Chapter 5 - LOD 2

Chapter 5

LOD-2

Exercises in this chapter are more difficult because of either (i) larger passages or (ii) slightly more difficult questions, or a combination of both. Different reading techniques should be applied in different exercises. As one progresses, one will see how questions also become more difficult. At this stage, the student should time himself and see how much time it takes to an exercise. The learning in this exercise should be used to attempt the more difficult passages and questions in the next exercise.

Exercise 5.1

Questions: 25                          Time: 40 minutes

Directions: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Read the given passages and answer the questions by ticking the appropriate choice from the options given.

Passage 1

It is not often that a man born 300 years ago suddenly springs back to life. But that is what has happened to the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century Presbyterian minister and mathematician-in spirit, at least, if not in body. Over the past decade the value of a statistical method outlined by Bayes in a paper first published in 1763 has become increasingly apparent and has re­sulted in a blossoming of "Bayesian" meth­ods in scientific fields ranging from ar­chaeology to computing. 

            Proponents of the Bayesian approach argue that it has many advantages over tradi­tional, "frequentist" statistical methods. Expressing scientific results in Bayesian terms, they suggest, makes them easier to understand and makes border­line or inconclusive results less prone to misinterpretation. Bayesians claim that their methods could make clinical trials of drugs faster and fairer, and computers easier to use. There are even suggestions that Bayes's ideas could prompt a re-evaluation of fundamental scientific concepts of evidence and causality. Not bad for an old dead white male.

            The essence of the Bayesian ap­proach is to provide a math­ematical rule explaining how you should change your exist­ing beliefs in the light of new evidence. In other words, it al­lows scientists to combine new data with their existing knowl­edge or expertise.

            The canonical example is to imagine that a precocious newborn observes his first sun­set, and wonders whether the sun will rise again or not. He assigns equal prior probabil­ities to both possible outcomes, and repre­sents this by placing one white and one black marble into a bag. The following day, when the sun rises, the child places another white marble in the bag. The probability that a marble plucked randomly from the bag will be white (i.e., the child's degree of belief in fu­ture sunrises) has thus gone from a half to two-thirds. After sunrise the next day, the child adds another white marble, and the probability (and thus the degree of belief) goes from two-thirds to three-quarters. And so on. Gradually, the initial belief that the sun is just as likely as not to rise each morning is modified to become a near-certainty that the sun will always rise.

            In a Bayesian analysis, in other words, a set of observations should be seen as some­thing that changes opinion, rather than as a means of determining ultimate truth. In the case of a drug trial, for example, it is possible to evaluate and compare the degree to which a sceptic and an enthusiast would be con­vinced by a particular set of results. Only if the sceptic can be convinced should a drug be licensed for use.

            This is far more subtle than the tradi­tional way of presenting results, in which an outcome is deemed statistically significant only if there is a better than 95% chance that it could not have occurred by chance. The problem, according to Robert Matthews, a mathematician at Aston University in Bir­mingham, is that medical researchers have failed to understand that subtlety. In a paper to be published shortly in the Journal of Sta­tistical Planning and Inference, he sets out to demystify the Bayesian approach, and ex­plains how to apply it after the event to exist­ing data.

            Patients in clinical trials will soon bene­fit. Bayesian methods offer the possibility of modifying a trial while it is being conducted, something that is impossible with traditional statistics. Andy Grieve and his colleagues at Pfizer, a drug firm, are intending to do just that.

            Traditionally, dose-alloca­tion trials--in which the aim is to establish the most effective dose of a new drug-involve giving different groups of pa­tients different doses and eval­uating the results once the trial has finished. This is fine from a statistical point of view, but un­fair on those patients who turn out to have been given non-op­timal doses. Rather than an­alysing the results at the end of a trial, Dr Grieve's method will evaluate patients' responses during it, and adjust the doses accordingly. The advantage of this over the traditional ap­proach that it maximises the medical benefit to all partici­pants. It also means that fewer people are needed to conduct a trial, because participants on non-optimal doses can have those doses changed to increase the amount of data collected near the optimal dose.

            Pfizer is intending to conduct a trial using this new method, and the plan is to re-analyse the data once it is com­pleted in ways that will satisfy both Bayes­ians and non-Bayesians. This kind of paral­lel approach is likely to become increasingly common, at least until Bayesianism has been more widely accepted.

            Decision-making using Bayesian meth­ods has many applications in software, as well. Perhaps the best-known example is Microsoft's Office Assistant, which appears as a somewhat irritating anthropomorphic paper-clip that tries to help the user. When a user calls up the assistant, Bayesian methods are used to analyse recent actions in order to try to work out what the user is attempting to do, with this calculation constantly being modified in the light of new actions. (Unfor­tunately, a non-Bayesian approach is used to decide when to make the paper-clip pop up on its own, adding to the annoyance of many users.) According to Eric Horvitz, a statisti­cian in Microsoft's research division, future products will try to determine users' inten­tions more broadly, so as to speed things up. Having worked out which link on a web page a user is most likely to click on, for ex­ample, the computer could fetch the corre­sponding page in advance, so that it appears more quickly.

            Bayes is still, however, the focus of much controversy. Larry Wasserman, a statistician at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, says that although Bayesianism is becoming more acceptable, it is no panacea, and when used indiscriminately it becomes "more a religion than a science". Perhaps the gran­dest claims made for Bayesian methods are those of Judea Pearl, a computer scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr Pearl has suggested that by analysing scien­tific data using a Bayesian approach it may be possible to distinguish between correla­tion (in which two phenomena, such as smoking and lung cancer, occur together) and causation (in which one actually causes the other). This kind of claim makes many scientists, including many Bayesians, throw up their hands in horror. Evidently there is life in the old reverend yet.

1. What are the advantages of Bayesian approach, according to its proponents?

1. it would make computers faster                              

2. it would make drug trials safer

3. it would make science easy to understand              

4. none of the above

2. In what way is the Bayesian approach unique?

1. it allows scientists to change existing beliefs in light of experience

2. it allows scientists to modify their beliefs

3. it allows a person to change the probability of an event happenings

4. it breaks all established laws of mathematics.

3. Which subtlety has medical researchers failed to understand?

1. that they should always keep changing their opinion.

2. that it is not necessary that an event should be considered significant only if it has 95% probability of occurring.

3. that the chances of an event happening could keep changing.

4. the degree to which a sceptic and enthusiast would be convinced is different

4 How will patients benefit from the Bayesian approach?

1. participants on optimal doses can have the doses changed.

2. doctors can conduct trials on fewer number of people

3. people who respond to less than optimal doses can be given appropriate doses

4. all patients will not be treated alike in clinical trials

5. Which of the following statements is/are true?

I. Bayesianism is widely accepted now

II. Bayesianism will be used by many fields in the future.

III. Bayesian techniques have been used to determine the action of Microsoft Office Assistant

1. I & II                       2. II and III                  3. I, II and III               4. Only III

6. What word could best replace the phrase “it is no panacea” used in the passage?

1. it is no cure all                                             2. it cannot be used blindly

3. it is not a balanced approach                                   4. it is not an important method

7. What does Larry Wasserman mean when he says that Bayesian techniques may become "more religion than science”?

1. they will gradually gather a large number of followers

2. people will start believing in them as they believe in God

3. people will start believing in Bayesian techniques blindly

4. people will start revering Bayes.

Passage 2

            A business and its organisation are a couple, and when one is much younger than the other, as with people, there can be problems which are far from obvious. There is something sad and misplaced about large, very mature corporations dreaming of creating organisations that will always be young and vibrate businesses to run, and you rarely find old vibrant organisations. If the management can't invigorate the business, it shouldn't waste its time attempting to invigorate its organisation. This view is heret­ical and offensive only for those who operate within an immortality framework.

            The best match-ups between a business and an organisation are when the life cycles of the two are as closely parallel as a company can get them to be. Young entrepre­neurs often grow exciting and chaotic organisations, and the two seem to share the exhilaration, awkwardness, and pain of the adolescent marriage. The faster a business moves from conception through growth, the more difficult it is to have the organisation keep pace. The last thing a young business needs is an overly developed organisation ahead of its time, and it is equally bad for the organisation not to keep pace with rapid business growth.

            Sun Microsystems is a typical example of the problem that can occur when a company's organisation does not keep us with its business growth. Sun was responsible for some fundamental changes in the computer industry while, at the same time, it grew from $0 to $2 billion and from four people to ten thousand in seven years. "Things in Sun over the last seven years always seemed, if not out of control, at least right on the edge," says Crawford Beveridge, Vice President for corporate resources. "New people often found a lack of rules and structure that they would have expected in a company the size we were becoming. Typically, there was some overlap and some underlap. Our conclusion, even if we were always behind in the hiring curve, was to hire people who deal easily with first principles, a few rules, and a lot of ambiguity."

            Like a marriage, a company will succeed best when its two partners, business and organisation, pass through the same seasons of their lives more together than apart. There is a fit and a logic to closely matched pairs. Although it is difficult to accomplish, the most effective organisation is one that is matched to the same point in its life cycle as the business it serves.

            It is not easy, once an organisation's infrastructure has been fixed, to shed it completely for another one. Crustaceans grow exoskeletons and shed their shells in order to grow. Corporations can't do this. Instead, their organisations grow like endoskeletons and suffer all the pains of ageing bodies that cannot be shed even if they no longer do what their management wants them to do. Companies are limited to only semi-satisfying reconstructive surgery, called "re-organisation", and to lipusuction, called "downsizing," where they take out extra layers of management around the middle but leave the basic form the same. Companies that need tummy tucks are not in prime condition for raising offspring.

A more effective approach may not involve losing extra weight so much as transforming unhealthy fat into healthy muscle and other issues. A first step in this direction, in corporate housekeeping terms, is repositioning people into more productive jobs, wherever possible and successful method for doing this is mature companies is to move staff people into sales jobs. KCL and Uniware are two companies that have done this in recent years.

            KCL had always prided itself on meeting its custom­er's needs, but when its near monopoly eroded and its growth consistently slipped, in the late 1980's it finally underwent a massive re-organisation. Commenting on what went wrong, CEO Diwakar said, "We were trying to solve some problems." Because of its no-layoff tradition, downsizing through early retirement only eliminated 6500 people from the payroll. More important, Diwakar moved 20,000 people form staff and labs to sales, increasing both revenue and customer contact.

            Nobody has zero body fat, although the most top-notch conditioning does get some athletes down to 23 to 3 per cent. Most men, by contrast, carry around 15-18 per cent body fat and the women lug around the 25-28 per cent. In corporate world, mature companies, like mature people, tend to put on weight. People dieted exercise to stay healthy, which suggests that corporations might take a similar approach towards conditioning their organisations. Staff is like fat, a little is necessary and healthy; a lot is the opposite. Most bodies, both corporate and individual, how­ever, have much more than they need. While virtually no company will ever get to zero staff, that isn't a bad focus to take. Conditioning may help them lead longer and more productive lives; still the fact remains they cannot live forever.

Again ball players don't get younger, they become coaches, managers, sportscasters and advertising personali­ties. The professional life span of most athletes is well under two decades, except in the rarest of cases. Those who continue successful careers beyond that are able to do so because they switched the business mix so thoroughly.

            When thoroughbreds can no longer race, they are still valuable as studs. Why do we resist the ageing process in corporation? Why do we try to keep decrepit ones racing? Denial of death can kill you.

8. According to the passage, the author has

1. treated business as organisation                              

2. treated organisation to be different from business

3. treated organisation to be a part of business           

4.  None of these

9. As per the passage, the life cycle of the business and the organisation:

1. is always same                                            

2. should always be as close as possible

3. has no relevance whatsoever                                  

4.  none of these

10. Re-organisation, according to the passage,

1. will always lead to downsizing                                           

2. may not always lead to downsizing

3. is undertaken to fit old bodies to newer require­ments         

4.  none of these

11. According to the passage, the organisations which usually become more prone to inefficiency are:

1. newer and smaller ones                   2. old and smaller ones                       

3. old and bigger ones                          4.  all of these

12. The best of executives who grow old to be fit for active business life should

1. retire from business

2. remain in the corporations

3. be used for advice and counsel but removed from active business

4.  none of these

13. The author has suggested that:

I. no organisation has got zero fat                   

II. zero fat is ideal       

III. we should not have zero fat in business

1. I and III                   2. II only          3. III only        4.  None of these

14. In which of the following could be considered to be most appropriate title for the passage?

1. Ageing Organisations                       2. Fatless Organisations                      

3. Business Life Cycle                                     4.  None of these

Passage 3

            The basic inspiration of Madhubani art is ritualistic. Each painting is a prayer, an accompaniment to meditation and everything depicted there has some kind of association with a legend or rite. Earlier, the paintings were transitory and anonymous. They appeared on the walls, faded away and reappeared again, coinciding with the cyclic movement of the seasons and with related rituals. Seen in this context, the bhiti chitra (wall paintings) and aripan (floor paintings), replicated on paper, alienated from their traditional social moorings and devoid of their myriad social functions -- all these paintings framed, artificially illuminated and nearly decorated on the walls of an art gallery -- looked incongruous and thoroughly out of place.

            The folk paintings of Mithila are the exclusive preoccupation of the women. For generations, the women living in the region have produced vigorous and distinctive paintings without any significant change in style. That this traditional art has survived the vicissitudes of history is due first of all to the social organisation of Mithila, one based on the village community in whose corporate life the women have a clearly defined role. For these women, the whole world is their home on whose walls they paint a world of their own: indeed, countless recapitulations have resulted in a dexterity that enables them to produce the most abstract designs without any conscious effort. As a result, the possibility of any radical assertion of individuality in the modern sense is extremely limited.

            No attempt was made by most of the painters to look for new themes even within the ambit of traditional subjects. Even when there was a slight departure from the traditional mould, the purpose was to simplify art as to make it more popular and probably easily marketable. Thus in Kohbar, which is a picture used as a marriage proposal, the earlier abstract symbols of female fertility like fish, bamboo, turtle, parrot, etc., were replaced by figures of divinities. The themes of Madhubani folk art are usually taken from the epics, the Puranas and other popular stories of the Hindu mythology.

            The decorative style of Mithila at abhors empty space. Viewed as a whole, the harmony reflected in the utilisation of space and in picturisation conveys the artist’s understanding of the peaceful coexistence of man, bird and beast. The understanding of the importance of living in harmony, as is reflected in Gaach, was in the past extended even to the practice of preparing colours from the paint extract. Thus black was prepared from burnt barley or by mixing lamp soot with cowdung. In Aripan, rice paste mixed with water, called pithar, was used for white colour. Even the brushes used earlier were of a peculiar kind - cotton tied to a bamboo twig called pihua. Under the onslaught of commercialisation, this practice is now on the decline. Chemical colours, modern brushes and nibs have replaced traditional colours.

15. Why does the author say that the paintings looked incongruous and out of place?

1. because the folk paintings of Mithila are exclusively made by women

2. because each painting is like a prayer, which is not conveyed in the art galleries

3. because they appeared on walls, faded away and reappeared again, but were permanent in the gallery

4. because they represented rituals and social functions and were part of life whereas they were lifeless in galleries

16. Which of the following has been responsible for the lack of any significant change in the style of paintings of Mithila women painters?

1. The women painters did not assert their individuality in their paintings.

2. The women painters of Mithila painted their world on the walls of their homes.

3. The dexterity of the women painters of Mithila was confined to popular stories of the Puranas.

4. None of the above

17. Why do the paintings of Madhubani art not carry the assertion of individuality of the painter?

I. because the home was the world for the painters.

II. because the painters used the walls of the home to paint their world.

III. because the Madhubani folk paintings were the exclusive preoccupation of the women.

            1. I and II         2. II and III                  3. I and III                   4. all the above

18. By ‘ritualistic’ the author meant all of the following EXCEPT

1. accompaniment to meditation                      2. association with a legend

3. transience and anonymity                            4. association with a rite

19. All of the following have been the result of the “onslaught of commercialisation” on Madhubani art EXCEPT

1. replacement of some of the traditional abstract symbols                

2. use of chemical colours

3. themes have changed                                                          

4. use of brushes and nibs.

Passage 4

            The use of the United Nations as an international police force has, in the space of the past decade, ballooned, shrivelled again when things went wrong, and, with Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone, once again grown fat. Increasingly, the liberal world's fitful conscience does not want to live with barbarity, and demands that it be checked. Usually, the UN is the only available instrument. But the one constant, throughout those ten troubled years, is that the Security Council, the world's flawed policymaker, continues to instruct its policemen to do what needs to be done without providing them with the means to do it.

            A great fuss is made of signing a council resolution. But once that is done, the further business of implementing it is passed lightly over, a matter for the UN bureaucracy rather than for member-governments. A report on peacekeeping by a panel chaired by an experienced UN old-timer, Lakhdar Brahimi, takes a sharp look at this and other UN shortcomings, both in the council and in the secretariat. One of its most important messages to the UN's secretary-general is that, if told to do the impossible, he should just say no.

            For the UN's first 40 years, peacekeeping usually meant waiting until armies had fought to a standstill, and then interposing monitors between the ex-combatants. An up-to-date version of this sort of peacekeeping has occurred in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where the UN agreed to send up to 100 military observers to monitor a ceasefire.

            But at the end of the 1980s, the Security Council, over-excited by its release from the cold-war lock, reinvented humanitarian intervention. The council's concerns were extended to "human security": it would rescue people from the savagery of civil and ethnic conflict. But then came Somalia, whose warlords showed none of the respect for international authority of regular armies, and where the Americans were shocked to discover that peacekeeping could be dangerous. This was followed by Bosnia, where expectations of "safe havens" were raised only to crash in tragedy. Its credibility in shreds, the UN dithered unforgivably through Rwanda's genocide.

            It would be better, people began to argue, to enlist regional groups-the "coalitions of the willing"-to take on peace-making or peace-building; let the UN stick to uncontroversial peacekeeping. The NATO alliance, after decades of inactivity, swung into action in the Balkans. The Nigerians led a West African force into Sierra Leone.

            Regional peace-making sounds good. But few regions, Europe apart, have either the men or the money to mount such an operation. For a start, the costs fall directly on the participating countries, who have to pay for everything. When democracy returned to Nigeria last year, taxpayers wondered, justifiably enough, why they should be paying both in money and men to stop the Sierra Leoneans from slaughtering one another. The costs of UN missions are paid by all UN members, who are assessed on a scale adjusted to their wealth. Or that is the theory: in practice, when big payers such as the United States fall behind with their dues, it takes a while to repay the countries, often among the world's poorest, who have supplied the troops.

            There are other reasons why regional intervention cannot always be the answer. Look, for instance, at Congo, where the neighbours are already fighting over the country like hyenas round a corpse. Australia led a successful coalition into East Timor. But it is rare for a threatened third-world country to have a first-world godfather of that sort, with the political will to lead a charge and the capability to succeed.

            So the pendulum is swinging back. The UN took on Sierra Leone, and eventually Congo. In both countries, its theoretical job was the traditional one of supporting a peace treaty. But both treaties were horribly flawed. In Sierra Leone, the UN is floundering, its original mandate in tatters, its forces not strong enough to succeed in a more ambitious task. Revealing a modicum of common sense, the Security Council held back from ordering Mr Annan to conjure up the 5,000 troops who were supposed to bring order to the vast mayhem in Congo, and protect the handful of UN observers already there.

            Congo is an extreme case. But getting peacekeepers together is a constant nightmare for the UN. With the end of the cold war, the governments that traditionally, and generously, supplied well-trained troops-the Nordic countries, Canada, the Netherlands and others-cut their defence budgets and have fewer men available. America, Britain, France, Russia and China, the five permanent members of the Security Council, still have sizeable armed forces but are seldom willing to commit them. Third-world countries tend to have rather large armies, and are usually happy for the UN to employ them. But their soldiers are often ill-trained, and their equipment usually has to be supplied by someone richer.

            However desperate the need, the UN is not even allowed to start collecting a peacekeeping force until the council provides its mandate. Supposedly, several countries have troops on stand-by for such emergencies. But when called on, they are almost always unavailable. Supposedly, too, spare UN weapons are stored in Brindisi. But the few arms left in this dump are mostly obsolete.

            The UN, in other words, has to fly by the seat of its pants. The result can be seen in the Kafkaesque confusion of Sierra Leone. The Indian general in command was told to support a peace treaty; that treaty was not worth the paper it was written on. Instead he found himself, without new orders, let alone reinforcements, from the council, at war with a bunch of murderous rebels, backed by an almost equally unscrupulous outside power. To help him carry out this operation, he had a motley army including Guineans, who meekly handed their weapons over to the rebels at the first spot of trouble; Zambians, who arrived without even the most basic equipment; and Nigerians, sulky because they are not in command.

            Should the trusteeship council, presumably under a new name less worrying to the third world, be resurrected to run disabled countries? The counter-argument is that the UN has had only two running-a-country jobs in the past half-century-Kosovo and East Timor-and may not be landed with any more. Perhaps, with its limited resources, it should concentrate on bread-and-butter stuff. It is a hard choice, which the UN may face in its usual way by ignoring it.

            The larger question is when, or even whether, the UN should intervene in a country's sovereign affairs for humanitarian reasons. Third-world countries twitch at the notion that it is the first world (plus Russia and China), personified by the Security Council's permanent five, which decides when and how to intervene. Is it, they ask, the right of the powerful to push in, often for their own narrow national interests, or the right of victims to be rescued?

           

20. Why, according to the passage, has the UN's role become fat once again?

1. because there are terrible things being done in Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone.

2. because the liberal world demands that the UN be active in times of crisis

3. because of conscience of the liberal world

4. because the UN is the only available instrument for control in the world

21. What has been the shortcoming of the UN so far?

1. it lacks the resources                                               

2. it lacks a decision making mechanism

3. it has a great bureaucracy                                       

4. it makes a great fuss in signing resolutions

22. It may be inferred from the passage that:

1. UN interventions on humanitarian grounds have generally been successful.

2. UN interventions on humanitarian grounds have generally not been successful.

3. the UN has always succeeded in rescuing people from the savagery of civil and ethnic conflict

4. none of the above

23. Among the reasons advanced for regional intervention, which one of the following would not be a reason?

I. Third World countries do not have First World godfathers

II. there is too much barbarism that must be controlled

III. it can avoid future conflicts

1. I and II                     2. II and III                  3. III only                    4. II only

24. It may be inferred from the passage that the reason that Indian forces are used in UN peacekeeping operations is that:

1. the soldiers are motivated                                                   

2. the soldiers are brave

3. the soldiers look forward to overseas assignments              

4. none of the above

25. Which one of the following is true about Indian forces in UN peacekeeping force, with respect to what is stated in the passage?

1. the soldiers are motivated                                       

2. the soldiers are often ill-trained and lack equipment

3. the soldiers look forward to overseas assignments  

4. none of the above

Exercise 5.2

Questions: 24                          Time: 40 minutes

Directions: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Read the given passages and answer the questions by ticking the appropriate choice from the options given.

Passage 1

            The Indian steel industry, in line with global trends, is at crossroads, witnessing a resurgent phase of modernization, expansion a consolidation, mainly through mergers and acquisitions. A sector that was moribund just about five years ago because of a worldwide slump, in steel prices, the industry has turned the corner and has in fact been vibrant over the past two years. Domestic steel companies, both public and private, are surging ahead on the strength of an unprecedented buoyancy in the economy and the resultant boom in real estate and various infrastructure sectors such as roads and highways, ports and airports. The official figures speak for themselves. Powered by an increased demand for steel from neighbouring China, which has been clocking a 15 percent sectoral growth annually on account of construction projects in preparation for the Olympics, the steel industry in India has grown by about 10 per cent in the past two years, compared with the global growth rate of about 6 per cent a year. The country's production of crude steel in 2005-06 stood at 42.1 million tonnes, reflecting an increase of 7.1 per cent over the previous fiscal. On the other hand, the consumption of steel during the year was pegged at 41.43 million tonnes, a massive growth of 13.88 per cent when compared with the 2004-05 figures. Likewise, the production of sponge iron also increased sharply by 25 per cent, from about 10.3 million tonnes in 2004-05 to 12.9 million tonnes in 2005-06. Currently, India is the largest sponge iron producer in the world and ranks seventh among steel-producing countries. The growth in domestic steel consumption is, by and large, in keeping with the International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) forecast of a 10 per cent increase in steel use in 2006. While the IISI has projected the global demand for steel to grow by 4.9 per cent in the medium term up to 2010, it has pegged its forecast for the 2010 -15 period at 4.2 per cent annually for the entire world. The IISI says India will lead the consumption growth story with an annual demand of 7.7 per cent, followed by China with 6.2 per cent. More heartening is the indication that the exciting phase in the domestic steel industry is expected to continue for the next five to seven years at the least, in terms of both consumption and production. Already, the growth in steel consumption, as projected by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the National Steel Policy (NSP) formulated in 2005, stands exceeded by a huge margin. The NSP had conservatively estimated the country's steel production to grow by 7.3 per cent, with an annual consumption growth of 6.9 per cent. Considering that the past two years have already witnessed a demand growth of over 10 per cent, the government expects the healthy trend to continue during the Eleventh Plan period (2007-12), provided an annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 9 per cent is achieved during the period as projected by the Planning Commission. Clearly, for primary steel producers, India is the place to be in as it has the greatest growth potential. Coupled with this are two other major factors. One, India is bestowed with the largest reserves of high quality iron ore in the world. Secondly, the annual per capita consumption of steel in the country is still one of the lowest in the world, at 35 kilograms against the global benchmark of 250-400 kg. In effect, the growth story in India is here to stay for quite a few decades in view of the sheer disparity in consumption levels. Not surprising, then, that when the three ore-rich states — Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh — threw open their doors, steel-makers of all hues jumped into the fray to sign memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with more than one state government. In all, more than 116 MoUs have already been inked, pledging a total investment of a whopping Rs. 3,57,344 crores in the coming years. If all the pledges materialize, the country's installed steel production capacity will surge to anywhere between 150 million and 180 million tones by 2014-15, compared with the conservative NSP target of 110 million tonnes by 2019-20. Orissa signed 43 MoUs to hike its production capacity to 58.04 million tonnes. Not to be left behind, Chhattisgarh entered into 42 MoUs to augment its steel capacity to 19.32 million tonnes, while Jharkhand signed 31 MoUs to increase its capacity to 68.67 million tonnes. The extensive availability of rich iron ore — the basic raw material for steel-making — in the three states has attracted big global names too who, at the outset, made it clear that they would require captive iron ore mines to feed their Greenfield steel projects. Initially, it was the home-grown Tata Steel that signed an MoU with the Orissa government, in November 2004 for setting up a six-million-tonne plant at an estimated cost of Rs. 15,400 crores after the government made a commitment that its ore requirement of 250 million tonnes for a period of 25 years would be met. By the time Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO), the South Korean major and the 3rd largest global steel producer, approached the Orissa government, the terms turned out to be far sweeter. Under the MoU signed in June 2005, POSCO plans to set up a 12-million-tonne plant at Paradeep, with an investment of Rs. 51,000 crores. The initial proposal was for a 10-million-tonne plant. But there is a catch here. The government has committed itself not only to provide 600 million tonnes of ore on a captive basis for a period of 30 years but also allowing POSCO to export the quality domestic ore for use in its steel plants in Korea. It has demanded the raw material from mines in Sundergarh and Keonjhar districts. Lakshmi N. Mittal, the non-resident Indian (NRI) tycoon and the world's biggest steel-maker following the merger of Mittal Steels with the Luxembourg-based Arcelor in June last year, did still better. He put Jharkhand and Orissa in competition by proposing a steel venture in either state, depending upon the terms and incentives and the swiftness in approvals. Jharkhand lost out — owing to litigation over its Chiraia ore mines and for other reasons — to Orissa, which signed an MoU with Mittal-Arcelor in December last year for a 12-million-tonne steel plant at Keonjhar.

            The state-owned Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) also undertook a major exercise to retain its position as the leading integrated steel producer in the country. The steel behemoth announced its "Corporate Plan-2012,' envisaging an outlay of Rs. 37,000 crores to upgrade its plants and modernize its operations. Under the plan, expansion programmes are under way in various SAIL units to enhance the total production capacity to 22-9 million tonnes of hot metal from the present 12-5 million tonnes by 2011-12. Late last year, following the merger of IISCO with SAIL, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the modernization and expansion of ISP (IISCO Steel Plant) with an investment of Rs. 9,592 crores. Mergers of a few more state-owned units with SAIL are on the cards with a view to consolidating public sector share in the steel market. The other public sector steel enterprise, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd. (RINL), is already in the process of implementing an ambitious expansion programme for increasing its liquid steel capacity from the current three million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes at an estimated cost of Rs. 8,692 crores. Launched on May 20, 2006, the project is scheduled for completion by 2008-09. Needless to say, the demand for iron ore has surged in view of the long-term supply commitments being given by the State governments at a time when the international market prices for the raw material are at a high.

            This sparked off a debate among domestic steel-makers on whether liberal ore exports should be permitted, as in the past, or the ore should be conserved to the extent possible in view of the projected demand for steel. The government set up a committee under the Planning Commission, headed by Anwarul Hoda, to recommend changes in the National Mineral Policy. The existing policy permits free exports of iron ore with a ferrous content of less than 64 percent. For export of high-grade ore with higher ferrous content, a licence is required and is currently canalized through the Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation (MMTC). The Hoda Committee recommended free exports of iron ore with a ferrous content of less than 65 per cent but advocated discontinuation of the existing regime of canalization and export licensing for the high-grade ore. Instead, the panel suggested free exports of quality ore lumps with ferrous content of more than 65 per cent on payment of an export duty.

1. According to the passage, the steel industry in India has grown by ___________ in the past two years and India ranks ____________ among steel producing countries.

            1. 12%, sixth               2. 10%, seventh                       3. 8%, first                   4. 6%, eighth

2. ____________ per cent is the projected global demand for steel to grow in the medium term up to 2010.

            1. 6.9                           2. 5.9                           3. 4.9                           4. 3.9

3. According to the International Iron and Steel Institute, India will lead the' consumption growth with an annual demand of ____________ per cent, followed by China with __________ per cent.

            1. 6.2, 5.7                    2. 8.7, 6.7                    3. 5.2, 3.2                    4. 7.7, 6.2

4. Which one of the following statements is incorrect?

            1. The licence for export of high-grade iron ore is being canalized through MMTC.

2. With the merger of Mittal Steels with Arcelor, L.N. Mittal is the world's biggest steel-maker.

            3. A South Korean company is the world's third largest steel producer.

4. As per Corporate Plan-2012 of Steel Authority of India Limited, the total production capacity will be enhanced to 12.5 million tonnes by 2011-12.

Passage 2

            The Finance Minister has put big-bang reforms on the backburner, but he has definitely tried to buy peace with the aam aadmi by increasing investment in big ticket projects like Bharat Nirman and National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREG). While the outlay for Bharat Nirman has been hiked by 31.6%, allocations for the education sector and health and family welfare schemes have gone up by 34.2% and by 21.9%, respectively. Chidambaram also surprised many by increasing the education cess to 3%, from 2%, to fund secondary and higher education. The government also proposed to increase funding for the mid-day meal scheme from the primary level to the upper primary classes in 3,427 educationally backward blocks. However, it has pruned allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) — a scheme started by NDA government. To arrest the drop-out ratio after eighth standard, a means-cum-merit scholarship scheme covering one lakh students has been announced. The first year of the Eleventh Plan period will also see the appointment of two lakh teachers and construction of five lakh classrooms.

            As the saying goes, well begun is half done. But how many of these noble intentions will translate into actions? There are many unanswered questions. One, are the increased outlays enough to achieve the social goals enumerated the UPA government's common minimum programme (CMP)? Two, is the greater allocation to the flagship programmes in proportion to the GDP growth ? And more importantly, will the increased allocation also fix the lacuna in the delivery mechanism ? The CMP, for instance, has set a 6% target for education spend (as a proportion of the GDP). However, the spend has hardly touched the halfway mark as the coalition government moves closer to the end of its tenure. The education cess has also been swelling the general pool without any firm commitment from the government on incremental spending to meet specific objectives. Experts also question the success of the Bharat Nirman project touted as "the cornerstone of the UPA government's policies" to fight rural poverty. The IDFC, for instance, raises doubts about the sustainability of the project in its India Infrastructure Report 2007. According to Prof. Jean Dreze, one of the architects of the NREG and member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, the two big disappointments in the Budgets are the allocations for Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Rural Employment Scheme.

            "Both a virtually unchanged as a proportion of GDP. If anything, they have declined," points out Dreze. The universalisation of ICDS, one of the core commitments of the CMP, assumes importance from another angle. The Supreme Court in a December 2006 directive called for the doubling of operational anganwadis by 2008 and wanted the government to ensure that all ICDS services are extended to all children under six. 'This cannot be done without increasing financial allocations. The absence of any such increase in the Budget is an alarming indication of lack of political commitment to this programme. It is also, in effect, a violation of the court's order," he says.

            In the case of Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes, it was estimated by the now defunct National Advisory Council (NAC) that at least around Rs. 20,000 crore would be required for the fair implementation of the NREG Act in the country's 200 poorest districts. However, only Rs. 6,000 crores have been spent as of January 2007 and the implementation is also tardy in many states, says Dreze. "The need of the hour is not only to expand the number of districts covered by NREGA, but also raise expenditure levels much closer to the NAC projections. Instead of this, the government proposes to extend NREGA to 330 districts without any increase in expenditure. This is another sobering indication of lack of commitment to flagship programmes and to the rural poor," says Dreze. TV Mohandas Pai, Director and HR Chief, Infosys, says that the government, instead of so many incremental steps, should have undertaken certain path-breaking initiatives in irrigation and health insurance for the poor. "The government should think of revolutionary steps to catapult the economy into a much higher orbit. For instance, the subsidies for food, fertilizers, kerosene and LPG, which account for about Rs. 75,000 crore, can be done away with, and instead, a direct income transfer of Rs. 1,000 each, to say 10 crore below poverty line families, which the government has already identified, could have been done," he says. This way, at one stroke, nearly 50 crore people (assuming five people in a family) will get a kind of social security, Pai argues.

           

5. Which one of the following statements is incorrect?

1. The implementation National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has not been fair.

2. The mid-day meal scheme has been proposed to be extended to upper primary classes in certain educationally backward blocks.

            3. During the period 2007-08, it is planned to construct five lakh classrooms.

            4. None of these

6. Which one of the following statement(s) is/are true?

1. The education cess has also been swelling the general pool without any firm commitment from the government on incremental spending to meet specific objectives.

            2. The outlay for Bharat Nirman has been hiked by 31.6%.

            3. The CMP has set a 6% target for education spend.

            4. All are true.

7. Experts question the success of the Bharat Nirman project touted as the cornerstone of the UPA government's policies to

            1. develop rural employment scheme.             2. integrate child development.

            3. develop rural areas.                                     4. fight rural poverty.

8. In the case of Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes, it is estimated by the now defunct National Advisory Council (NAC) that at least around ___________ crore would be required for the fair implementation of the NREG Act in the country's 200 poorest districts.

            1. Rs. 25,000               2. Rs. 20,000               3. Rs. 10,000               4. Rs. 15,000

Passage 3

            All men by nature, desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses: for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others, the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. By nature, animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation, memory is produced in some of them, though not in others. And therefore, the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than those which cannot remember; those which are incapable of hearing sounds are intelligent though they cannot be taught, e.g., the bee and any other race of animals that may be like it; and those which besides memory, have this sense of hearing can be taught. The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now from memory, experience is produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. And experience seems pretty much like science and art, but really, science and art come to men through experience; for 'experience made art', as Polus says, 'but inexperience luck.' Now art arises, when from many notions gained by experience, one universal judgement about a class of objects is produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was ill of this disease that did him good, and similarly, in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a matter of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution, marked off in one class, when they were ill of this disease, e.g., to phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fevers — this is a matter of art.

            With a view to action, experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience. (The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual; for the physician does not cure man, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name, who happens to be a man. If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured.) But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience (which implies that wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the former know the cause, but the latter do not. For men of experience know that the thing is so, but do not know why, while the others know the ‘why’ and the cause. Hence we think also that the masterworkers in each craft are more honourable and know in a truer sense and are wiser than the manual workers, because they know the causes of the things that are done (we think the manual workers are like certain lifeless things which act indeed, but act without knowing what they do, as fire burns, but while the lifeless things perform each of their functions by a natural tendency, the labourers perform them through habit); thus we view them as being wiser not in virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for themselves and knowing the causes. And in general, it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know, that the former can teach, and therefore, we think art more truly knowledge than experience is; for artists can teach, and men of mere experience cannot.

            Again, we do not regard any of the senses as Wisdom; yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the 'why' of anything e.g., why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot. At first, he who invented any art whatever, that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wiser and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility.

            Hence, when all such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. We have said in the Ethics what the difference is between art and science and the other kindred faculties; but the point of our present discussion is this, that all men suppose what is called Wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things; so that, as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense-perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience; the masterworker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive. Clearly then, wisdom is knowledge about certain principles and causes.

9. What is the relationship between sensation and memory?

1. Human beings are intelligent as they can reason, whereas animals do not have the capacity of reasoning.

            2. Human beings have sensation and memory both.

            3. All animals have sensation but some animals do not have memory.

4. When sensation is remembered, it becomes a memory experience and this leads to connected experience, which in turn gives rise to reasoning.

10. What is the difference between art and experience?

1. Art does not give the cause and effect of things, whereas experience gives the cause and effect of things.

2. Experience and art give rise to one another and they are complementary and supplementary to each other.

3. Art explains the cause of things together with its effects, whereas experience gives us just the effect of things, not the cause.

4. Both experience and art are views of a contradictory time and space and this is where the difference between the two lies.

11. Why according to the author, were the mathematical arts founded in Egypt?

1. Because the sciences which do not cater to necessities or pleasures develop only after the previous two have been invented and only then, men have time for themselves. So was the case in Egypt where the priestly caste had ample leisure time.

2. Because the inventors of luxuries were considered more important than the inventors of necessities and in Egypt, the kingly and priestly class had developed great standards in luxurious tastes and attitudes.

3. Because they were men of experience and had wisdom and knowledge about certain principles and causes.

4. Because Egyptians were considered to be connoisseurs of art and crafts and had superior civilization as opposed to the other ancient civilizations.

12. Which of the following can be considered to be the central idea of the passage?

            1. Art is superior to experience.

            2. What actually is "Wisdom"?

            3. "Experience made art, but inexperience luck".

            4. Knowledge is wisdom.

Passage 4

            There are a few instances of diseases that have laid waste, huge tracts of forests throughout India. Caused mainly by pathogens and pests, these diseases are deadly and are capable of wiping out entire forests and plantations, causing immense economic as well as ecological loss. Meanwhile, forest pathologists and entomologists are grappling with new maladies that are surfacing almost every year. But with meagre resources and just a few experts working on the issue, things are heading virtually towards a cul-de-sac.

            Moreover, no assessment has been made so far to quantify the devastation. While large chunks of forests fall prey to maladies, it is also an opportunity for some politicians and timber merchants to cash in on it. Research and documentation on forest disease, particularly on forest pathology, began in India way back in 1929, by pioneering pathologists KD Bagchi and BK Bagchi. Although it has been eight decades since then, not much headway has been made in this direction. The forestry sector today is ailing due to its misplaced priorities, resource crunch, and mismanagement. "Forest management lacks scientific approach," says Surendra Kumar, director of the Himalayan Forest Research Institute (HFRI), Shimla.

            The scientific community involved with forest diseases is today a dispirited lot. With only a few stalwarts left in this field, forest disease is a neglected area of research. Moreover, bureaucracy is increasingly taking over the scientific institutions and scientists in most of these institutes are a marginalized group.

            To top it all, there are no institutions dedicated to forest diseases. Although the ministry of environment and forests is the facilitator for such research, it is not paying enough attention to promote scientific research of forest diseases. In fact, the government's lackadaisical approach came to the fore with the Sal borer epidemic in Madhya Pradesh in 1998. While forest bureaucracy slept, the beetles merrily continued to wipe out entire tracts of precious Sal forests. Eventually, with no solution in sight, thousands of valuable trees were hacked. There were also allegations that the Sal tragedy was a chance for the timber mafia in the state to cash in on timber through the legal loophole, with the nexus of politicians. Today things haven't changed one bit. India's forest department and research institutes have yet to formulate contingency plans to face any assault of similar dimensions.

            Forest diseases are elusive. Although experts claim that they know quite a lot about forest diseases, there are still aspects of the maladies that are not completely understood. Says R.S. Bhandari, entomologist in the Forest Research Institute (FRI), Dehradun, "We know about all the important pests and insects, their life cycles and their development. But there are a few diseases which remain an enigma." According to Jamaluddin, head of the pathology department in the Tropical Forest Research Institute (TERI), Jabalpur, "Due to micro climatic changes, we are discovering new aspects of the same disease every year. Diseases have also increased manifold." Another FRI scientist points out that although forest diseases are increasing, there is no study to estimate the economic and ecological damage caused by these pests and pathogens.

            Varying with different geophysical regions and climatic conditions, pathogens and pests are essentially responsible for the tree maladies and their mortality. When the pristine, natural and mixed forests existed, forest diseases acted as a natural control measure to check the proliferation of a particular species that could threaten the balance of the ecosystem. Perhaps, this is why forest diseases paled into insignificance in the past. But today, with shrinking forests and increasing monoculture plantations, any outbreak of disease takes on a virulent form.

            To top this, changed climatic and forest patterns and environmental pollution have given rise to newer forms of forest diseases. While trees are forced to take an additional load of human induced environmental changes, the introduction of monoculture has substantially increased the problems. Whatever little we know about forest diseases today comes primarily through mycology, the study of forest pathogens. Mycology explains that the prime pathological reasons for forest disease are fungi, bacteria and viruses. "Among these, fungi play a major role, while the other two are relatively less significant. There are 150 to 200 major pathological infections in central India. Out of these, only five per cent are bacterial. The rest are fungal," says Jamaluddin.

            Most of these pathogens stay close to a tree, waiting for a chance to infiltrate. Their entry points are small openings or wounds in the tree. However, invasion is not always easy. Like human beings, trees also have antibodies that fight anything alien. In case of invasion from the trunk of a tree, the sapwood acts as a shield and secretes enzymes to fight pathogens. But when attacked and conquered, there are tell-tale signs in the form of knotty growths of fruit bodies that are extensions of the fungi in the tree.

13. Which of the following is the author most likely to agree with?

1. The ministry responsible should take a more serious view towards research in forest diseases.

2. There is a likelihood of another forest disease epidemic, similar to the Sal Borer epidemic, spreading in the country.

3. There needs to be a more coordinated effort towards dealing with forest diseases in India.

            4. All of these

14. Which of these incidents discourages the government to formulate any kind of concrete plans?

            1. India lacks specialists in this area of forestry.

2. The government is not able to work in concomitance with specialists, like entomologists & pathogenists.

3. The prevalence of malpractices such as the alleged nexus of politicians with some of the forest officials.

            4. None of these

15. Which of these statements cannot be inferred from the passage?

1. With the variation of different climatic conditions, pests responsible for forest tree degradation, disappear.

2. There are hardly any committed institutions in India, for the promotion of research in forest diseases in India.

3. It is possible that the timber mafias could spread their network with help from vested interests in the political and bureaucratic brass.

            4. None of these.

16. The discussion on the present condition of forest diseases proves that

1. there must be a cooperative endeavour by scientists, government officials and politicians to weed out the possibilities of forest diseases.

            2. a lot more needs to be done by the government for sustaining the ecological balance.

            3. hitherto, forestry has been a neglected area of research.

            4. None of these

Passage 5

            For years, the contents of a child's sandbox have confounded some of the nation's top physicists. Sand and other granular materials, such as powders, seeds, nuts, soils, and detergent, behave in ways that seem to undermine natural laws and cost industries ranging from Pharmaceuticals to agribusiness and mining, billions of dollars.

            Just shaking a can of mixed nuts can show you how problematic granular material can be. The nuts do not 'mix'; they 'unmix' and sort themselves out, with the larger Brazil nuts on top and the smaller peanuts at the bottom. In this activity and others, granular matter's behaviour apparently goes counter to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase in any natural system.

            Mimicking the mixed-nut conundrum with a jar containing many small beads and one large bead, one group of physicists claimed that vibrations causing the beads to percolate open up small gaps rather than larger ones. Thus, when a Brazil nut becomes slightly airborne, the peanuts rush in underneath and gradually nudge it to the top. Another group of physicists colour coded layers of beads to track their circulation in a container and achieved a different result. Vibrations, they found, drive the beads in circles up the centre and down the sides of the container. Yet downward currents, similar to convection currents in air or water, are too narrow to accommodate the larger bead, stranding it on top.

            One industrial engineer who has studied the problem says that both the 'percolation' and 'convection current' theories can be right, depending upon the material, and that percolation is the major factor with nuts. Given the inability of scientists to come up with a single equation explaining unmixing, you can see why industrial engineers who must manage granular materials go a little, well, 'nuts'! Take Pharmaceuticals, for instance. There may be six types of powders with different-sized grains in a single medicine tablet. Mixing them at some speeds might sort them, while mixing at other speeds will make them thoroughly amalgamated. One aspirin company still relies on an experienced employee wearing a latex glove who pinches some powder in the giant mixing drum to see if it 'feels right'.

            Granular material at rest can be equally frustrating to physicists and engineers. Take a tall cylinder of sand. Unlike a liquid, in which pressure exerted at the bottom increases in direct proportion to the liquid's height, pressure at the base of the sand cylinder doesn't increase indefinitely. Instead, it reaches a maximum value and stays there. This quality allows sand to trickle at a nearly constant rate through the narrow opening separating the two glass bulbs of an hourglass, thus measuring the passage of time.

            Physicists have also found that forces are not distributed evenly throughout granular material. It is this characteristic that may account for the frequent rupturing of silos in which grain is stored. In a silo, for instance, the column's weight is carried from grain to grain along jagged chains. As a result the container's walls carry more of the weight than its base, and the force is significantly larger at some points of contact than at others. Coming up with equations to explain, much less, predict the distribution of these force chains" is extremely difficult.

            Again, using beads, physicists developed a simple theoretical model in which they assume that a given bead transmits the load it bears unequally and randomly onto the three beads on which it rests. While the model agrees well with experimental results, it does not take into account all of the mechanisms of force transmission between grains of sand or wheat.

            In the struggle to understand granular materials, sand-studying physicists have at least one thing in their favour. Unlike particle physicists who must secure billions of dollars in government funding for the building of super-colliders in which to accelerate and view infinitesimal particles, they can conduct experiments using such low-cost, low-tech materials as sand, beads, marbles, and seeds. It is hoped that more low-tech experiments and computer simulations will lead to equations that explain the unwieldy stuff and reduce some of the wastage, guesswork, and accidents that occur in the various industries that handle it.

17. The percolation theory of unmixing is best illustrated by which of the following examples?

1. Contents settling in a bag of potato chips so that the package appears less full after handling.

2. Currents of small beads blocking the upward movement of large beads in a shaken container.

            3. Larger rocks rising to the surface in a garden after a period of frost.

            4. Large nuts blocking the upward movement of small nuts in a shaken container.

18. In saying that the percolation and convection current theories may both be right, the industrial engineer means that

            1. though the theories have different names, they describe same physical mechanism.

2. both theories are still unproven, as they have  not been  tested on  a variety of materials.

            3. neither theory is supported by an adequate mathematical basis.

4. the mechanism causing unmixing varies depending upon the type of granular material.

19. Which of the following appears to be the best solution for combating the 'unmixing" problem faced by pharmaceutical manufacturers that must prepare large quantities of powders?

            1. To mix all the powders together at the same speed.

            2. To craft' powders in which every grain weighs the same amount.

            3. To craft powders so that all the grains have similar sizes and shapes.

            4. To hire engineers who have years of experience in powder mixing.

20. The passage implies that if the top bulb of an hourglass were filled with water instead of sand, the pressure pushing the water through the opening would

            1. remain constant as water trickles through the opening.

            2. decrease as water trickles through the opening.

            3. increase as water trickles through the opening.

            4. be directed at the walls of the container rather than the base.

Passage 6

While welcoming the nuclear deal, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to tell the President of USA that there remained areas of concern that needed to be addressed during the negotiation of the bilateral agreement (called the 123 agreement, after the relevant clause number in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, 1954). The U.S. has entered into some twenty-five 123 agreements with various countries, including the one concerning Tarapur. The Tarapur agreement concluded in 1963 was unique in that it guaranteed supplies of enriched uranium fuel from the U.S. for running the Tarapur reactors for their entire life. However, after 1978 the U.S. did not supply fuel saying its domestic legislation (under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act) prevented it from doing so. India argued that Tarapur was an inter-governmental agreement and hence it had to be honoured by the U.S. But to no avail. However, later, the U.S. allowed France to supply fuel to India. Subsequently, the USSR (now Russia) and even China supplied fuel for Tarapur. The lesson from the Tarapur episode is that U.S. breached with impunity even a cast-iron guarantee it had furnished. Considerable bitterness grew between the U.S. and India and extended to many other areas beyond the nuclear one. When India agreed, reluctantly, in March 2006 to put imported reactors under "safeguards in perpetuity", the U.S. consented to the Indian insistence on assurances of fuel supply. This meant India could build up a stockpile of fuel to tide over disruption in supply and the U.S. would agree to work with other countries namely Russia, France, and Britain to arrange alternate supplies. The U.S. legislation, based on the Hyde Bill, forbids India building up a stockpile of nuclear fuel. It also obligates the U.S. administration to work with other Nuclear Supplier Group countries to get them to suspend supplies to India, if the U.S. has done so under some provision of the Hyde Bill. It is not evident how the U.S. can address the legitimate concerns of India on continued fuel supply, given the boundaries set by the Hyde Bill. With regard to future nuclear tests, the Prime Minister has said, India is only committed to a voluntary moratorium. A moratorium is only a temporary holding off of an activity, conditioned by specific circumstances that obtained at the time when such a declaration was made. It cannot be construed as a permanent ban. The Hyde Bill has sought to make the moratorium into a permanent ban. However, there is no such restraint imposed on the U.S., China. Pakistan or any other country. In bringing up this issue, I do not wish to suggest that I favour a resumption of tests by India. But India cannot prevent other countries from, carrying out tests. It is, therefore, unacceptable that India forfeits its right to test for all time to come under the agreement with the U.S. Even if the 123 agreement is silent on the issue, Indian negotiators must put this issue on the table. The Hyde Bill calls for suspension of all cooperation and fuel supplies and even calls for return of all equipment and materials supplied earlier in the event of a test. It baffles one how India can return reactor installations that might have been operated a few years, were such a contingency to arise in future. The differences over the definition of "full civilian nuclear cooperation" have been discussed in the media. The Indian understanding was that reprocessing of spent fuel, enrichment of uranium, and production of heavy water also formed part of the term "full civilian nuclear cooperation." In the congressional debate, it has been noted that these were construed by the U.S. to be in the nature of military activities and not civilian. India's future plans for thorium utilisation for civil nuclear power depend crucially or reprocessing. Similarly, civil nuclear power units using natural uranium require heavy water as reactor coolant and moderator. Equally if India were to embark on a sizeable light water reactor programme, it may like to have control on supply of enriched uranium for economic and supply security reasons. India has technologies of its own in these areas and will develop them further in the years ahead. If the Indo-U.S agreement moves ahead in the manner its sponsors have speculated, in a few decades from now some 90 per cent of the nuclear installations in India would be open to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. In that scenario, how can India reconcile to the embargo from nuclear advanced countries on the export of enrichment, reprocessing, and heavy water technologies? Even if the issue were to be papered over now, it will then look from India's point of view to have been a very bad bargain.

21. What is the Indian understanding of the definition of "full civilian nuclear cooperation"?

            1. Enrichment of uranium                                2. Reprocessing of spent fuel

            3. Production of heavy water                           4.All the above

22. With reference to the passage, select which of the following statement(s) is/are incorrect?

A. U.S. did not supply fuel to India after 1987.

B. The Hyde Bill calls for suspension of all cooperation and fuel supplies.

C. India can prevent other countries from carrying out the test.

            1. A and B                   2. B only                      3. A and C                   4. A, B and C

23. What was the uniqueness of the Tarapur agreement that was concluded in 1963?

1. It guaranteed supplies of enriched uranium fuel from the U.S. for running the Tarapur reactors for entire life.

            2. It prevented other countries from carrying out nuclear tests.

            3. It addresses the legitimate concerns of India on fuel supply.

            4. All the above

24. Which of the following countries supplied fuel for Tarapur?

            1. France          2. U.S.A.          3. USSR and France     4. France, USSR and China

Exercise 5.3

Questions: 25                          Time: 40 minutes

Directions: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Read the given passages and answer the questions by ticking the appropriate choice from the options given.

Passage 1

Not even a three-day brainstorming session among top psychologists at the Chinese University could unravel one of the world's greatest puzzles — how the Chinese mind ticks. Michael Bond, the psychologist who co-ordinated and moderated a three-day seminar in Chinese psychology, came a long way to knock heads. “If a bomb hits this building,” muttered Bond, half-seriously, “it would wipe out the whole discipline.” But the only thing that went-off in the Cho Yiu Conference Hall of Chinese University was the picking of brains, the pouring out of brains and a refrain from an on-going mantra: "more work needs to be done" or "we don't know". Each of the 36 participants was allowed 30 minutes plus use of an over-head projector to condense years of research into data and theories. Their content spilled over from 20 areas of Chinese behaviour, including reading, learning styles, psychopathology, social interaction, personality and modernisation. An over-riding question for observers, however, was why, in this group of 21 Chinese and 15 non-Chinese, weren't there more professionals from mainland China presenting research on the indigenous people? Michael Philips, a psychiatrist who works in Hubei Province, explained: "The Cultural Revolution silenced and froze the research," said the Canadian-born doctor who has lived and worked in China for more than 10 years. "And 12 years later, research is under way but it is too early to have anything yet. Besides, most of the models being used are from the West anyway." In such a specialised field, how can non-Chinese academics do research without possessing fluency in Chinese? Those who cannot read, write or speak the language usually team up with Chinese colleagues. "In 10 years, we won't be able to do this. It's a money thing," said William Gabrenya of Florida Institute of Technology, who described himself as an illiterate gweilo who lacks fluency in Chinese. He said that 93 per cent of the non-Chinese authors in his field cannot read Chinese. Dr. Gabrenya raised questions such as why is research dependent on university students, why is research done on Chinese people in coastal cities (Singapore, Taiwan, Shanghai and Hong Kong) but not inland? "Chinese psychology is too Confucian, too neat. He's been dead a long time. How about the guy on a motorcycle in Taipei?" Dr. Gabrenya said, urging that research have a more contemporary outlook. The academics came from Israel, Sweden, Taiwan, Singapore, United States, British Columbia and, of course, Hong Kong. Many of the visual aids they used by way of illustration contained eye-squinting type and cobweb-like graphs. One speaker, a sociologist from Illinois, even warned her colleagues that she would not give anyone enough time to digest the long, skinny columns of numbers. Is Chinese intelligence different from Western? For half of the audience who are illiterate in Chinese, Professor Jimmy Chan of HKU examined each of the Chinese characters for "intelligence". Phrases such as "a mind as fast as an arrow" and connections between strokes for sun and the moon were made. After his 25-minute speech, Chan and the group lamented that using Western tests are the only measure available to psychologists, who are starving for indigenous studies of Chinese by Chinese. How do Chinese children learn? David Kember of Hong Kong Polytechnic University zeroed in on deep learning versus surface. Deep is when the student is sincerely interested for his own reasons. Surface is memorising and spitting out facts. It doesn't nurture any deep understanding. If the language of instruction happens to be the children's second language, students in Hong Kong have all sorts of challenges with English-speaking teachers from Australia, Britain and America with accents and colloquialism? Westerners have more self-esteem than Chinese? Dr. Leung Kwok, chairman of the psychology department of Chinese University, points his finger at belief systems: the collectivist mind-set often stereotypes Chinese unfairly. The philosophy of "yuen" (a concept used to explain good and bad events which are pre-determined and out of the individual's control) does not foster a positive self-concept. Neither do collectivist beliefs, such as sacrifice for the group, compromise and importance of using connections. "If a Chinese loses or fails, he has a stronger sense of responsibility. He tends to blame it on himself. A non-Chinese from the West may blame it on forces outside himself," Dr. Leung said. By the end of the three-day session, there were as many questions raised as answered. It was agreed there was room for further research. To the layman, so much of the discussion was foreign and riddled with jargon and on-going references to studies and researchers. The work of the participants will resurface in a forthcoming Handbook of Chinese Psychology, which will be edited by Dr. Bond and published by Oxford University Press.

1. According to the passage the author suggests that

            1. not many people study Chinese psychology.

            2. the building of the Chinese University was in danger of attack.

            3. Chinese psychology is a difficult subject to study.

            4. Chinese psychology is a difficult subject to organize.

2. It can be inferred from the passage that

            1. the Cultural Revolution was a productive period for Chinese psychology.

            2. the Cultural Revolution was a dangerous period for Chinese psychology.

            3. the Cultural Revolution was an unproductive period for Chinese psychology.

            4. the Cultural Revolution was a  new beginning for Chinese psychology.

3. According to the passage, William Gabrenya refers to himself as an 'illiterate gweilo'. This suggests that

            1. he feels defensive about not speaking and reading Chinese.

            2. he feels secure in his illiteracy.

            3. he is representative of other westerners active in this field.

            4. he can operate perfectly well  without learning Chinese.

4. According to the passage, all of the following are true except

            1. the visual aids were not very easy to understand.

            2. the conference attracted a very professional standard of presentation.

            3. the visual aids were not very tidy.

            4. the presenters were under time pressure.

5. According to the passage which of the following is not true?

            1. Chinese characters are very difficult for westerners to master.

            2. It is difficult to come to a conclusion about western and Chinese intelligence.

            3. It is difficult to measure Chinese intelligence with western tests.

            4. More tests are required that are conducted by the Chinese for the Chinese.

Passage 2

"Since wars begin in the minds of men," so runs the historic UNESCO Preamble, "It is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed." Wars erupt out when the minds of men are inflamed, when the human mind is blinded and wounded, succumbs to frustration and self-negation. War is the transference of this self-negation into the other-negation. The three Indo-Pak wars and the persisting will to terrorise have emanated from this savage instinct of other-negation that is the legacy of the partition carnage and its still-bleeding and unhealed wound. Truncated from its eastern wing in 1971, Pakistan ever since has suffered from a sense of total existential self-negation. Plus the scars left by the two previously lost wars to India and Kargil fill the Army and the Pakistan psyche with a seething urge to revenge: that India has to be negated, destroyed - in a deep psychological sense, another Hiroshima in the subcontinent is imaginable and possible. Terrorism in Kashmir springs from such deep negating existential grounds. Like the former Soviet Union, Pakistan came into being as a result of a grand delusion and massive perversion of reality - the so called two-nation theory. Like the former Soviet Union, it stands in danger of crumbling unless it modifies its reality perception and comes to terms with its post-Bangladesh reality within the prevailing subcontinental equation. Failing this, Pakistan is bound to break up, nudging the region to a nuclear nightmare, including possible South Asian Hiroshimas. With 'hot pursuits' and 'surgical operations' freely making rounds among the policy elite and the public at large, the national atmosphere looks ominously charged. "On the brink," headlines The Week adding, "As men and machines are quickly positioned by India and Pakistan, the threat of war looms real." To which Pakistan counters, "If any war is thrust on Pakistan, Pakistan's armed forces and the 140 million people of Pakistan are fully prepared to face all consequences with all their might." According to Indian Express, "Pakistan has deployed medium range ballistic missile batteries (MRBBs) along the Line of Control (LoC) near Jammu and Poonch sectors in an action that will further escalate the tension between the two countries." And India's Defence Minister ups the ante, "We could take a (nuclear) strike, survive and then hit back, Pakistan would be finished." This is certainly a tactical super shot, even a strategical super hit inasmuch as this is the very logic of India's 'No-first-strike' doctrine. The Defence Minister obviously has no idea of the ethical, phenomenological implications of abandoning chunks of the Indian population to ransom for potential Hiroshimas and then 'finishing' the neighbouring country of 140 million in what could be nothing short of an Armageddon. Forget these horrendous scenarios. But does this hot repudiate the grain of truth for which- India's civilisation stood for and vindicated across the untold millennia of its history? Yet the defence minister, the pacifist and Gandhian, is no warmonger. As Defence Minister he had to react at a level with the Pakistanis, with their proclivity to drop the nuclear speak whenever that suited them, could have Fegistered the message.

6. According to the passage, Pakistan is bound to disintegrate

I. and it will throw the subcontinent into a nuclear backlash.

II. if it refuses to accept its present identity.

III. if it does not stop fuelling terrorism in Kashmir.

            1. II and III are correct             2. I, II and III are correct         3. I and II are correct   4. I and III are correct

7. It can be inferred from the passage that

            1. Soviet Union crumbled as a result of the grand delusion of the two nation theory.

            2. Soviet Union also came into being as a result of the two nation theory.

            3. Soviet Union's disintegration was due to her failure to accept the reality.

            4. The ideological basis of creation of Soviet Union and Pakistan was the same.

8. According to the passage, the reason for terrorism in Kashmir is

            1. Pakistan's perception of two-nation theory. 2. Pakistan's blind faith in terrorism.

            3. Pakistan's sense of self-negation.                 4. Both (2) and (3)

9. According to the passage, all of the following about the defence minister are not true, except

            1. He is not a Gandhian.                      2. He is not logical.                  3. He is a pacifist.        4. He is not a warmonger.

Passage 3

Mobility of capital has given an unprecedented leverage to companies not only to seek low paid, informal wage employees across national boundaries, but the threat of capital flight can also serve to drive down wages and place large numbers of workers in insecure, irregular employment. Informalisation strategies enable employers to draw on the existing pool of labour as and when they require, without having to make a commitment to provide permanent employment or any of the employee-supporting benefits associated with permanent jobs. As far as the working class is concerned, informalisation is in fact, a double-edged sword. For not only is the employee denied the rights associated with permanent employment, but the nature of casual work essentially destroys the foundations of working class organisation. As workmen move from one employer to another, numbers are scattered, everyday interests become divergent, and individualised survival takes precedence over group or collective struggles.

Even workers who have been in sectors with a long tradition of unionisation are difficult to organise once they are removed from the arena of permanent employment. About 50,000 textile mill workers in Ahmedabad City were laid off during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The move to obtain compensation and rehabilitation for these workers floundered on the weakness of the struggle, as numbers of workers who were available for pressing their claims and taking to some kind of activism dwindled the motivation of leaders declined and the struggle slowly frittered away. If this is the situation with workers familiar with the concept of unionisation, the task of organising vast masses of casual workers who have never been organised, is obviously much more difficult. The problem, essentially, is not only that of organising workers for struggle, but given the transitory nature of casual employment, employers are not bound to provide insurance of any kind, and frequently, there is no fixed employer against whom workers' claims can be pressed. In this context, the formation of the National Centre for Labour (NCL) can be seen as a landmark in the history of the working class movement in India. The NCL is an apex body of independent trade unions working in the unorganised sector of labour, registered under the Indian Trade Union Act, 1926. Through its constituent members, the NCL represents the interests of workers in construction, agriculture, fisheries, forests, marble and granite manufacturing, self-employed women, contract workers, anganwadi and domestic workers, as also workers in the ' tiny and small-scale industries. The NCL, launched in 1995, has about 6,25,000 members spread over 10 states in India. The NCL reflects two tendencies. First, the formation of such a federation highlights that despite the problems in organising workers in the informal sector, there have in fact, been a range of organisations which have sought to address these issues. On a collective plane, their activities represent a marked departure from the traditional way of conceptualising union activities exclusively around organised or formal sector workers. Thus, the unionisation of the hitherto unorganised sector has become inserted into the political universe as a possible and legitimate activity. Second, the formation of the NCL, to an extent, overturns the pessimistic logic that the interests of the unorganised sector — given their diverse and inchoate form — cannot be articulated from a single platform. For the NCL aims precisely, not only provide an anchoring for these diverse organisations, but more importantly, to articulate the need for institutionalised norms of welfare which can apply to the unorganised sector as a whole. It is in the context of this generalised movement that one needs to view recent efforts to bring in legislative acts which seek to create a new framework of laws and institutions addressing the needs of the unorganised sector. One of the major problems that has dogged this sector has of course been that of implementation. Thus, for example, while there is a stipulated minimum wage for most industries, this is frequently flouted by employers. A central objective of the NCL has been to advocate' legislation to create agencies, which would mediate between the employer and the employee, to institutionalise certain guarantees of welfare and security to the employee. Thus, for example, the State Assisted Scheme of Provident Fund for Unorganised Workers, 2000, proposed by the Labour Department of the Government of West Bengal, introduces the mechanism of a Fund which will be contributed to by the worker (wage-earner or self-employed person), the employer, and the Government and to which the worker would be entitled at the age of 55 or above. By registering a worker to this programme and issuing an identity card, the initial hurdle of identifying a large mass of scattered workers is overcome, and a step is taken towards institutionalising their legitimate claims against the employers and from the State. The Karnataka Unorganised Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Work) Bill, 2001, offers a more comprehensive framework for addressing the unorganised sector's needs. It envisages the formation of a Fund and a Board, in each sector. The Board, consisting of members from the Government, employers and employees, would be responsible for administering the Fund. Employers must compulsorily pay towards the Fund, a certain fixed percentage of the wages or taxes payable by them, or a certain percentage of the cost of their project, (for example, in construction projects). The concept of the Fund is designed to create the financial viability of social security for workers, and to provide a structure for employers' contribution. Thus, workers would be insured for accident and illness, old age, and unemployment. The Board is designed to provide a mechanism to ensure the working of the Fund, and essentially, to institutionalise workers' claims against employers through an empowered agency. In the broader context of economic liberalisation, recently proposed labour reforms seek to extend the scope of contract employment and to facilitate worker lay-off. As casualisation of labour now seems an irreversible trend, the Bills outlined above would appear to be the only way to ensure workers' interest. To this extent, organisations such as the NCL, which have systematically struggled to push for such legislation, are serving an invaluable historical purpose. As the Karnataka Unorganised Workers Bill awaits endorsement during the Assembly sessions being held currently, for the protagonists of the movement, this would be a watershed, but, nevertheless only a moment in a struggle that needs to be waged at multiple points and to evolve to newer heights.

10. According to the passage, the proposed labour reforms

            1. will provide a much needed thrust to liberalization.

            2. will encourage the practice of hiring labourers on a contract basis.

            3. have resulted in casualisation of labour.

            4. seek to extend the scope of employment and to facilitate worker retrenchment.

11. According to the passage, textile mill workers could not obtain compensation because

            1. the number of workers available for pressing their claims was not adequate.

            2. they were not united.

            3. of the weakness of the struggle.

            4. the motivation of the leaders was very low.

12. According to the passage, the most important aspect of the NCL is that

            1. it has given a voice to the interests of workers in the unorganized sector.

            2. it is an apex body of independent trade unions.

            3. it has 6,25,000 members spread over 10 states in India.

            4. it is the only body of its kind in India.

Passage 4

            The philosopher and king of theosophists, J. Krishnamurti has given a clear contemporary statement of the human condition. The condition involves misery, greed, desire, fear and suffering. And that is what K in fact did. He dealt only with facts. Only fact has reality, he said. All the ideals created by the human mind are illusions. They are about what should be and not what is. Somehow, our mind is such that it is unable to live only with fact. The creation and sustenance of the ideal is the major cause of conflict in the human mind.

            That was why K did not offer any ready-made solution. He only invited us to investigate, enquire without a bias, to see for ourselves the truth in the falsehood. He derided all attempts to bestow any authority on him. Because calling him a teacher or guru implied that the listener was a follower. So there was again a duality between the teacher and the taught, which would cause conflict. While he was speaking, he wanted all to feel that they are on the same platform. One can realise how difficult it indeed is to listen and not to follow.

            Therefore, to many people K’s approach appeared negative or even destructive. He did not give anything for the miserable or the seeker to hand on to. He only asked the seeker’s awareness to be functional. Asked what his life’s teaching was he said: “Nothing, just be aware.”

            This attitude to K’s ways indicates our own lethargy and conditioned minds. We want to arrive at solutions and conclusions and don’t want to enquire. God is more important to us than the means. According to K, there can’t be another more positive approach. The negative is the most positive action. Because of our conditioned minds and distorted perception, all our intended action will itself be distorted and cannot lead to clarity. Only choiceless awareness leads to clear perception and induces a holistic vision.

            Apart from all important issues relate to man, K talked in great detail about time. There is time to do things of the external world and there is time in the psychological sense; K questioned if the latter time really existed. He pleaded (as he always did) not to treat this as conclusion, but as an inquiry, whose truth has to be investigated by all of us together. Living in the past is what psychological time is about. So K asked: Can there be an ending of time? Then there is the possibility of living from moment to moment. You don’t let the dust of experience settle on the consciousness, which then remains unconditioned.

            This brings us to the title of the present book. The author is highly regarded as a person well-versed in the works of K. This book is, besides other volumes, written on what K said. One has the right to pose the question that K did not teach anything and abnegated authority. What then is the purpose of and need for elaborating on what he said? Although K went into a problem very slowly, laying bare the remarkable web of our psyche, still he often sounded abstract and remote to many, by talking about time, desire, the observer and the observed.
            An understanding of what he is saying can come only very slowly; of course, real understanding comes from within. Thus our trained capacity at observing ourselves determines our progress in understand. Therefore a beginner may be discouraged to go far with K in his search. So some simplification and elaboration by somebody who has spent lot of time and developed clear understanding is justified.

            K himself rarely compared his teachings with other systems of philosophy or religion, except for his request to the listener to detach himself from any system and start afresh. He had not read any sacred texts, he claimed. But in the book one often finds comparisons with Zen Buddhist ways of spirituality and also the sayings of other philosophers. Of course, interpretation would take on some colour. It can only be a pointer towards the real thing. Such a book should be taken in that spirit. It can serve as a good introductory guide to the original books of K.

            The author has included as appendix some of his lectures on the vegetarian way of living, sensitivity of mind and body, compassion for all life and finally on the life of the Buddha. K himself said that the teachings of the Buddha came closest to what he meant. Of course, he was not a Buddhist.

13. The author is tempted to

1. strongly disagree with Krishnamuti’s philosophy

2. vehemently decry Krishnamurti’s way of dealing with life

3. challenge Krishnamurti’s claim that he had read no other religious text

4. express reservations about the efficacy of Krishnamurti’s approach in today’s materialistic world

14. How does the author explain Krishnamurti’s not offering any ready-made solution?

1. because Krishnamurti wanted human mind to operate with ideals.

2. because Krishnamurti wanted human mind to work in conjunction with ideals and facts

3. because Krishnamurti proposed a constructive approach

4. because Krishnamurti felt that creation and sustenance of ideal was a major cause of conflict in the human mind

15. The author empathises with Krishnamurti’s feelings that

1. man finds it easier to be a listener and not follower

2. man finds it easier to follow rather than to listen

3. man finds it easier to be totally aware without going for conclusion.

4. man should listen with the urge to follow.

16. The author of the book is

1. attributed the quality of the same vagueness assigned to Krishnamurti

2. assigned the quality of painstakingly unfolding he subject matter of the book under review

3. acknowledged as one who has read a lot on Krishnamurti

4. said to be a slow understanding being

17. Which of the following is not explicitly stated to be a part of the book under review?

1. promotion of vegetarianism                                     2. Discourse on sensitivity of body

3. discussing compassion for all life                4. Early life of Krishnamurti

18. Which word would best describe the meaning of "abnegated authority"?

1. disliked authority                             2. hated authority                    

3. renounced authority                         4. none of the above

Passage 5

            In his book "About Behaviourism", Dr. B.F. Skinner, the noted behavioural psychiatrist, lists the 20 most salient objections to behaviourism and goes on to answer them. He has answers and explanations for every one. For instance, to those who object that behaviourism “neglects innate endowment and argues that all behaviour is acquired during the lifetime of the individual,” Dr. Skinner expresses puzzlement. Granted, “a few behaviourists in their enthusiasm for what may be done through the environment, have minimised or even denied genetic contribution. But others have no doubt acted as if a genetic endowment were unimportant. Few would actually contend that behaviour is endlessly malleable.” And Dr. Skinner himself, sounding as often as not like some latter-day social Darwinist, gives as much weight to the ‘contingencies of survival’ in the evolution of the human species as to the ‘contingencies of reinforcement’ in the lifetime of the individual. Dr Skinner is a radical behaviourist. Radical behaviourism does not deny the possibility of self-observation or self-knowledge.

            To those who claim that behaviourism "cannot explain creative achievements--in arts, in music, literature, science or mathematics,” Dr. Skinner provides an intriguing ellipsis. “Contingencies of reinforcement also resemble contingencies of survival in the production of novelty. In both natural selection and operand conditions, the appearance of mutations is crucial. Until recently, species evolved because of random changes in genes or chromosomes, but the geneticist may arrange conditions under which mutations are particularly likely to occur. We can discover some of the sources of the new forms of behaviour which undergo selection by prevailing contingencies or reinforcement, and fortunately the creative artist or thinker has other ways of introducing novelties.”

            Dr. Skinner’s answers to the 20 questions he poses -- questions that range all the way from investigating that behaviourism fails ‘to account for cognitive processes’ to wondering if behaviourism ‘is indifferent to the warmth and richness of human life, and is incompatible with the enjoyment of art, music and with love for one’s fellow men.’ But will it wash? Will it serve to serve those critics who have characterised Skinner variously as a mad, manipulative doctor, as a native nineteenth century positivist, as an unscientific technician, an arrogant social engineer? There is no gainsaying that ‘About Behaviourism’ is an unusually compact summing up of both the history and ‘the philosophy of the science of human behaviour’ (as Dr. Skinner insists on defining behaviourism). It is a veritable artwork of organisation. And anyone who reads it will never again be able to think of behaviourism as simplistic philosophy that reduces human being to black boxes responding robot-like to external stimuli.

            Still, there are certain quandaries that the book does not quite dispel. For one thing, though Dr. Skinner makes countless references to the advances in experiments with human beings that behaviourism has made since it first began running rats through mazes six or seven decades go, he fails to provide a single illustration of these advances. And though it may be true, as Dr. Skinner argues that one can extrapolate from pigeons to people, it would be reassuming to be shown precisely how. More important, he has not satisfactorily rebutted the basic criticism that behaviourism “is scientistic rather than scientific; it merely emulates the sciences.’ A true science doesn’t predict in advance what it will accomplish when it is firmly established as a science, not even when it is posing as ‘the philosophy of that science.’ A true science simply advances rules for testing hypothesis. But Dr. Skinner predicts that behaviourism will produce the means to save human society from impending disaster. Two key concepts that keep acceding to that prediction are ‘manipulation’, and ‘control’. And so, while he reassures us quite persuasively that science would practise those concepts benignly, one can’t shake off the suspicion that he was advancing a science just in order to save society by means of ‘manipulation’ and ‘control’, and that is not so reassuring.

19. The passage is most probably a/an:

1. essay on behaviourism                                2. book review

3. analysis of behaviourism                             4. psychological discourse

20. From the passage it can be inferred that the book mentioned here deals with:

a) answers to questions about behaviourism   

2. the science of behaviourism

3. behaviourism and human life                     

4. a list of questions and answers on the science of behaviourism.

21. It can be inferred from the passage that Dr. Skinner is a:

a) behavioural psychologist who explains the values of behaviourism

2. a radical ‘behaviourist’ who accepts the possibility of self knowledge

3. behaviourist who denies existence of sensations and feelings of human life

4. a scientist who advocates methodological behaviourism.

22. The author advocates the view that:

a) a behavioural pattern is set up during the lifetime of an individual

2. there are too many chance occurrences in the lifetime of individual

3. environmental factors count much in the behaviour of human being

4. there is an absence of genetic contribution in the science of behaviourism.

23. Which of the following statements is true?

a) Behaviour takes different pliable forms and patterns         

2. Contingencies of reinforcement play a very important part

3. Contingencies of survival play an important part as contingencies of reinforcement

4. There are different and novel factors of environment that contributes.

24. Which of the following is true about Radical Behaviourism?

a) it does not deny the possibility of self observation and its necessity          

2. it give great importance to retrospection

3. it counteracts the influence of mentalism   

4. tries to put an end to mentalistic explanation of behaviour.

25. The passage stresses on the importance of which of the following?

a) the relationship between creativity and human achievement

2. the part played by mutations in creating novelties

3. the development of a creative artist by the influence of behaviour

4. prevailing contingencies or reinforcement selecting new forms of behaviour

Exercise 5.4

Questions: 24                          Time: 40 minutes

Directions: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Read the given passages and answer the questions by ticking the appropriate choice from the options given.

Passage 1

            To say that Bach was a man with a mind is putting it mildly. In terms of mastery over the craft and technique of musical forms he has not been surpassed to this day, not even by the apocalyptic musicianship of Beethoven. All the same, the similarities between Bach and Beethoven are striking. Both were Germans from humble families of musicians that had migrated into Germany; both were traumatised by their father-figures in childhood; both became voraciously musical in order to escape childhood oppression; both then became masterly improvisers and performers of keyboard instruments (Bach on the organ, Beethoven on the piano); both were volcanically independent and fierce-tempered with employers and patrons; both had only a sparse notion of the social world and how to deal with it; both were thrifty as well as canny with money; both chose to radically enlarge and massively alter most of the major musical forms rather than invent new ones.

            The differences end here because Beethoven was preceded by a string of musical masters, whereas Bach's inheritance in that respect was leaner. Beethoven took over the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn and Salieri. Both Mozart, Haydn and Salieri had themselves inherited the spirit of Johann Sebastian Bach from the most famous of Bach's sons, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, who gave the world the Classic version of the sonata form as we know it now. Johann Sebastian Bach had no such exalted pedigree stretching behind him, so his achievement is all the more historically colossal.

            The groundwork for most of the major Baroque musical forms had in fact been established before Bach by a string of Italians - Monteverdi, Allessandro Scarlatti, Frescobaldi. Bach knew their work and, more specifically, learnt much about composing for the violin from two other Italians, Corelli and Vivaldi. Purcell in England, Pachelbel (of the wonderful "Canon in D") in Germany and Couperin in France preceded Bach too. Yet the collective accomplishments of all these Baroque predecessors is over-shadowed by Bach's own. Every historian of music agrees that, unlike Beethoven, Bach had no precursors of comparable accomplishment. What he did have was two good ears, and it was only his eyesight that failed him in his last years.

            Not being endowed with a grand genealogy, Bach seems to have created one without intending to. No musician's canvas was as large. In terms of output, Beethoven's opus numbers stretch to 138, Mozart's to 626, Bach's to nearly 1,100. In fact, judging by sheer prolificity, Bach is thought to have been exceeded only by his contemporary Telemann. But whereas Telemann wrote around 3,000 compositions of which very few are now remembered, a reasonably large component of Bach's huge oeuvre is still performed.

            This was far from being always the case. After his death Bach's work was largely forgotten, including by his own musical progeny. His sons sold his scripts for small sums and were occasionally slighting about his achievement. In large part this was because the musical tradition developed away from the polyphonic forms of which Bach was the master. Secular patronage and courtly composition for the amusement of the rich  nobility grew more important than service to the church. Haydn and Mozart dominated the era after Bach and Handel, and the fashion in their time was for forms in which the single-line melody and "tunefulness" could assume dominance. Bach's fugal contrapuntal style seemed archaic almost as soon as he was in his grave. Then in 1829, upon the hundredth anniversary of Bach's "Passion According to St. Matthew", Felix Mendelssohn, alongside Schumann, pulled Bach from the brink, reviving that work and creating considerable interest in the long-forgotten master. In 1850, on the first centenary of Bach's death, the Bach Gesellschaft (Corporation) was formed in order to publish The Complete Works of J.S. Bach. It took 50 years to complete the task. Bach's complete works have only recently been made available on a set of 138 CDs.

            Alongside his exact contemporary George Freiderich Handel (curiously Handel, Bach and Domenico Scarlatti were all born in 1985), Bach defined his musical epoch. He did so with a mind-boggling profusion of vocal and instrumental compositions, accompanied as well as unaccompanied, in every known genre of the time: sonata, overture, partita, mass concerto, concerto grosso, cantata, secular cantata (a form comparable with opera). Consequently he is considered the fountainhead and originally genius of the Baroque period, and his death in 1950 marks the end of the "High Baroque" in standard histories of Western music. His last professional years were spent as organist and music-teacher in Leipzig where, for 27 years, he was weighty both as musician and as husband. At his death he had, apart from his 1,000 compositions, 20 children by two wives to his score. Many of Bach's children died in infancy, nine survived him, and three of the survivors, including C.P.E. Bach, became important musicians in their own right. In this again he vastly outscored Beethoven, who craved women and children in a deeply unfulfilled manner.

            Bach would have been nonplussed by any attribution of the term "genius" to him. According to Denis Arnold, one of his many biographers, when asked how he managed to compose so much music of such complexity he replied dourly, like a Scotsman: "I worked hard." The notion of "craftsmanship" as "genius" came with Romanticism, a 100 years after Bach. Chopin and Brahms, Liszt and Berlioz could think of themselves as geniuses, not Bach. Nor was Bach's tireless dedication to his craft considered anything other than a dedication to what God had cut him out to do. Like master craftsmen within a musical guild, he was devoted to his deity; the notion of deifying his craft would have seemed absurd. He was no self-glorifying Wagner and aestheticism lay far in the future. Humility before God and duty to God via music were all Bach's concerns. Of course he considered it his godly duty to pocket the proceeds of what he composed so he could feed his considerable family. This he seems to have managed quite adequately.

1. Which of the following in NOT a similarity between Bach and Beethoven, as mentioned in the passage?

1. they did not have considerable social skills            

2. they were careful with money

3. they performed on keyboard instruments                           

4. they wrote classical music

2. Which of the following statements are true?

1. Mozart and Haydn preceded Bach.                         

2. Mozart succeeded Beethoven

3. Johann Sebastian was Bach's son                                       

4. Beethoven succeeded Haydn and Salieri

3. Why is Bach's achievement considered "all the more historically colossal" by the author?

1. Bach broke the tradition and wrote great music

2. He gave the world the classic version of the sonata form

3. He did not have any precedents to draw from

4. all of the above

4. The passage mentions the following music forms match the music from with its meaning:

I. Sonata                      A. religious song sung by a large number of people

II. Mass                        B. composition for one or more solo instruments

III. Concerto                C. introduction to opera or musical play

IV. Overture                D. composed for one, or two  instruments

            1. I-A, II-B, III-C, IV-D                                               2. I-D, II-A, III-B, IV-C                      

3. I-D, II-C, III-B, IV-A                                               4. none of these

5. What is implied by the phrase, "Bach's fugal contrapuntal style"?

1. Bach's musical style consisting of counterpoint

2. Bach's frugal style which does not have many embellishments

3. Bach's grand style which is an allegory

4. Bach's style which cannot be compared.

6. Felix Mendelssohn revived Bach in 1829, how many years after his death?

1. 100                          b)79                             3. 69                            4. 39

7. What is implied by the first line of the passage?

1. Bach was a man with a mind                                  

2. Bach was not a man than a man with a mind

3. Bach was more then a man with a mind                 

4. Bach was a fierce-tempered man

8.  We can conclude that:

1. Bach died in poverty and his sons sold his scripts for small sums.

2. Bach earned enough from his music.

3. Bach was remembered only after his death.

4. Bach found fulfilment in marriage.

Passage 2

            When Amazon.com was downgraded, the firms' analysts drew an angry response from Amazon's CEO. Nearer home, when L&T's results disappointed by a wide margin, it was the analysts' turn to feel aggrieved. Following the steep declines in prices of high-tech IPOs here and abroad, investors cannot be too happy with either the companies or analysts.

            Companies, analysts and investors constitute the three corners of the investment triangle. So who is to blame when returns disappoint? Analysts for doing a poor job? Or companies for misdealing analysts and investors? Or do companies and analysts collude at the expense of investors? The performance of analysts has been the subject of considerable research. In his best selling Random walk down Wall Street, published in the early seventies, Burton Malkiel cited studies that looked at analysts' earnings forecasts and others that evaluated returns generated by fund managers based on analysts' recommendations. Analysts' performance on both counts was disappointing.

            Recent research gives analysts more credit, but not an awful lot. One study finds that the contribution of analysts is "modest at best". Analysts' predictions, according to the study, are useful only in selected cases - loss making companies, relatively small firms, high-tech industries.

            Another study, reviewed and posted at the Wharton Knowledge Newsletter site, looked at 360,000 recommendations from 269 brokerage houses in the period 2006-07. It found that stocks receiving strong positive recommendations from analysts did better than the average stock. This suggests that analysts are indeed capable of picking winners. The study, however, found that the gains would have accrued only to large institutional investors who traded large blocks of shares and reacted instantly to recommendations, not to ordinary investors.

            Do companies mislead analysts? Analysts depend on companies for vetting their forecasts, so the "optimism bias" seen in analysts' forecasts often reflects companies' own optimism about the future. Companies have, however, found that deliberate exaggeration or failure to give out bad news on time does not pay. When results are way below expectations, the company's shares get trashed and it is difficult to regain investors' confidence. Many companies these days find merit in inducing "pessimism bias" in analysts. When earnings exceed forecasts, stock prices ten to rise smartly.

            There is one area, though, where companies are keen to have inflated forecasts and analysts seem ready to oblige - IPOs. Anecdotal evidence on this subject is aplenty but a recent study has documented the phenomenon with some rigour. The authors studied "buy" recommendations for 391 IPOs in the period 2000-01. They compared analysts' recommendations for stocks underwritten by competitors. The first group should have fared better given analysts' access to superior information; in fact, it was the second group that did. This does point to bias among analysts in the cases of stocks underwritten by their firms. We should not be surprised. There are huge rewards to attracting  underwriting deals -- the authors note that analysts who do so earn bonuses two or four times those of analysts who don't. It is impossible to attract such deals without favourable coverage of the firms concerned. One outcome of investment banking relationships is that "buy" recommendations outnumber "sell" by a wide margin, something that has attracted criticism from the SEC chairman, Arthur Levitt.

9. Why should investors not feel too happy with the companies or analysts?

1. because Amazon.com was downgraded

2. because the results disappointed and analysts had misguided them

3. because nobody knew what could happen to high tech stocks

4. because the analysts had not predicted the stock market crash.

10. Who, according to the author, is to blame when returns disappoint?

1. analysts                    2. companies               3. investors      4. None of the above.

11. The author's opinion about analysts is that:

1. they are all but useless

2. their contribution is "modest at best."

3. they are capable of picking winners but their recommendations have limited value

4. they fulfil a role in society.

12. What would be the best meaning of "optimism bias" as mentioned in the passage?

1. exaggeration of expected financial results.

2. introducing an element of optimism among analysts.

3. analysts' optimistic expectations

4. none of the above

13. Why do the companies want to induce "pessimism bias" in analysts?

1. They have found that deliberate exaggeration does not pay

2. When earnings exceed expectations, stock prices rise

3. Companies do not want investors to have a bad time

4. This is the new thinking on the stock exchange

14. What did the study about of recommendations of 391 IPOs prove?

1. that the analysis by the competitors would tend to be better than stocks underwritten by their own firms

2. that analysts were often biased and did not do a proper job

3. that analysts were more interested in attracting underwriting deals

4. that analysts were biased in cases of stocks underwritten by their own firms

15. It can be inferred from the passage that:

1. analysts are always mistaken about the movement of stocks

2. analysts recommend people to sell more often than they recommend to buy

3. investors should not rely too much on the recommendations of analysts

4. studies often point to contradictory data about stocks and shares

Passage 3

            As a human, you are undoubtedly an animal, even if you do not always choose to think of yourself that way. Like other animals, you eat, breathe and mate. It is only 5m years since your ancestors parted evolutionary company with those of the chimpanzees, and only a couple of hundred thousand since modern humans left Africa to begin their conquest of the world.

            You might therefore expect evolutionary biology to cast light on the essential nature of humans. If they are products of evolution, then ought not evolution help explain what makes them tick? In theory it should. But the track record of the purely biological approach to thinking and human behaviour is poor. A generation ago, thinkers as different as Desmond Morris, a British ethologist, and E. O. Wilson, a Harvard entomologist, began to offer explanations of humans in biological terms, with distinctly uneven results. Simple-minded applications of biological concepts like ``pecking order'', ``nesting instinct'' and ``alpha male'' have achieved little but crude caricatures of human life, and nobody but committed enthusiasts was persuaded.

            Yet the biological approach would not lie down. A new phalanx of biological thinkers is now emerging under the banner of "evolutionary psychology''. The name itself is due to two American academics, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, and their message is that recent advances in cognitive science now make it possible to avoid the mistakes of earlier biologically inclined thinkers. The bible of this movement is a collection of essays they edited with John Barkow, ``The Adapted Mind''. Their introduction to this book serves as a manifesto calling on psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and economists to break free from outmoded tradition and to begin anew within the framework of Darwinian theory.

            Popularisers have followed hard on the heels of the academics. Two of the most successful are Matt Ridley and Steven Pinker. Mr Ridley, in his most recent book, ``The Origins of Virtue'', sought the seeds of human altruism in life on the African savannah. Understanding the evolutionary pressures responsible for fellow-feeling, Mr Ridley believes, will help identify the kinds of society that best suit human beings.

            Steven Pinker is even more ambitious. He is professor of psychology at MIT, and now rather better known as a telegenic author and magazine contributor: he wrote a short piece offering ``an evolutionary explanation for presidents behaving badly''. Yet Mr Pinker has serious aims and his latest, much talked about book, ``How The Mind Works'', is modest neither in title nor scope. He starts fairly sedately, with chapters on hominid evolution and visual perception. But once into his stride there is no stopping him. By the end, he has offered evolutionary explanations for human emotions, personal relationships, humour, music, literature, art and religion.

            What exactly is new about evolutionary psychology? Any serious account of human beings has to give a central place to their intellectual abilities. People have taken over the planet not because they are stronger or fiercer than other animals (they aren't), but because they are cleverer. This is where older biological approaches broke down. They had nothing to say about human intelligence, but portrayed people as doltish bundles of instincts.

            The fault lay less in biology than psychology. Until fairly recently the dominant paradigm in psychology offered virtually no purchase for evolutionary theorising. From David Hume in 1750 to B.F. Skinner in 1950, it was more or less taken for granted that all intelligence is built on one simple mechanism, the association of ideas. Intelligent minds start as blank slates, and gradually build up a picture of the world from elements associated in our experience. Given this assumption, there was little to say about how evolution might have made people cleverer. The only answer was that it must have made them better at making associations, presumably by enlarging their brains. So claims about ``nesting instincts'' and ``pecking orders'' seemed beside the point. They left out what made you special: your superior associative abilities.

            Psychology is not like that any more. Instead of viewing the brain as one big associative engine, an increasing number of psychologists now take it to be a bundle of ``modules'', each dedicated to a different intellectual ability, and each pre-programmed with a substantial body of information about the world. A key moment was Noam Chomsky's attack on Skinner's associative account of language-learning. In a famous review of Skinner's theory in 1959, Mr Chomsky argued that associationism could not possibly explain human language. Children learn it too fast, and on such incomplete evidence, and there are so many odd parallels between different tongues, that the only plausible explanation is an innate and dedicated ``language organ'', which grows in the brain, just as your heart grows in the chest.

            Once Mr Chomsky had made this breach, the floodgates opened. Psychologists now postulate innate ``modules'' for any number of intellectual abilities. That new approach was codified 15 years ago by a philosopher colleague of Mr Chomsky's at MIT, Jerry Fodor, in ``The Modularity of Mind'' (MIT Press). Mr Fodor appealed in this book to a wide range of evidence to argue that many dedicated cognitive devices are part of an innate inheritance and embody assumptions that could not have been derived from experience. Some of the modules postulated by psychologists are unsurprising, such as a module for visually identifying physical objects, or for segmenting heard speech into words. But others are less obvious, like a module for face recognition, or for distinguishing animals from artefacts, or thinking about other people's minds and motives.

16. The work of thinkers like Desmond Morris and E.O. Wilson, according to the author, are:

1. important, as they helped explain human behaviour

2. gave plausible explanation of humans in biological terms.

3. were too simple and did not achieve much

4. none of these

17. Who, among the following, could be said to be the falter of "evolutionary psychology"?

            1. Leda Cosmides        2. John Tooby                         3. John Barkow           4. all of these

18. Which of the following would best describe the thinking of Matt Ridley?

1. Human altruism is a desirable human trait.

2. Society rests on human altruism

3. Altruism probably stated on the African savannah

4. Evolutionary pressures responsible for fellow-feeling beings are helpful in identifying human society.

19. How is evolutionary psychology different from other biological approaches?

1. it takes into account intelligence as a factor in evolution.

2. it offers evolutionary explanations for human emotions.

3. it breaks free from the framework of Darwinian theory.

4. none of the above

20. Biologists believed that intelligence was based on:

            1. evolution                 2. association of ideas             3. instincts       4. none of these

Passage 4

            It is affection received, not affection given, that causes a sense of security, though it arises most of all from affection which is reciprocal, strictly speaking. It is not only affection but also admiration that has this effect. Persons whose trade is to secure public admiration, such as actors, preachers, speakers, and politicians, come to depend more and more upon applause. When they receive their due need of public approbation their life is full of zest. When they do not, they become discontented and self centred. The diffused goodwill of a multitude does for them what is done for others by the more concentrated affection of the few. The child whose parents are fond of him accepts their affection as a law of nature. He does not think very much about it, although it is of great importance to his happiness. He thinks about the world, about the adventures that come his way and the more marvellous adventures that will come his way when he is grown up. But, behind all these external interests there is the feeling that he will be protected from disaster by parental affection. The child, from whom, parental affection is withdrawn for any reason, is likely to become timid and unadventurous filled with fears and self-pity and no longer able to meet the world in a mood of gay exploration. Such a child may set to work at a surprisingly early age to meditate on life and death and human destiny. He becomes an introvert, melancholy at first, but seeking ultimately the unreal consolations of some system of philosophy or theology. The world is a higgedly piggedly place, containing things pleasant and unpleasant, in haphazard sequence. And the desire to make an intelligible system or pattern out of it is at bottom an outcome of fear, in fact a kind of agoraphobia. Within four walls of his library the timid student feels safe. If he can persuade himself that the universe is equally tidy, he can feel almost safe when he has to venture forth into the streets. Such a man, if he had received more affection, would have feared the real world less, and would not have had to invent and ideal world to take its place in his beliefs.

21. We get maximum sense of security from affection:

1. we give others                      2. others give us                       3. that is reciprocal      4. none of the above

22. The 'diffused goodwill of a multitude' in the content, means:

1. show of affection by many people              2. general approbation

3. having a large following                              4. intense admiration by crowd

23. The child who receives adequate parental affection does not think very much about it, because he:

1. is busy thinking about the world and its adventures

2. becomes introvert with many external interests

3. accepts it as the law of nature

4. knows that his parents will protect him from disasters

24. By describing the world as 'higgedly piggedly place', the author implies that life is:

1. full of fear and dread                                  2. full of things pleasant and unpleasant

3. full of confusion                             4. unsystematic and uncertain

Answers

Exercise 5.1

1. 4      All the given choices mix up the words, for example, they will not make computer faster but easier to use

2. 1      directly stated in the passage

3. 2      the technique calls for change in statistical techniques

4. 3      it is stated that it is not fair to patients who respond to less than optimal doses.

5. 4      I is wrong because “at least until Bayesian techniques have become more widely accepted…” II is a statement about the future. Only III is stated in the passage.

6. 2      in the context of the passage, it means that it cannot be used indiscriminately.

7. 3      This is evident from the example given in the passage.

8. 2      The author says that "A business and its organisation are a couple," which means they are two separate entities.

9. 2      "match-ups between a business and an organisation are when the life cycles of the two are as closely parallel as a company can get them to be."

10. 4    "only semi-satisfying reconstructive surgery, called "re-organisation", and to lipusuction, called "downsizing,"

11. 3    "you rarely find old vibrant organisations"

12. 3    It is mentioned that they become coaches.

13. 1    "Staff is like fat, a little is necessary and healthy a lot is the opposite."

14. 1    The central idea of the passage is ageing organisations

15. 4    They seemed lifeless in galleries

16. 1    the possibility of any radical assertion of individuality in the modern sense is extremely limited

17. 1   

18. 3    anonymity is not part of ritualistic

19. 3    The themes are still the same.

20. 3    the liberal world's fitful conscience…first paragraph

21. 1    without providing them with the means to do it…first paragraph

22. 4    We cannot infer anything as evidence on both sides has been provided

23. 3    There is no mention of future conflicts anywhere in the passage

24. 4    nothing to this effect is stated in the passage

25. 2    It is stated about Third World that their soldiers are often ill-trained, and their equipment usually has to be supplied by someone richer.

Exercise 5.2

1. 2      Direct question: the figures are given in the first paragraph.

2. 3      Direct question: “IISI has projected the global demand for steel to grow by 4.9 per cent in the medium term up to 2010.”

3. 4      Directly mentioned in the passage.     

4. 4      12.5 million tones (mt) is the present capacity. It will be enhanced to 22.9mt by 2011-12

5. 4      (1) is implied when the NAC talks about the amount required for the “fair implementation” of NREG Act. (2) and (3) are mentioned in the passage.

6. 4      All the statements are mentioned in the passage.

7. 4      “Experts also question the success of the Bharat Nirman project … to fight rural poverty.”

8. 2      Directly stated.

9. 4      First paragraph states that from sensation, memory is produced and experience is produced from memory.

10. 3    First paragraph: “science and art come to men through experience; for 'experience made art', as Polus says, 'but inexperience luck.'”

11. 1    Read the first two sentences of the fourth para.

12. 1    The author discusses art and experience and concludes that the artist is wiser than the man of experience.

13. 4    All the given choices are given or implied in the passage.

14. 4    The reason given is that “bureaucracy is increasingly taking over the scientific institutions and scientists in most of these institutes are a marginalized group.” None of the choices give this reason.

15. 1    The passage says that diseases are increasing because of climatic changes.

16. 1   

17. 4    The passage says that “percolation is the major factor with nuts.”

18. 4    The industrial engineer says that both statements are correct since it is also “depending upon the material”

19. 3    The problem lies with difference in size.

20. 2    The pressure increases in proportion to the liquid’s height.

21. 4    The full civilian nuclear co-operation is discussed towards the end of the passage. 

22. 4    All three are stated in the passage.

23. 1       The sixth line in the passage supports the answer choice.

24. 4       Read 9^th and 10^th line of the passage.

Exercise 5.3

1. 3      The seminar is about how the Chinese mind ticks, i.e. it is difficult to understand their psychology.

2. 3         “The Cultural Revolution silenced and froze the research.”

3. 1      The phrase in in context of 93 percent of the non-Chinese authors who cannot read Chinese.

4. 2         Options 1, 3 and 4 are stated in the passage but not option 2.

5. 1      Nowhere in the passage does the writer give an indication to this effect whereas all the others can be easily concluded from the passage.

6. 3      The author mentions that it must come to terms with its post-Bangladesh reality, failing this, Pakistan is bound to break up, nudging the region to a nuclear nightmare.

7. 3      The middle of the passage states that Pakistan will disintegrate like the former Soviet Union.

8. 3         Stated in the passage. Read the 9^th line in the passage

9. 3         The 2^nd last line of the passage clearly states it.

10. 3    Read the last few lines of 1^st paragraph- ‘For not only is the employee…class organisation.’

11. 3       The 3^rd line of the 2^nd paragraph supports the answer choice.

12. 1       Refer to the 2^nd para-‘….the NCL represents….small-scale industries.’

13. 1    The tone suggests that the author is agreeing with the philosopher

14. 4    Directly stated in the passage

15. 4    "he wanted all to feel that they are on the same platform. One can realise how difficult it indeed is to listen and not to follow."

16. 3    The author says that he has read a lot about Krishnamurthi

17. 4    The early life is not mentioned at all.

18. 3    abnegate - to give up

19. 2    It is clearly a review of the book, About Behaviourism

20. 4    It is mentioned that the book lists 20 objections and their answers.

21. 2    Stated at the end of the first paragraph: "Dr Skinner is a radical behaviourist. Radical behaviourism does not deny the possibility of self observation or self knowledge".

22. 3    Skinner gives weight to "contingencies of survival" hence environment

23. 3    Directly stated in the first paragraph

24. 1    Stated in the end of the first paragraph

25. 4    "gives as much weight to the ‘contingencies of survival’…"

Exercise 5.4

1. 4      The similarities are mentioned in the first paragraph. That they wrote classical music is not mentioned.

2. 4      "Beethoven took over the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn and Salieri…"

3. 3      "…Bach had no such exalted pedigree stretching behind him…"

4. 2      Mass (large number of people), Overture (introduction).

5. 1      fugal contrapuntal means a musical style consisting of fugues and counterpoint.

6. 2      As mentioned in the passage, he died in 1750 and his work was revived in 1829, that is 79 years after his death.

7. 3      Bach was a man with a mind is to put it mildly…

8. 2      The last line of the passage proves this.

9. 2      The second paragraph asks, who is to blame when results disappoint? It is clear that investors felt aggrieved because the results disappointed and analysts had not foreseen what was going to happen.

10. 4    The passage does not answer the question raised in the second paragraph.

11. 3    They are useful in selected cases, hence they are useful, but their recommendations have limited value. Hence (3) is correct.

12.  1   companies' own optimism about the future…

13. 2    Clearly stated in the passage -- "When earnings exceed forecasts…"

14. 4    "This does point to bias among analysts in the cases of stocks underwritten by their firms."

15. 3    The passage mentions various points to show that analysts' recommendations are average, hence this statement can be inferred from the passage.       

16. 3    Directly stated: "Simple-minded applications of biological concepts… have achieved little…"

17. 4    All three of them wrote "the Bible" of the movement and the introduction serves as a manifesto for others.

18. 4    "Understanding the evolutionary pressures responsible for fellow-feeling, Mr Ridley believes, will help identify the kinds of society…"

19. 1    evolutionary psychology gives a central place to the intellectual abilities of humans

20. 2    "it was more or less taken for granted that all intelligence is built on one simple mechanism, the association of ideas."

21. 3    First paragraph: "it arises most of all from affection which is reciprocal…"

22. 1    What is done for others by a few; so the phrase would mean affection by many people.

23. 3    accepts their affection as a law of nature (direct question).

24. 4    The world is full of things unpleasant and haphazard, hence (4).