02.03.16

https://www.facebook.com/events/202501190107150/

omo

1.
a)
Even though recent legal changes have made it easier, even in America,
to claw back some of the money paid to failed bosses, in practice
firms will only try to do that if there is cast-iron evidence of
fault, such as a financial misstatement.
b)
Robert Marcus is set to take over as boss on January 1st and if
rumours are to be believed, that will be just in time for the cable
firm to be bought by one of a host of rivals that are now circling it.
c)
A change-of-control clause in his contract means he could go straight
back out of the door with a "golden goodbye" of over $56m.
d)
Is the new boss of Time Warner Cable about to become one of the
luckiest-ever winners of the great chief-executive pay lottery?


OMO

2.
a)
He has adapted Homer, Virgil and Thucydides for the radio and, as a
labour of love and at a rate of a paragraph a day, he has translated
Herodotus, the man Cicero called "the Father of History" and who Mr.
Holland refers to as "the most entertaining of historians".
b)
Over the course of the past decade Tom Holland, a British popular
historian, has produced a succession of highly readable works of
fiction and non-fiction about the classical world.
c)
The Greek word "history" meant something more like "investigation",
and Herodotus's curiosity led him to explore the structure, customs
and past of all the then known world.
d)
This lively, engaging version of the "Histories" written by Herodotus
around 440 B.C. provides ample support for what might otherwise appear
to be a wild exaggeration.

omo

3.
a)
It is hard to be sure, since the huge fall in worldwide mortality
since 1950 makes comparisons hard.
b)
But according to Delia Grace of the International Livestock Research
Institute in Nairobi, zoonoses cause a fifth of premature deaths in
poor countries.
c)
Zoonoses – diseases transmitted from animals to people – seem to be
becoming more serious.
d)
That cuts the chance of transmission, but means that a disease that
crosses into people is likely to do more harm


4.
a)
You will be more creative, determined, and focused than ever before.
b)
It is absolutely amazing how much you can accomplish if you break your
tasks down into bite-sized pieces, set deadlines, and then do one
piece at a time, every single day – "By the yard it's hard; but inch
by inch, anything's a cinch."
c)
Great men and women are those who make clear, unequivocal commitments
and then refuse to budge from them, no matter what happens.
d)
When you make a firm commitment to achieve a particular goal, and you
put aside all excuses, it is very much like stepping on the
accelerator of your subconscious mind.

5.There is an unwritten social contract between scientists and
society: an unspoken agreement that gives science a creative
separateness from involvement with goals, values and institutions
other than its own. This has made it possible for science to be able
to pursue long-term goals, even in a society such as ours, which
thinks only in the short term. But this same social contract is
responsible for the troubling disparity between the sophistication of
our science and the relatively primitive state of our social and
political relationships.

With respect to scientists, we can conclude that
a)
In today's public domain, scientists contribute to progress in the
scientific arena but they are not nearly as influential as they should
be in public affairs.
b)
Scientists' importance, the significance of their work, and the
promises and dangers it can host for our communal life is underplayed.
c)
Scientists belong to the intellectual elite who need not sign social
contracts with ordinary society.
d)
It is time that scientists eschew long-term goals and focus on short
term, socially relevant goals.

PC

6. In the sum over histories, there is only one completely uniform and
regular history, and it will have the greatest probability, but many
other histories that are very slightly irregular will have
probabilities that are almost as high. That is why inflation (the
exponential expansion of space in the early universe) predicts that
the very early universe is likely to be slightly non-uniform,
corresponding to the small variations in the temperature that were
observed. The irregularities in the early universe are lucky for us.
They are important because if some regions had a slightly higher
density than others, the gravitational attraction of the extra density
would slow the expansion of that region compared with its
surroundings. As the force of gravity slowly draws matter together, it
can eventually cause it to collapse to form galaxies and stars, which
can lead to planets and, on at least one occasion, people. So look
carefully at the map of the microwave sky. It is the blueprint for all
the structure in the universe. ___________________________________
a)
We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.
b)
In order to make predictions in cosmology, we need to calculate the
probabilities of different states of the entire universe at the
present time.
c)
One can use the laws of physics to calculate how this history develops
with time – we create history by our observation, rather than history
creating us.
d)
If one were religious, one could say that God really does play dice.

SC 7
Select all that are correct:

a)
In the sweaty heat of northern Mozambique, Vale, a Brazilian mining
giant, is digging coals at its mine near the village of Moatize.
b)
A 400,000-tonne mound sits ready to burn. The mine can churn off 4,000
tonnes an hour but the railways and ports cannot cope.
c)
Vale is working for improving a line through Malawi to take the coal for export.
d)
OAS Construtora, another Brazilian firm, has signed a deal with the
minor to build part of a new port
e)
at Nacala, 1,000 km (620 miles) to the north-east.

SC 8

Select all that are correct:

a)
Scientists discovered a new species of snail (Zospeum tholussum) in
one of the world's 20 deepest cave systems, Lukina Jama–Trojama in
Croatia.
b)
These are land, air-breathing, minute, fragile snails that have lost
visual orientation and are considered to be true eutroglobionts, or
exclusive cave-dwellers.
c)
The animals were found at the remarkable depth of 980 m, in an unnamed
chamber full of sand and a small stream running through them.
d)
Their preference of a muddy habitat and the fact that they are located
usually near the drainage system of the cave, in a close proximity to
running water,
e)
suggest that these animals are not exactly immobile.


SC 9

Select all that are correct:

a)
"A life of usefulness, literature, and religion, was not by any means
a life of event," wrote Henry Austen for his spinster sister Jane.
b)
This image of the sequestered author persisted for years. But
contemporary scholars have reprised "dear Aunt Jane" as an independent
and
c)
worldly-wise woman who wielded a sardonic pen. She continues to
fascinate, 200 years after the publication of "Pride and Prejudice".
d)
This is the charm of a new biography from Paula Byrne, a British
author, who yet breathes more life into Austen and her works by
e)
considering the objects that populated her days.



PC

12. The theory of the modular mind is another way of explaining
behaviour – in particular, human behaviour. The idea is that the human
mind is made up of a number of specialized components called modules
that work more or less independently. These modules collect various
kinds of information from the environment and process it in different
ways. They issue different commands – occasionally, conflicting
commands. It's not an elegant theory; on the contrary, it's the sort
of thing that would make Occam whip out his razor. But we shouldn't
judge theories by asking them to compete in a beauty pageant. We
should ask whether they can explain more, or explain better, than
previous theories could. The modular theory can explain, for example,
the curious effects of brain injuries.

_______________________________________
a)
Humans tend to accumulate in memory information of no immediate
practical relevance which they can exploit to imagine possible novel
situations.
b)
Some abilities may be lost while others are spared, with the pattern
differing from one patient to another.
c)
In cognitive science, the modularity of mind refers to the idea that
the mind is composed of independent, closed, domain-specific
processing modules.
d)
The theory of the modular mind is not beautiful or elegant but not
being a poet, I prize truth above beauty.


PC

13. A successful transaction between two people – a sale and purchase
– should benefit both. If it benefits one and not the other, it is
exploitation, and it does nothing to raise the standard of living. The
history of human prosperity lies in the repeated discovery of
non-zero-sum bargains that benefit both sides. That's the trick by
which the world gets rich. Yet it takes only a few sidelong glances at
your fellow human beings to realize that remarkably few people think
this way. Zero-sum (win-lose) thinking dominates the popular
discourse, whether in debates about trade or in complaints about
service providers. You just don't hear people coming out of shops
saying, "I got a great bargain, but don't worry, I paid enough to be
sure that the shopkeeper feeds his family too."

___________________________
a)
Every voluntary transaction between traders in a fair market provides
to each trader more wealth after the transaction than he or she had
before and like Portia's mercy in The Merchant of Venice, exchange is
'twice blest: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.'
b)
That is a shame, because the zero-sum mistake was what made so many
-isms of past centuries so wrong.
c)
When radicals who "occupy" this or that claim that the "1%" should be
divested of their wealth, through higher taxes, because they have more
wealth than others, they start from the false premise that the "1%"
got richer because they made others poorer--a zero-sum fallacy.
d)
This may be because during our evolutionary history, we lived in a
zero-sum world, in which one person's gain meant another person's
loss.


14.Carbon credit activists, while pleading for emission reversal
through clean development mechanism, have been pressing for the
issuance of individual credit bonds, which they can later redeem in
the form of hard cash. Though there is no denying the fact that people
with low carbon footprint should not only be compensated for their low
carbon usage but also for their carbon offsetting initiatives; the
activists have become almost intolerant in pursuance of 'their' line
of emission trading. In order to show their dissent, they have even
fallen heavily on the commodity exchange boards and emissions control
initators. In one of the recent high-level summits on climate change,
carbon credit activists have burnt effigies of top-notch personnel,
thereby polluting the local environment. They have also punctured the
tyres of those huge cars that were supposed to ferry the personnel to
and fro, thereby adding new cars in the loop and causing more fuel
burns. None of the activists bothered, though, to put up a formal
request to the authorities to reflect their concerns and issues. The
12 day summit ultimately ended in a fiasco, to the detriment of the
activists.

Which of the following proverbial statements is reflected in the path
followed by the carbon credit activists for attaining their goals?
a)
To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.
b)
Where there is a will, there is a way.
c)
Necessity knows no law and in everything one thing is impossible: rationality.
d)
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

15.(a) The committee gave him the nod but then the grandees had second
thoughts.

(b) In an inspired move they replaced Shipton with his psychological
opposite – a methodical and self-effacing military man named John Hunt
– replacing one idea of mountaineering (gentlemanly amateurism) with a
very different one (meticulous organisation).

(c) Eric Shipton was the obvious man for the job: a
gentleman-adventurer who knew the mountain better than anyone.

(d) Shipton took amateurism to absurd lengths; he had even forgotten
to bring a backpack on one expedition and foreign rivals were
threatening to reach the top first.

(e) In 1953 the Himalayan Committee of the Royal Geographical Society
met to choose a leader for the latest attempt to climb Mount Everest.
a)
decba
b)
ecdab
c)
ecadb
d)
edcab

16.(a) It is not clear whether Japan's pacifist constitution prevents
its Self-Defence Forces from striking back until its own citizens are
injured.

(b) Imagine that China decided to land soldiers on the disputed
islands that it calls the Diaoyus.

(c) Nor is it obvious that its main ally, America, would go to war to
rid the Senkakus of the platoon of Chinese troops.

(d) The coastguard may repel private vessels, but not troops arriving
from the air or from a submarine.

(e) Japan, which administers the uninhabited rocks and knows them as
the Senkakus, might, under its own laws, be unable to meet the
incursion with force.
a)
acebd
b)
bedac
c)
bdcae
d)
bacde



#RC

'Market' no longer means a place where you go to buy provisions. The
'market' is a de-territorialised space where faceless corporations do
business, including buying and selling 'futures'. 'Justice' has come
to mean 'human rights'. This theft of language, this technique of
usurping words and deploying them like weapons, to mask intent and to
mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has
been the most brilliant strategic victories of the tsars of the new
dispensation. It has allowed them to marginalise their detractors,
deprive them of a language in which to voice their critique and
dismiss them as being 'anti-progress', 'anti-development',
'anti-reform' and of course 'anti-national' – negativists of the worst
sort. Talk about saving a river or a forest and they say, 'Don't you
believe in Progress?' To people whose land is being submerged by dam
reservoirs and whose homes are being bulldozed they say, 'Do you have
an alternative development model?' To those who believe that a
government is duty-bound to provide people with basic education,
healthcare and social security, they say, 'You're against the Market.'
And who except a cretin could be against a Market?

Two decades of 'Progress' in India has created a vast middle class
punch-drunk on sudden wealth and respect – and a much vaster,
desperate underclass. Millions of people have been displaced from
their land by floods, droughts and desertification caused by
indiscriminate environmental engineering and massive infrastructural
projects, dams, mines and special economic zones. All of them
developed in the name of the poor, but really meant to service the
rising demands of the new aristocracy.

Already forests, mountains and water systems are being ravaged by
marauding multinational corporations, backed by a State that has lost
its moorings and is committing 'ecocide'. In eastern India, mining is
destroying whole ecosystems, turning fertile land into desert. In the
Himalayas, high dams are being planned, leading to disastrous
consequences. In the plains, embankments built along rivers, to
control floods, have led to rising river beds, causing more flooding,
water logging, salinisation of agricultural land and the destruction
of livelihoods. Most of India's holy rivers have been turned into
unholy drains that carry more sewage and industrial effluent than
water.

The regime of free market economic policies, administered by people
who are blissfully ignorant of the fate of civilisations that grew too
dependent on artificial irrigation, has led to a worrying shift in
cropping patterns. Sustainable food crops, suitable to local soil
conditions and micro-climates, have been replaced by water-guzzling,
hybrid and genetically modified 'cash' crops which are heavily
dependent on chemical fertilisers, pesticides, canal irrigation and
the indiscriminate mining of ground water. As abused farmland,
saturated with chemicals, gradually becomes exhausted and infertile,
agricultural input costs rise, ensnaring small farmers in a debt trap.
Over the last few years, 1,80,000 Indian farmers have committed
suicide. While state granaries are bursting with food that eventually
rots, starvation and malnutrition approaching the same levels as in
sub-Saharan Africa stalk the land.

It's as though an ancient society, decaying under the weight of
feudalism and caste, was churned in a great machine. The churning has
ripped through the mesh of old inequalities, recalibrating some of
them but reinforcing most. Now the old society has curdled and
separated into a thin layer of thick cream – and a lot of water. The
cream is India's 'market' of many million consumers (of cars, cell
phones, computers, Valentine's Day greeting cards), the envy of
international business. The water is of little consequence. It can be
sloshed around, stored in holding ponds, and eventually drained away.
Or so they think, the men in suits. They didn't bargain for the
violent civil war that has broken out in India's heartland:
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal.

17. The author implies in the first paragraph "Market's no longer
....... against a market" that
a)
India is diluting its responsibilities towards the needy in pursuit of
an illusion.
b)
an unabashed display of half-truths has taken the place of convincing arguments.
c)
anyone championing the voice of distressed farmers is being branded
'anti-national'.
d)
India is bending over backwards to favour industrialists.

18. The author alludes to which of the following as the adverse
environmental impact of 'development'?
a)
Freeing up India's national resources for corporate plunder.
b)
India's rivers carrying more sewage and industrial effluent than water.
c)
Wrecking the ecology of the entire subcontinent.
d)
Destroying deltas and estuaries.

19. The author of the passage implies that cash crops are
a)
profitable
b)
soil-degrading
c)
sustainable
d)
viable

20. In the last sentence of the passage "They didn't bargain ........
West Bengal", "They" signifies
a)
The cream of society in India.
b)
The vast underclass of India.
c)
The vast middleclass of India.
d)
The tsars of the new aristocracy in India.




#RC

The term 'glass ceiling' describes "the unseen, unreachable barrier
that keeps women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate
ladder, regardless of their achievements". Most individuals concerned
with this problem cite it as evidence of discrimination; to be
corrected by affirmative action laws. Yet even if what such advocates
of "equality" claimed about glass ceilings were true, they would not
be justified in using immoral means to achieve a purportedly positive
end.

The idea of "affirmative action" has shape-shifted over the past three
decades. At first, the goal was equality under the law. Slowly,
"affirmative action" melted to a desire for equality of opportunity.
Now the term means equality of results regardless of the objective
reasons for any disparities in the economic conditions of our nation's
citizens.

Some feminists state that the "under-representation" of women at the
most rarified heights of business is a result of conscious decisions
and overt anti-women prejudice on the part of top leadership. Other
critics see the dearth of female business leaders as an inexorable
result of subconscious prejudice: the fallout of years of male
domination in our society.

Occupying an organization's higher echelons means subordinating other
aspects of one's life to one's career. The desirability of such a goal
is not relevant in the current context where more men than women are
willing to commit themselves to the course of action demanded by such
a rigorous goal. Even if there were no prejudice against women in
business, the disparate numbers in the pools of available male and
female candidates actively striving for this end would lead to a
male/female ratio in line with that observed today.

Consider the health field. Nursing is almost exclusively the province
of women and is well-paid. Yet many nurses voluntarily accept only
part-time positions as they prefer more flexibility in work schedules
and free time to engage in personal development and enjoyable
activities. The resulting consequence of low average wage is one of
voluntary choice, not prejudice. Overall, women nurses work fewer
hours than men nurses; have less job experience and work fewer years.
In other sectors, women who fail to understand the importance of
office politics, going through proper channels etc put themselves at a
disadvantage.

Unfortunately, some feminists prefer to focus solely on the issue of
wages as measures of how much society values women. They have no
incentive to impute economic importance to a homemaking career. To do
so would undermine their case for widespread discrimination. But while
material goods are necessary and desirable, they are by no means the
sole standard we should use in judging someone's worth.

Despite barriers of prejudice, there is no need to invoke conscious
(or subconscious) male-led conspiracies designed to deny women
opportunities for achievement. Whatever the objective merits or
shortcomings of the different goals selected by men and women, the
reality of those differences provides a sufficient explanation for
most situations. Businesses which continue to hire only males at top
positions to maintain a "good old boys" environment will find
themselves at a competitive disadvantage with rivals who promote more
competent, "underpaid" females. Also all the (invalid) derivative
permutations of "affirmative action" and "equality" entail violations
of property rights. Even if an employer is overtly racist, there is no
ethical justification for governmental intervention in his business
decisions. If someone wants to serve only blacks or hire only young
women on the basis of their looks, that is his perogative. The
function of government is not to ensure virtue but to ensure that no
one's rights are violated.

No "right" exists to a job or a product or a service except for those
economic goods which one has earned and obtained in a mutually
satisfactory, voluntary interaction. Any other course involving the
coercive powers of the State threatens the freedom of the business
operators and of those who would seek redress of "unfairness" by
calling on the State to commit injustices of its own.

The proper avenue for victims of prejudice is to respect the rights
which protect them: to seek change by education, and argument
(including boycotts); by working harder than those who do discriminate
against them; and by utilizing only nonviolent means to their noble
ends. Better yet, they can create their own businesses where women
seeking executive positions are welcomed, not rejected. They need to
realize that the initiation of force is always wrong. The constructive
power of demonstrating merit will -- in the long run and despite
prejudice -- win out over the destructive actions of discrimination.
Left to itself, evil is powerless to achieve anything beyond its own
demise. It grows stronger only when those well-intentioned souls who
oppose it adopt those same immoral means practiced by their enemy

21. DIRECTIONS for question 87: Select one or more answer choices
according to the directions given in the question.


Which of the following can be understood from the passage?



Select all that apply:



a)
The primary concern of the author in the passage is to affirm that
many of the barriers in the career path of women are related to the
women themselves and to argue against affirmative action because he
feels that women are incapable of being committed towards their work.
b)
The main purpose of the author is to explain that feminists grossly
exaggerate the issue of 'glass ceiling' as women are increasingly
taking up superior positions in the corporate world thereby turning
down all the male bastions.
c)
The author takes the example of the nursing profession (para 5) to
explain that social values and mores and the increased global focus on
women's issues have changed the woman's role impacting the career
progression of women.
d)
The example of the nursing profession is used by the author to state
that women outperform in 'taking care' while men outperform in 'taking
charge' and work policies keep more men in positions of corporate
power.
e)
None of the above

22. The style of the passage is _______________ and the tone of the
author is _____________.
a)
narrative . . . commiserating
b)
descriptive . . . polemical
c)
argumentative . . . emphatic
d)
analytical . . . speculative

23. The author of the passage would be least likely to agree with
which of the following?

(i) Glass ceilings are more precarious than 'glass cliffs' and the
number of women who are desirous of committing themselves to their
careers wholeheartedly, subordinating all other aspects of life, is
very meagre.

(ii) If among the students who get admission to top engineering,
medical and business schools, 80% are males, then there should be 50%
reservation for female students.

(iii) If, in a school in Kentucky, black kids are not allowed, strict
action should be taken against the school.

(iv) Affirmative action has transformed from a recognition of equality
under the law to a desire for equality of opportunity and has now come
to mean equality of results.
a)
(i) and (ii)
b)
(ii) and (iv)
c)
(i) and (v)
d)
Only (iii)

24. DIRECTIONS for question 90: Select one or more answer choices
according to the directions given in the question.


What remedial measures can be taken to overcome the 'glass ceiling'?



Select all that apply:

a)
Employers should make organization culture more friendly and
supportive for women. All other things being equal, no corporate
should deny a job to a woman because of her gender. They can go the
extra mile in ensuring that she is safe and secure at her workplace
and that there is no discrimination of any kind by her male
colleagues, bosses and subordinates.
b)
Women should understand their own strengths and weaknesses and their
motivations and understand one's situation that provides the framework
within which their career is to be developed.
c)
Women should watch men and women role models and contemplate as to
what is effective and what is not for understanding how to behave in
new situations.
d)
Organizations should monitor the flow of promotions to the highest
echelons, especially the flow of those getting opportunities to make
sure that deserving women are included.
e)
None of the above

‪#‎RC‬

Many political analysts had wrongly hoped that the elections of 2009
would be a precursor to economic progress. In its time in office, in
order to mitigate the devastation caused by its economic policies, the
former Congress regime passed three progressive (critics call them
populist and controversial) parliamentary acts. The Forest Rights Act
(which gave forest-dwellers legal right to land and the traditional
use of forest produce), the Right to Information Act and the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The NREGA guarantees every
rural family a hundred days of work (hard, manual labour) a year at
minimum wages. It amounts to an average of Rs 8,000 (about $170) per
family per year. Enough for a good meal in a restaurant, including
wine and dessert. Imagine how hellish times must be for even that tiny
amount of money to come as a relief to millions of people who are
reeling under the impact of the precipitous loss of their lands and
their livelihoods. (Talk about crumbs from the high table. But then,
which one of us has the heart, or the right, to argue that no crumbs
are better than crumbs? Or, indeed, that no elections are better than
meaningless elections?) Implementing the NREGA, seeing that the crumbs
actually reach the people they're meant for, has occupied all the
energy of some of India's committed social activists. They have had to
battle cartels of corrupt government officers, power-brokers and
middlemen. They have faced threats and a fair amount of violence. One
rural activist in Jharkhand immolated himself in anger and frustration
at the injustice of it all.

Ironically, the NREGA only made it through Parliament because of
pressure brought to bear on the UPA government by the Left Front and
by Sonia Gandhi. It was passed despite tremendous resistance from the
mandarins of the free market within the Congress party. The corporate
media was unanimously hostile to the Act. Come election-time and the
NREGA became one of the main planks of the Congress party's election
campaign. There's little doubt that the goodwill it generated amongst
the poor translated into votes for the Congress. But now that the
elections are over, victory is being attributed to the very policies
that the NREGA was passed to mitigate! The Captains of Industry have
lost no time in claiming the 'People's Mandate' as their own. 'It's
fast forward for markets', the business papers crowed the morning
after, 'Vote [was] for reforms, says India Inc'.

There is an even greater irony: the Left Front, acting with the
duplicity that has become second nature to all parliamentary political
parties, took a sharp turn to the right. Even while it criticised the
government's economic policies at the Centre, it tried to enforce
similar ones on its home turf in West Bengal. It announced that it was
going to build a chemical hub in Nandigram, a manufacturing unit for
the Tata Nano in Singur, and a Jindal Steel plant outside the forests
of Lalgarh, home to the Santhal people. It began to acquire land, most
of it fertile farmland, virtually at gunpoint. The militant uprisings
that followed were put down with bullets and lathicharges. Lumpen
'party' militias ran amok among the protesters, raping women and
killing people. But eventually the combination of genuine mass
mobilisation and militancy worked. The people prevailed. They won all
three battles, and forced the government to back off. The Tatas had to
move the Nano project to Gujarat which offered a 'good investment
climate'. The Left Front was decimated in the elections in West
Bengal, something that had not happened in thirty years.

The irony doesn't end there. In a fiendishly clever sleight of hand,
the defeat of the Left is being attributed to its obstructionism and
anti-development policies! 'Corporate captains feel easy without
Left', the papers said. The stockmarket surged, looking forward to 'a
summer of joy'. CEOs on TV channels celebrated the new government's
'liberation' from the Left. Hectoring news anchors have announced that
the UPA no longer has any excuse to prevaricate on implementing
reforms, unless of course it has 'closet socialists' hiding in its
midst. This is the wonderful thing about democracy. It can mean
anything you want it to mean.

25. The author of the passage mentions "a good meal in a five-star
hotel" in para 1
a)
to imply that the $170 per family per year that NREGA brings is a
handsome amount indeed.
b)
to argue that everyone has the right to live the good life.
c)
to accuse the NREGA of being populist and controversial.
d)
to satirize the pittance that the NREGA offers.

26. The second paragraph "Ironically ............... India Inc"
supports all of the following statements EXCEPT?
a)
The UPA government on its own was least inclined to pass the NREGA.
b)
Corporate globalization has vaulted over the stated ideologies of
political parties.
c)
India Inc declared that the markets have won a popular mandate from the people.
d)
The NREGA boosted the electoral fortunes of the UPA government.

27. What does the author describe as "an even greater irony" in the
third paragraph?
a)
The Left's temporary, shotgun solutions to its economic pitfalls
having magnified West Bengal's economic woes.
b)
The absence of a genuinely left-wing party in mainstream politics
creating the space for some truly progressive politics.
c)
The Left implementing pro-industry economic policies in West Bengal.
d)
Gujarat being celebrated by business houses for its faith in the free market.

28. What does the author of the passage describe as a "fiendishly
clever sleight of hand"?
a)
The mandarins of the free market being able to fool all the people all the time.
b)
Soaring stocks vindicating the defeat of the Left in Bengal.
c)
CEOs practically living in TV studios to hasten the demise of
socialism in India.
d)
The Left's dismissal at the hustings being attributed to an
anti-development agenda.






TITA

29. (A) In the 1930s it was an article of faith that aerial bombing
would transform the nature of war.

(B) The bombing campaign in Europe had become a Western Front of the
air: a costly, grinding war of attrition with no clear-cut end and a
yawning gap between ambition and outcome.

(C) Yet when war broke out in 1939 neither was the air force capable
of such devastation nor did the general staffs of the main
protagonists have plans to use what passed for heavy bombers at the
time to carry out such attacks, seeing them as adjuncts to ground
warfare rather than forces intended for independent operation.

(D) There are many paradoxes associated with the European bombing
campaign of the second world war.

(E) Not only would the "bomber always get through", as Stanley
Baldwin, Britain's prime minister, lamented in 1932, but when it did,
the assumption was that it would visit so much destruction on city
populations that any country on the receiving end would quickly be
forced to surrender.

(F) Nearly four years later in 1943, even when allied bombers with the
range and payload to do serious damage had become available in
numbers, only the most blinkered disciples still believed claims that
they could deliver a "knockout blow".



30.(a) But surely true greatness means that the creator of a painting
has brought a certain je ne sais quoi to the work as well.

(b) In 1945, for example, a Dutchman named Han van Meegeren faced
execution for selling a national art treasure, in the form of a
painting by Vermeer, to Hermann Göring, Hitler's deputy.

(c) Instead he turned out a completely new painting, "Jesus Among the
Doctors", in the style of the master, before the eyes of his
incredulous inquisitors.

(d) What makes an artist great? Brilliant composition, no doubt.
Superb draughtsmanship, certainly. Originality of subject or of
concept, sometimes.

(e) There is, however, a type of person who seems to sait perfectly
well what that quoi is, and can turn it out on demand.

(f) His defence was that it was a forgery he had painted himself and
when asked to prove it by copying a Vermeer he scorned the offer.
a)
daebfc
b)
bdaefc
c)
deabfc
d)
bfadec


#RC

An error-statistical philosophy of science involves using
error-statistical methods, to deal with problems of philosophy of
science: to model scientific inference, to scrutinize principles of
inference, and to address philosophical problems (the problem of
induction, under determination, theory testing, etc.).

After I'd bungled teaching it enough times to have an idea of what I
was doing, one of the first things students in my introductory physics
and statistics classes learned was probability and error analysis:
estimating the uncertainty in measurements, propagating errors from
measured quantities into calculated ones, and some significance tests,
tests for whether or not two numbers agree, within their associated
margins of error. I did this for purely pragmatic reasons: it seemed
like one of the most useful things we were supposed to teach, and also
one of the few areas where what I did had any discernible effect on
what they learnt. Now that I've read Deborah G. Mayo's book, I'll be
able to offer another excuse to my students the next time I teach
error analysis, namely, that it's how science really works.

I exaggerate her conclusion slightly, but only slightly. Mayo is a
dues-paying philosopher of science, and like most of the breed these
days is largely concerned with questions of method and justification,
of "ampliative inference" (C. S. Peirce) or "non-demonstrative
inference" (Bertrand Russell). Put concretely: why, since neither can
be deduced rigorously from unquestionable premises, should we put more
trust in David Grinspoon's ideas about Venus than in those of Immanuel
Velikovsky? A nice answer would be something like, "because good
scientific theories are arrived at by employing thus-and-such a
method, which infallibly leads to the truth, for the following
self-evident reasons." A nice answer, but not one which is seriously
entertained by anyone these days, apart from some professors of
sociology and literature moonlighting in the construction of straw
men. In the real world, science is alas fallible, subject to constant
correction, and very messy. Still, mess and all, we somehow or other
come up with reliable, codified knowledge about the world, and it
would be nice to know how the trick is turned: not only would it
satisfy curiosity ("the most agreeable of all vices" --- Nietzsche),
and help silence such people as do, in fact, prefer Velikovsky to
Grinspoon, but it might lead us to better ways of turning the trick.
Asking scientists themselves is nearly useless: you'll almost
certainly just get a recital of whichever school of methodology we
happened to blunder into in college, or impatience at asking silly
questions and keeping us from the lab. If this vice is to be indulged
in, someone other than scientists will have to do it: namely, the
methodologists.

That they have been less than outstandingly successful is not exactly
secret. Peter Medawar once said, "Most scientists receive no tuition
in scientific method, but those who have been instructed perform no
better as scientists than those who have not." Medawar's friend Karl
Popper achieved eminence by tenacious insistence on the importance of
this point. Instead of conferring patents of epistemic nobility,
lawdoms and theoryhoods, on certain hypotheses, Popper hauled them all
before an Anglo-Austrian Tribunal of Revolutionary Empirical Justice
where the accused was blindfolded, and the magistrates then formed a
firing squad, shooting at it with every piece of possibly-refuting
observational evidence or conjectures they could find.

The problem for Popper, I think, is that getting two successes in ten
thousand trials is possible, and the Tribunal is only authorized to
eliminate conjectures in actual contradiction to the facts, as "no
mammals lay eggs" is contradicted by the platypus. Popper realized
this and said that we just have to make "risky decisions" about when
to reject statistical hypotheses. But the challenges facing the
Tribunal in the execution of its duty mounted: another "risky
decision" was required, about what ammunition the firing squad could
legitimately use, i.e., about what evidence would be accepted when we
saw whether or not a hypothesis stands up.

Mayo thinks she knows what the problem is: Popper is entirely too soft
on conjectures.

Although Popper's work is full of exhortations to put hypotheses
through the wringer, to make them "suffer in our stead in the struggle
for the survival of the fittest," the tests Popper sets out are
white-glove affairs of logical analysis. If anomalies are approached
with white gloves, it is little wonder that they seem to tell us only
that there is an error somewhere and that they are silent about its
source.

Fortunately, scientists should not only devote much effort to making
errors talk, they need to even develop a theory of inquisition, in the
form of mathematical statistics, which Mayo feels, should justify a
very large class of scientific inferences, those concerned with
"experimental knowledge," and to suggest that the rest of our business
can be justified on similar grounds. Statistics should become a kind
of applied methodology, as well as the "continuation of experiment by
other means." Mayo's key notion is that of a severe test of a
hypothesis, one with "an overwhelmingly good chance of revealing the
presence of a specific error, if it exists --- but not otherwise". If
a severe test does not turn up the error it looks for, it's good
grounds for thinking that the error is absent.



31. As per Mayo's perspective, which of the following statements best
describes her conclusion?
a)
Error analysis is a study of the inferences of natural phenomena.
b)
A scientific inference that is thoroughly tested by other scientists
cannot be questioned.
c)
The method and justification employed to explain scientific inferences
need to be reevaluated.
d)
Good scientific theories are arrived at after considering all related
implications.


32. The author's use of David Grinspoon and Velikovsky (third para)
can be best described as
a)
premeditated
b)
illustrative
c)
contrived
d)
superfluous

33. All of the following, if true, would resonate with the viewpoint
of Mayo as discussed in the passage, except ............ ?
a)
Mathematical statistics is important as, without it, initial
hypotheses or conjectures can never be made but it should not allow
the possibility of rejecting a theory or hypothesis or conjecture.
b)
Instead of a method for infallibly or even reliably finding truths, we
need to have a host of methods for reliably finding errors.
c)
The severity of the test of a basis or hypothesis must ensure that
errors, if any, in the basis or hypothesis are thrown up; otherwise
the hypothesis is rendered acceptable.
d)
We have to become shrewd inquisitors of errors, interact with them,
simulate them (with models and computers), and amplify them.

34. Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the passage?
a)
Inferences drawn from the use of method and justification cannot be
challenged on the basis of error analysis.
b)
In a non-ideal world, where the theories of academicians are really
put to the test, science is subject to being infallible.
c)
Error analysis is a sufficient condition to ensure the validity of
inferences and conclusions resulting from scientific experiments.
d)
Error analysis can be used to revisit inferences based on time-tested
scientific experiments and methodology.