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प्रश्न
Read the given passage carefully and choose the most appropriate option to the questions given below.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of tradeoffs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal dispute settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT dispute settlement less in political terms add more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rulebased system and by the symbolic value of a trade organization, both of which inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rulebased system with those gains. This reasoning – replicated in many countries – was contained in U. S. Ambassador Kantor’s defense of the WTO, and it announced to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rulebased environment.A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an organization creating a further rule will, in turn, be influenced by legal process. Robert Hudee has written of the‘momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof a whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfatherrights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rulebased system of cooperation since without these value rules would be meaningless in the first place, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.The moment of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’sinternal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in Cassis de Dijon case in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘the accomplishment of the most elementary goals set forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with slated rules. In both cases, legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation.In the large part, the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a nearrevolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, that is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.
The most likely reason for the acceptance of the WTO package by nations was that:
विकल्प
They recognized the need for a rulebased environment to protect the benefits of increased trade.
Its rule-based system leads to export gains.
It has the means to prevent the US from taking unilateral measures.
It settles disputes more legally and more effectively.
उत्तर
They recognized the need for a rulebased environment to protect the benefits of increased trade.
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संबंधित प्रश्न
If religion and community are associated with global violence in the trends of many people, then so are global poverty and inequality. There has, in fact, been an increasing tendency in recent years to justify policies of poverty removal on the ground that this is the surest way to prevent political strife and turmoil. Basing public policy - international as well as domestic- on such an understanding has some evident attractions. Given the public anxiety about wars and disorders in the rich countries in the world, the indirect justification of poverty removal -not for its own sake but for the sake of peace and quiet in the world - provides an argument that appeals to self-interest for helping the needy. It presents an argument for allocating more resources on poverty removal because of its presumed political, rather than moral, relevance.
While the temptation to go in that direction is easy to understand, it is a perilous route to take even for a worthy cause. Part of the difficulty lies in the possibility that if wrong, economic reductionism would not only impair our understanding of the world but would also tend to undermine the declared rationale of the public commitment to remove poverty. This is a particularly serious concern, since poverty and massive inequality are terrible enough in themselves, and deserve priority even if there were no connection whatsoever with violence. Just as virtue is its own reward, poverty is at least its own penalty. This is not to deny that poverty and inequality can - and do - have far-reaching consequences with conflict and strife, but these connections have to be examined and investigated with appropriate care and empirical scrutiny, rather than being casually invoked with unreasoned rapidity in support of a `good cause."
Destitution can, of course, produce provocation for defying established laws and rules. But it need not give people the initiative, courage, and actual ability to do anything very violent. Destitution can be accompanied not only by economic debility but also by political helplessness. A starving wretch can be too frail and too dejected to fight and battle, and even te protest and holler. It is thus not surprising that often enough intense and widespread suffering and misery have been accompanied by unusual peace and silence.
Indeed, many famines have occurred without there being much political rebellion or civil strife or intergroup warfare. For example, the famine years in the 1840s in Ireland were among the most peaceful, and there was little attempt by the hungry masses to intervene even as ship after ship sailed down the river Shannon with rich food. Looking elsewhere, my own childhood memories in Calcutta during the Bengal famine of 1943 include the sight of starving people dying in front of sweetshops with various layers of luscious food displayed behind the glass windows, without a single glass being broken, or law or order being disrupted.
The author asserts that basing anti-poverty measures on the avowed connections between poverty and violence has certain apparent benefits because:
Direction: The passage given below is followed by a set of question. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Ahmedabad’s Sunday market that sells junk is this 35-year-old artist’s favourite hunting ground. That’s where he picks saw-blades, printer toners, monitors, busted VCDs and hard disks, video players and other castaway gems. Back home, he painstakingly dismantles his treasure of scrap and segregates it into big pieces (the video player's outer case), mid-sized (the insides of a hard disk) and small pieces (innards of a mobile). This is art you can get up, close and personal with. The works grab the viewer’s attention at several levels. Aesthetically, the creations themselves - such as Frivolity which uses feathers and terracotta diyas painted in dark fossil green that give it a strange life - appeal in a live-and-kicking sort of way. Look a little closer and hey, you spot a zipper. Then it’s a journey all your own. Your eyes identify hairpins, spray spouts that hairdressers use, paper clips, thread, computer ribbons and the insides of everything from watches to the sliding metal bits that support drawers. You can almost hear the works whirr. So Hashissh, constructed from paper clips, backpack clips, a shining CD and twirled thread, may invite you to study its water-blue, pinks and green or Nelumbeshwar may beckon, bathed in acrylic pink and grey-black. But once you’re standing in front of a piece, you spot the zips and the hairpins. Then you simply visually dismantle Har’s work and rebuild it all over again. Zoom in, zoom out. It’s great fun. Visualising the colour of his work demands a lot of attention, says Har. “During creation, the material is all differently coloured. So there’s a red switch next to a white panel next to a black clip. It can distract. I don’t sketch, so I have to keep a sharp focus on the final look I am working towards.” As his work evolved, Har discovered laser-cutting on a visit to a factory where he had gone to sand-blast one of his pieces. Hooked by the zingy shapes laser-cutting offered, Har promptly used it to speed up a scooter and lend an unbearable lightness of being to a flighty autorickshaw, his latest works. The NID-trained animation designer’s scrap quest was first inspired by a spider in his bathroom in Chennai when he was a teenager. He used a table-tennis ball (for the head), a bigger plastic ball (for the body) and twisted clothes hangers to form the legs. His next idea was to create a crab, and his mother obligingly brought one home from the market so that he could study and copy it. Winning the first Art Positive fellowship offered by Bajaj Capital Arthouse last year gave Har the confidence to believe that he could make it as an artist or ‘aesthete’ as he likes to call himself.
What is the Central idea of the given passage?
Paragraph: On the surface, the conquest of the Aztec empire by Herman Cortes is one of the most amazing military accomplishments in history. With a small fighting force numbering in the hundreds, Cortes led the Spanish explorers into victory against an Aztec population that many believe topped 21 million. In light of such a seemingly impossible victory, the obvious question is: how did a small group of foreign fighters manage to topple one of the world's strongest, wealthiest, and most successful military empires?
Several factors led to Cortes' success. First, the Spanish exploited animosity toward the Aztecs among rival groups and convinced thousands of locals to fight. In one account of a battle, it is recorded that at least 200,000 natives fought with Cortes. Next, the Spanish possessed superior military equipment in the form of European cannons, guns, and crossbows, leading to effective and efficient disposal of Aztec defenses. For example, Spanish cannons quickly defeated large Aztec walls that had protected the empire against big and less technically advanced armies.
Despite the Spanish advantages, the Aztecs probably could have succeeded in defending their capital city of Tenochtitlan had they leveraged their incredible population base to increase their army's size and ensured that no rogue cities would ally with Cortes. In order to accomplish this later goal, Aztec leader Motecuhzoma needed to send envoys to neighboring cities telling their inhabitants about the horrors of Spanish conquest and the inevitability of Spanish betrayal.
In addition, the Aztecs should have exploited the fact that the battle was taking place on their territory. No reason existed for the Aztecs to consent to a conventional battle, which heavily favored the Spanish. Motecuhzoma's forces should have thought outside the box and allowed Cortes into the city, only to subsequently use hundreds of thousands of fighters to prevent escape and proceed in surprise "door-to-door" combat. With this type of battle, the Aztecs would have largely thwarted Spanish technological supremacy. However, in the end, the superior weaponry of the Spanish, the pent-up resentment of Aztec rivals, the failure of Aztec diplomacy, and the lack of an unconventional Aztec war plan led to one of the most surprising military outcomes in the past one thousand years.
Which of the following best characterizes the main point the author is trying to convey in the passage?
Passage in this section is followed by a group of question which is to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage. For some questions, more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question. However, you are to choose the best answer, that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question and blacken the corresponding space.
One of the most prolific authors of all time, Isaac Asimov was influential both in science fiction and in the popularization of science during the twentieth century, but he is also justly famous for the scope of his interests. Although the common claim that Asimov is the only author to have written a book in every category of the Dewey decimal system is untrue, its spirit provides an accurate picture of the man: a dedicated humanist who lauded the far-reaching power of reason. His most famous work, the Foundation trilogy, can be read as an illustration of Asimov’s belief in reason and science, but even while he expressed that belief, science itself was calling it into question.
Foundation describes a time in which a vast Empire spanning the galaxy is on the verge of collapse. Its inevitable doom is a consequence not of its size, but of the shortsightedness of its leaders. In this environment, a scientist named Hari Seldon devises an all encompassing plan to help human civilization recover from the trauma of the Empire’s coming collapse. Using mathematics, Seldon is able to predict the future course of history for thousands of years, and he takes steps that are geared toward guiding that future in a beneficial direction. The trope of the benevolent and paternalistic scientist shaping existence from behind the scenes, present in much of Asimov’s fiction, is never more explicit than in the Foundation series, which describes with an epic sweep the course and progress of the Seldon Plan.
As naive and, perhaps, self-serving as the conceit of Foundation may seem to contemporary readers, it retains to some degree its ability of comfort by offering an antidote to the complex and unpredictable nature of experience. Science in Asimov’s time was, in popular conceptions, engaged in just this pursuit: discerning immutable laws that operate beneath a surface appearance of contingency, inexplicability, and change. But even while Asimov wrote, science itself was changing. In Physics, the study of matter at the subatomic level showed that indeterminacy was not a transitory difficulty to be overcome, but an essential physical principle. In Biology, the sense of evolution as steady progress toward better-adapted forms was being disturbed by proof of a past large-scale evolution taking place in brief explosions, of frantic change. At the time of Asimov’s death, even Mathematics was gaining popular notice for its interest in chaos and inexplicability. Usually summarized in terms of the so-called ‘butterfly effect’, chaos theory showed that perfect prediction could take place only on the basis of perfect information, which was by nature impossible to obtain. Science had dispensed with the very assumptions that motivated Asimov’s idealization of it in the Seldon Plan. Indeed, it was possible to see chaos at work in Foundation itself: as sequels multiplied and began to be tied into narrative threads from Asimov’s other novels, the urge to weave one grand narrative spawned myriad internal inconsistencies that were never resolved.
Which one of the following statements best illustrates the “butterfly effect” as it is described in the passage’s third paragraph?
Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
There is a fairly universal sentiment that the use of nuclear weapons is clearly contrary to morality and that its production probably so, does not go far enough. These activities are not only opposed to morality but also to law if the legal objection can be added to the moral, the argument against the use and the manufacture of these weapons will considerably be reinforced. Now the time is ripe to evaluate the responsibility of scientists who knowingly use their expertise for the construction of such weapons, which has deleterious effect on mankind.
To this must be added the fact that more than 50 percent of the skilled scientific manpower in the world is now engaged in the armaments industry. How appropriate it is that all this valuable skill should be devoted to the manufacture of weapons of death in a world of poverty is a question that must touch the scientific conscience.
A meeting of biologists on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological consequences of nuclear war added frightening dimension to those forecasts. Its report suggested that the long biological effects resulting from climatic changes may at least be as serious as the immediate ones. Sub-freezing temperatures, low light levels, and high doses of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation extending for many months after a large-scale nuclear war could destroy the biological support system of civilization, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Productivity in natural and agricultural ecosystems could be severely restricted for a year or more. Post war survivors would face starvation as well as freezing conditions in the dark and be exposed to near lethal doses of radiation. If, as now seems possible, the Southern Hemisphere were affected also, global disruption of the biosphere could ensue. In any event, there would be severe consequences, even in the areas not affected directly, because of the interdependence of the world economy. In either case the extinction of a large fraction of the earth’s animals, plants and microorganism seems possible.
The population size of Homo sapiens conceivably could be reduced to prehistoric levels or below, and extinction of the human species itself cannot be excluded.
The author’s most important objective of writing the above passage seems to
Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
There is a fairly universal sentiment that the use of nuclear weapons is clearly contrary to morality and that its production probably so, does not go far enough. These activities are not only opposed to morality but also to the law if the legal objection can be added to the moral, the argument against the use and the manufacture of these weapons will considerably be reinforced. Now the time is ripe to evaluate the responsibility of scientists who knowingly use their expertise for the construction of such weapons, which has deleterious effect on mankind.
To this must be added the fact that more than 50 percent of the skilled scientific manpower in the world is now engaged in the armaments industry. How appropriate it is that all this valuable skill should be devoted to the manufacture of weapons of death in a world of poverty is a question that must touch the scientific conscience.
A meeting of biologists on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological consequences of nuclear war added frightening dimension to those forecasts. Its report suggested that the long biological effects resulting from climatic changes may at least be as serious as the immediate ones. Sub-freezing temperatures, low light levels, and high doses of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation extending for many months after a large-scale nuclear war could destroy the biological support system of civilization, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Productivity in natural and agricultural ecosystems could be severely restricted for a year or more. Post war survivors would face starvation as well as freezing conditions in the dark and be exposed to near lethal doses of radiation. If, as now seems possible, the Southern Hemisphere were affected also, global disruption of the biosphere could ensue. In any event, there would be severe consequences, even in the areas not affected directly, because of the interdependence of the world economy. In either case the extinction of a large fraction of the earth’s animals, plants and microorganisms seem possible.
The population size of Homo sapiens conceivably could be reduced to prehistoric levels or below, and extinction of the human species itself cannot be excluded.
It appears from the passage that the use of nuclear weapons is considered against morality by
Read the given passage carefully and attempt the questions that follow.
It is an old saying that knowledge is power. Education is an instrument that imparts knowledge and therefore, indirectly controls power. Therefore, ever since the dawn of our civilisation, persons in power have always tried to supervise or control education. It has been the handmaid of the ruling class. During the Christian era, the ecclesiastics controlled the institution of education and diffused among the people the gospel of the Bible and religious teachings. These gospels and teachings were no other than a philosophy for the maintenance of the existing society. It taught the poor man to be meek and to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow, while the priests and the landlords lived in luxury and fought duels for the slightest offence. During the Renaissance, education passed more from the clutches of the priest into the hands of the prince. In other words, it became more secular. Under the control of the monarch, education began to devise and preach the infallibility of its masters, the monarch or king. It also invented and supported fantastic theories like “The Divine right Theory” and that the king can do no wrong, etc. With the advent of the industrial revolution, education took a different turn and had to please the new masters. It now no longer remained the privilege of the baron class, but was thrown open to the new rich merchant class of the society. The philosophy which was in vogue during this period was that of “Laissez Faire” restricting the function of the state to a mere keeping of laws and order while on the other hand, in practice the law of the jungle prevailed in the form of free competition and the survival of the fittest.
What does the policy of “Laissez Faire” stand for?
Read the following passage carefully and then answer the question that follows.
Surajendu Kumar’s study on the effect of the modernization of a Government Printing Press on Press maintenance work and workers is a solid contribution to a debate that encompasses two lively issues in the history and sociology of technology: technological determinism and social constructivism.
Kumar makes the point that the characteristics of a technology have a decisive influence on job skills and work organization. Put more strongly, technology can be a primary determinant of social and managerial organization. Kumar believes this possibility has been obscured by the recent sociological fashion, exemplified by Cravman’s analysis, that emphasizes the way machinery reflects social choices. For Cravman, the shape of a technological system is subordinate to the manager’s desire to wrest control of the labor process from the workers. Technological change is construed as the outcome of negotiations among interested parties who seek to incorporate their own interests into the design and configuration of the machinery. This position represents the new mainstream called social constructivism. The constructivists gain acceptance by misrepresenting technological determinism: technological determinists are supposed to believe, for example, that machinery imposes appropriate forms of order on society. The alternative to constructivism, in other words, is to view technology as existing outside society, capable of directly influencing skills and work organization. Kumar refutes the extremes of the constructivists by both theoretical and empirical arguments. Theoretically, he defines “technology” in terms of relationship between social and technical variables. Attempts to reduce the meaning of technology to cold, hard metal are bound to fail, for machinery is just scrap unless it is organized functionally and supported by appropriate systems of operation and maintenance. At the empirical level, Kumar shows how a change at the Printing Press from maintenance-intensive electromechanical devices to semi-electronic devices altered work tasks, skills, training opportunities, administration, and organization of workers. Some changes Kumar attributes to the particular way management and labor unions negotiated the introduction of the technology, whereas others are seen as arising from the capabilities and nature of the technology itself. Thus, Kumar helps answer the question: “When is social choice decisive and when are concrete characteristics of technology more important ?”
The author of the passage uses the expression “are supposed to” in third para (highlighled) primarily in order to -
Choose the word that is most opposite in the meaning of the given word.
Concession
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Under very early common law, all felonies were punishable by death. The perpetrators of the felony were hanged whether or not a homicide had been committed during the felony. Later, however, some felonies were declared to be non-capital offences. The common law courts, in need of a deterrent to the use of deadly force in the course of these non-capital felonies, developed the "felony-murder" rule. The first formal statement of the rule stated: '1\ny killing by one in the commission of a felony is guilty of murder." The killing was a murder whether intentional or unintentional, accidental or mistaken. The usual requirement of malice was eliminated and the only criminal intent necessary was the intent to commit the particular underlying felony. all participants in the felony were guilty of murder actual killer and non-killer confederates. Proponents of the rule argued that it was justified because the felony demon treated a lack of concern for human life by the commission of a violent and dangerous felony and that the crin1e was murder either because of a conclusive presumption of malice or simply by force of statutory definition. Opponents of the rule describe it as a highly artificial concept and "an enigma wrapped in a riddle." They are quick to point out that the rule has been abandoned in England where it originated, abolished in India, severely restricted in Canada and a number of other commonwealth countries are unknown in continental Europe and abandoned in Michigan. In reality, the real strength of the opponents' criticism stems from the bizarre and of times unfair results achieved when the felony-murder rule is applied mechanically. Defendants have been convicted under the rule where the killing was purely accidental, or the killing took place after the Felony during the later flight from the scene, or a third party killed another (police officer killed a citizen or vice versa, or a victim died of a heart attack 15-20 minutes after the robbery was over, or the person killed was an accomplice in the felony). Attacks on the rule have come from all directions with basically the same demand - re-evaluate and abandon the archaic legal fiction; restrict and F it vicarious criminal liability; prosecute killers for murder, not non-killers; increase punishment for the underlying felony as a real deterrent and initiate legislative modifications. With the unstable history of the felony - murder rule, including its abandonment by many jurisdictions in this country, the felony-murder rule is dying a slow but certain death.
The author believes that the felony-murder the rule is
