scale shifts in agro-ecological conditions.
Indian needs to make long-term investments in research and development in agriculture. India is likely to experience changed weather patterns in future.
According to the passage, why is it important to promote agricultural research in India?

Cynthia was a shy girl. She believed that she was plain and untalented. One day her teacher ordered the entire class to show up for audition for the school play. Cynthia nearly died of fright when she was told that she would have to stand on stage in front of the entire class and deliver dialogues. The mere thought of it made her feel sick. But a remarkable transformation occurred during the audition. A thin, shy girl, her knees quaking, her stomach churning in terror, began to stun everyone with her excellent performance. Her bored classmates suddenly stopped their noisy chat to stare at her slender figure on the stage. At the end of her audition, the entire room erupted in thunderous applause.

Cynthia was afraid to stand on stage because

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

The Himalayan ecosystem is highly vulnerable to damage, both due to geological reasons and on account of the stress caused by increased pressure of population, exploitation of natural resources and other related challenges. These aspects may be exacerbated due to the impact of climate change. It is possible that climate change may adversely impact the Himalayan ecosystem through increased temperature, altered precipitation patterns, episodes of drought and biotic influence. This would impact not only the very sustenance of the indigenous communities in uplands but also the life of downstream dwellers across the country and beyond. Therefore, there is an urgent need for giving special attention to sustain the Himalayan ecosystem. This would require conscious efforts for conserving all the representative systems.

Further, it needs to be emphasized that the endemics with restricted distribution, and most often with specialized habitat requirements, are among the most vulnerable elements. In this respect the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, with rich endemic diversity, is vulnerable to climate change. The threats include possible loss of genetic resources and species, habitats and concomitantly a decrease in ecosystem services. Therefore, conservation of endemic elements in representative ecosystems/habitats assumes a great significance while drawing conservation plans for the region.

Towards achieving the above, we will have to shift towards contemporary conservation approaches, which include a paradigm of landscape level interconnectivity between protected area systems. The concept advocates a shift from the species-habitat focus to an inclusive focus on expanding the biogeographic range so that natural adjustments to climate change can proceed without being restrictive.

Consider the following statements:
According to the passage, the adverse impact of climate change on an ecosystem can be a

1. permanent disappearance of some of its flora and fauna.
2. permanent disappearance of an ecosystem itself.

‘If political leadership fails to emerge, there is Q likelihood of military taking over power in developing countries. Radical student groups or labour may try to raise revolution but they are not likely to compete with the military. Military intervention rule and withdrawal from politics is closely related to a society’s level of political development.’
In the context of political development, the assumption in the above passage is that

Cynthia was a shy girl. She believed that she was plain and untalented. One day her teacher ordered the entire class to show up for audition for the school play. Cynthia nearly died of fright when she was told that she would have to stand on stage in front of the entire class and deliver dialogues. The mere thought of it made her feel sick. But a remarkable transformation occurred during the audition. A thin, shy girl, her knees quaking, her stomach churning in terror, began to stun everyone with her excellent performance. Her bored classmates suddenly stopped their noisy chat to stare at her slender figure on the stage. At the end of her audition, the entire room erupted in thunderous applause.
Cynthia's classmates were chatting because

It is essential that we mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and thus avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change that would take place in coming years and decades. Mitigation would require a major shift in the way we produce and consume energy. A shift away from overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels in now long overdue, but unfortunately technological development has been slow and inadequate largely because government policies have not promoted investments in research and development, myopically as a result of relatively low prices of oil, It is now, therefore, imperative for a country like India treating the opportunity of harnessing renewable energy on a large scale as a national imperative. This country is extremely well endowed with solar, wind and biomass sources of energy. Where we have lagged, unfortunately, is in our ability to develop and to create technological solutions for harnessing these resources.

One particular trajectory for carrying out stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows the need for ensuring that global emissions of greenhouse gases peak no later than 2015 and reduce rapidly thereafter. The cost associated with such a trajectory is truly modest and would amount, in the estimation of IPCC, to not more than 3 per cent of the global GDP in 2030. In other words, the level of prosperity that the world would have reached without mitigation would at worst be postponed by a few months or a year at the most. This is clearly not a very high price to pay for protecting hundreds of millions of people from the worst risk associated with climate change. Any such effort, however, would require lifestyles to change appropriately also. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not a mere technological fix, and clearly requires changes in lifestyles and transformation of a country’s economic structure, whereby effective reduction in emissions is brought about such as through the consumption of much lower quantities of animal protein. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has determined that the emissions from the liver stock sector amount to 18 per cent of the total. The reduction of emissions from this source is entirely in the hands of human beings, who have never questioned the impacts that their dietary habits of consuming more and more animal protein are bringing about. Mitigation overall has huge co-benefits such as lower air pollution and health benefits, higher energy security and greater employment.

According to the passage, which of the following would help in the mitigation of greenhouse gases?

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Many nations now place their faith in capitalism and governments choose it as the strategy to create wealth for their people. The spectacular economic growth seen in Brazil, China and India after the liberalization of their economies is proof of its enormous potential and success. However, the global banking crisis and the economic recession have left many bewildered. The debates tend to focus on free market operations and forces, their efficiency and their ability for self-correction. Issues of justice, integrity and honesty are rarely elaborated to highlight the failure of the global banking system. The apologists of the system continue to justify the success of capitalism and argue that the recent crisis was a blip. Their arguments betray an ideological bias with the assumptions that an unregulated market is fair and competent, and that the exercise of private greed will be in the larger public interest. Few recognize the bidirectional relationship between capitalism and greed: that each reinforces the other Surely, a more honest conceptualization of the conflicts of interest among the rich and powerful players who have benefited from the system, their biases and ideology is needed; the focus on the wealth creation should also highlight the resultant gross inequity. The apologists of the ‘Free Market System’, according to the passage, believe in:

The Himalayan ecosystem is highly vulnerable to damage, both due to geological reasons and on account of the stress caused by increased pressure of population, exploitation of natural resources and other related challenges. These aspects may be exacerbated due to the impact of climate change. It is possible that climate change may adversely impact the Himalayan ecosystem through increased temperature, altered precipitation patterns, episodes of drought and biotic influence. This would impact not only the very sustenance of the indigenous communities in uplands but also the life of downstream dwellers across the country and beyond. Therefore, there is an urgent need for giving special attention to sustain the Himalayan ecosystem. This would require conscious efforts for conserving all the representative systems.
Further, it needs to be emphasized that the endemics with restricted distribution, and most often with specialized habitat requirements, are among the most vulnerable elements. In this respect the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, with rich endemic diversity, is vulnerable to climate change. The threats include possible loss of genetic resources and species, habitats and concomitantly a decrease in ecosystem services. Therefore, conservation of endemic elements in representative ecosystems/habitats assumes a great significance while drawing conservation plans for the region.
Towards achieving the above, we will have to shift towards contemporary conservation approaches, which include a paradigm of landscape level interconnectivity between protected area systems. The concept advocates a shift from the species-habitat focus to an inclusive focus on expanding the biogeographic range so that natural adjustments to climate change can proceed without being restrictive.
What is the most important message conveyed by the passage?

It is often forgotten that globalization is not only about policies on international economic relationships and transactions but has equally to do with domestic policies of a nation. Policy changes necessitated by meeting the internationally set conditions (by WTO, etc.) of free trade and investment flows obviously affect domestic producers and investors. But the basic philosophy underlying globalization emphasizes absolute freedom to markets to determine prices and production and distribution patterns, and government interventions as processes that create distortions and bring in inefficiency. Thus, public enterprises have to be privatized through disinvestments and sales; sectors and activities hitherto reserved for the public sector have to be opened to the private sector. This logic extends to the social services like education and health. Any restrictions on the adjustments in workforce by way of retrenchment of workers should also be removed and exit should be made easier by removing any restriction on closures. Employment and wages should be governed by free play of market forces, as any measure to regulate them can discourage investment and also create inefficiency in production. Above all, in line with the overall philosophy of reduction in the role of the State, fiscal reforms should be undertaken to have generally low levels of taxation and government expenditure should be kept to the minimum to abide thy the principle of fiscal prudence. All these are policy actions on the domestic front and are not directly related to the core items of the globalization agenda, namely free international flow of goods and finance.

According to the passage, the basic philosophy of globalization is to:

Net profits are only 2.2 per cent of their total assets for central public sector undertakings, lower than for the private corporate sector. While the public sector or the state-led entrepreneurship played an important role in triggering India’s industrialization, our evolving development needs, comparatively less-than satisfactory performance of the public sector enterprises, the maturing of our private sector, a much larger social base now available for expanding entrepreneurship and the growing institutional capabilities to enforce completion policies would suggest that the time has come to review the role of public sector.
What should the portfolio composition of the government be? It should not remain static all times. The airline industry works well as a purely private affair. At the opposite end, rural roads, whose sparse traffic makes tolling unviable, have to be on the balance sheet of the state. If the government did not own rural roads, they would not exist. Similarly, public health capital in our towns and cities will need to come from the public sector. Equally, preservation and improvement, of forest cover will have to be a new priority for the public sector assets.
Take the example of steel. With near-zero tariffs, India is a globally competitive market for the metal. Indian firms export steel into the global market, which demonstrates there is no gap in technology. Indian companies are buying up global steel companies which show there is no gap in capital availability. Under these conditions, private ownership works best.
Private ownership is clearly desirable in regulated industries, ranging from finance to infrastructure, where a government agency performs the function of regulation and multiple competing firms are located in the private sector. Here, the simple and clean solution—government as the umpire and the private sector as the players is what works best. In many of these industries, we have a legacy of government ownership, where productivity tends to be lower, fear of bankruptcy is absent, and the risk of asking for money from the taxpayer is ever present. There is also the conflict of interest between government as an owner and as the regulator. The formulation and implementation of competition policy will be more vigorous and fair if government companies are out of action.
According to the passage, rural roads should be in the domain of public sector only. Why?

In front of us was walking a bare-headed old man in tattered clothes. He was driving his beasts. They were all laden with heavy loads of clay from the hills and looked tired. The man carried a long whip which perhaps he himself had made. As he walked down the road he stopped now and then to eat the wild becomes that grew on bushes along the uneven road, when he threw away the seeds, the bold birds would fly to peck at them. Sometimes a stray dog watched the procession philosophically and then began to bark. When this happened, my two little sons would stand still holding my hands firmly. A dog can sometimes be dangerous indeed.

The author's children held his hands firmly because

It is essential that we mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and thus avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change that would take place in coming years and decades. Mitigation would require a major shift in the way we produce and consume energy. A shift away from overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels in now long overdue, but unfortunately technological development has been slow and inadequate largely because government policies have not promoted investments in research and development, myopically as a result of relatively low prices of oil, It is now, therefore, imperative for a country like India treating the opportunity of harnessing renewable energy on a large scale as a national imperative. This country is extremely well endowed with solar, wind and biomass sources of energy. Where we have lagged, unfortunately, is in our ability to develop and to create technological solutions for harnessing these resources.

One particular trajectory for carrying out stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows the need for ensuring that global emissions of greenhouse gases peak no later than 2015 and reduce rapidly thereafter. The cost associated with such a trajectory is truly modest and would amount, in the estimation of IPCC, to not more than 3 per cent of the global GDP in 2030. In other words, the level of prosperity that the world would have reached without mitigation would at worst be postponed by a few months or a year at the most. This is clearly not a very high price to pay for protecting hundreds of millions of people from the worst risk associated with climate change. Any such effort, however, would require lifestyles to change appropriately also. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not a mere technological fix, and clearly requires changes in lifestyles and transformation of a country’s economic structure, whereby effective reduction in emissions is brought about such as through the consumption of much lower quantities of animal protein. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has determined that the emissions from the liver stock sector amount to 18 per cent of the total. The reduction of emissions from this source is entirely in the hands of human beings, who have never questioned the impacts that their dietary habits of consuming more and more animal protein are bringing about. Mitigation overall has huge co-benefits such as lower air pollution and health benefits, higher energy security and greater employment.

What is the essential message of the passage?

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Many nations now place their faith in capitalism and governments choose it as the strategy to create wealth for their people. The spectacular economic growth seen in Brazil, China and India after the liberalization of their economies is proof of its enormous potential and success. However, the global banking crisis and the economic recession have left many bewildered. The debates tend to focus on free market operations and forces, their efficiency and their ability for self-correction. Issues of justice, integrity and honesty are rarely elaborated to highlight the failure of the global banking system. The apologists of the system continue to justify the success of capitalism and argue that the recent crisis was a blip.
Their arguments betray an ideological bias with the assumptions that an unregulated market is fair and competent, and that the exercise of private greed will be in the larger public interest.
Few recognize the bidirectional relationship between capitalism and greed: that each reinforces the other Surely, a more honest conceptualization of the conflicts of interest among the rich and powerful players who have benefited from the system, their biases and ideology is needed; the focus on the wealth creation should also highlight the resultant gross inequity.
With reference to ‘ideological bias’, the passage implies that:

Cynthia was a shy girl. She believed that she was plain and untalented. One day her teacher ordered the entire class to show up for audition for the school play. Cynthia nearly died of fright when she was told that she would have to stand on stage in front of the entire class and deliver dialogues. The mere thought of it made her feel sick. But a remarkable transformation occurred during the audition. A thin, shy girl, her knees quaking, her stomach churning in terror, began to stun everyone with her excellent performance. Her bored classmates suddenly stopped their noisy chat to stare at her slender figure on the stage. At the end of her audition, the entire room erupted in thunderous applause.
The transformation that Occurred during the audition refers to

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

The Himalayan ecosystem is highly vulnerable to damage, both due to geological reasons and on account of the stress caused by increased pressure of population, exploitation of natural resources and other related challenges. These aspects may be exacerbated due to the impact of climate change. It is possible that climate change may adversely impact the Himalayan ecosystem through increased temperature, altered precipitation patterns, episodes of drought and biotic influence. This would impact not only the very sustenance of the indigenous communities in uplands but also the life of downstream dwellers across the country and beyond. Therefore, there is an urgent need for giving special attention to sustain the Himalayan ecosystem. This would require conscious efforts for conserving all the representative systems.

Further, it needs to be emphasized that the endemics with restricted distribution, and most often with specialized habitat requirements, are among the most vulnerable elements. In this respect the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, with rich endemic diversity, is vulnerable to climate change. The threats include possible loss of genetic resources and species, habitats and concomitantly a decrease in ecosystem services. Therefore, conservation of endemic elements in representative ecosystems/habitats assumes a great significance while drawing conservation plans for the region.

Towards achieving the above, we will have to shift towards contemporary conservation approaches, which include a paradigm of landscape level interconnectivity between protected area systems. The concept advocates a shift from the species-habitat focus to an inclusive focus on expanding the biogeographic range so that natural adjustments to climate change can proceed without being restrictive.

Which one of the following statements best implies the need to shift towards contemporary conservation approach?

It is often forgotten that globalization is not only about policies on international economic relationships and transactions but has equally to do with domestic policies of a nation. Policy changes necessitated by meeting the internationally set conditions (by WTO, etc.) of free trade and investment flows obviously affect domestic producers and investors. But the basic philosophy underlying globalization emphasizes absolute freedom to markets to determine prices and production and distribution patterns, and government interventions as processes that create distortions and bring in inefficiency. Thus, public enterprises have to be privatized through disinvestments and sales; sectors and activities hitherto reserved for the public sector have to be opened to the private sector. This logic extends to the social services like education and health. Any restrictions on the adjustments in workforce by way of retrenchment of workers should also be removed and exit should be made easier by removing any restriction on closures. Employment and wages should be governed by free play of market forces, as any measure to regulate them can discourage investment and also create inefficiency in production. Above all, in line with the overall philosophy of reduction in the role of the State, fiscal reforms should be undertaken to have generally low levels of taxation and government expenditure should be kept to the minimum to abide thy the principle of fiscal prudence. All these are policy actions on the domestic front and are not directly related to the core items of the globalization agenda, namely free international flow of goods and finance.

According to the passage, in the process of globalization the State should have:

In front of us was walking a bare-headed old man in tattered clothes. He was driving his beasts. They were all laden with heavy loads of clay from the hills and looked tired. The man carried a long whip which perhaps he himself had made. As he walked down the road he stopped now and then to eat the wild becomes that grew on bushes along the uneven road, when he threw away the seeds, the bold birds would fly to peck at them. Sometimes a stray dog watched the procession philosophically and then began to bark. When this happened, my two little sons would stand still holding my hands firmly. A dog can sometimes be dangerous indeed.

The expression ‘a stray dog watched the procession philosophically’ means that

It is easy for the government to control state-owned companies through nods and winks. So, what really needs to be done as a first step is to be done as a first step is to put petrol pricing on a transparent formula—if the price of crude is x and the exchange rate y, then every month or fortnight, the government announces a maximum price of petrol, which anybody can work out from the x and y. The rule has to be worked out to make sure that the oil-marketing companies can, in general, cover their costs. This will mean that it one company can innovate and cut costs, it will make greater profits. Hence, firms will be more prone to innovate and be efficient under this system. Once the rule is announced, there should be no interference by the government. If this is done for a while, private companies will re-enter this market. And once a sufficient number of them are in the fray, we can remove the rule-based pricing and leave it truly to the market (subject to, of course, the usual regulations of anti-trust and other competition laws).

Consider the following statements:
According to the passage, private oil companies re-enter the oil-producing market.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

Net profits are only 2.2 per cent of their total assets for central public sector undertakings, lower than for the private corporate sector. While the public sector or the state-led entrepreneurship played an important role in triggering India’s industrialization, our evolving development needs, comparatively less-than satisfactory performance of the public sector enterprises, the maturing of our private sector, a much larger social base now available for expanding entrepreneurship and the growing institutional capabilities to enforce completion policies would suggest that the time has come to review the role of public sector.

What should the portfolio composition of the government be? It should not remain static all times. The airline industry works well as a purely private affair. At the opposite end, rural roads, whose sparse traffic makes tolling unviable, have to be on the balance sheet of the state. If the government did not own rural roads, they would not exist. Similarly, public health capital in our towns and cities will need to come from the public sector. Equally, preservation and improvement, of forest cover will have to be a new priority for the public sector assets.

Take the example of steel. With near-zero tariffs, India is a globally competitive market for the metal. Indian firms export steel into the global market, which demonstrates there is no gap in technology. Indian companies are buying up global steel companies which show there is no gap in capital availability. Under these conditions, private ownership works best.

Private ownership is clearly desirable in regulated industries, ranging from finance to infrastructure, where a government agency performs the function of regulation and multiple competing firms are located in the private sector. Here, the simple and clean solution—government as the umpire and the private sector as the players is what works best. In many of these industries, we have a legacy of government ownership, where productivity tends to be lower, fear of bankruptcy is absent, and the risk of asking for money from the taxpayer is ever present. There is also the conflict of interest between government as an owner and as the regulator. The formulation and implementation of competition policy will be more vigorous and fair if government companies are out of action.

According to the passage, what is/are the reason/reasons for saying that the time has come to review the role of public sector?

Which of the statements given above is/are correct in the given context?

It is essential that we mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and thus avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change that would take place in coming years and decades. Mitigation would require a major shift in the way we produce and consume energy. A shift away from overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels in now long overdue, but unfortunately technological development has been slow and inadequate largely because government policies have not promoted investments in research and development, myopically as a result of relatively low prices of oil, It is now, therefore, imperative for a country like India treating the opportunity of harnessing renewable energy on a large scale as a national imperative. This country is extremely well endowed with solar, wind and biomass sources of energy. Where we have lagged, unfortunately, is in our ability to develop and to create technological solutions for harnessing these resources.

One particular trajectory for carrying out stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows the need for ensuring that global emissions of greenhouse gases peak no later than 2015 and reduce rapidly thereafter. The cost associated with such a trajectory is truly modest and would amount, in the estimation of IPCC, to not more than 3 per cent of the global GDP in 2030. In other words, the level of prosperity that the world would have reached without mitigation would at worst be postponed by a few months or a year at the most. This is clearly not a very high price to pay for protecting hundreds of millions of people from the worst risk associated with climate change. Any such effort, however, would require lifestyles to change appropriately also. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not a mere technological fix, and clearly requires changes in lifestyles and transformation of a country’s economic structure, whereby effective reduction in emissions is brought about such as through the consumption of much lower quantities of animal protein. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has determined that the emissions from the liver stock sector amount to 18 per cent of the total. The reduction of emissions from this source is entirely in the hands of human beings, who have never questioned the impacts that their dietary habits of consuming more and more animal protein are bringing about. Mitigation overall has huge co-benefits such as lower air pollution and health benefits, higher energy security and greater employment.

According to the passage, how does mitigation of greenhouse gases help us?

1. Reduces expenditure on public health
2. Reduces dependence on livestock
3. Reduces energy requirements
4. Reduces rate of global climate change

It is often forgotten that globalization is not only about policies on international economic relationships and transactions, but has equally to do with domestic policies of a nation. Policy changes necessitated by meeting the internationally set conditions (by WTO, etc.) of free trade and investment flows obviously affect domestic producers and investors. But the basic philosophy underlying globalization emphasizes absolute freedom to markets to determine prices and production and distribution patterns, and government interventions as processes that create distortions and bring in inefficiency. Thus, public enterprises have to be privatized through disinvestments and sales; sectors and activities hitherto reserved for the public sector have to be opened to the private sector. This logic extends to the social services like education and health. Any restrictions on the adjustments in workforce by way of retrenchment of workers should also be removed and exit should be made easier by removing any restriction on closures. Employment and wages should be governed by free play of market forces, as any measure to regulate them can discourage investment and also create inefficiency in production. Above all, in line with the overall philosophy of reduction in the role of the State, fiscal reforms should be undertaken to have generally low levels of taxation and government expenditure should be kept to the minimum to abide thy the principle of fiscal prudence. All these are policy actions on the domestic front and are not directly related to the core items of the globalization agenda, namely free international flow of goods and finance.

According to the passage, under the globalization, government interventions are viewed as processes leading to:

‘Price is not the same thing as value. Suppose that on a day the price of everything, viz., coal, bread, postage stamps, a day’s labour, the rent of houses, etc. were to double. Prices then would certainly rise, but values of all things except one would not.’
The writer wants to say that if prices of all things were doubled

According to the passage, in the Indian financial system, banks ability to withstand stress is critical to ensure overall financial stability because Indian financial system is:

The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until man’s nature changes, his physical needs will always arise, and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will remove them completely. The only solution of the problem is to make mankind pure. Ignorance is the mother of evil and of all the misery we see. Let men have light, let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated; then along will misery cease in the country into a charitable asylum we may fill the land with hospitals, but human misery will continue until man’s character change.

With reference to the passage, the following assumptions have been made:

Which of the assumptions is/are valid?

A number of empirical studies find that farmers are risk averse, though only moderately in many cases. There is also evidence to show that farmers’ risk aversion results in crop-ping patterns and input use designed to reduce risk rather than to maximize income. Farmers adopt a number of strategies to manage and cope with agricultural risks. These include practices like crop and field diversification, non-form employment, storage of stocks and strategic migration of family members. These are also institutions ranging from share tenancy to kinship, extended family and informal credit agencies. One major obstacle to risk sharing by farmers is that the same type of risk can affect a large number of farmers in the region. Empirical studies show that the traditional methods are not adequate. Hence there is a need for policy interventions, especially methods that cut across geographical regions.

Policies may aim at tackling agricultural risks directly or indirectly. Examples of risk-specific policies are crop insurance, price stabilization and the development of varieties resistant to pests and diseases. Policies which affect risk indirectly are irrigation, subsidized credit and access to information. No single risk specific policy is sufficient to reduce risk and is without side effects, whereas policies not specific to risk influence the general situation and affect risks only indirectly. Crop insurance as a policy measure to tackle agricultural risk directly, deserves careful consideration in the Indian context and in many other developing countries – because the majority of farmers depend on rain-fed agriculture and in many areas yield variability is the predominant cause of their income instability.

The need for policy intervention to mitigate risks in agriculture is because:

Malnutrition most commonly occurs between the ages of six months and two years. This happens despite the child’s food requirements being less than that of an older child. Malnutrition is often attributed to poverty, but it has been found that even in households where adults eat adequate quantities of food, more than fifty per cent of children-under-five do not consume enough food. The child’s dependence on someone else to feed him/her is primarily responsible for the malnutrition. Very often the mother is working and the responsibility of feeding the young child is left to an older sibling. It is therefore crucial to increase awareness regarding the child’s food needs and how to satisfy them.

According to the author, poverty is not the main cause of malnutrition, but the fact that.

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Financial markets in India have acquired greater depth and liquidity over the years. Steady reforms since 1991 have led to growing linkages and its financial system with the global economy. Weak global economic prospects and continuing uncertainties in the international financial markets therefore, have had their impact on the emerging market economies. Sovereign risk concerns particularly in the Euro area, affected financial markets for the greater part of the year with contagion of Greece’s sovereign debt problem spreading to India and other economies by way of higher-than-normal levels of volatility.

The funding constraints in international financial markets could impact both the availability and cost of foreign funding for banks and corporates. Since the Indian financial system is bank dominated, banks ability to withstand stress is critical to overall financial stability. Indian banks, however remains robust, not with standing a decline in capital to risk weighed assets ratio and a raise in nonperforming asset levels in the recent past. Capital adequacy levels remain above the regularity requirements. The financial market infrastructure continues to function without any major disruption. With further globalization, consolidation, deregulation and diversification of these financial systems, the banking business may become more complex and riskier. Issues like risk and liquidity management and enhancing skill therefore assume greater significance.

The Indian financial markets are affected by global changes mainly due to the:

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
The law in many parts of the world increasingly restricts the discharge of agricultural slurry in to water courses. The simplest and most economically sound practice returns the material to the land as semisolid manure or as sprayed slurry. This dilutes its concentration in the environment to what might have occurred in a more primitive and sustainable type of agriculture and converts pollutant into fertilizer. Soil microorganisms decompose the organic components of sewage and slurry and most of the mineral nutrients become available to be absorbed again by the vegetation. The excess input of the nutrients, both nitrogen and phosphorus – based, from agricultural runoff (and human sewage) has caused many ‘healthy’ oligotrophic lakes (low nutrient concentrations, low plant productivity with abundant water weeds, and clear water) to change to eutrophic condition where high nutrient lead to high phytoplankton productivity (sometimes dominated by bloom-forming toxic species). This makes the water turbid, eliminates large plants and, in the worst situations, leads to anoxia and fish kills; so called cultural eutrophication. Thus important ecosystem services are lost, including the provisioning service of wild-caught fish and cultural service associated with recreation.
The process of cultural eutrophication of lakes has been understood for some time. But only recently did scientists notice huge ‘dead zones’ in the oceans near river outlets, particularly those draining large catchment areas such as Mississippi and North America and the Yangtze in China. The nutrient enriched water flows through streams, rivers and lakes and eventually to the estuary and ocean where the ecological impact may be ^huge, killing virtually all invertebrates and fish in areas up to 70,000 km² in extent. More than 150 sea areas worldwide are now regularly starved of oxygen as a result of decomposition of algal blooms, fueled particularly by nitrogen from agricultural runoff of fertilizers and sewage from large cities. Oceanic dead zones are typically associated with industrialized nations and usually lie off countries that subsidize their agriculture, encouraging farmers to increase productivity and use more fertilizer.

According to the passage, why should the discharge agricultural slurry into watercourses be restricted?

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

The subject of democracy has become severely muddled because of the way the rhetoric surrounding it has been used in recent years, there, increasingly, an oddly confused dichotomy between those echo want to ‘impose’ democracy on countries in the non- western world(in these countries’ ‘own interest’, of course) and those who are opposed to such ‘own ways’). But the entire language of ‘imposition’, used by both sides, is extraordinarily inappropriate since it makes the implicit assumption that democracy belongs exclusively to the west, taking it be a quintessentially ‘Western’ idea which has originated and flourished only in the West.

But the theses and the pessimism it generates about the possibility of democratic practice in the world would be extremely hard to justify. There were several experiments in local democracy in the world, we have to take an understanding the roots of democracy in the world. We have to take an interest in the history of people participation and public reasoning in different parts of the world. We have to look beyond thinking of democracy only in terms of European and American evolution. We would fail to understand the pervasive demands for participatory living, on which Aristotle spoke with far-reaching insight, if we take democracy to be a kind of a specialized cultural product of the West. It cannot, of course, be doubted that the institutional structure of the contemporary practice of democracy is largely the product of European and American experience over the last few centuries. This is extremely important to recognize since these developments in institutional formats were immensely innovative and ultimately effective. There can be little doubt that there is a major ‘Western’ achievement here.

Which of the following is closest to the view of democracy as mentioned in the above passage?

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

The law in many parts of the world increasingly restricts the discharge of agricultural slurry in to water courses. The simplest and most economically sound practice returns the material to the land as semisolid manure or as sprayed slurry. This dilutes its concentration in the environment to what might have occurred in a more primitive and sustainable type of agriculture and converts pollutant into fertilizer. Soil microorganisms decompose the organic components of sewage and slurry and most of the mineral nutrients become available to be absorbed again by the vegetation. The excess input of the nutrients, both nitrogen and phosphorus – based, from agricultural runoff (and human sewage) has caused many ‘healthy’ oligotrophic lakes (low nutrient concentrations, low plant productivity with abundant water weeds, and clear water) to change to eutrophic condition where high nutrient lead to high phytoplankton productivity (sometimes dominated by bloom-forming toxic species). This makes the water turbid, eliminates large plants and, in the worst situations, leads to anoxia and fish kills; so called cultural eutrophication. Thus important ecosystem services are lost, including the provisioning service of wild-caught fish and cultural service associated with recreation.
The process of cultural eutrophication of lakes has been understood for some time. But only recently did scientists notice huge ‘dead zones’ in the oceans near river outlets, particularly those draining large catchment areas such as Mississippi and North America and the Yangtze in China. The nutrient enriched water flows through streams, rivers and lakes and eventually to the estuary and ocean where the ecological impact may be ^huge, killing virtually all invertebrates and fish in areas up to 70,000 km² in extent. More than 150 sea areas worldwide are now regularly starved of oxygen as a result of decomposition of algal blooms, fueled particularly by nitrogen from agricultural runoff of fertilizers and sewage from large cities. Oceanic dead zones are typically associated with industrialized nations and usually lie off countries that subsidize their agriculture, encouraging farmers to increase productivity and use more fertilizer.
The passage refers to the conversion of “pollutant to fertilizer”. What is the pollutant and what is the fertilizer in this context?

Seven-year-old Jim came home from the park without his new bicycle. “An old man and a little boy borrowed it”, he explained. “They are going to bring it back at four o’clock.” His parents were upset that he has given his expensive new bicycle but were secretly proud of his kindness and faith. Came four o’clock, no bicycle. The parents were anxious. But at 4:30, the doorbell rang, and there stood a happy man and a boy, with a bicycle and a box of chocolates. Jim suddenly disappeared in to bed room, and then came running out. “All right” he said after examining the bicycle. “You can have your watch back!”

Jim returned the watch to the old man and the little boy because:

Read the following passage and answer the two items that follow. Your answers to these questions should be based on the passage only.

Crude mineral oil comes out of the earth as a thick brown or black liquid with a strong smell. It is a complex mixture of many different substances, each with its own individual qualities. Most of them are combinations of hydrogen and carbon in varying proportions. Such hydrocarbons are also found in other forms such as Bitumen, Asphalt and natural gas. Mineral oil originates from the carcasses of tiny animals and plants that live in the sea. Over millions of years, these dead creatures form large deposits under the sea bed; and ocean currents cover them with a blanket of sand and silt. As this mineral hardens, it becomes sedimentary rock and effectively shut out the oxygen, so preventing the complete decomposition of the marine deposits underneath. The layers of sedimentary rock become thicker and heavier. Their pressure produces heat, which transforms the tiny carcasses in to crude oil in a process that is still going on today.
Mineral oil deposits under the sea do not get completely decomposed because they:

It was already late when we set out for the next town, which according to the map was about fifteen kilometers away on the other side of the hills. There we felt that we would find a bed for the night. Darkness fell soon after we left the village, but luckily we met no one as we drove swiftly along the narrow winding road that led to the hills. As we climbed higher, it became colder and rain began to fall, making it difficult at times to see the road. I asked John, my companion, to drive more slowly. After we had travelled for about twenty kilometers, there was still no sign of the town which was marked on the map. We were beginning to get worried. Then without warning, the car stopped and we found we had run Out of petrol.

The author asked John to drive more slowly because

The subject of democracy has become severely muddled because of the way the rhetoric surrounding it has been used in recent years, there, increasingly, an oddly confused dichotomy between those echo want to ‘impose’ democracy on countries in the non- western world(in these countries’ ‘own interest’, of course) and those who are opposed to such ‘own ways’). But the entire language of ‘imposition’, used by both sides, is extraordinarily inappropriate since it makes the implicit assumption that democracy belongs exclusively to the west, taking it be a quintessentially ‘Western’ idea which has originated and flourished only in the West.

But the theses and the pessimism it generates about the possibility of democratic practice in the world would be extremely hard to justify. There were several experiments in local democracy in the world, we have to take an understanding the roots of democracy in the world. We have to take an interest in the history of people participation and public reasoning in different parts of the world. We have to look beyond thinking of democracy only in terms of European and American evolution. We would fail to understand the pervasive demands for participatory living, on which Aristotle spoke with far-reaching insight, if we take democracy to be a kind of a specialized cultural product of the West. It cannot, of course, be doubted that the institutional structure of the contemporary practice of democracy is largely the product of European and American experience over the last few centuries. This is extremely important to recognize since these developments in institutional formats were immensely innovative and ultimately effective. There can be little doubt that there is a major ‘Western’ achievement here.

With reference to the passage, the following assumptions have been made:

1. Many of the non-Western countries are unable to have democracy because they take democracy to be a specialized cultural product of the West.
2. Western countries are always trying to impose democracy on non-Western countries.

Which of the above is/are valid assumption/assumptions?

A Stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for foot-passengers, but she replied ‘I'm going to walk where I like. We've got liberty now.’ It did not occur to the dear lady that if liberty entitled the foot-passenger to walk down the middle of the road it also entitled the taxi-driver to drive on the pavement, and that the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everything would be getting in everybody else's way and nobody would get anywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy.

It was pointed out to the lady that she should walk on the pavement because she was -

It was already late when we set out for the next town, which according to the map was about fifteen kilometers away on the other side of the hills. There we felt that we would find a bed for the night. Darkness fell soon after we left the village, but luckily we met no one as we drove swiftly along the narrow winding road that led to the hills. As we climbed higher, it became colder and rain began to fall, making it difficult at times to see the road. I asked John, my companion, to drive more slowly. After we had travelled for about twenty kilometers, there was still no sign of the town which was marked on the map. We were beginning to get worried. Then without warning, the car stopped and we found we had run Out of petrol.

The travellers were worried after twenty kilometers because

A Stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for foot-passengers, but she replied ‘I'm going to walk where I like. We've got liberty now.’ It did not occur to the dear lady that if liberty entitled the foot-passenger to walk down the middle of the road it also entitled the taxi-driver to drive on the pavement, and that the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everything would be getting in everybody else's way and nobody would get anywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy.
The old lady failed to realise that

Corporate governance is based on principles such as conducting the business with all integrity and fairness, being transparent with regard to all transactions, making all the necessary disclosures and decisions, complying with all the laws of the land, accountability and responsibility towards the stakeholders and commitment to conducting business in an ethical manner. Another point which is highlighted on corporate governance is the need for those in control to be able to distinguish between what are personal and corporate funds while managing a company.

Fundamentally, there is a level of confidence that is associated with a company that is known to have good corporate governance. The presence of an active group of independent directors on the board contributes a great deal towards ensuring confidence m the market. Corporate governance is known to be one of the criteria that foreign institutional investors are increasingly depending on when deciding on which companies to invest in. It is also known to have a positive influence on the share price of the company. Having a clean image on the corporate governance front could also make it easier for companies to source capital at more reasonable costs. Unfortunately, corporate governance often becomes the centre of discussion only after the exposure of a large scam.

According to the passage, which of the following is/are the major benefit/benefits of good corporate governance?

Seven year old Jim came home from the park without his new bicycle. “An old man and a little boy borrowed it”, he explained. “They are going to bring it back at four o’clock.” His parents were upset that he has given his expensive new bicycle, but were secretly proud of his kindness and faith. Came four o’clock, no bicycle. The parents were anxious. But at 4:30, the doorbell rang, and there stood a happy man and a boy, with a bicycle and a box of chocolates. Jim suddenly disappeared in to bed room, and then came running out. “All right” he said after examining the bicycle. “You can have your watch back!”

When Jim came home without his bicycle, his parents:

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
The law in many parts of the world increasingly restricts the discharge of agricultural slurry in to water courses. The simplest and most economically sound practice returns the material to the land as semisolid manure or as sprayed slurry. This dilutes its concentration in the environment to what might have occurred in a more primitive and sustainable type of agriculture and converts pollutant into fertilizer. Soil microorganisms decompose the organic components of sewage and slurry and most of the mineral nutrients become available to be absorbed again by the vegetation. The excess input of the nutrients, both nitrogen and phosphorus – based, from agricultural runoff (and human sewage) has caused many ‘healthy’ oligotrophic lakes (low nutrient concentrations, low plant productivity with abundant water weeds, and clear water) to change to eutrophic condition where high nutrient lead to high phytoplankton productivity (sometimes dominated by bloom-forming toxic species). This makes the water turbid, eliminates large plants and, in the worst situations, leads to anoxia and fish kills; so called cultural eutrophication. Thus important ecosystem services are lost, including the provisioning service of wild-caught fish and cultural service associated with recreation.
The process of cultural eutrophication of lakes has been understood for some time. But only recently did scientists notice huge ‘dead zones’ in the oceans near river outlets, particularly those draining large catchment areas such as Mississippi and North America and the Yangtze in China. The nutrient enriched water flows through streams, rivers and lakes and eventually to the estuary and ocean where the ecological impact may be ^huge, killing virtually all invertebrates and fish in areas up to 70,000 km² in extent. More than 150 sea areas worldwide are now regularly starved of oxygen as a result of decomposition of algal blooms, fueled particularly by nitrogen from agricultural runoff of fertilizers and sewage from large cities. Oceanic dead zones are typically associated with industrialized nations and usually lie off countries that subsidize their agriculture, encouraging farmers to increase productivity and use more fertilizer.

What is/are the characteristics of a water body with cultural eutrophication?

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Financial markets in India have acquired greater depth and liquidity over the years. Steady reforms since 1991 have led to growing linkages and its financial system with the global economy. Weak global economic prospects and continuing uncertainties in the international financial markets therefore, have had their impact on the emerging market economies. Sovereign risk concerns particularly in the Euro area, affected financial markets for the greater part of the year with contagion of Greece’s sovereign debt problem spreading to India and other economies by way of higher-than-normal levels of volatility.

The funding constraints in international financial markets could impact both the availability and cost of foreign funding for banks and corporates. Since the Indian financial system is bank dominated, banks ability to withstand stress is critical to overall financial stability. Indian banks, however remains robust, not with standing a decline in capital to risk weighed assets ratio and a raise in nonperforming asset levels in the recent past. Capital adequacy levels remain above the regularity requirements. The financial market infrastructure continues to function without any major disruption. With further globalization, consolidation, deregulation and diversification of these financial systems, the banking business may become more complex and riskier. Issues like risk and liquidity management and enhancing skill therefore assume greater significance.

According to the passage, the financial markets in the emerging market economies including India had the adverse impact in recent years due to:

1. Weak global economic prospects
2. Uncertainties in the international financial markets
3. Sovereign risk concerns in the Euro area
4. Bad monsoons and the resultant crop loss

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Ecological-research over the last quarter of the century has established the deleterious effects of habitat fragmentation due to the mining, highways and such other intrusions on forests. When a large block of forests gets fragmented into smaller bits, the edges of all these bits come into contact with human activities resulting in the degradation of the entire forests. Continuity of forested landscapes and corridors gets disrupted affecting several extinction prone species of wild life. Habitat fragmentation is therefore considered as the most serious threat to biodiversity conservation. Ad hoc grants of forest lands to mining companies coupled with rampant illegal mining is aggravating this threat.
What is the central focus of the passage?

The law in many parts of the world increasingly restricts the discharge of agricultural slurry in to water courses. The simplest and most economically sound practice returns the material to the land as semisolid manure or as sprayed slurry. This dilutes its concentration in the environment to what might have occurred in a more primitive and sustainable type of agriculture and converts pollutant into fertilizer. Soil microorganisms decompose the organic components of sewage and slurry and most of the mineral nutrients become available to be absorbed again by the vegetation. The excess input of the nutrients, both nitrogen and phosphorus – based, from agricultural runoff (and human sewage) has caused many ‘healthy’ oligotrophic lakes (low nutrient concentrations, low plant productivity with abundant water weeds, and clear water) to change to eutrophic condition where high nutrient lead to high phytoplankton productivity (sometimes dominated by bloom-forming toxic species). This makes the water turbid, eliminates large plants and, in the worst situations, leads to anoxia and fish kills; so called cultural eutrophication. Thus important ecosystem services are lost, including the provisioning service of wild-caught fish and cultural service associated with recreation.

The process of cultural eutrophication of lakes has been understood for some time. But only recently did scientists notice huge ‘dead zones’ in the oceans near river outlets, particularly those draining large catchment areas such as Mississippi and North America and the Yangtze in China. The nutrient enriched water flows through streams, rivers and lakes and eventually to the estuary and ocean where the ecological impact may be ^huge, killing virtually all invertebrates and fish in areas up to 70,000 km² in extent. More than 150 sea areas worldwide are now regularly starved of oxygen as a result of decomposition of algal blooms, fueled particularly by nitrogen from agricultural runoff of fertilizers and sewage from large cities. Oceanic dead zones are typically associated with industrialized nations and usually lie off countries that subsidize their agriculture, encouraging farmers to increase productivity and use more fertilizer.

What is the central theme of this passage?

The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until man’s nature changes, his physical needs will always arise, and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will remove them completely. The only solution of the problem is to make mankind pure. Ignorance is the mother of evil and of all the misery we see. Let men have light, let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated; then along will misery cease in the country into a charitable asylum we may fill the land with hospitals, but human misery will continue until man’s character change.

According to the passage, which of the following statements is most likely to be true as the reason for man’s miseries?

It was already late when we set out for the next town, which according to the map was about fifteen kilometers away on the other side of the hills. There we felt that we would find a bed for the night. Darkness fell soon after we left the village, but luckily we met no one as we drove swiftly along the narrow winding road that led to the hills. As we climbed higher, it became colder and rain began to fall, making it difficult at times to see the road. I asked John, my companion, to drive more slowly. After we had travelled for about twenty kilometers, there was still no sign of the town which was marked on the map. We were beginning to get worried. Then without warning, the car stopped and we found we had run Out of petrol.

The travellers set out for the town although it was getting dark because

A number of empirical studies find that farmers are risk averse, though only moderately in many cases. There is also evidence to show that farmers’ risk aversion results in crop-ping patterns and input use designed to reduce risk rather than to maximize income. Farmers adopt a number of strategies to manage and cope with agricultural risks. These include practices like crop and field diversification, non-form employment, storage of stocks and strategic migration of family members. These are also institutions ranging from share tenancy to kinship, extended family and informal credit agencies. One major obstacle to risk sharing by farmers is that the same type of risk can affect a large number of farmers in the region. Empirical studies show that the traditional methods are not adequate. Hence there is a need for policy interventions, especially methods that cut across geographical regions.

Policies may aim at tackling agricultural risks directly or indirectly. Examples of risk-specific policies are crop insurance, price stabilization and the development of varieties resistant to pests and diseases. Policies which affect risk indirectly are irrigation, subsidized credit and access to information. No single risk specific policy is sufficient to reduce risk and is without side effects, whereas policies not specific to risk influence the general situation and affect risks only indirectly. Crop insurance as a policy measure to tackle agricultural risk directly, deserves careful consideration in the Indian context and in many other developing countries – because the majority of farmers depend on rain-fed agriculture and in many areas yield variability is the predominant cause of their income instability.

Which of the following observations emerge from the above passage?

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Ecological-research over the last quarter of the century has established the deleterious effects of habitat fragmentation due to the mining, highways and such other intrusions on forests. When a large block of forests gets fragmented into smaller bits, the edges of all these bits come into contact with human activities resulting in the degradation of the entire forests. Continuity of forested landscapes and corridors gets disrupted affecting several extinction prone species of wild life. Habitat fragmentation is therefore considered as the most serious threat to biodiversity conservation. Ad hoc grants of forest lands to mining companies coupled with rampant illegal mining is aggravating this threat.
What is the purpose of maintaining the continuity of forested landscapes and corridors?

Read the following passage and answer the two items that follow. Your answers to these questions should be based on the passage only.

Crude mineral oil comes out of the earth as a thick brown or black liquid with a strong smell. It is a complex mixture of many different substances, each with its own individual qualities. Most of them are combinations of hydrogen and carbon in varying proportions. Such hydrocarbons are also found in other forms such as Bitumen, Asphalt and natural gas. Mineral oil originates from the carcasses of tiny animals and plants that live in the sea. Over millions of years, these dead creatures form large deposits under the sea bed; and ocean currents cover them with a blanket of sand and silt. As this mineral hardens, it becomes sedimentary rock and effectively shut out the oxygen, so preventing the complete decomposition of the marine deposits underneath. The layers of sedimentary rock become thicker and heavier. Their pressure produces heat, which transforms the tiny carcasses in to crude oil in a process that is still going on today.
Sedimentary rock leads to the formation of oil deposits because:

A Stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for foot-passengers, but she replied ‘I'm going to walk where I like. We've got liberty now.’ It did not occur to the dear lady that if liberty entitled the foot-passenger to walk down the middle of the road it also entitled the taxi-driver to drive on the pavement, and that the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everything would be getting in everybody else's way and nobody would get anywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy.
The lady refused to move from the middle of the street because

Malnutrition most commonly occurs between the ages of six months and two years. This happens despite the child’s food requirements being less than that of an older child. Malnutrition is often attributed to poverty, but it has been found that even in households where adults eat adequate quantities of food, more than fifty per cent of children-under-five do not consume enough food. The child’s dependence on someone else to feed him/her is primarily responsible for the malnutrition. Very often the mother is working and the responsibility of feeding the young child is left to an older sibling. It is therefore crucial to increase awareness regarding the child’s food needs and how to satisfy them.

According to the passage, malnutrition in children can be reduced:

Corporate governance is based on principles such as conducting the business with all integrity and fairness, being transparent with regard to all transactions, making all the necessary disclosures and decisions, complying with all the laws of the land, accountability and responsibility towards the stakeholders and commitment to conducting business in an ethical manner. Another point which is highlighted on corporate governance is the need for those in control to be able to distinguish between what are personal and corporate funds while managing a company.

Fundamentally, there is a level of confidence that is associated with a company that is known to have good corporate governance. The presence of an active group of independent directors on the board contributes a great deal towards ensuring confidence m the market. Corporate governance is known to be one of the criteria that foreign institutional investors are increasingly depending on when deciding on which companies to invest in. It is also known to have a positive influence on the share price of the company. Having a clean image on the corporate governance front could also make it easier for companies to source capital at more reasonable costs. Unfortunately, corporate governance often becomes the centre of discussion only after the exposure of a large scam.

According to the passage, which of the following should be the practice/practices in good corporate governance?

Select the correct answer using the codes given below:

Most champions of democracy have been rather reticent in suggesting that democracy would itself-promote development and enhancement of social welfare - they have tended to see them as good but distinctly separate and largely independent goals. The detractors of democracy, on the other hand, seemed to have been quite willing to express their diagnosis of what they see as serious tensions between democracy and development. The theorists of the practical split - ‘Make up your mind: do you want democracy, or instead, do you want development?’ - Often came, at least to start with, from East Asian countries, and their voice grew in influence as several of these countries were immensely successful - through the 1970s and 1980s and even later - in promoting economic growth without pursuing democracy.

To deal with these issues we have to pay particular attention to both the content of what can be called development and to the interpretation of democracy (in particular to the respective roles of voting and of public reasoning.) The assessment of development cannot be divorced from the lives that people can lead and the real freedom that they enjoy: Development can scarcely be seen merely in terms of enhancement of inanimate objects of convenience, such as a rise in the GNP (or in personal incomes), or industrialization - important as they may be as means to the real ends. Their value must depend on what they do to the lives and freedom of the people involved, which must be central to the idea of development.

If development is understood in a broader way, with a focus on human lives, then it becomes immediately clear that the relation between development and democracy has to be seen partly in terms of their constitutive connection, rather than only through their external links. Even though the question has often been asked whether political freedom is ‘conducive to development’, we must not miss the crucial recognition that political liberties and democratic rights are among the ‘constituent components’ of development. Their relevance for development does not have to be established indirectly through their contribution to the growth of GNP.

What does a ‘constitutive’ connection between democracy and development imply?

Chemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance. The evolution of pesticide resistance is simply natural selection in action. It is almost certain to occur when vast numbers of a genetically variable population are killed. One or a few individuals may be unusually resistant (perhaps because they possess an enzyme that can detoxify the pesticide). If the pesticide is applied repeatedly, each successive generation of the pest will contain a larger proportion of resistant individuals Pests typically have a high intrinsic rate of reproduction, and so few individuals in one generation may give rise to hundreds or thousands in the next, and resistance spreads very rapidly in a population.

This problem was often ignored in the past, even though the first case of DDT (dichloro diphenyltrichloroethane) resistance was reported early as 1946. There is exponential increase in the numbers of m vertebrates that have evolved resistance and in the number of pesticides against which resistance has evolved. Resistance has been recorded in every family of arthropod pests (including dipterans such as mosquitoes and house flies, as well as beetles, moths, wasps, fleas, Lice and mites) as well as well as in weeds and plant pathogens, Take the Alabama leaf-worm, a moth pest of cotton, as an example. It has developed resistance in one or more regions of the world to Aldrin, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, lindane and toxaphene.

If chemical pesticides brought nothing but, problem-if their use was intrinsically and acutely unsustainable — then they would already have fallen out of widespread use. This has not happened. Instead, their rate of production has increased rapidly. The ratio of cost of benefit for the individual agricultural producer has remained in favour of pesticide use. In the USA insecticides have been estimated to benefit the agricultural products to the tune of around $5 for every $1 spent.

Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic disease, are so frightening that the social and health cost of using pesticides have to be ignored. In general, the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as lives saved, ‘economic efficiency of food production’’ and total food produced. In these very fundamental senses, their use may be described as sustainable. In practice, sustainability depends on continually developing new pesticides that keep at least one step ahead of the pests pesticides that are less persistent, biodegradable and more accurately targeted all the pests.

Why is the use of chemical pesticides generally justified by giving the examples of poor and developing countries?

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Today’s developing economic use much less energy per capita than developed countries such as the United States did at similar incomes, showing the potential for lower-carbon growth. Adaptation and mitigation need to be integrated into a climate-smart development strategy that increases resilience, reduces the threat of further global warming, and improves development outcomes. Adaptation and mitigation measures can advance development, and prosperity can raise incomes and foster better institutions. A healthier population living in better-built houses and with access to bank loans and social security is better equipped to deal with a changing climate and its consequences. Advancing robust, resilient development policies that’ promote adaptation is needed today because changes, in the climate, already begun, will increase even in the short term.

Which of the following conditions of growth can add to vulnerability?

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Invasions of exotic species into new geographic areas sometimes occur naturally and without human agency. However, human actions have increased this trickle to a flood. Human caused introductions may occur either accidentally as a consequence of human transport, or intentionally but illegally to serve some private purpose or legitimately to procure some hoped-for public benefit by bringing a pest under control, producing new agricultural products new agricultural products or providing novel recreational opportunities. Many introduced species are assimilated into communities without much obvious effect. However, some have been responsible for dramatic changes to native species and natural communities. For example, the accidental introduction of the brown tree snake Boigairregularis into Guam, an island in the Pacific, has through nest predation reduced 10 endemic forest bird species to the point of extinction.

One of the major reasons for the world’s great biodiversity is the occurrence of centers of endemism so that similar habitats in different parts of the world are occupied by different groups of species that happen to have evolved there. If every species naturally had access to everywhere on the globe, we might expect a relatively small number of successful species to become dominant in each biome. The extent to which this homogenization can happen naturally is restricted by the limited powers of dispersal. By virtue of the transport opportunities offered by humans, these barriers have been breached by an ever-increasing number of exotic species. The effects of introductions have been to convert a hugely diverse range of local community compositions into something much more homogeneous. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that introducing species to a region will inevitably cause a decline in species richness there. For example, there are numerous species of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates found in continental Europe but absent from the British Isles (many because they have so far failed to recolonize after the last glaciations). Their introduction would be likely to significant detrimental effect noted above arises where aggressive species provide a novel challenge to endemic biotas ill-equipped to deal with them.

How have the human beings influenced the biodiversity?

For fourteen and a half months I lived in my little call or room in the Dehradun jail, and I began to feel as if I was almost a part of it. I was familiar with every bit of it, I knew every mark and dent on the whitewashed walls and on the uneven floor and the ceiling with its moth-eaten rafters. In the little yard outside I greeted little tufts of grass and odd bits of stone as old friends. I was not alone in my cell, for several colonies of wasp and hornets lived there, and many lizards found a home behind the rafters, emerging in the evenings in search of prey.
Which of the following explains best the sentences in the passage ‘I was almost a part of it’?

In a typical Western liberal context, deepening of democracy invariably leads to consolidation of ‘liberal values’. In the Indian context, democratization is translated into greater involvement of people not as ‘individuals’ which is a staple to liberal discourse, but as communities or groups. Individuals are getting involved in the public sphere not as ‘atomized’ individuals but as members of primordial communities drawn on religious or caste identity. Community-identity seems to be the governing force. It is not therefore surprising that the so-called peripheral groups continue to maintain their identities with reference to the social groups (caste, religion or sect) to which they belong while getting involved in the political processes despite the fact that their political goals remain more or less identical. By helping to articulate the political voice of the mariginalized, democracy in India has led to ‘a loosening of social strictures’ and empowered the peripherals to be confident of their ability to improve the socio-economic conditions in which they are placed. This is a significant political process that had led to a silent revolution through a meaningful transfer of power from the upper caste elites to various subaltern groups within the democratic framework of public governance.

According to the passage, what does ‘deepening of democracy’ mean in the Western context?

Education is a process in which

The need for Competition Law becomes more evident when foreign direct investment (FDI) is liberalized. The impact of FDI is not always pro-competitive. Very often FDI takes the form of a foreign corporation acquiring a domestic enterprise or establishing a joint venture with one. By making such an acquisition the foreign investor may substantially lessen competition and gain a dominant position in the relevant market, thus charging higher prices. Another scenario is where the affiliates of two separate multinational companies (MNCs) have been established in competition with one another in a particular developing economy, following the liberalization of FDI. Subsequently, the parent companies overseas merge. With the affiliate’s no longer remaining independent, competition in the host country may be virtually eliminated and the prices of the products may be artificially inflated. Most of these adverse consequences of mergers and acquisitions by MNCs can be avoided if an effective competition law is in place. Also, an economy that has implemented an effective competition law is in a better position to attract FDI than one that has not. This is not just because most MNCs are expected to be accustomed to the operation of such a law in their home countries and know how to deal with such concerns but also that MNCs expect competition authorities to ensure a level playing field between domestic and foreign firms.

According to the passage, how does a foreign investor dominate the relevant domestic market?

Which of the statements given above are correct?

A local man, staying on the top floor of an old wooden house, was awakened at midnight by a fire. Losing his way in a smoke-filled passage, he missed the stairway and went into another room. He picked up a bundle to protect his face from the fire and immediately fell through the floor below where he managed to escape through a clear doorway. The ‘bundle’ proved to be the baby of the Mayor's wife. The ‘hero’ was congratulated by all.

The man went into another room because

Today’s developing economic use much less energy per capita than developed countries such as the United States did at similar incomes, showing the potential for lower-carbon growth. Adaptation and mitigation need to be integrated into a climate-smart development strategy that increases resilience, reduces the threat of further global warming, and improves development outcomes. Adaptation and mitigation measures can advance development, and prosperity can raise incomes and foster better institutions. A healthier population living in better-built houses and with access to bank loans and social security is better equipped to deal with a changing climate and its consequences. Advancing robust, resilient development policies that’ promote adaptation is needed today because changes, in the climate, already begun, will increase even in the short term.

What does low-carbon growth imply in the present context?