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Reading Comprehension Test 67

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Reading Comprehension Test 67
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  • Question 1
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    The question in this section is based on a single passage. The question is to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage. Kindly note that more than one of the choices may conceivably answer the question. However, you are to choose the most appropriate answer; that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question.

         The spread of education in society is at the foundation of success in countries that are latecomers to development. In the quest for development, primary education is absolutely essential because it creates the base. But higher education is just as important for it provides the cutting edge. Universities are the life-blood of higher education. Islands of excellence in professional education, such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), are valuable complements but cannot be substituted for universities which provide educational opportunities for people at large.
         There can be no doubt that higher education has made a significant contribution to economic development, social progress and political democracy in independent India. It is a source of dynamism for the economy. It has created social opportunities for people, it has fostered the vibrant democracy in our polity. It has provided a beginning for the creation of a knowledge society. But it would be a mistake to focus on its strengths alone. It has weaknesses that are cause for serious concern.
         There is, in fact, a quiet crisis in higher education in India that runs deep. It is not yet discernible simply because there are pockets of excellence, an enormous reservoir of talented young people and an intense competition in the admissions process.
    And, in some important spheres, we continue to reap the benefits of what was sown in higher education 50 years ago by the founding fathers of the republic. The reality is that we have miles to go. The proportion of our population, in the age group 18-24, that enters the world of higher education is around 7%, which is only one-half the average for Asia. The opportunities for higher education, in terms of the number of places in universities, are simply not enough in relation to our need. What is more, the quality of higher education is most of our universities requires substantial improvement.
         It is clear that the system of higher education in India faces serious challenges. It needs a systematic overhaul so that we can educate much larger numbers without diluting academic standards. This is imperative because the transformation of economy and society in the 21st century would depend, in significant part, on the spread and the quality of education among our people, particularly in the sphere of higher education. It is only an inclusive society that can provide the foundations for a knowledge society.
         The challenges that confront higher education in India are clear. It needs a massive expansion of opportunities for higher education, to 1500 universities nationwide, that would enable India to attain a gross enrollment ration of at least 15% by 2015. It is just as important to raise the average quality of higher education in the very sphere. At the same time, it is essential to create institutions that are exemplars of excellence at par with the best in the world. In the pursuit of these objectives, providing people with access to higher education in a socially inclusive manner is imperative. The realization of these objectives, combined with access. would not only develop the skills and capabilities we need for the economy but would also help transform India into a knowledge economy and society.

    ...view full instructions

    According to the passage, the current state of affairs of higher education in India is
    Solution
    The second sentence of he last paragraph suggests that option (c) correctly expresses about the current state of affairs of higher education in India
  • Question 2
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the following passage carefully and answer the question that follows:
         Why don't I have a telephone? Not because I pretend to be wise or pose as unusual. There are two chief reasons; because I don't really like the telephone, and because I find I can still work and play, eat, breathe, and sleep without it. Why don't I like the telephone? Because I think it is a pest
    and a time waster. It may create unnecessary suspense and anxiety, as when you wait for an expected call that doesn't come; or irritating delay, as when you keep ringing a number that is always engaged.
         As for speaking in a public telephone booth, that seems to be really horrible. You would notuse it because you will find other people waiting before you. When you do get into the booth, you are half suffocated by stale, unventilated air, flavoured with cheap face-powder and chain
    smoking; and by the time you have begun your conversation your back is chilled by the cold looks  of somebody who is moving about restlessly to  take your place.
         If you have a telephone in your house, you will admit that it tends to ring when you least want it to ring - when you are asleep, or in the middle of a meal or a conversation, or when you are just going out, or when you are in your bath. Are you strong-minded enough to ignore it to say to yourself. 'Ah well, it will be all the same in a 'hundred years time? You are not. You think there may be some important news or message for you. Have you ever rushed dripping from the bath, only to be told that you are a wrong number You were told the truth. In my opinion, if the telephone rings and you decide not to answer it, then you will have to listen to an idiotic bell ringing and 
    ringing in what is supposed to be the privacy of your own home. You might as well buy a bicycle bell and ring it yourself.
         If one, like me, is without a telephone, somebody is sure to say, "Oh, but don't you find you have to write an awful lot of letters? The answer to that is Yes, but I should have to write an awful lot of letters anyway" This may bring the remark "Ah, well if you do have a telephone, at least you must have a typewriter". And the answer to that is  'No'.
         'What, no telephone and no typewriter', Do please explain why? Well, I am a professional man of letters and when I was younger I thought a typewriter would be convenient, I even thought it was necessary, and that editors and publishers would expect anything sent to them to be  typewritten. So, I brought a typewriter and taught myself to type, and for some years, I typed away busily. But I did not enjoy typing. I happen to enjoy the act of writing. I enjoy forming letters or words with a pen, and I never could enjoy typing the keys  of a typewriter.
         There again there was a bell, only little bell that rang at the end of each line - but still a bell. And the fact is, I am not mechanically minded, and the typewriter is a machine. I have never been really drawn to machines. I don't like oiling, cleaning or mending them to work. To control them gives me no sense of power; not of the kind of power that I find interesting. And machines do not like me. When I touch them they tend to break down, get jammed, catch fire or blow up.

    ...view full instructions

    Why does the author dislike using a public telephone booth?
    Solution
    Option B: As it's mentioned in the passage, "As for speaking in a public telephone booth, that seems to be really horrible... When you do get into the booth, you are half suffocated by stale, unventilated air, flavoured with cheap face-powder and chain smoking".
    Hence option B is correct.
    Options A, C and D: These lines are neither mentioned nor implied by the passage. Hence options A, C and D are wrong.
  • Question 3
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Four alternative summaries are given for the text. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

    ...view full instructions

    Physically, inertia is a feeling that you just can't move. Mentally, it is a sluggish mind. Even if you try to be sensitive, if your mind is sluggish, you just don't feel anything intensely. You may even see a tragedy enacted in front of your eyes and not be able to respond meaningfully. You may see one person exploiting another, one group persecuting another and not be able to get angry. Your energy is frozen.
    You are not deliberately refusing to act, you just don't have the capacity.
    (A) Inertia makes your body and mind sluggish. They become insensitive to tragedies, exploitation and persecution because it freezes you energy and decapitates it.
    (B) When you have inertia, you don't act although you see one person exploiting another or one group persecuting another. You don't get angry because you are incapable.
    (C) Inertia is of two types - Physical and Mental. Physical inertia restricts bodily movements. Mental inertia prevents response to events enacted in front of your eyes.
    (D) Physical inertia stops your body from moving, mental inertia freezes your energy and stops your mind from responding meaningfully to events, even tragedies, in front of you.
    Solution
    Option D is able to capture the physical as well as mental aspect of inertia in the passage. It shares the example mentioned: "even tragedies" are not able to invoke any response from a person who's experiencing inertia.
    Hence option D is correct.
    The rest of the options do not mention the most important aspects of inertia mentioned in the passage.
  • Question 4
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the given passage carefully and choose the most appropriate option to the question given below:

          The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since negotiation was an attempt at a 'constitutional reform' of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
         One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was product of a series of trade-offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal disputed settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT disputed settlement less in political terms and more as regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rule-based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organisation, both of which
    inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. 
    Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains that on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning-replicated in many countries-was contained in U.S Ambassador Kantor's defence of the WTO, and it announced to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rule-based environment. A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations creating a further rule will in turn be influenced by legal process. Robert Hudee has written of the 'momentum of legal development', but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of co-operation, since without these value rules would be meaningless in the first place, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
         The moment of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU's internal market, in which the doctrine of 'mutual recognition' handed down in Cassis de Dijon case in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the 'teleological method of interpretation', whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against 'the accomplishment of the most elementary goals forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent
    with slated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with slated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further co-operation.
         In the large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near-revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, that is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
    [passage-footer] [/passage-footer]

    ...view full instructions

    According to the passage, WTO promoted the technical legal values partly through
    Solution
    WTO promoted the technical legal values partly through integrating under one rood the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices.
  • Question 5
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the given passage carefully and choose the most appropriate option to the question given below:

          The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since negotiation was an attempt at a 'constitutional reform' of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
         One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was product of a series of trade-offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal disputed settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT disputed settlement less in political terms and more as regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rule-based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organisation, both of which
    inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. 
    Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains that on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning-replicated in many countries-was contained in U.S Ambassador Kantor's defence of the WTO, and it announced to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rule-based environment. A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations creating a further rule will in turn be influenced by legal process. Robert Hudee has written of the 'momentum of legal development', but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of co-operation, since without these value rules would be meaningless in the first place, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
         The moment of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU's internal market, in which the doctrine of 'mutual recognition' handed down in Cassis de Dijon case in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the 'teleological method of interpretation', whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against 'the accomplishment of the most elementary goals forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent
    with slated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with slated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further co-operation.
         In the large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near-revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, that is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
    [passage-footer] [/passage-footer]

    ...view full instructions

    What would be the closest reason why WTO was not formed in 1970s?
    Solution
    As seen in the passage, "However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since negotiation was an attempt at a 'constitutional reform' of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted...
         One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was product of a series of trade-offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal disputed settlement system.".
    During the 1970s, the important players (USA, Europe, Canada, etc.) did not find it in their best interest to form a WTO. The same is mentioned in option A, hence it is correct.
    The other options are neither mentioned nor implied by the passage.
  • Question 6
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the given passage carefully and answer the question given after the passage.

    Often, we passionately pursue matters that in the future appear to be contradictory to our real intention or nature; and triumph is followed by remorse or regret. There are numerous examples of such a trend in the annals of history and contemporary life.'     
         Alfred Nobel was the son of Immanuel Nobel, an inventor who experimented extensively with a large range of chemicals; he found new methods to blast rocks for the construction of roads and bridges; he was engaged in the development of technology and different weapons; his life revolved around rockets and cannons and gun powder. The ingenuity of the scientist brought him enough wealth to buy the Bofors armament plant in Sweden.
         Paradoxically, Nobel's life was a busy one yet he was lonely; and as he grew older, he began suffering from the guilt of having invented the dynamite that was being used for destructive purposes. He set aside a huge part of his wealth to institute Nobel Prizes. Besides honouring men and women for their extraordinary achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, he wished to honour people who worked for the promotion of peace.
         Another example that comes to one's mind is that of Albert Einstein. In 1939, fearing that the Nazis would win the race to build the world's first atomic bomb, Einstein urged President Franklin D Roosevelt to launch an American programme on nuclear research. The matter was considered and a project called the Manhattan Project was initiated. The project involved intense nuclear research the construction of the world's first atomic bomb.
    All this while, Einstein had the impression that the bomb would be used to protect the world from the Nazis. But in 1945, when Hiroshima was bombed to end World War II, Einstein was deeply grieved and he regretted his endorsement of the need for nuclear research.
         He also stated that had he known that the Germans would be unsuccessful in making the atomic bomb, he would have probably never recommended making one. In 1947, Einstein began working for the cause of disarmament. But, Einstein's name still continues to be linked with the bomb.
         Man's fluctuating thoughts, changing opinions, varying opportunities keep the mind in a state of flux. Hence, the paradox of life it's certain that nothing is certain in life.

    ...view full instructions

    One of the paradoxes in Alfred's life was that he was _______ .
    Solution
    In the third paragraph, 1st sentence it is mentioned that, 'Paradoxically, Nobel's life was a busy one yet he was lonely.' Therefore option (b) justifies the required answer.
  • Question 7
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the given passage carefully and answer the question given after the passage.

    Often, we passionately pursue matters that in the future appear to be contradictory to our real intention or nature; and triumph is followed by remorse or regret. There are numerous examples of such a trend in the annals of history and contemporary life.'     
         Alfred Nobel was the son of Immanuel Nobel, an inventor who experimented extensively with a large range of chemicals; he found new methods to blast rocks for the construction of roads and bridges; he was engaged in the development of technology and different weapons; his life revolved around rockets and cannons and gun powder. The ingenuity of the scientist brought him enough wealth to buy the Bofors armament plant in Sweden.
         Paradoxically, Nobel's life was a busy one yet he was lonely; and as he grew older, he began suffering from the guilt of having invented the dynamite that was being used for destructive purposes. He set aside a huge part of his wealth to institute Nobel Prizes. Besides honouring men and women for their extraordinary achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, he wished to honour people who worked for the promotion of peace.
         Another example that comes to one's mind is that of Albert Einstein. In 1939, fearing that the Nazis would win the race to build the world's first atomic bomb, Einstein urged President Franklin D Roosevelt to launch an American programme on nuclear research. The matter was considered and a project called the Manhattan Project was initiated. The project involved intense nuclear research the construction of the world's first atomic bomb.
    All this while, Einstein had the impression that the bomb would be used to protect the world from the Nazis. But in 1945, when Hiroshima was bombed to end World War II, Einstein was deeply grieved and he regretted his endorsement of the need for nuclear research.
         He also stated that had he known that the Germans would be unsuccessful in making the atomic bomb, he would have probably never recommended making one. In 1947, Einstein began working for the cause of disarmament. But, Einstein's name still continues to be linked with the bomb.
         Man's fluctuating thoughts, changing opinions, varying opportunities keep the mind in a state of flux. Hence, the paradox of life it's certain that nothing is certain in life.

    ...view full instructions

    The Manhattan Project was initiated _______
    Solution
    As per 5th paragraph:.... the Manhattan Project was initiated. The project involved intense nuclear research...... clearly states option (b) is the only appropriate answer.
  • Question 8
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    In view of the passage given below, choose the best option for the blank:
         When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased, so has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledgling has grown tremendously.
         And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetual on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still or walking backward.
         Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had.
         It suffered hardly or not at all during World War II. It had advantages like an English speaking elite quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others, who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness, it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top.
         Hong Kong is a powerhouse. So, is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back, note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car.
         The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism. The government discouraged imports and self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally encouraging inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and therefore, became absolutely uncompetitive. Only, when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent.
         The years since then have been spent in merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it opened under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crooks, who were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, who were to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, who were to be tolerated in the same way as an excisable wart.
         The high expropriatory rates taxation, the licensing laws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude.
         The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created. The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. Some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been all but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide.
         But most of these changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 and the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds to support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself or that of more than a handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations.
         Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no existing policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labor is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business. If one industry is not allowed to retrench labor, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labor. In other ways too, the government hurts industries.
         Public sector monopolies like the Department of Telecommunications and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad.
         The infrastructure is in a shambles party because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business and partly because it does not have the stomach to charge market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government is dragging its feet. At the rate it is going, it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy. By then, of course, the world would have moved even farther ahead.

    ...view full instructions

    India was in a better condition than other Asian nations because
    Solution
       Compared with large chunks of what was then the
    developing world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand,
    Indonesia, China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong... It [India] began with a far better infrastructure 
    than most of these countries had. It suffered hardly or not at all during the World War II. It had advantages like an English speaking elite quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others, who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen."- these lines from the passage support both options A and B- India was in a better condition than other Asian nations because it didn't face the ravages of World War II and it had an English speaking populace and good business sense. Option D combines these two options so D is the answer.
  • Question 9
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the given passage carefully and choose the most appropriate option to the question given below:

          The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since negotiation was an attempt at a 'constitutional reform' of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?
         One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was product of a series of trade-offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal disputed settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT disputed settlement less in political terms and more as regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rule-based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organisation, both of which
    inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. 
    Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains that on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule-based system with those gains. This reasoning-replicated in many countries-was contained in U.S Ambassador Kantor's defence of the WTO, and it announced to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rule-based environment. A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations creating a further rule will in turn be influenced by legal process. Robert Hudee has written of the 'momentum of legal development', but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule-based system of co-operation, since without these value rules would be meaningless in the first place, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.
         The moment of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU's internal market, in which the doctrine of 'mutual recognition' handed down in Cassis de Dijon case in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the 'teleological method of interpretation', whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against 'the accomplishment of the most elementary goals forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent
    with slated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with slated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further co-operation.
         In the large part the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near-revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, that is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
    [passage-footer] [/passage-footer]

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    In the method of interpretation of the European Court of Justice ________________________________________________.
    Solution
    Option A: As mentioned in the passage, "One means the Court used to expand integration was the 'teleological method of interpretation', whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against 'the accomplishment of the most elementary goals forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent".
    the actions of member states were evaluated against the community goals (most elementary goals forth in the preamble to the treaty).
    Hence option A is correct.
    Options B, C and D: These lines are neither mentioned nor implied by the passage. Hence these options are incorrect.
  • Question 10
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Read the following passage carefully and then answer the question that follows.     

         Rural manual workers comprise the single largest occupational category in India. In 1991, according to the National Commission on Rural Labour, 60 per cent of the workers in rural India were manual workers and they numbered more than 160 million. The changes in the working and living conditions of rural labourers are thus central to changes in the welfare of the rural population and of the country as a whole. The structure and working of rural labour markets in India are complex; as is well known, there is great diversity across regions and across segments of the labour market. This article brings together an interesting body of research that seeks to understand and explain the types of changes that have accrued in the structure of rural labour markets over the last few decades.
         The 1980s were characterised by an explosion of the rural labour force, slow employment growth in agriculture and a rise in the share of non-agricultural employment. The decade was also characterized by growing casualisation of the workforce (for a relative rise in casual employment as opposed to regular employment). At the same time, it was a period when agricultural wages increased in real terms and when income poverty declined. There was what may be called "the tension between the estimated decline in poverty on the one hand, and the slow growth of agricultural
    employment and increased casualisation of the labour force on the other. Some of the trends in the development of rural labour over for this period are a source of concern. These include, as Radhakrishnan and Sharma note, the continuous widening of the gap between labour productivity in agricultural and non-agricultural occupations, the burgeoning mass of rural casual workers who have no social security safety net, and the increasing number of women employed at very low wages in agriculture. Another matter for concern, one that emerges from the desegregation of data on rural unemployment by age groups, is that the incidence of unemployment is higher for persons in the age group of 15-29 than for other age groups, in other words, unemployment is typically high among new entrants to the workforce.
         In her review of trends in wages employment and poverty, Dheila Bhalla shows that the real wages of agricultural labourers stagnated from the time of independence to the mid-1970s and then began to rise in all parts of the country. This was also the period in which the incidence of rural poverty began to decline. The rise in wages was not limited to the more prosperous agricultural zones, and Bhalla argues that the movement in real wages was co-related with the increase in the share of non-agricultural employment in total employment. As wages in non-agricultural work are typically higher than wages in agriculture, the expansion of non-farm work could also explain some of the declines in rural poverty. In the 1990s, the improvement in real wages and the decline of poverty were reversed while agricultural employment expanded. Economic development all over the world has been associated with a rise in the share of employment in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy and a fail in the share of the agricultural sector. In India, changes in the composition of the rural workforce in the 1980s points to a "structural retrogression".

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    Why are changes in the working and living conditions of rural manual workers of utmost significance to the country as a whole?
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