Chapter 6 - Exercises on How to solve CAT questions

Chapter 6 LOD 3

How to solve CAT questions

So far we have done exercises in two levels of difficulty. By doing these students have been exposed to different types of passages and different types of questions. Now we are ready to do actual passages from past papers of CAT and other exams. Notice the diversity of the passages and the answer choices, which are sometimes quite close. The answer choices are increased to 5 per question, and this could also add to the difficulty of the passage. The strategy remains same: when confused, go back to the passage, read the lines carefully, debate both choices in your mind, and then tick the answer.

Exercise 6.1    [CAT 2008]

Questions: 20                          Time: 30 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.                                                                                              

Directions for Questions 1 to 5: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves ­in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests.

With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape." Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of useable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.

The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man's lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.

As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them.

Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we must already be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.   

1. According to the passage, which of the following best represents the factor that has been cited by the author in the context of Rwanda and Haiti?

(1) Various ethnic groups competing for land and other resources

(2) Various ethnic groups competing for limited land resources

(3) Various ethnic groups fighting with each other

(4) Various ethnic groups competing for political power

(5) Various ethnic groups fighting for their identity

2. By an anthropogenic drought, the author means

(1) a drought caused by lack of rains.

(2) a drought caused due to deforestation.

(3) a drought caused by failure to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields. (4) a drought caused by actions of human beings.

(5) a drought caused by climate changes.

3. According to the passage, the drought at the time of Maya collapse had a different impact compared to the droughts earlier because

(1) the Maya kings continued to be extravagant when common people were suffering. (2) it happened at the time of collapse of leadership among Mayas.

(3) it happened when the Maya population had occupied all available land suited for agriculture.

(4) it was followed by internecine warfare among Mayans.

(5) irreversible environmental degradation led to this drought.

4. According to the author, why is it difficult to explain the reasons for Maya collapse?

(1) Copan inhabitants destroyed all records of that period.

(2) The constant deforestation and hillside erosion have wiped out all traces of the Maya kingdom.

(3) Archaeological sites of Mayas do not provide any consistent evidence.

(4) It has not been possible to ascertain which of the factors best explains as to why the Maya civilization collapsed.

(5) At least five million people were crammed into a small area.

5. Which factor has not been cited as one of the factors causing the collapse of Maya society?

(1) Environmental degradation due to excess population

(2) Social collapse due to excess population

(3) Increased warfare among Maya people

(4) Climate change

(5) Obsession of Maya population with their own short-term concerns

Directions for Questions 6 to 10: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

            A remarkable aspect of art of the present century is the range of concepts and ideologies which it embodies. It is almost tempting to see a pattern emerging within the art field -- or alternatively imposed upon it a posteriori -- similar to that which exists under the umbrella of science where the general term covers a whole range of separate, though interconnecting, activities. Any parallelism is however -- in this instance at least -- misleading. A scientific discipline develops systematically once its bare tenets have been established, named and categorized as conventions. Many of the concepts of modern art, by contrast, have resulted from the almost accidental meetings of groups of talented individuals at certain times      and certain places. The ideas generated by these chance meetings had twofold consequences. Firstly, a corpus of work would be produced which, in great part, remains as a concrete record         of the events. Secondly, the ideas would themselves be disseminated through many different channels of communication -- seeds that often bore fruit in contexts far removed from their generation. Not all movements were exclusively concerned with innovation. Surrealism, for instance, claimed to embody a kind of insight which can be present in the art of any period. This claim has been generally accepted so that a sixteenth century painting by Spranger or a mysterious photograph by Atget can legitimately be discussed in surrealist terms. Briefly, then, the concepts of modern art are of many different (often fundamentally different) kinds and resulted from the exposures of painters, sculptors and thinkers to the more complex phenomena of the twentieth century, including our ever increasing knowledge of the thought and products of earlier centuries. Different groups of artists would collaborate in trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world of visual and spiritual experience. We should hardly be surprised if no one group succeeded completely, but achievements, though relative, have been considerable. Landmarks have been established -- concrete statements of position which give a pattern to a situation which could easily have degenerated into total chaos. Beyond this, new language tools have been created for those who follow -- semantic systems which can provide a springboard for further explorations.          The codifying of art is often criticized. Certainly one can understand that artists are wary of being pigeonholed since they are apt to think of themselves as individuals --sometimes with good reason. The notion of self expression, however, no longer carries quite the weight it once did; objectivity has its defenders. There is good reason to accept the ideas codified by artists and critics, over the past sixty years or so, as having attained the status of independent existence -- an independence which is not without its own value. The time factor is important here. As an art movement slips into temporal perspective, it ceases to be a living organism -- becoming, rather, a fossil. This is not to say that it becomes useless or uninteresting. Just as a scientist can reconstruct the life of a prehistoric environment from the messages codified into the structure of a fossil, so can an artist decipher whole webs of intellectual and creative possibility from the recorded structure of a ‘dead’ art movement. The artist can match the creative patterns crystallized into this structure against the potentials and possibilities of his own time. As TS Eliot observed, no one starts anything from scratch; however consciously you may try to live in the present, you are still involved with a nexus of behaviour patterns bequeathed from the past. The original and creative person is not someone who ignores these patterns, but someone who is able to translate and develop them so that they conform more exactly to his -- and our -- present needs.

6. Many of the concepts of modern art have been the product of                  

(1) ideas generated from planned deliberations between artists, painters and thinkers.            (2) the dissemination of ideas through the state and its organizations.

(3) accidental interactions among people blessed with creative muse.

(4) patronage by the rich and powerful that supported art.

(5) systematic investigation, codification and conventions.

7. In the passage, the word ‘fossil’ can be interpreted as

(1) an art movement that has ceased to remain interesting or useful.

(2) an analogy from the physical world to indicate a historic art movement.

(3) an analogy from the physical world to indicate the barrenness of artistic creations in the past.

(4) an embedded codification of pre-historic life.

(5) an analogy from the physical world to indicate the passing of an era associated with an art movement.

8. In the passage, which of the following similarities between science and art may lead to erroneous conclusions?

(1) Both, in general, include a gamut of distinct but interconnecting activities.

(2) Both have movements not necessarily concerned with innovation.

(3) Both depend on collaborations between talented individuals.

(4) Both involve abstract thought and dissemination of ideas.

(5) Both reflect complex priorities of the modern world.

9. The range of concepts and ideologies embodied in the art of the twentieth century is explained by

(1) the existence of movements such as surrealism.

(2) landmarks which give a pattern to the art history of the twentieth century.

(3) new language tools which can be used for further explorations into new areas.

(4) the fast changing world of perceptual and transcendental understanding.

(5) the quick exchange of ideas and concepts enabled by efficient technology.

10. The passage uses an observation by T.S. Eliot to imply that

(1) creative processes are not `original' because they always borrow from the past.

(2) we always carry forward the legacy of the past.

(3) past behaviours and thought processes recreate themselves in the present and get labeled as `original' or `creative'.

(4) `originality' can only thrive in a `greenhouse' insulated from the past biases.

(5) `innovations' and `original thinking' interpret and develop on past thoughts to suit

contemporary needs.

Directions for Questions 11 to 15: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

When I was little, children were bought two kinds of ice cream, sold from those white wagons with canopies made of silvery metal: either the two-cent cone or the four-cent ice-cream pie. The two-cent cone was very small, in fact it could fit comfortably into a child's hand, and it was made by taking the ice cream from its container with a special scoop and piling it on the cone. Granny always suggested I eat only a part of the cone, then throw away the pointed end, because it had been touched by the vendor's hand (though that was the best part, nice and crunchy, and it was regularly eaten in secret, after a pretence of discarding it).

The four-cent pie was made by a special little machine, also silvery, which pressed two disks of sweet biscuit against a cylindrical section of ice cream. First you had to thrust your tongue into the gap between the biscuits until it touched the central nucleus of ice cream; then, gradually, you ate the whole thing, the biscuit surfaces softening as they became soaked in creamy nectar. Granny had no advice to give here: in theory the pies had been touched only by the machine; in practice, the vendor had held them in his hand while giving them to us, but it was impossible to isolate the contaminated area.

I was fascinated, however, by some of my peers, whose parents bought them not a four-cent pie but two two-cent cones. These privileged children advanced proudly with one cone in their right hand and one in their left; and expertly moving their head from side to side, they licked first one, then the other. This liturgy seemed to me so sumptuously enviable, that many times I asked to be allowed to celebrate it. In vain. My elders were inflexible: a four-cent ice, yes; but two two-­cent ones, absolutely no.

As anyone can see, neither mathematics nor economy nor dietetics justified this refusal. Nor did hygiene, assuming that in due course the tips of both cones were discarded. The pathetic, and obviously mendacious, justification was that a boy concerned with turning his eyes from one cone to the other was more inclined to stumble over stones, steps, or cracks in the pavement. I dimly sensed that there was another secret justification, cruelly pedagogical, but I was unable to grasp it.

Today, citizen and victim of a consumer society, a civilization of excess and waste (which the society of the thirties was not), I realize that those dear and now departed elders were right. Two two-cent cones instead of one at four cents did not signify squandering, economically speaking, but symbolically they surely did. It was for this precise reason that I yearned for them: because two ice creams suggested excess. And this was precisely why they were denied to me: because they looked indecent, an insult to poverty, a display of fictitious privilege, a boast of wealth. Only spoiled children ate two cones at once, those children who in fairy tales were rightly punished, as Pinocchio was when he rejected the skin and the stalk. And parents who encouraged this weakness, appropriate to little parvenus, were bringing up their children in the foolish theatre of "I'd like to but I can't." They were preparing them to turn up at tourist-class check-in with a fake Gucci bag bought from a street peddler on the beach at Rimini.

Nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality, in a world where the consumer civilization now wants even adults to be spoiled, and promises them always something more, from the wristwatch in the box of detergent to the bonus bangle sheathed, with the magazine it accompanies, in a plastic envelope. Like the parents of those ambidextrous gluttons I so envied, the consumer civilization pretends to give more, but actually gives, for four cents, what is worth four cents. You will throwaway the old transistor radio to purchase the new one, that boasts an alarm clock as well, but some inexplicable defect in the mechanism will guarantee that the radio lasts only a year. The new cheap car will have leather seats, double side mirrors adjustable from inside, and a panelled dashboard, but it will not last nearly so long as the glorious old Fiat 500, which, even when it broke down, could be started again with a kick.

The morality of the old days made Spartans of us all, while today's morality wants all of us to be Sybarites.

11. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

(1) Today's society is more extravagant than the society of the 1930s.

(2) The act of eating two ice cream cones is akin to a ceremonial process.

(3) Elders rightly suggested that a boy turning eyes from one cone to the other was more likely to fall.

(4) Despite seeming to promise more, the consumer civilization gives away exactly what the thing is worth.

(5) The consumer civilization attempts to spoil children and adults alike.

12. In the passage, the phrase "little parvenus" refers to

(1) naughty midgets.                (2) old hags.                 (3) arrogant people.                 (4) young upstarts.                   (5) foolish kids.

13. The author pined for two two-cent cones instead of one four-cent pie because

(1) it made dietetic sense.        (2) it suggested intemperance.

(3) it was more fun.                 (4) it had a visual appeal.

(5) he was a glutton.

14. What does the author mean by "nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality"?

(1) The moralists of yesterday have become immoral today.

(2) The concept of morality has changed over the years.

(3) Consumerism is amoral.

(4) The risks associated with immorality have gone up.

(5) The purist's view of morality is fast becoming popular.

15. According to the author, the justification for refusal to let him eat two cones was plausibly

(1) didactic.     (2) dietetic.      (3) dialectic.     (4) diatonic.     (5) diastolic.

Directions for Questions 16 to 20: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct". It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.

Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature’s talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.

Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature's engineering marvels - an organ with "that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration," in Darwin's words -- gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist's point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school -- as Oscar Wilde said, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." A preschooler's tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax-fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, marticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.

16. According to the passage, which of the following does not stem from popular wisdom on language?

(1) Language is a cultural artifact.

(2) Language is a cultural invention.

(3) Language is learnt as we grow.

(4) Language is unique to Homo sapiens.

(5) Language is a psychological faculty.

17. Which of the following can be used to replace the "spiders know how to spin webs" analogy as used by the author?

(1) A kitten learning to jump over a wall

(2) Bees collecting nectar

(3) A donkey carrying a load

(4) A horse running a Derby

(5) A pet dog protecting its owner's property

18. According to the passage, which of the following is unique to human beings?

(1) Ability to use symbols while communicating with one another.

(2) Ability to communicate with each other through voice modulation.

(3) Ability to communicate information to other members of the species.

(4) Ability to use sound as means of communication.

(5) All of the above.

19. According to the passage, complexity of language cannot be taught by parents or at school to children because

(1) children instinctively know language.

(2) children learn the language on their own.

(3) language is not amenable to teaching.

(4) children know language better than their teachers or parents.

(5) children are born with the knowledge of semiotics.

20. Which of the following best summarizes the passage?

(1) Language is unique to Homo sapiens.

(2) Language is neither learnt nor taught.

(3) Language is not a cultural invention or artifact as it is made out.

(4) Language is instinctive ability of human beings.

(5) Language is use of symbols unique to human beings.

                                     

Exercise 6.2 [CAT 2007 and 2006]

Questions: 27                          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.

CAT 2007

DIRECTIONS for questions 1 to 3: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

            Human Biology does nothing to structure human society. Age may enfeeble us all, but cultures vary considerably in the prestige and power they accord to the elderly. Giving birth is a necessary condition for being a mother, but it is not sufficient. We expect mothers to behave in maternal ways and to display appropriately maternal sentiments. We prescribe a clutch of norms or rules that govern the role of a mother. That the social role is independent of the biological base can be demonstrated by going back three sentences. Giving birth is certainly not sufficient to be a mother but, as adoption and fostering show, it is not even necessary!

            The fine detail of what is expected of a mother or a father or a dutiful son differs from culture to culture, but everywhere behaviour is coordinated by the reciprocal nature of roles. Husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, waiters and customers, teachers and pupils, warlords and followers; each makes sense only in its relation to the other. The term ⁴role' is an appropriate one, because the metaphor of an actor in a play neatly expresses the rule-governed nature or scripted nature of much of social life and the sense that society is a joint production. Social life occurs only because people play their parts (and that is as true for war and conflicts as for peace and love) and those parts make sense only in the context of the overall show. The drama metaphor also reminds us of the artistic licence available to the players. We can play a part straight or, as the following from J.P. Sartre conveys, we can ham it up.

            Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope-walker....All his behaviour seems to us a game....But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe.

            The American sociologist Erving Goffman built an influential body of social analysis on elaborations of the metaphor of social life as drama. Perhaps his most telling point was that it is only through acting out a part that we express character. It is not enough to be evil or virtuous; we have to be seen to be evil or virtuous.

            There is distinction between the roles we play and some underlying self. Here we might note that some roles are more absorbing than others. We would not be surprised by the waitress who plays the par! m such a way as to signal to us that she is much more than her occupation. We would be surprised and offended by the father who played his part 'tongue in check’. Some roles arc broader and more far-reaching than others. Describing someone as a clergyman or faith healer would say far more about that person than describing someone as a bus driver.

1. What is the thematic highlight of this passage?

1. In the absence of strong biological linkages, reciprocal roles provide the mechanism for coordinating human behaviour.

2. In the absence of reciprocal roles, biological linkages provide the mechanism for coordinating human behaviour.

            3. Human behaviour is independent of biological linkages and reciprocal roles.

            4. Human behaviour depends on biological linkages and reciprocal roles.

            5. Reciprocal roles determine normative human behaviour in society.

2. Which of the following would have been true if biological linkages structured human society?

1. The role of mother would have been defined through her reciprocal relationship with her children.

            2. We would not have been offended by the father playing his role 'tongue in cheek'.

            3. Women would have adopted and fostered children rather than giving birth to them.

4. Even if warlords were physically weaker than their followers, they would still dominate them.

            5. Waiters would have stronger motivation to serve their customers.

3. It has been claimed in the passage that "some roles are more absorbing than others”. According to the passage, which of the following seem(s) appropriate reason(s) for such a claim?

A. Some roles carry great expectations from the society preventing manifestation of the true self.

B. Society ascribes so much importance to some roles that the conception of self may get aligned with the roles being performed.

C. Some roles require development of skill and expertise leaving little time for manifestation of self.

            1. A only         2. B only          3. C only          4. A & B          5. B & C

DIRECTIONS for questions 4-6: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

          The difficulties historians face in establishing cause-and-effect relations in the history of human societies are broadly similar to the difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and palaeontologists. To varying degrees each of these fields is plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, controlled experimental interventions, the complexity arising from enormous numbers of variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the consequent impossibility of formulating universal laws, and the difficulties of predicting emergent properties and future behaviour. Prediction in history, as in other historical sciences, is most feasible on large spatial scales and over long times, when the unique features of millions of small-scale brief events become averaged out. Just as I could predict the sex ratio of the next 1,000 newborns but not the sexes of my own two children, the historian can recognize factors that made inevitable the broad outcome of the collision between American and Eurasian societies after 13,000 years of separate developments, but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential election. The details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in October 1960 could have given the electoral victory to Nixon instead of to Kennedy, but no details of who said what could have blocked the European conquest of Native Americans.

          How can students of human history profit from the experience of scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments. While neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ greatly in their salt intake; and cultural anthropologists, unable to provide human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances for many centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on human societies by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on islands differing naturally in resource abundance.

          The student of human history can draw on many more natural experiments than just comparisons among the five inhabited continents. Comparisons can also utilize large islands that have developed complex societies in a considerable degree of isolation (such as Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola, New Guinea, Hawaii, and many others), as well as societies on hundreds of smaller islands and regional societies within each of the continents. Natural experiments in any field, whether in ecology or human history, are inherently open to potential methodological criticisms. Those include confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed correlations between variables. Such methodological problems have been discussed in great detail for some of the historical sciences. In particular, epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with problems similar to those facing historians of human societies.

In short, I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in fields of science where history is unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Nevertheless, successful methodologies for analyzing historical problems have been worked out in several fields. As a result, the histories of dinosaurs, nebulae, and glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of science rather than to the humanities.

4. Why do islands with considerable degree of isolation provide valuable insights into human
        history?

            1. Isolated islands may evolve differently and this difference is of interest to us.

        2. Isolated islands increase the number of observations available to historians.

3. Isolated islands, differing in their endowments and size may evolve differently and this difference can be attributed to their endowments and size.

4. Isolated islands, differing in their endowments and size, provide a good comparison to large islands such as Eurasia, Africa, Americas and Australia.

5. Isolated islands, in so far as they are inhabited, arouse curiosity about how human beings evolved there.

5. According to the author, why is prediction difficult in history?

        1. Historical explanations are usually broad so that no prediction is possible.

2. Historical outcomes depend upon a large number of factors and hence prediction is difficult for each case.

3. Historical sciences, by their very nature, are not interested in a multitude of minor factors, which might be important in a specific historical outcome.

4. Historians are interested in evolution of human history and hence are only interested in long-term predictions.

5. Historical sciences suffer from the inability to conduct controlled experiments and therefore have explanations based on a few long-term factors.

6. According to the author, which of the following statements would be true?

1. Students of history are missing significant opportunities by not conducting any natural experiments.

2. Complex societies inhabiting large islands provide great opportunities for natural experiments.

3. Students of history are missing significant opportunities by not studying an adequate variety of natural experiments.

4. A unique problem faced by historians is their inability to establish cause and effect relationships.

5. Cultural anthropologists have overcome the problem of confounding variables through natural experiments.

DIRECTIONS for questions 7-9: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

            Every civilized society lives and thrives on a silent but profound agreement as to what is to be accepted as the valid mould of experience. Civilization is a complex system of dams, dykes, and canals warding off, directing, and articulating the influx of the surrounding fluid element; a fertile fenland, elaborately drained and protected from the high tides of chaotic, unexercised, and inarticulate experience. In such a culture, stable and sure of itself within the frontiers of 'naturalized' experience, the arts wield their creative power not so much in width as in depth. They do not create new experience, but deepen and purify the old. Their works do not differ from one another like a new horizon from a new horizon, but like a madonna from a madonna.

The periods of art which are most vigorous in creative passion seem to occur when the established pattern of experience loosens its rigidity without as yet losing its force. Such a period was the Renaissance, and Shakespeare its poetic consummation. Then it was as though the discipline of the old order gave depth to the excitement of the breaking away, the depth of job and tragedy, of incomparable conquests arid irredeemable losses. Adventurers of experience set out as though in lifeboats to rescue and bring back to the shore treasures of knowing and feeling which the old order had left floating on the high seas. The works of the early Renaissance and the poetry of Shakespeare vibrate with the compassion for live experience in danger of dying from exposure and neglect. In this compassion was the creative genius of the age. Yet, it was a genius of courage, not of desperate audacity. For, however elusively, it still knew of harbours and anchors, of homes to which to return, and of barns in which to store the harvest. The exploring spirit of art was in the depths of its consciousness still aware of a scheme of things into which to fit its exploits and creations.

But the more this scheme of things loses its stability, the more boundless and uncharted appears the ocean of potential exploration. In the blank confusion of infinite potentialities flotsam of significance gets attached to jetsam of experience; for everything is sea, everything is at sea –

.... The sea is all about us;

The sea is the land's edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

            Its hints of earlier and other creation -- and Rilke tells a story in which, as in T.S. Eliot's poem, it is again the sea and the distance of 'other creation' that becomes the image of the poet's reality. A rowing boat sets out on a difficult passage. The oarsmen labour in exact rhythm. There is no sign yet of the destination. Suddenly a man, seemingly idle, breaks out into song. And if the labour of the oarsmen meaninglessly defeats the real resistance of the real waves, it is the idle single who magically conquers the despair of apparent aimlessness. While the people next to him try to come to grips with the element that is next to them, his voice seems to bind the boat to the farthest distance so that the farthest distance draws it towards itself. 'I don't know why and how,’ is Rilke's conclusion, 'but suddenly I understood the situation of the poet, his place and function in this age. It does not matter if one denies him every place - except this one. There one must tolerate him.’

7. In the passage, the expression "like a madonna from a madonna" alludes to

            1. The difference arising as a consequence of artistic license.
2. The difference between two artistic interpretations.

            3. The difference between 'life' and 'interpretation of life'.

            4. The difference between 'width' and 'depth' of creative power.

            5. The difference between the legendary character and the modern day singer.

8. The sea and 'other creation' leads Rilke to

            1. Define the place of the poet in his culture.

            2. Reflect on the role of the oarsman and the singer.

            3. Muse on artistic labour and its aimlessness.

            4. Understand the elements that one has to deal with.

            5. Delve into natural experience and real waves.

9. According to the passage, the term "adventurers of experience" refers to

            1. Poets and artists who are driven by courage.

            2. Poets and artists who create their own genre.
3. Poets and artists of the Renaissance.

            4. Poets and artists who revitalize and enrich the past for us.

            5. Poets and artists who delve in flotsam and jetsam in sea.

DIRECTIONS for questions 10 to 12: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

          To discover the relation between rules, paradigms, and normal science, consider first how the historian isolates the particular loci of commitment that have been described as accepted rules. Close historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set of recurrent and quasi-standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community's paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. By studying them and by practicing with them, the members of the corresponding community learn their trade. The historian, of course, will discover in addition a penumbral area occupied by achievements whose status is still in doubt, but the core of solved problems and techniques will usually be clear. Despite occasional ambiguities, the paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease.

          That demands a second step and one of a somewhat different kind. When undertaking it, the historian must compare the community's paradigms with each other and with its current research reports. In doing so, his object is to discover what isolable elements, explicit or implicit, the members of that community may have abstracted from their more global paradigms and deploy it as rules in their research. Anyone who has attempted to describe or analyze the evolution of a particular scientific tradition will necessarily have sought accepted principles and rules of this sort. Almost certainly, he will have met with at least partial success. But, if his experience has been at all like my own, he will have found the search for rules both more difficult and less satisfying than the search for paradigms. Some of the generalizations he employs to describe the community's shared beliefs will present more problems. Others, however, will seem a shade too strong. Phrased in just that way, or in any other way he can imagine, they would almost certainly have been rejected by some members of the group he studies. Nevertheless, if the coherence of the research tradition is to be understood in terms of rules, some specification of common ground in the corresponding area is needed. As a result, the search for a body of rules competent to constitute a given normal research tradition becomes a source of continual and deep frustration.

          Recognizing that frustration, however, makes it possible to diagnose its source. Scientists can agree that a Newton, Lavoisier, Maxwell, or Einstein has produced an apparently permanent solution to a group of outstanding problems and still disagree, sometimes without being aware of it, about the particular abstract characteristics that make those solutions permanent. They can, that is, agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research. Normal science can be determined in part by the direct inspection of paradigms, a process that is often aided by but does not depend upon the formulation of rules and assumption. Indeed, the existence of a paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exists.

10. What is the author attempting to illustrate through this passage?

      1. Relationships between rules, paradigms, and normal science

      2. How a historian would isolate a particular ‘loci of commitment’

      3. How a set of shared beliefs evolves into a paradigm

      4. Ways of understanding a scientific tradition

      5. The frustrations of attempting to define a paradigm of a tradition

11. The term 'loci of commitment' as used in the passage would most likely correspond with which of the following?

     1. Loyalty between a group of scientists in a research laboratory

     2. Loyalty between groups of scientists across research laboratories
     3. Loyalty to a certain paradigm of scientific inquiry

      4. Loyalty to global patterns of scientific inquiry

      5. Loyalty to evolving trends of scientific inquiry

12. The author of this passage is likely to agree with which of the following?

      1. Paradigms almost entirely define a scientific tradition.

2. A group of scientists investigating a phenomenon would benefit by defining a set of rules.

     3. Acceptance by the giants of a tradition is a sine qua non for a paradigm to emerge.

4. Choice of isolation mechanism determines the type of paradigm that may emerge from a tradition.

     5. Paradigms are a general representation of rules and beliefs of a scientific tradition.

CAT 2006

DIRECTIONS for questions 13 to 17: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behaviour: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of 'background noise'; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.

It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume's theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.

My logical criticism of Hume's psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them -  to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision - in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.

Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.

The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.

13. In the context of science, according to the passage, the interaction of dogmatic beliefs and critical attitude         can be best described as:

            1. A duel between two warriors in which one has to die.

            2. The effect of a chisel on a marble stone while making a sculpture.

            3. The feedshare (natural gas) in fertilizer industry being transformed into fertilizers.

            4. A predator killing its prey.

            5. The effect of fertilizers on a sapling.

14. According to the passage, the role of a dogmatic attitude or dogmatic behaviour in the development of science is

            1. critical and important, as, without it, initial hypotheses or conjectures can never be made.

            2. positive, as conjectures arising out of our dogmatic attitude become science.

            3. negative, as it leads to pseudo-science.

            4. neutral, as the development of science is essentially because of our critical attitude.

5. inferior to critical attitude, as a critical attitude leads to the attitude of reasonableness and rationality.

15. Dogmatic behaviour, in this passage, has been associated with primitives and children. Which of the following best describes the reason why the author compares primitives with children?

1. Primitives are people who are not educated, and hence can be compared with children, who have not yet been through school.

            2. Primitives are people who, though not modern, are as innocent as children.

            3. Primitives are people without a critical attitude, just as children are.

4. Primitives are people in the early stages of human evolution; similarly, children are in the early stages of their lives.

            5. Primitives are people who are not civilized enough, just as children are not.

16. Which of the following statements best supports the argument in the passage that a critical attitude leads to a weaker belief than a dogmatic attitude does?

1. A critical attitude implies endless questioning, and, therefore, it cannot lead to strong beliefs.

            2. A critical attitude, by definition, is centred on an analysis of anomalies and "noise".

3. A critical attitude leads to questioning everything, and in the process generates "noise" without any conviction.

            4. A critical attitude is antithetical to conviction, which is required for strong beliefs.

            5. A critical attitude leads to questioning and to tentative hypotheses.

17. According to the passage, which of the following statements best describes the difference between science        and pseudo-science?

1. Scientific theories or hypothesis are tentatively true whereas pseudo-sciences are always true.

2. Scientific laws and theories are permanent and immutable whereas pseudo-sciences are contingent on the             prevalent mode of thinking in a society.

3. Science always allows the possibility of rejecting a theory or hypothesis, whereas pseudo-sciences seek to validate their ideas or theories.

4. Science focuses on anomalies and exceptions so that fundamental truths can be uncovered, whereas             pseudo-sciences focus mainly on general truths.

5. Science progresses by collection of observations or by experimentation, whereas pseudo-sciences do not worry about observations and experiments.

DIRECTIONS for questions 18 to 22: The passage given below is followed by a set of live questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes," linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries." Now Goran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European Ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days, and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Mr. Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.

He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50^th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Josef Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything, become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive." Perhaps the real problem for Mr. Lindblad and his right-wing allies in Eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.

The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sorbibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But, in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why Western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialization, mass education, job security, and huge advances in social and gender equality. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the West, and provided a powerful counterweight to Western global domination.

It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.

Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early twentieth century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe. Presumably, European lives count for more.

No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official Western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today's Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering. With the new imperialism now being resisted in the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for alternatives will increase.

18. Among all the apprehensions that Mr. Goran Lindblad expresses against communism, which one gets admitted, although indirectly, by the author?

1. There is nostalgia for communist ideology even if communism has been abandoned by most European nations.

2. Notions of social justice inherent in communist ideology appeal to critics of existing systems.

            3. Communist regimes were totalitarian and marked by brutalities and large scale violence.

4. The existing economic order is wrongly viewed as imperialistic by proponents of communism.

            5. Communist ideology is faulted because communist regimes resulted in economic failures.

19. What, according to the author, is the real reason for a renewed attack against communism?

1. Disguising the unintended consequences of the current economic order such as social injustice and environmental crisis.

            2. Idealising the existing ideology of global capitalism.

3. Making communism a generic representative of all historical atrocities, especially those perpetrated by the European imperialists.

            4. Communism still survives, in bits and pieces, in the minds and hearts of people.

5. Renewal of some communist regimes has led to the apprehension that communist nations might overtake the capitalists.

           

20. The author cites examples of atrocities perpetrated by European colonial regimes in order to

            1. compare the atrocities committed by colonial regimes with those of communist regimes.

2. prove that the atrocities committed by colonial regimes were more than those of communist regimes.

            3. prove that, ideologically, communism was much better than colonialism and Nazism.

4. neutralise the arguments of Mr. Lindblad and to point out that the atrocities committed by colonial regimes             were more than those of communist regimes.

5. neutralise the arguments of Mr. Lindblad and to argue that one needs to go beyond and look at the motives of these regimes.

21. Why, according to the author, is Nazism closer to colonialism than it is to communism?

            1. Both colonialism and Nazism were examples of tyranny of one race over another.

            2. The genocides committed by the colonial and the Nazi regimes were of similar magnitude.

            3. Several ideas of the Nazi regime were directly imported from colonial regimes.

            4. Both colonialism and Nazism arc based on the principles of imperialism.

5. While communism was never limited to Europe, both the Nazis and the colonialists originated in Europe.

22. Which of the following cannot be inferred as a compelling reason for the silence of the Council of Europe on colonial atrocities?

            1. The Council of Europe being dominated by erstwhile colonialists.

            2. Generating support for condemning communist ideology.

            3. Unwillingness to antagonize allies by raking up an embarrassing past.

            4. Greater value seemingly placed on European lives.

            5. Portraying both communism and Nazism as ideologies to be condemned.

DIRECTIONS for questions 23 to 26: The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract. In order to do this we are not to think of the original contract as one to enter a particular society or to set up a particular form of government. Rather, the idea is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original agreement. They are the principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality. These principles are to regulate all further agreements; they specify the kinds of social cooperation that can be entered into and the forms of government that can be established. This way of regarding the principles of justice, I shall call justice as fairness. Thus, we are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation choose together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits. Just as each person must decide by rational reflection what constitutes his good, that is, the system of ends which it is rational for him to pursue, so a group of persons must decide once and for all what is to count among them as just and unjust. The choice which rational men would make in this hypothetical situation of equal liberty determines the principles of justice.

In 'justice as fairness', the original position is not an actual historical state of affairs. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all are similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to favor his particular condition, the principles of justice are the result of a fair agreement or bargain.

Justice as fairness begins with one of the most general of all choices which persons might make together, namely, with the choice of the first principles of a conception of justice which is to regulate all subsequent criticism and reform of institutions. Then, having chosen a conception of justice, we can suppose that they are to choose a constitution and a legislature to enact laws, and so on, all in accordance with the principles of justice initially agreed upon. Our social situation is just if it is such that by this sequence of hypothetical agreements we would have contracted into the general system of rules which defines it. Moreover, assuming that the original position does determine a set of principles, it will then be true that whenever social institutions satisfy these principles, those engaged in them can say to one another that they are cooperating on terms to which they would agree if they were free and equal persons whose relations with respect to one another were fair. They could all view their arrangements as meeting the stipulations which they would acknowledge in an initial situation that embodies widely accepted and reasonable constraints on the choice of principles. The general recognition o( this fact would provide (he basis for a public acceptance of the corresponding principles of justice. No society can, of course, be a scheme of cooperation which men enter voluntarily in a literal sense; each person finds himself placed at birth in some particular position in some particular society, and the nature of this position materially affects his life prospects. Yet a society satisfying the principles of justice as fairness comes as close as a society can to being a voluntary scheme, for it meets the principles which free and equal persons would assent to under circumstances that are fair.

23. A just society, as conceptualized in the passage, can be best described as:

1. A Utopia in which everyone is equal and no one enjoys any privilege based on their existing positions and powers.

            2. A hypothetical society in which people agree upon principles of justice which are fair.

3. A society in which principles of justice are not based on the existing positions and powers of the individuals.

            4. A society in which principles of justice are fair to all.

5. A hypothetical society in which principles of justice are not based on the existing positions and powers of the individuals.

24. The original agreement or original position in the passage has been used by the author as:

1. A hypothetical situation conceived to derive principles of justice which are not influenced by position, status and condition of individuals in the society.

2. A hypothetical situation in which every individual is equal and no individual enjoys any privilege based on the existing positions and powers.

            3. A hypothetical situation to ensure fairness of agreements among individuals in society.

            4. An imagined situation in which principles of justice would have to be fair.

5. An imagined situation in which fairness is the objective of the principles of justice to ensure that no individual enjoys any privilege based on the existing positions and powers.

25. Which of the following best illustrates the situation that is equivalent to choosing 'the principles of justice'             behind a 'veil of ignorance'?

1. The principles of justice are chosen by businessmen, who are marooned on an uninhabited island after a shipwreck, but have some possibility of returning.

2. The principles of justice are chosen by a group of school children whose capabilities are yet to develop.

3. The principles of justice are chosen by businessmen, who are marooned on an uninhabited island after a shipwreck and have no possibility of returning.

4. The principles of justice are chosen assuming that such principles will govern the lives of the rule makers only in their next birth if the rule makers agree that they will be born again.

5. The principles of justice are chosen by potential immigrants who are unaware of the resources necessary to succeed in a foreign country.

26. Why, according to the passage, do principles of justice need to be based on an original agreement?

1. Social institutions and laws can be considered fair only if they conform to principles of justice.

2. Social institutions and laws can be fair only if they are consistent with the principles of justice as initially agreed upon.

            3. Social institutions and laws need to be fair in order to be just.

4. Social institutions and laws evolve fairly only if they are consistent with the principles of justice as initially agreed upon.

            5. Social institutions and laws conform to the principles of justice as initially agreed upon.

27. Which of the following situations best represents the idea of justice as fairness, as argued in the passage?

            1. All individuals are paid equally for the work they do.

            2. Everyone is assigned some work for his or her livelihood.

            3. All acts of theft are penalized equally.

            4. All children are provided free education in similar schools.

            5. All individuals are provided a fixed sum of money to take care of their health.

Exercise 6.3 [CAT 2005 and CAT 2004]

Questions: 27                          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.

CAT 2005

Passage 1

Directions for Questions 1 to 4: The passage given below is followed by a set of four questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more "players" make choices among available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players. Thus the "interests" of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game.

Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players. Each is torn between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests.

Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call "interesting" psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict. Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel, reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story, on the other hand, depicts only external conflict; that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, or any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict.

The detective story, the "adult” analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict. However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itself not a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective's path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict. But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal's part or the detective's insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western. For example, Tic-tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe.

In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.

1. According to the passage, internal conflicts are psychologically more interesting than external conflicts because

1. internal conflicts, rather than external conflicts, form an important component of serious

literature as distinguished from less serious genres.

2. only juveniles or very few "adults" actually experience external conflict, while internal conflict is more widely prevalent in society.

3. in situations of internal conflict, individuals experience a dilemma in resolving their own preferences for different outcomes.

4. there are no threats to the reader (or viewer) in case of external conflicts.

2. Which, according to the author, would qualify as interesting psychology?

1. A statistician's dilemma over choosing the best method to solve an optimisation problem.

2. A chess player's predicament over adopting a defensive strategy against an aggressive opponent.

3. A mountaineer's choice of the best path to Mt. Everest from the base camp.

4. A finance manager's quandary over the best way of raising money from the market.

3. According to the passage, which of the following options about the application of game theory to a conflict-of-interest situation is true?

1. Assuming that the rank order of preferences for options is different for different players.

2. Accepting that the interests of different players are often in conflict.

3. Not assuming that the interests are in complete disagreement.

4. All of the above.

4. The problem solving process of a scientist is different from that of a detective because

1. scientists study inanimate objects, while detectives deal with living criminals or law offenders.

2. scientists study known objects, while detectives have to deal with unknown criminals or law

offenders

3. scientists study phenomena that are not actively altered, while detectives deal with phenomena

that have been deliberately influenced to mislead.

4. scientists study psychologically interesting phenomena, while detectives deal with "adult"

analogues of juvenile adventure tales.

PASSAGE 2

Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, some historians can spot the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change: It is a period when the dominance of the world's superpower is coming under threat. It 'is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain. And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation.

Spare a moment to take stock of what's been happening in the past few months. Let's start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn't worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Cooper used to say, 'just like that'.

            Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution, seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modern world. What the French needed to realize, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners. An alternative way of looking at the French "non" is that our neighbours translate "flexibility" as "you're fired".

Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britain a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America's wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence of a new scramble for Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well. Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world's biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 percent of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength not weakness.

In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is taken from the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-74, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 per cent. Yet the idea that higher oil prices are of little consequence is fanciful. If people are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less. The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways - through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits.

There are those who point out, rightly, that modem industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything -- a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices -- that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasons for concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own. There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free trade, and in the power of the market. It was a time of massive income inequality and unprecedented migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy.

Second, the world is traditionally at its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain's role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline. Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India -- which together account for half the world's population -- will flex their muscles.

Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.

5. By the expression 'Edwardian Summer', the author refers to a period in which there is

1. unparalleled luxury and opulence.

2. a sense of complacency among people because of all-round prosperity.

3. a culmination of all-round economic prosperity.

4. an imminent danger lurking behind economic prosperity.

6. What, according to the author, has resulted in a widespread belief in the resilience of modern capitalism?

l. Growth in the economies of Western countries despite shocks in the form of increase in levels of indebtedness and inflated asset prices.

2. increase in the prosperity of Western countries and China despite rising oil prices.

3. Continued growth of Western economies despite a rise in terrorism, an increase in oil prices and other similar shocks.

4. The success of continued reforms aimed at making Western economies more dynamic, competitive and efficient.

7. Which of the following best represents the key argument made by the author?

1. The rise in oil prices, the flux in the global balance of power and historical precedents should make us question our belief that the global economic prosperity would continue.

2. The belief that modern industrial capitalism is highly resilient and capable of overcoming shocks will be belied soon.

3. Widespread prosperity leads to neglect of early signs of underlying economic weakness, manifested in higher oil prices and a flux in the global balance of power.

4. A crisis is imminent in the West given the growth of countries like China and India and the increase in oil prices.

8. What can be inferred about the author's view when he states, 'As Tommy Cooper used to say "just like that"'?

1. Industry has incentive to build new production and refining capacity and therefore oil prices

would reduce.

2. There would be a correction in the price levels of oil once new production capacity is added.

3. The decline in oil prices is likely to be short-term in nature.

4. It is not necessary that oil prices would go down to earlier levels.

PASSAGE 3

While complex in the extreme, Derrida's work has proven to be a particularly influential approach to the analysis of the ways in which language structures our understanding of ourselves and the world we inhabit, an approach, he termed deconstruction. In its simplest formulation, deconstruction can be taken to refer to a methodological strategy which seeks to uncover layers of hidden meaning in a text that have been denied or suppressed. The term 'text', in this respect, does not refer simply to a written form of communication, however. Rather, texts are something we all produce and reproduce constantly in our everyday social relations, be they spoken, written or embedded in the construction of material artifacts. At the heart of Derrida's deconstructive approach is his critique of what he perceives to be the totalitarian impulse of the Enlightenment pursuit to bring all that exists in the world under the domain of a representative language, a pursuit he refers to as logocentrism. Logocentrism is the search for a rational language that is able to know and represent the world and all its aspects perfectly and accurately. Its totalitarian dimension, for Derrida at least, lies primarily in its tendency to marginalize or dismiss all that does not neatly comply with its particular linguistic representations, a tendency that, throughout history, has all too frequently been manifested in the form of authoritarian institutions. Thus logocentrism has, in its search for the truth of absolute representation, subsumed difference and oppressed that which it designates as its alien 'other'. For Derrida, western civilization has been built upon such a systematic assault on alien cultures and ways of life, typically in the name of reason and progress.

In response to logocentrism, deconstruction posits the idea that the mechanism by which this process of marginalization and the ordering of truth occurs is through establishing systems of binary opposition. Oppositional linguistic dualisms, such as rational/irrational, culture/nature and good/bad are not, however, construed as equal partners as they are in, say, the semiological structuralism of Saussure. Rather, they exist, for Derrida, in a series of hierarchical relationships with the first terms normally occupying a superior position. Derrida defines the relationship between such oppositional terms using the neologism differance. This refers to the realization that in any statement, oppositional terms differ from each other (for instance, the difference between rationality and irrationality is constructed through oppositional usage), and at the same time, a hierarchical relationship is maintained by the deference of one term to the other (in the positing of rationality over irrationality, for instance). It is this latter point which is perhaps the key to understanding Derrida's approach to deconstruction.

For the fact that at any given time one term must defer to its oppositional 'other', means that the two terms are constantly in a state of interdependence. The presence of one is dependent upon the absence or 'absent-presence' of the 'other', such as in the case of good and evil, whereby to understand the nature of one, we must constantly relate it to the absent term in order to grasp its meaning. That is, to do good, we must understand that our act is not evil for without that comparison the terms becomes meaningless. Put simply, deconstruction represents an attempt to demonstrate the absent-presence of this oppositional 'other', to show that what we say or write is in itself not expressive simply of what is present, but also of what is absent. Thus, deconstruction seeks to reveal the interdependence of apparently dichotomous terms and their meanings relative to their textual context; that is, within the linguistic power relations which structure dichotomous terms hierarchically. In Derrida's own words, a deconstructive reading "must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of a language that he uses. . . .[It] attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight."

Meaning, then, is never fixed or stable, whatever the intention of the author of a text. For Derrida, language is a system of relations that are dynamic, in that all meanings we ascribe to the world are dependent not only on what we believe to be present but also on what is absent. Thus, any act of interpretation must refer not only to what the author of a text intends, but also to what is absent from his or her intention. This insight leads, once again, to Derrida's further rejection of the idea of the definitive authority of the intentional agent or subject. The subject is decentred; it is conceived as the outcome of relations of differance. As author of its own biography, the subject thus becomes the ideological fiction of modernity and its logocentric philosophy, one that depends upon the formation of hierarchical dualisms, which repress and deny the presence of the absent 'other'. No meaning can, therefore, ever be definitive, but is merely an outcome of a particular interpretation.

9. According to the passage, Derrida believes that:

1. Reality can be construed only through the use of rational analysis.

2. Language limits our construction of reality.

3. A universal language will facilitate a common understanding of reality.

4. We need to uncover the hidden meaning in a system of relations expressed by language.

10. To Derrida, 'logocentrism' does not imply:

1. A totalitarian impulse.

2. A domain of representative language.

3. Interdependence of the meanings of dichotomous terms.

4. A strategy that seeks to suppress hidden meanings in a text.

11. According to the passage, Derrida believes that the system of binary opposition

1. represents a prioritization or hierarchy.

2. reconciles contradictions and dualities.

3. weakens the process of marginalization and ordering of truth.

4. deconstructs reality.

12. Derrida rejects the idea of 'definitive authority of the subject' because

1. interpretation of the text may not make the unseen visible.

2. the meaning of the text is based on binary opposites.

3. the implicit power relationship is often ignored.

4. any act of interpretation must refer to what the author intends.

CAT 2004

PASSAGE 4

Recently I spent several hours sitting under a tree in my garden with the social anthropologist William Ury, a Harvard University professor who specializes in the art of negotiation and wrote the bestselling book, Getting to Yes. He captivated me with his theory that tribalism protects people from their fear of rapid change. He explained that the pillars of tribalism that humans rely on for security would always counter any significant cultural or social change. In this way, he said, change is never allowed to happen too fast. Technology, for example, is a pillar of society. Ury believes that every time technology moves in a new or radical direction, another pillar such as religion or nationalism will grow stronger -- in effect, the traditional and familiar will assume greater importance to compensate for the new and untested. In this manner, human tribes avoid rapid change that leaves people insecure and frightened.

But we have all heard that nothing is as permanent as change. Nothing is guaranteed. Pithy expressions, to be sure, but no more than cliches. As Ury says, people don't live that way from day-to-day. On the contrary, they actively seek certainty and stability. They want to know they will be safe.

Even so, we scare ourselves constantly with the idea of change. An IBM CEO once said: 'We only re-structure for a good reason, and if we haven't re-structured in a while, that's a good reason.' We are scared that competitors, technology and the consumer will put us out of business -- so we have to change all the time just to stay alive. But if we asked our fathers and grandfathers, would they have said that they lived in a period of little change? Structure may not have changed much. It may just be the speed with which we do things.

Change is over-rated, anyway. Consider the automobile. It's an especially valuable example, because the auto industry has spent tens of billions of dollars on research and product development in the last 100 years. Henry Ford's first car had a metal chassis with an internal combustion, gasoline-powered engine, four wheels with rubber tyres, a foot operated clutch assembly and brake system, a steering wheel, and four seats, and it could safely do 18 miles per hour. A hundred years and tens of thousands of research hours later, we drive cars with a metal chassis with an internal combustion, gasoline-powered engine, four wheels with rubber tyres, a foot operated clutch assembly and brake system, a steering wheel, four seats -- and the average speed in London in 2001 was 17.5 miles per hour!

That's not a hell of a lot of return for the money. Ford evidently doesn't have much to teach us about change. The fact that they're still manufacturing cars is not proof that Ford Motor Co. is a sound organization, just proof that it takes very large companies to make cars in great quantities -- making for an almost impregnable entry barrier.

Fifty years after the development of the jet engine, planes are also little changed. They've grown bigger, wider and can carry more people. But those are incremental, largely cosmetic changes.

Taken together, this lack of real change has come to mean that in travel -- whether driving or flying -- time and technology have not combined to make things much better. The safety and design have of course accompanied the times and the new volume of cars and flights, but nothing of any significance has changed in the basic assumptions of the final product.

At the same time, moving around in cars or aeroplanes becomes less and less efficient all the time. Not only has there been no great change, but also both forms of transport have deteriorated as more people clamour to use them. The same is true for telephones, which took over hundred years to become mobile, or photographic film, which also required an entire century to change.

The only explanation for this is anthropological. Once established in calcified organizations, humans do two things: sabotage changes that might render people dispensable, and ensure industry-wide emulation. In the 1960s, German auto companies developed plans to scrap the entire combustion engine for an electrical design. (The same existed in the 1970s in Japan, and in the 1980s in France.) So for 40 years we might have been free of the wasteful and ludicrous dependence on fossil fuels. Why didn't it go anywhere? Because auto executives understood pistons and carburettors, and would be loath to cannibalize their expertise, along with most of their factories.

13. Which of the following best describes one of the main ideas discussed in the passage?

1. Rapid change is usually welcomed in society.

2. Industry is not as innovative as it is made out to be.

3. We should have less change than what we have now.

4. Competition spurs companies into radical innovation.

14. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?

1. Executives of automobile companies are inefficient and ludicrous.

2. The speed at which an automobile is driven in a city has not changed much in a century.

3. Anthropological factors have fostered innovation in automobiles by promoting use of new technologies.

4. Further innovation in jet engines has been more than incremental.

15. Which of the following views does the author fully support in the passage?

1. Nothing is as permanent as change.

2. Change is always rapid.

3. More money spent on innovation leads to more rapid change.

4. Over decades, structural change has been incremental.

16. According to the passage, the reason why we continued to be dependent on fossil fuels is that:

1. Auto executives did not wish to change.

2. No alternative fuels were discovered.

3. Change in technology was not easily possible.

4. German, Japanese and French companies could not come up with new technologies.

PASSAGE 5

The painter is now free to paint anything he chooses. There are scarcely any forbidden subjects, and today everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of some fruit can be as important as a painting of a hero dying. The Impressionists did as much as anybody to win this previously unheard-of freedom for the artist. Yet, by the next generation, painters began to abandon the subject altogether, and began to paint abstract pictures. Today the majority of pictures painted are abstract.

Is there a connection between these two developments? Has art gone abstract because the artist is embarrassed by his freedom? Is it that, because he is free to paint anything, he doesn't know what to paint? Apologists for abstract art often talk of it as the art of maximum freedom. But could this be the freedom of the desert island? It would take too long to answer these questions properly. I believe there is a connection. Many things have encouraged the development of abstract art. Among them has been the artists' wish to avoid the difficulties of finding subjects when all subjects are equally possible.

I raise the matter now because I want to draw attention to the fact that the painter's choice of a subject is a far more complicated question than it would at first seem. A subject does not start with what is put in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens to remember. A subject starts with the painter deciding he would like to paint such-and-such because for some reason or other he finds it meaningful. A subject begins when the artist selects something for special mention. (What makes it special or meaningful may seem to the artist to be purely visual -- its colours or its form.) When the subject has been selected, the function of the painting itself is to communicate and justify the significance of that selection.

It is often said today that subject matter is unimportant. But this is only a reaction against the excessively literary and moralistic interpretation of subject matter in the nineteenth century. In truth the subject is literally the beginning and end of a painting. The painting begins with a selection (I will paint this and not everything else in the world); it is finished when that selection is justified (now you can see all that I saw and felt in this and how it is more than merely itself).

Thus, for a painting to succeed it is essential that the painter and his public agree about what is significant. The subject may have a personal meaning for the painter or individual spectator; but there must also be the possibility of their agreement on its general meaning. It is at this point that the culture of the society and period in question precedes the artist and his art. Renaissance art would have meant nothing to the Aztecs -- and vice versa. If, to some extent, a few intellectuals can appreciate them both today it is because their culture is an historical one: its inspiration is history and therefore it can include within itself, in principle if not in every particular, all known developments to date.

When a culture is secure and certain of its values, it presents its artists with subjects. The general agreement about what is significant is so well established that the significance of a particular subject accrues and becomes traditional. This is true, for instance, of reeds and water in China, of the nude body in Renaissance, of the animal in Africa. Furthermore, in such cultures the artist is unlikely to be a free agent: he will be employed for the sake of particular subjects, and the problem, as we have just described it, will not occur to him.

When a culture is in a state of disintegration or transition the freedom of the artist increases -- but the question of subject matter becomes problematic for him: he, himself, has to choose for society. This was at the basis of all the increasing crises in European art during the nineteenth century. It is too often forgotten how many of the art scandals of that time were provoked by the choice of subject (Gericault, Courbet, Daumier, Degas, Lautrec, Van Gogh, etc.).

By the end of the nineteenth century there were, roughly speaking, two ways in which the painter could meet this challenge of deciding what to paint and so choosing for society. Either he identified himself with the people and so allowed their lives to dictate his subjects to him; or he had to find his subjects within himself as painter. By people I mean everybody except the bourgeoisie. Many painters did of course work for the bourgeoisie according to their copy-book of approved subjects, but all of them, filling the Salon and the Royal Academy year after year, are now forgotten, buried under the hypocrisy of those they served so sincerely.

17. In the sentence, "I believe there is a connection" (second paragraph), what two developments is the author referring to?

1. Painters using a dying hero and using a fruit as a subject of painting.

2. Growing success of painters and an increase in abstract forms.

3. Artists gaining freedom to choose subjects and abandoning subjects altogether.

4. Rise of Impressionists and an increase in abstract forms.

18. When a culture is insecure, the painter chooses his subject on the basis of:

1. The prevalent style in the society of his time.

2. Its meaningfulness to the painter.

3. What is put in front of the easel.

4. Past experience and memory of the painter.

19. Which of the following views is taken by the author?

1. The more insecure a culture, the greater the freedom of the artist.

2. The more secure a culture, the greater the freedom of the artist.

3. The more secure a culture, more difficult the choice of subject.

4. The more insecure a culture, the less significant the choice of the subject.

20. Which of the following is NOT necessarily among the attributes needed for a painter to succeed:

1. The painter and his public agree on what is significant.

2. The painting is able to communicate and justify the significance of its subject selection.

3. The subject has a personal meaning for the painter.

4. The painting of subjects is inspired by historical developments.

21. In the context of the passage, which of the following statements would NOT be true?

1. Painters decided subjects based on what they remembered from their own lives.

2. Painters of reeds and water in China faced no serious problem of choosing a subject.

3. The choice of subject was a source of scandals in nineteenth century European art.

4. Agreement on the general meaning of a painting is influenced by culture and historical context.

PASSAGE 6

Throughout human history the leading causes of death have been infection and trauma. Modern medicine has scored significant victories against both, and the major causes of ill health and death are now the chronic degenerative diseases, such as coronary artery disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, macular degeneration, cataract and cancer. These have a long latency period before symptoms appear and a diagnosis is made. It follows that the majority of apparently healthy people are pre-ill.

But are these conditions inevitably degenerative? A truly preventive medicine that focused on the pre-ill, analysing the metabolic errors which lead to clinical illness, might be able to correct them before the first symptom. Genetic risk factors are known for all the chronic degenerative diseases, and are important to the individuals who possess them. At the population level, however, migration studies confirm that these illnesses are linked for the most part to lifestyle factors -- exercise, smoking and nutrition. Nutrition is the easiest of these to change, and the most versatile tool for affecting the metabolic changes needed to tilt the balance away from disease.

Many national surveys reveal that malnutrition is common in developed countries. This is not the calorie and/or micronutrient deficiency associated with developing nations (Type A malnutrition); but multiple micronutrient depletion, usually combined with calorific balance or excess (Type B malnutrition). The incidence and severity of Type B malnutrition will be shown to be worse if newer micronutrient groups such as the essential fatty acids, xanthophylls and flavonoids are included in the surveys. Commonly ingested levels of these micronutrients seem to be far too low in many developed countries.

There is now considerable evidence that Type B malnutrition is a major cause of chronic degenerative diseases. If this is the case, then it is logical to treat such diseases not with drugs but with multiple micronutrient repletion, or 'pharmaco-nutrition'. This can take the form of pills and capsules -- 'nutraceuticals', or food formats known as 'functional foods', This approach has been neglected hitherto because it is relatively unprofitable for drug companies -- the products are hard to patent -- and it is a strategy which does not sit easily with modem medical interventionism. Over the last 100 years, the drug industry has invested huge sums in developing a range of subtle and powerful drugs to treat the many diseases we are subject to. Medical training is couched in pharmaceutical terms and this approach has provided us with an exceptional range of therapeutic tools in the treatment of disease and in acute medical emergencies. However, the pharmaceutical model has also created an unhealthy dependency culture, in which relatively few of us accept responsibility for maintaining our own health. Instead, we have handed over this responsibility to health professionals who know very little about health maintenance, or disease prevention.

One problem for supporters of this argument is lack of the right kind of hard evidence. We have a wealth of epidemiological data linking dietary factors to health profiles / disease risks, and a great deal of information on mechanism: how food factors interact with our biochemistry. But almost all intervention studies with micronutrients, with the notable exception of the omega 3 fatty acids, have so far produced conflicting or negative results. In other words, our science appears to have no predictive value. Does this invalidate the science? Or are we simply asking the wrong questions?

Based on pharmaceutical thinking, most intervention studies have attempted to measure the impact of a single micronutrient on the incidence of disease. The classical approach says that if you give a compound formula to test subjects and obtain positive results, you cannot know which ingredient is exerting the benefit, so you must test each ingredient individually. But in the field of nutrition, this does not work. Each intervention on its own will hardly make enough difference to be measured. The best therapeutic response must therefore combine micronutrients to normalise our internal physiology. So do we need to analyse each individual's nutritional status and then tailor a formula specifically for him or her? While we do not have the resources to analyse millions of individual cases, there is no need to do so. The vast majority of people are consuming suboptimal amounts of most micronutrients, and most of the micronutrients concerned are very safe. Accordingly, a comprehensive and universal program of micronutrient support is probably the most cost-effective and safest way of improving the general health of the nation.

22. Why are a large number of apparently healthy people deemed pre-ill?

1. They may have chronic degenerative diseases.

2. They do not know their own genetic risk factors which predispose them to diseases.

3. They suffer from Type-B malnutrition.

4. There is a lengthy latency period associated with chronically degenerative diseases

23. Type-B malnutrition is a serious concern in developed countries because

1. developing countries mainly suffer from Type-A malnutrition.

2. it is a major contributor to illness and death.

3. pharmaceutical companies are not producing drugs to treat this condition.

4. national surveys on malnutrition do not include newer micronutrient groups.

24. Tailoring micronutrient-based treatment plans to suit individual deficiency profiles is not necessary because

1. it very likely to give inconsistent or negative results.

2. it is a classic pharmaceutical approach not suited to micronutrients.

3. most people are consuming suboptimal amounts of safe-to-consume micronutrients.

4. it is not cost effective to do so.

25. The author recommends micronutrient-repletion for large-scale treatment of chronic degenerative diseases because

1. it is relatively easy to manage.

2. micronutrient deficiency is the cause of these diseases.

3. it can overcome genetic risk factors.

4. it can compensate for other lifestyle factors.

PASSAGE 7

Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn't appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the color of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old -- young adults. "This is wonderful!" he said, after staring at them for several moments. "This is what we came to see. They really are maneless." Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctoral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the maneless males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.

The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton's show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It's the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some "maneless" lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?

The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller's pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya's oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, they behave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. "Remember too," Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, "Tsavo's lions have a reputation of ferocity." Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya Railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African laborers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson's account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo's lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. "People don't want to give up on mythology," Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. "I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo's lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere."

But tales of their savagery and wiliness don't all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don't give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.

And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighborhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.

But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their manelessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species -- the latest model, so to speak -- while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.

26. The book Man-Eaters of Tsavo annoys some scientists because

1. it revealed that Tsavo lions are ferocious.

2. Patterson made a helluva lot of money from the book by sensationalism.

3. it perpetuated the bad name Tsavo lions had.

4. it narrated how two male Tsavo lions were killed.

27. The sentence which concludes the first paragraph, "Now they knew better", implies that:

1. The two scientists were struck by wonder on seeing maneless lions for the first time.

2. Though Craig was an expert on the Serengeti lion, now he also knew about the Tsavo lions.

3. Earlier, Craig and West thought that amateur observers had been mistaken.

4. Craig was now able to confirm that darkening of the noses as lions aged applied to Tsavo lions as well.

28. Which of the following, if true, would weaken the hypothesis advanced by Gnoske and Peterhans most?

1. Craig and Peyton develop even more serious doubts about the idea that Tsavo lions are primitive.

2. The maneless Tsavo East lions are shown to be closer to the cave lions.

3. Pleistocene cave lions are shown to be far less violent than believed.

4. The morphological variations in body and skull size between the cave and Tsavo lions are found to be insignificant.

29. According to the passage, which of the following has NOT contributed to the popular image of Tsavo lions as savage creatures?

1. Tsavo lions have been observed to bring down one of the strongest and most aggressive animals -- the Cape buffalo.

2. In contrast to the situation in traditional lion haunts, scarcity of non-buffalo prey in the Tsavo makes the Tsavo lions more aggressive.

3. The Tsavo lion is considered to be less evolved than the Serengeti variety.

4. Tsavo lions have been observed to attack vehicles as well as humans.

PASSAGE 7

The viability of the multinational corporate system depends upon the degree to which people will tolerate the unevenness it creates. It is well to remember that the 'New Imperialism' which began after 1870 in a spirit of Capitalism Triumphant, soon became seriously troubled and after 1914 was characterized by war, depression, breakdown of the international economic system and war again, rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica and Material Improvement. A major reason was Britain's inability to cope with the by-products of its own rapid accumulation of capital; i.e., a class-conscious labour force at home; a middle class in the hinterland; and rival centres of capital on the Continent and in America. Britain's policy tended to be atavistic and defensive rather than progressive -- more concerned with warding off new threats than creating new areas of expansion. Ironically, Edwardian England revived the paraphernalia of the landed aristocracy it had just destroyed. Instead of embarking on a 'big push' to develop the vast hinterland of the Empire, colonial administrators often adopted policies to arrest the development of either a native capitalist class or a native proletariat which could overthrow them.

As time went on, the centre had to devote an increasing share of government activity to military and other unproductive expenditures; they had to rely on alliances with an inefficient class of landlords, officials and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the cost of development. A great part of the surplus extracted from the population was thus wasted locally.

The New Mercantilism (as the Multinational Corporate System of special alliances and privileges, aid and tariff concessions is sometimes called) faces similar problems of internal and external division. The centre is troubled: excluded groups revolt and even some of the affluent are dissatisfied with the roles. Nationalistic rivalry between major capitalist countries remains an important divisive factor. Finally, there is the threat presented by the middle classes and the excluded groups of the underdeveloped countries. The national middle classes in the underdeveloped countries came to power when the centre weakened but could not, through their policy of import substitution manufacturing, establish a viable basis for sustained growth. They now face a foreign exchange crisis and an unemployment (or population) crisis -- the first indicating their inability to function in the international economy and the second indicating their alienation from the people they are supposed to lead. In the immediate future, these national middle classes will gain a new lease of life as they take advantage of the spaces created by the rivalry between American and non-American oligopolists striving to establish global market positions.

The native capitalists will again become the champions of national independence as they bargain with multinational corporations. But the conflict at this level is more apparent than real, for in the end the fervent nationalism of the middle class asks only for promotion within the corporate structure and not for a break with that structure. In the last analysis their power derives from the metropolis and they cannot easily afford to challenge the international system. They do not command the loyalty of their own population and cannot really compete with the large, powerful, aggregate capitals from the centre. They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumption standards' set at the centre.

The main threat comes from the excluded groups. It is not unusual in underdeveloped countries for the top 5 per cent to obtain between 30 and 40 per cent of the total national income, and for the top one-third to obtain anywhere from 60 to 70 per cent. At most, one-third of the population can be said to benefit in some sense from the dualistic growth that characterizes development in the hinterland. The remaining two-thirds, who together get only one-third of the income, are outsiders, not because they do not contribute to the economy, but because they do not share in the benefits. They provide a source of cheap labour which helps keep exports to the developed world at a low price and which has financed the urban-biased growth of recent years. In fact, it is difficult to see how the system in most underdeveloped countries could survive without cheap labour since removing it (e.g. diverting it to public works projects as is done in socialist countries) would raise consumption costs to capitalists and professional elites.

30. According to the author, the British policy during the 'New Imperialism' period tended to be defensive because

1. it was unable to deal with the fallouts of a sharp increase in capital.

2. its cumulative capital had undesirable side-effects.

3. its policies favoured developing the vast hinterland.

4. it prevented the growth of a set-up which could have been capitalistic in nature.

31. The author is in a position to draw parallels between New Imperialism and New Mercantilism because

1. both originated in the developed Western capitalist countries.

2. New Mercantilism was a logical sequel to New Imperialism.

3. they create the same set of outputs -- a labour force, middle classes and rival centres of capital.

4. both have comparable uneven and divisive effects.

32. Under New Mercantilism, the fervent nationalism of the native middle classes does not create conflict with the multinational corporations because they (the middle classes)

1. negotiate with the multinational corporations.

2. are dependent on the international system for their continued prosperity.

3. are not in a position to challenge the status quo.

4. do not enjoy popular support.

33. In the sentence, "They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumption standards set at the centre." (fourth paragraph), what is the meaning of 'centre'?

1. National government                       2. Native capitalists                  3. New capitalists

4. None of the above

Exercise 6.4 [CAT 2003]

Questions: 30                          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 controversy over genetically modified food continues unabated in the West. Genetic modification (GM) is the science by which the genetic material of a plant is altered, perhaps to make it more resistant to pests or killer weeds or to enhance its nutritional value. Many food biotechnologists claim that GM will be a major contribution of science to mankind in the 21st century. On the other hand, large numbers of opponents, mainly in Europe, claim that the benefits of GM are a myth propagated by multinational corporations to increase their profits, that they pose a health hazard, and have therefore called for governments to ban the sale of genetically-modified food.

­The anti-GM campaign has been quite effective in Europe, with several European Union member countries imposing a virtual ban for five years over genetically-modified food imports. Since the genetically-modified food industry is particularly strong in the United States of America, the controversy also constitutes another chapter in the US-Europe skirmishes which have become particularly acerbic after the US invasion of Iraq.

To a large extent, the GM controversy has been ignored in the Indian media, although Indian biotechnologists have been quite active in GM research. Several groups of Indian biotechnologists have been working on various issues connected with crops grown in India. One concrete achievement which has recently figured in the news is that of a team led by the former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Asis Datta -- it has successfully added an extra gene to potatoes to enhance the protein content of the tuber by at least 30 percent. Not surprisingly, the new potato has been called the protato. The protato is now in its third year of field trials. It is quite likely that the GM controversy will soon hit the headlines in India since a spokesperson of the Indian Central government has recently announced that the government may use the protato in its midday meal programme for schools as early as next year.

Why should "scientific progress", with huge potential benefits to the poor and malnourished, be so controversial? The anti-GM lobby contends that pernicious propaganda has vastly exaggerated the benefits of GM and completely evaded the costs which will have to be incurred if the genetically-modified food industry is allowed to grow unchecked. In particular, they allude to different types of costs.

This group contends that the most important potential cost is that the widespread distribution and growth of genetically-modified food will enable the corporate world (alias the multinational corporations – MNCs) to completely capture the food chain. A "small" group of biotech companies will patent the transferred genes as well as the technology associated with them. They will then buy up the competing seed merchants and seed-breeding centres, thereby controlling the production of food at every possible level. Independent farmers, big and small, will be completely wiped out of the food industry. At best, they will be reduced to the status of being sub-contractors.

This line of argument goes on to claim that the control of the food chain will be disastrous for the poor since the MNCs, guided by the profit motive, will only focus on the high-value food items demanded by the affluent. Thus, in the long run, the production of basic staples which constitute the food basket of the poor will taper off. However, this vastly overestimates the power of the MNCs. Even if the research promoted by them does focus on the high value food items, much of biotechnology research is also funded by governments in both developing and developed countries. Indeed, the protato is a by-product of this type of research. If the protato passes the field trials, there is no reason to believe that it cannot be marketed in the global potato market. And this type of success story can be repeated with other basic food items.

The second type of cost associated with the genetically-modified food industry is environmental damage. The most common type of "genetic engineering" involves gene modification in plants designed to make them resistant to applications of weed-killers. This then enables farmers to use massive dosages of weed killers so as to destroy or wipe out all competing varieties of plants in their fields. However, some weeds through genetically modified pollen contamination may acquire resistance to a variety of weed-killers. The only way to destroy these weeds is through the use of ever-stronger herbicides which are poisonous and linger on in the environment.

1. According to the passage, biotechnology research

1. is of utility only for high value food items.

2. is funded only by multinational corporations.

3. allows multinational corporations to control the food basket of the poor.

4. addresses the concerns of rich and poor countries.

2. Genetic modification makes plants more resistant to killer weeds. However, this can lead to environmental damage by

1. wiping out competing varieties of plants which now fall prey to killer weeds.

2. forcing application of stronger herbicides to kill weeds which have become resistant to weak herbicides.

3. forcing application of stronger herbicides to keep the competing plants weed-free.

4. not allowing growth of any weeds, thus reducing soil fertility.

3. Which of the following about the Indian media's coverage of scientific research does the passage seem to suggest?

1. Indian media generally covers a subject of scientific importance when its mass application is likely.        

2. Indian media's coverage of scientific research is generally dependent on MNC’s interests.            

3. Indian media, in partnership with the government, is actively involved in publicizing the results of scientific research.         

4. Indian media only highlights scientific research which is funded by the government.        

4. The author doubts the anti-GM lobby's contention that MNC control of the food chain will be disastrous for the poor because

1. MNCs will focus on high-value food items.

2. MNCs are driven by the motive of profit maximization

3. MNCs are not the only group of actors in genetically-modified food research.

4. economic development will help the poor buy MNC-produced food.

5. Using the clues in the passage, which of the following countries would you expect to be in the forefront of the anti-GM campaign?

         1. USA and Spain.          2. India and Iraq.                     3. Germany and France.          4. Australia and New Zealand.

Passage 2

Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character; temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest.

This aspect, to my thinking, is realized as much in large parties composed of casual acquaintances or even strangers, as in intimate meetings of old friends. I am not one of those superior persons who hold cocktail parties in contempt, looking upon them as barren or at best as very tryingly kaleidoscopic places for gathering, because of the strangers one has to meet in them; which is no argument, for even our most intimate friends must at one time have been strangers to us. These large gatherings will be only what we make of them – if not anything better, they can be as good places to collect new friends from as the slave-markets of Istanbul were for beautiful slaves or New Market for race horses.

But they do offer more immediate enjoyment. For one thing, in them one can see the external expression of social life in appearance and behaviour at its widest and most varied -- where one can admire beauty of body or air, hear voices remarkable either for sweetness or refinement, look on elegance of clothes or deportment. What is more, these parties are schools for training in sociability, for in them we have to treat strangers as friends. So, we see social sympathy in widest commonalty spread, or at least should. We show an atrophy of the natural human instinct of getting pleasure and happiness out of other human beings if we cannot treat strangers as friends for the moment. And I would go further and paraphrase Pater to say that not to be able to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, even when we meet them casually, is on this short day of frost and sun which our life is, to sleep before evening.

So, it will be seen that my conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated. We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends. In sum, social life is a function of vitality.

It is tragic, however, to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow-feeling for human beings as such in our society – and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so-called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought a sinister addition -- class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack, and snarl or howl at people who are better off than they.

Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.

The situation is differently inhuman, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third-class position.

6. What is the author trying to show through the two incidents in the paragraph beginning, “Their most innocent exhibition of sociability...”?

l. The crowds in poor Calcutta suburbs can turn violent without any provocation

2. Although poor, the people of poor Calcutta suburbs have a rich social life.

3. It is risky for rich people to move around in poor suburbs.

4. Achieving a high degree of sociability does not stop the poor from hating the rich.

7. The word `discriminate' in the last sentence of the third paragraph means

            (1) recognise                (2) count          (3) distinguish             (4) analyse

8. In this passage the author is essentially

                        1. showing how shallow our social life is.      

                        2. poking fun at the lower middle class people who howl at better off people

                        3. lamenting the drying up of our real social life.       

                        4. criticizing the upper class for lavish showy parties.

9. The author's conception of ‘social life’ requires that

1. people attend large gatherings.

2. people possess qualities like wonder and interest.

3. people do not spend too much time in the company of intimate friends.

4. large parties consist of casual acquaintances and intimate friends.

10. The word ‘they’ in the first sentence of the third paragraph refers to

1. Large parties consisting of casual acquaintances and strangers.

2. Intimate meetings of old friends.

3. New friends.

4. Both 1 & 2.

PASSAGE 3

Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man's burden. Provincial self rule since 1935 paved the way for full self rule. Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was anti-imperialist by ideology. Finally, the Royal Indian ­Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully. But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshall Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constitutes a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.

Empire building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns. The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered.

No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the plunderer was admired. This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man's burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest. It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen toot impossible.

An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals. After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly, to promote the notion of the white man's burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites. This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19^th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 percent of Indian Gross National Product in the 19^th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20^th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit centre for the British Empire.

Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain's finances. But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape, and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible. Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by these countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered, undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded. Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was overruled by India hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts whether to pay the fare. Thus, World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain, meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax.

11. What was the main lesson the British learned from the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857?

1. That the local princes were allies, not foes.

2. That the land revenue from India would decline dramatically.

3. That the British were a small ethnic group.

4. That India would be increasingly difficult to rule.

12. Why didn't Britain tax India to finance its World War II efforts?

1. Australia, Canada and New Zealand had offered to pay for Indian troops.

2. India had already paid a sufficiently large sum during World War I.

3. It was afraid that if India refused to pay, Britain's war efforts would be jeopardised.

4. The British empire was built on the premise that the conqueror pays the conquered.

13. Which of the following was NOT a reason for the emergence of the `white man’s burden’ as a new rationale for empire-building in India?

1. The emergence of the idea of the public good as an element of governance.

2. The decreasing returns from imperial loot and increasing costs of conquest.

3. The weakening of the immorality attached to an emperor's looting behaviour.

4. A growing awareness of the idea of equality among peoples.

14. Which one of the following best expresses the main purpose of the author?

1. To present the various reasons that can lead to the collapse of an empire and the granting of independence to the subjects of an empire.

2. To point out the critical role played by the `white man's burden' in making a colonizing power give up its claims to native possessions.

3. To highlight the contradictory impulse underpinning empire building which is a costly business but very attractive at the same time.

4. To illustrate how erosion of the financial basis of an empire supports the granting of independence to an empire's constituents.

15. Which of the following best captures the meaning of the `white man's burden', as it is used by the author?

1. The British claim to a civilizing mission directed at ensuring the good of the natives.

2. The inspiration for the French and American revolutions.

3. The resource drain that had to be borne by the home country's white population.

4. An imperative that made open looting of resources impossible.

PASSAGE 4

At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentleman wine merchants in wing collars and bow ties, to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one's butler, the ordinary drinker didn't get a look-in. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only fall flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn't just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the stuff if it wasn't to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.

Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines -- like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don't even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow.

It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumers are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fume from their Pouilly-Fuisse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.

The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States: the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English-speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.

In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend -- not because they think their isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that?) but because they don't traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren't about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a specialty source of old-fashioned wines for old-fashioned connoisseurs.

Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!

16. Which one of the following, if true, would provide most support for Dr. Renaud’s findings about the effect of tannins?         

            1. A survey showed that film celebrities based in France have a low incidence of coronrary heart disease.

            2. Measurements carried out in southern France showed red wine drinkers had significantly higher levels of coronary heart incidence than white wine drinkers did.

            3. Data showed a positive association between sales of red wine and incidence of coronary heart disease.

            4. Long-term surveys in southern France showed that the incidence of coronary heart disease was significantly lower in red wine drinkers than in those who did not drink red wine.

17. Which one of the following CANNOT be reasonably attributed to the labelling strategy followed by wine producers in English-speaking countries?

1. Consumers buy wines on the basis of their familiarity with a grape variety’s name.

2. Even ordinary customers now have more access to technical knowledge about wine.

3. Consumers are able to appreciate better quality wines.

4. Some non-English speaking countries like Brazil indicate grape variety names on their labels

18. The tone that the author uses while asking "What French winemaker will ever admit that?” is best described as

1. caustic.                    2. satirical.                   3. critical.                     4. hypocritical

19. The development which has created fear among winemakers in the wine heartlands of France is the:

1 . tendency not to name wines after the grape varieties that are used in the wines.

2. `education' that consumers have derived from wine labels from English-speaking countries.

3. new generation of local winegrowers who use labels that show names of grape varieties

4. ability of consumers to understand a wine's qualities when confronted with "Brazilian upstarts"

20. What, according to the author, should the French do to avoid becoming a producer of merely old-fashioned wines?

1. Follow the labelling strategy of the English-speaking countries.

2. Give their wines English names.

3. Introduce fruity wines as Brazil has done.

4. Produce the wines that have become popular in the English-speaking world.

PASSAGE 5

Modern science, exclusive of geometry, is a comparatively recent creation and can be said to have originated with Galileo and Newton. Galileo was the first scientist to recognize clearly that the only way to further our understanding of the physical world was to resort to experiment. However obvious Galileo's contention may appear in the light of our present knowledge, it remains a fact that the Greeks, in spite of their proficiency in geometry, never seem to have realized the importance of experiment. To a certain extent this may be attributed to the crudeness of their instruments of measurement. Still, an excuse of this sort can scarcely be put forward when the elementary nature of Galileo's experiments and observations is recalled. Watching a lamp oscillate in the cathedral of Pisa, dropping bodies from the leaning tower of Pisa, rolling balls down inclined planes, noticing the magnifying effect of water in a spherical glass vase, such was the nature of Galileo's experiments and observations. As can be seen, they might just as well have been performed by the Greeks. At any rate, it was thanks to such experiments that Galileo discovered the fundamental law of dynamics, according to which the acceleration imparted to a body is proportional to the force acting upon it.

The next advance was due to Newton, the greatest scientist of all time, if account be taken of his joint contributions to mathematics and physics. As a physicist, he was of course an ardent adherent of the empirical method, but his greatest title to fame lies in another direction. Prior to Newton, mathematics, chiefly in the form of geometry, had been studied as a fine art without any view to its physical applications other than very trivial cases. But with Newton all the resources of mathematics were turned to advantage in the solution of physical problems. Thenceforth mathematics appeared as an instrument of discovery, the most powerful one known to man, multiplying the power of thought just as in the mechanical domain the lever multiplied our physical action. It is this application of mathematics to the solution of physical problems, this combination of two separate fields of investigation, which constitutes the essential characteristic of the Newtonian method. Thus problems of physics were metamorphosed into problems of mathematics.

But in Newton's day the mathematical instrument was still in a very backward state of development. In this field again Newton showed the mark of genius by inventing the integral calculus. As a result of this remarkable discovery, problems, which would have baffled Archimedes, were solved with ease. We know that in Newton’s hands this new departure in scientific method led to the discovery of the law of gravitation. But here again the real significance of Newton's achievement lay not so much in the exact quantitative formulation of the law of attraction, as in his having established the presence of law and order at least in one important realm of nature, namely, in the motions of heavenly bodies. Nature thus exhibited rationality and was not mere blind chaos and uncertainty. To be sure, Newton's investigations had been concerned with but a small group of natural phenomena, but it appeared unlikely that this mathematical law and order should turn out to be restricted to certain special phenomena; and the feeling was general that all the physical processes of nature would prove to be unfolding themselves according to rigorous mathematical laws.

When Einstein, in 1905, published his celebrated paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies, he remarked that the difficulties, which surrounded the equations of electrodynamics, together with the negative experiments of Michelson and others, would be obviated if we extended the validity of the Newtonian principle of the relativity of Galilean motion, which applied solely to mechanical phenomena, so as to include all manner of phenomena: electrodynamics, optical, etc. When extended in this way the Newtonian principle of relativity  became Einstein's special principle of relativity. Its significance lay in its assertion that absolute Galilean motion or absolute velocity must ever escape all experimental detection. Henceforth absolute velocity should be conceived of as physically meaningless, not only in the particular realm of mechanics, as in Newton’s day, but in the entire realm of physical phenomena. Einstein's special principle, by adding increased emphasis to this relativity of velocity, making absolute velocity metaphysically meaningless, created a still more profound distinction between velocity and accelerated or rotational motion. This latter type of motion remained absolute and real as before. It is most important to understand this point and to realize that Einstein's special principle is merely an extension of the validity of the classical Newtonian principle to all classes of phenomena.

21. According to the author, why did the Greeks NOT conduct experiments to understand the physical world?

            1. Apparently they did not think it necessary to experiment.

            2. They focused exclusively on geometry.

            3. Their instruments of measurement were very crude.                                   

4. The Greeks considered the application of geometry to the physical world more important.

22. The statement "Nature thus exhibited rationality and was not mere blind chaos and uncertainty” suggests that    

            1. problems that had baffled scientists like Archimedes were not really problems.     

            2. only a small group of natural phenomena was chaotic.

            3. physical phenomena conformed to mathematical laws.

            4. natural phenomena were evolving towards a less chaotic future.    

23. Newton may be considered one of the greatest scientists of all time because he

                        1. discovered the law of gravitation.               

                        2. married physics with mathematics.             

                        3. invented integral calculus.              

                        4. started the use of the empirical method in science.

24. The significant implication of Einstein's special principle of relativity is that

1. absolute velocity was meaningless in the realm of mechanics.

2. Newton's principle of relativity needs to be modified.

3. there are limits to which experimentation can be used to understand some physical phenomenon..

4. it is meaningless to try to understand the distinction between velocity and accelerated or rotational motion.

25. Which of the following statements about modern science best captures the theme of the passage?

            1. Modern science rests firmly on the platform built by the Greeks.

2. We need to go back to the method of enquiry used by the Greeks to better understand the laws of dynamics.

3. Disciplines like Mathematics and Physics function best when integrated into one.

4. New knowledge about natural phenomena builds on existing knowledge.

Passage 6

Ithaka14

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon–don't be afraid of them:

you'll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon–you won't encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbours seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind–

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you're destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you've gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

26. Which of the following best reflects the central theme of this poem?

            1. If you don’t have high expectations, you will not be disappointed.

            2. Don’t rush to your goal, the journey is what enriches you.

            3. The longer the journey the greater the experience you gather.

            4. You cannot reach Ithaka without visiting Egyptian ports.

27. The poet recommends a long journey. Which of the following is the most comprehensive reason for it?

1. You can gain knowledge as well as sensual experience.

2. You can visit new cities and harbours.

3. You can experience the full range of sensuality.

4. You can buy a variety of fine things.

28. In the poem, Ithaka is a symbol of

            1. the divine mother.                            2. your inner self.        3. the path to wisdom. 4. life's distant goal.

29. What does the poet mean by `Laistrygonians' and `Cyclops"?      

           1. Creatures which, along with Poseidon, one finds during a journey.

           2. Mythological characters that one should not be afraid of.   

           3. Intra-personal obstacles that hinder one's journey.  

           4. Problems that one has to face to derive the most from one's journey.

30. Which of the following best reflects the tone of the poem?

1. Prescribing.              2. Exhorting.                3. Pleading.                  4. Consoling.

Answers

Exercise 6.1

1. 1      The answer lies in the first line of the second paragraph: “it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources.” So there is a mismatch between population and resources. There is no reference to fighting, so the last three choices are knocked out. The difference between the first and second choice is that the first talks about land and other resources while the second is only land resources. As we are talking about “available resources” the first choice is selected.

2. 4      This is more of a vocabulary question. The root “anthro” means man, and only the fourth choice mentions actions taken by human beings.

3. 3      The third paragraph says that the difference was that “At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site.” From this line we conclude that there was no land available now and the drought took a heavy toll.

4. 4      The opening lines explain that though there are different strands, “Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves ­in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts…” Choice (4) sums up this line.

5. 5      The author tells us that “the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems” hence (5) is the appropriate choice. Note that the other choices are mentioned in the passage.

6. 3      Directly stated in the passage: “concepts of modern art, by contrast, have resulted from the almost accidental meetings of groups of talented individuals at certain times and certain places” so the correct answer is (3).

7. 5      The analogy with fossil occurs in the second paragraph: “…a fossil. This is not to say that it becomes useless or uninteresting… a scientist can reconstruct the life of a prehistoric environment from the messages codified into the structure of a fossil.” The word “fossil” is related to past eras so the correct answer is (5).

8. 1      The similarities between art and science are mentioned in the first paragraph. But the similarities may be erroneous because of “a whole range of separate, though interconnecting, activities” so the first choice is the correct answer.

9. 4      First paragraph: “the concepts of modern art are of many different kinds and resulted from the exposures … to the more complex phenomena of the twentieth century, … different groups of artists would collaborate in trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world of visual and spiritual experience.” From these lines, we see that (4) is the correct choice.

10. 5    Last two lines of the passage mention the observation by TS Eliot that people are still involved with a nexus of behaviour patterns bequeathed from the past. The creative person is able to develop them to his need. This idea is summed up in (5).

11. 3    Option (3) is clearly the right choice because the boy tripping and falling was a “pathetic, and obviously mendacious, justification.”

12. 4    This is a vocabulary question. Parvenu means an upstart. This can be made out from the passage because of the reference to Pinocchio.

13. 2    Clearly stated in the passage: “Two two-cent cones instead of one at four cents did not signify squandering, economically speaking, but symbolically they surely did. It was for this precise reason that I yearned for them.”

14. 2    Since the concept of morality has changed nowadays, the moralist seems to be at odds with the new reality.

15. 1    This too becomes a vocabulary question. Since the choice was dictated by the parents, the correct answer is (1). The other words are not related.

16. 5    Stated in the second line: “it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains.” This clearly shows that it is a psychological faculty.

17. 2    The author is talking about instinct – what might be done naturally rather than through learning. Of the choices given, only (2) is an instinct.

18. 2    The answer is found in the second paragraph: “In nature’s talent show, we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.”

19. 1    Third paragraph states, “The complexity of language … is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children.” From this we see that it is instinctively known.

20. 4    The central idea is how humans know their complex language by instinct.

Exercise 6.2

1. 5      See the second paragraph: “behaviour is coordinated by the reciprocal nature of roles…each makes sense only in relation to the other.”

2. 2      Refer to the last paragraph. This clearly shows that a father playing his role “tongue in cheek” would have been acceptable if biological linkages structured human society.

3. 4      The statement A tells us that some roles are so absorbing or interesting that the distinction between the role being played and the underlying self gets blurred. B is also true because it is mentioned: “the rule-governed nature or scripted nature of much of social life and the sense that society is a joint production.”

4. 3      Paragraph 3: “confounding effects of natural variation in additional   variables besides the one of interest”, thus conveying the differences in the evolution of isolated islands and the potential inherent in studying such differences. The difference between the first and the third choice is little, except that “interest to us” is wrong.

5. 2      The question asks why prediction is not possible, and each of the choices are limited except second choice, which says that a large number of factors influence history and that makes prediction impossible.

6. 3      Can be inferred from the line, “The student of human history can draw on many more natural experiments than just comparisons…” This means that they are missing out on a lot of things because they do not conduct experiments.

7. 2      Refer to the end of the first paragraph. The writer uses the expression “like a Madonna from a Madonna” to illustrate the fact that the artist does not create anything new but deepens and purifies the old, so the difference in two artistic creations is due to the difference in artistic interpretation.

8. 1      Refer to the last few lines of the passage. The sea and ‘other creation’ help Rilke to “understand the situation of the poet, his place and function in this age”.

9. 4      Note the term “experience.” Experience means the past and there is only one choice that satisfies this. An easy visual question.

10. 4    The passage is about evolution of a scientific tradition, as is clear from this line: “Anyone who has attempted to describe or analyze the evolution of a particular scientific tradition will necessarily have sought accepted principles and rules of this sort.” Rules point to the tradition, hence (4).

11. 3    The term refers to a sense of inherent loyalty - not to something as narrow as a laboratory but to a certain form of scientific inquiry.

12. 5    Refer to paragraphs 1 and 3: … if the coherence is to be understood… some specification of common ground…

13. 2    The passage mentions in the last lines of the 3^rd para that critical attitudes are super-imposed on the dogmatic ones and the latter are the raw material for the development of the former ones. Option 2 represents the best option in terms of a verbal analogy.

14. 1    Please refer to the last few lines of the first and third paras. “this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages…” so the author feels that it is critical.

15. 4     The last line of the 2nd para talks of the lack of maturity on their part.

16. 5    

17. 3     Please refer to the penultimate para for the right answer.

18. 3    Inferred from the first paragraph: “Now Goran Linblad … wants to go further.” This implies that the earlier statement is admitted by the author.

19. 2    Note that Goran Linblad has chosen an ideological offensive. Hence it is clear that the attack on communism is because of existing ideology.

20. 5    Third paragraph: The author says that attempt to equate communism and Nazism is nonsense. He then gives examples of atrocities of Europeans to counter his arguments.

21. 1    The common element between Nazism and colonialism, according to the author, is that they were both cruel and tyrannical.

22. 4    Since atrocities were committed on Europeans as well as others, we cannot say that greater value was placed on European lives as the reason for silence of the Council of Europe.

23. 3    Second paragraph: principles of justice should be based on the fact that no one is advantaged. Note that in this question, three choices can be easily crossed as they talk about a hypothetical society.

24. 1    First paragraph: the original position is used by the author to derive principles of a just society.

25. 4    Third paragraph: the principles of justice are chosen assuming that such principles will govern the rule makers in their next birth.

26. 2    The “original” agreement means that it must match with initially agreed upon principles. There is a close choice with (4) but that talks about evolution hence it is wrong.

27. 4    Principles of fair justice means that everyone gets equal opportunity, and this is given only in (4).

Exercise 6.3

1. 3      Second paragraph: “Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed…”

2. 2      An interesting psychology is one that involves inner conflict. Only the second choice satisfies this condition.

3. 4      All the statements are given in the first paragraph.

4. 3      In the fourth paragraph it says that there is a genuine conflict when an adversary puts obstacles in the path of the detective.

5. 2      The first paragraph describes “best of all possible worlds” – also Edwardian refers to Edward VII, whose age was flamboyant, ostentatious, at times vulgar and strident, with picturesque contrasts of fortune and circumstance.

6. 3      Sixth paragraph describes this.

7. 1      The passage gives us reasons to doubt the supposed prosperity evident in the both the ages of globalisation.

8. 4      The author’s perception is satirical.

9. 4      Derrida was the master of deconstruction – that is, uncovering hidden meanings (third paragraph).

10. 3    Logocentrism does not suppress hidden meanings, all other choices are mentioned in the passage.

11. 1    Mentioned in the second paragraph.

12. 1    Mentioned in the last paragraph.

13. 2    The passage says that humans avoid change and that companies “don’t have much to teach us about change” and that is the central theme. Hence the answer should be “innovation” and how there is none.

14. 2    Directly stated in 4th paragraph - Henry Ford’s first car did 18 miles per hour and in 2001 the average speed in London was 17.5 miles per hour.

15. 4    Can be inferred from the 6th paragraph – "fifty years after….largely cosmetic changes."

16. 1    The whole passage is about resistance to change. The answer can be inferred from the last paragraph – "in the 1960s, the German auto companies developed plans to scrap the entire combustion engine…..why didn’t it go anywhere?" However, the answer can be got by a simple reading.

17. 3    First line: "the painter is now free to paint anything he chooses” and then the painters started painting something abstract (first paragraph).

18. 2    Can be inferred from the 7th paragraph – "when a culture is in a state of disintegration .… he, himself, has to choose for society."

19. 1    As above, in 7th paragraph, "when a culture is in a state of disintegration …. the freedom of artist increases."

20. 4    All options except option 4 mention the attributes needed for a painter to succeed.

21. 1    All other options are mentioned. Option 2 is in the 6th paragraph – option 3 is in the 7th paragraph, and option 4 can be inferred from 5th paragraph.

22. 4    1st paragraph – "these have a long latency period… majority of apparently healthy people are pre-ill."

23. 2    The fourth paragraph says that there are several degenerative diseases because of type B, which can be cured.

24. 3    Last paragraph: "the vast majority of people are consuming suboptimal amounts of micronutrients … and most micronutrients concerned are very safe."

25. 1    Second paragraph: "nutrition is the easiest of these… balance away from disease."

26. 3    The reason behind the scientists’ annoyance is that they consider the Tsavo lions to be no more man-eaters than lions elsewhere, but the book has reinforced the view that they are more aggressive (third paragraph).

27. 3    The scientists realised that their earlier skepticism about the authenticity of the amateurs’ claims.

28. 3    Gnoske and Peterhans says that Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocence. Then in the 3rd paragraph it says that Tsavo lions have a reputation of ferocity. So the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocence are ferocious. But option 3 says that the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocence are shown to be far less violent than believed therefore weakening the assumption.

29. 3    All options except (3) shows their ferocious nature.

30. 1    First paragraph, ‘A major reason was Britain’s inability to cope with the by products of its own rapid accumulation of capital…’

31. 4    Third paragraph talks of similar problems of division and both, New Imperialism and New Mercantilism.

32. 3    Fourth paragraph. "They cannot easily afford to challenge the international system"

33. 4    Fourth paragraph

Exercise 6.4

1. 4      Stated towards the end: “much of biotechnology research is also funded by governments in both developing and developed countries…”

2. 2      The author states that some weeds through genetically modified pollen contamination may acquire resistance to a variety of weed-killers.        

3. 4      The author says that it is quite likely that the GM controversy will soon hit the headlines in India since a spokesperson of the Indian Central government intends to introduce protato. The implication is that Indian media covers the issue only if government says something.

4. 3      Since even government is involved, MNC control of food chain may not be disastrous.

5. 3      European nations are against GM food, according to the passage.

6. 3      The paragraph talks about the time when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars

7. 1      Can be inferred from: “to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude…” i.e. recognize.

8. 3      Evident from a reading of the passage.           

9. 2     

10. 1    Read the sentence preceding the line, to get the answer.

11. 4    Directly inferred from the line: “Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals.”

12. 3    Churchill was told that India would resist payment, and paralyze the war effort.

13. 2    Only (2) goes against the argument of white man’s burden.

14. 1    Read the first line of the passage.

15. 1    The white man’s burden is the desire to do good for the natives.

16. 4    One of Dr Renaud’s major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. So (4) is the correct answer.

17. 2   

18. 2    The comment is made in a satirical manner.

19. 2    “Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them …In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend

20. 1    Since the labels are tempting consumers back to French wine, the author suggests this very strategy.

21. 1    First paragraph: “Greeks, in spite of their proficiency in geometry, never seem to have realized the importance of experiment.”

22. 3    The line says that it was not mere chaos, so we can infer that it followed laws.

23. 2    Directly stated in the passage.

24. 1    Einstein’s principle made the concept of “absolute velocity metaphysically meaningless.”

25. 3    The author talks of combining Physics and Mathematics.

26. 2    Stated towards the end of the poem.

27. 1    In the end, the poet says, “Wise as you will have become…” so journeys make you wise.

28. 4    Can be inferred from the last and middle lines of the poem.

29. 3    We should not be afraid of these, and we will never find them if we keep our thoughts raised high. So the author is referring to these as difficulties.

30. 1    The poem is giving advice, hence we can say that the tone is prescribing.