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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.
In the statement ‘... it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rulebased environment’, it refers to:
विकल्प
The higher priority on export gains placed by many countries atthe Uruguay Round.
The export gains many countries came to associate with a rulebased system.
Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO.
The provision of a rule-based system by the WTO.
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उत्तर
The export gains many countries came to associate with a rulebased system.
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संबंधित प्रश्न
Direction: The passage given below is followed by a set of question. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
With an aim to check flow of black money and evasion of taxes through stock market, market regulator SEBI has decided to impose hefty penalty on brokers facilitating such transactions from tomorrow. The regulator recently came across a loophole in its existing regulations, which was being abused by stock brokers for facilitating tax evasion and flow of black money through fictitious trades in lieu of hefty commissions. To remove this anomaly, SEBI has asked stock exchanges to penalise the brokers transferring trades from one trading account to another after terming them as ‘punching’ errors. The penalty could be as high as 2% of the value of shares traded in the ‘wrong’ account, as per new rules coming into effect from August 1. In a widely-prevalent, but secretly operated practice, the people looking to evade taxes approach certain brokers to show losses in their stock trading accounts, so that their earnings from other sources are not taxed. These brokers are also approached by people looking to show their black money as earnings made through stock market. In exchange for a commission, generally 5-10% of the total amount, these brokers show desired profits or losses in the accounts of their clients after transferring trades from other accounts, created for such purposes only. The brokers generally keep conducting both ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ trades in these fictitious accounts so that they can be used accordingly when approached by such clients. In the market parlance, these deals are known as profit or loss shopping. While profit is purchased to show black money as earnings from the market, the losses are purchased to avoid tax on earnings from other sources. As the transfer of trades is not allowed from one account to the other in general cases, the brokers show the trades conducted in their own fictitious accounts as ‘punching’ errors. The regulations allow transfer of trades in the cases of genuine errors, as at times ‘punching’ or placing of orders can be made for a wrong client. To check any abuse of this rule, SEBI has asked the bourses to put in place a robust mechanism to identify whether the errors are genuine or not. At the same time, the bourses have been asked to levy penalty on the brokers transferring their non-institutional trades from one account to the other. The penalty would be 1% of the traded value in wrong account if such trades are up to 5% of the broker’s total non-institutional turnover in a month. The penalty would be 2% of trade value in wrong account if such transactions exceed 5% of total monthly turnover in a month.
Which of the following sentences is true according to the passage?
Read the passage and answer the question based on it.
Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960 and 1970s. Some observers attribute the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow, since 1960, the number of master’s degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid-1980’s as the MBA has become known as ‘the passport to the good life’.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness.
Amidst the criticisms, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught, one is either born with it or must acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real-world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop floor issues, production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and ‘bottom line’ targets, while neglecting longer-term development criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBA’s are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyze these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBA’s each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only graduate school of management in the entire country until the mid-1970s and it still boasts the only two-year master's programme. The absence of business schools in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when hundreds of students were dispatched to universities in US, Germany, England, and France to learn the secrets of Western technology and modernization. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japan corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company training programs have sought the socialization of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, ‘is management should be born out of the experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions.’ A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980’s a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multi-nationalization of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely on uponinternally trained managers. This has led to rapid growth of local business programmes and greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis but also developed worldwide contacts through their classmates and became Americanized, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not ‘do without’ business schools, as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates, even MBA’s, into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan’s system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, life-long employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made the Japanese industry highly productive and given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills, both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Center and other similar organizations.
Which of the following is absolutely true, about the Japenese education system, according to the passage?
Read the passage and answer the question based on it.
As the climate in the Middle East changed, beginning around 7000 B.C. conditions emerged that were conducive to a more complex and advanced form of civilization in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. The process began when the swampy valleys of the Nile in Egypt and of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia became drier, producing riverine lands that were both habitable and fertile, attracting settlers armed with the newly developed techniques of agriculture. This migration was further encouraged by the gradual transformation of the once-hospitable grasslands of these regions into deserts. The human population became increasingly concentrated into pockets of settlement scattered along the banks of the great rivers.
These rivers profoundly shaped the way of life along their banks. In Mesopotamia, the management of water in conditions of unpredictable drought, flood and storm became the central economic and social challenge. Villagers began early to build simple earthworks, dikes, canals, and ditches to control the waters and reduce the opposing dangers of drought during the dry season (usually the spring) and flooding at harvest time.
Such efforts required a degree of cooperation among large number of people, that had not previously existed. The individual village, containing only a dozen or so houses and families, was economically vulnerable; but when several villages, probably under the direction of a council of elders, learned to share their human resources in the building of a coordinated network of water-control systems, the safety, stability, and prosperity of all improved. In this new cooperation, the seeds of the great Mesopotamian civilizations were being sown.
The technological and mathematical inventions, too, were stimulated by life along rivers. Such devices as the noria (a primitive waterwheel) and the Archimedean screw (a device for raising water from the low riverbanks to the high ground where it was needed), two forerunners of many more varied and complex machines, were first developed here for use in irrigation systems. Similarly, the earliest methods of measurement and computation and the first developments in geometry were stimulated by the need to keep track of land holdings and boundaries in fields that were periodically inundated.
The rivers served as high roads of the earliest commerce. Traders used boats made of bundles of rushes to transport grains, fruits, nuts, fibers, and textiles from one village to another, transforming the rivers into the central spines of nascent commercial kingdoms. Trade expanded surprisingly widely; we have evidence suggesting that, even before the establishment of the first Egyptian dynasty, goods were being exchanged between villagers in Egypt and others as far away as Iran.
Similar developments were occurring at much the same time along the great river valleys in other parts of the world - for example, along the Indus in India and the Hwang Ho in China. The history of early civilization has been shaped to a remarkable degree by the relation of humans and rivers.
The passage implies that the earliest geometry was practiced primarily by
Paragraph: At this stage of civilisation, when many nations are brought in to close and vital contact for good and evil, it is essential, as never before, that their gross ignorance of one another should be diminished, that they should begin to understand a little of one another's historical experience and resulting mentality. It is the fault of the English to expect the people of other countries to react as they do, to political and international situations. Our genuine goodwill and good intentions are often brought to nothing because we expect other people to be like us. This would be corrected if we knew the history, not necessarily in detail but in broad outlines, of the social and political conditions which have given to each nation its present character.
The need for a greater understanding between nations
Paragraph: I felt the wall of the tunnel shiver. The master alarm squealed through my earphones. Almost simultaneously, Jack yelled down to me that there was a warning light on. Fleeting but spectacular sights snapped into and out of view, the snow, the shower of debris, the moon, looming close and big, the dazzling sunshine for once unfiltered by layers of air. The last twelve hours before re-entry were particular bone-chilling. During this period, I had to go up into command module. Even after the fiery re-entry splashing down in 81o water in south pacific, we could still see our frosty breath inside the command module.
The word 'Command Module' used twice in the given passage indicates perhaps that it deals with
Paragraph: In the 16th century, an age of great marine and terrestrial exploration, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the world. As a young Portuguese noble, he served the king of Portugal, but he became involved in the quagmire of political intrigue at court and lost the king's favor. After he was dismissed from service by the king of Portugal, he offered to serve the future Emperor Charles V of Spain.
A papal decree of 1493 had assigned all land in the New World west of 50 degrees W longitude to Spain and all the land east of that line to Portugal. Magellan offered to prove that the East Indies fell under Spanish authority. On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain with five ships. More than a year later, one of these ships was exploring the topography of South America in search of a water route across the continent. This ship sank, but the remaining four ships searched along the southern peninsula of South America. Finally they found the passage they sought near 50 degrees S latitude. Magellan named this passage the Strait of All Saints, but today it is known as the Strait of Magellan.
One ship deserted while in this passage and returned to Spain, so fewer sailors were privileged to gaze at that first panorama of the Pacific Ocean. Those who remained crossed the meridian now known as the International Date Line in the early spring of 1521 after 98 days on the Pacific Ocean. During those long days at sea, many of Magellan's men died of starvation and disease.
Later, Magellan became involved in an insular conflict in the Philippines and was killed in a tribal battle. Only one ship and 17 sailors under the command of the Basque navigator Elcano survived to complete the westward journey to Spain and thus prove once and for all that the world is round, with no precipice at the edge.
The 16th century was an age of great ______ exploration.
Read the following passage carefully and then answer the questions that follow.
Rural manual workers comprise the single largest occupational category in India. ln 1991, according to the National Commission on Rural Labour, 60 percent of the workers in rural India were manual workers and they numbered more than 160 million. The changes in the working and living conditions of rural labourers are thus central to changes in the welfare of the rural population and of the country as a whole. The structure and working of rural labour markets in India is complex; as is well known, there is great diversity across regions and across segments of the labour market. This article brings together an interesting body of research that seeks to understand and explain the types of changes that have accrued in the structure of rural labour markets over the last few decades.
The 1980s were characterised by an explosion of the rural labour force, slow employment growth in agriculture and a rise in the share of non-agricultural employment. The decade was also characterized by a growing casualisation of the workforce (for a relative rise in casual employment as opposed to regular employment).
At the same time, it was a period when agricultural wages increased in real terms and when income poverty declined. There was what may be called "the tension between the estimated decline in poverty on the one hand, and the slow growth of agricultural employment and increased casualisation of the labour force on the other. Some of the trends in the development of rural labour over for this period are a source of concern. These include, as Radhakrishnan and Sharma note, the continuous widening of the gap between labour productivity in agricultural and non-agricultural occupations, the burgeoning mass of rural casual workers who have no social security safety net, and the increasing number of women employed at very low wages in agriculture. Another matter for concern, one that emerges from the desegregation of data on rural unemployment by age groups, is that the incidence of unemployment is higher for persons in the age group of 15-29 than for any other age group in others words, unemployment is typically high among new entrants to the workforce.
ln, her review of trends in wages, employment and poverty, Sheila Bhalla shows that the real wages of agricultural labourers stagnated from the time of independence to the mid1970s and then began to rise in all parts of the country. This was also the period in which the incidence of rural poverty began to decline. The rise in wages was not limited to the more prosperous agricultural zones, and Bhalla argues that the movement in real wages was co-related with the increase in the share of non-agricultural employment in total employment. As wages in non-agricultural work are typically higher than wages in agriculture, the expansion of non-farm work could also explain some of the declines in rural poverty. In the 1990s, the improvement in real wages and the decline in poverty were reversed while agricultural employment expanded. Economic development all over the world has been associated with a rise in the share of employment in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy and a fail in the share of the agricultural sector. In India, changes in the composition of the rural workforce in the 1990's points to a "structural retrogression"
The author does not say
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
King Solomon was celebrated for his wisdom. The Queen of the Sheba once paid a visit to his court. She was very much impressed by his wealth and grandeur. She had also heard of his uncanny ability to solve the most difficult puzzles which she meant to test. She showed Solomon two garlands of flowers, one in the right-hand and the other in the left and asked which one was real. The courtiers were puzzled. Both the garlands looked the same. Solomon could not say a word. The Queen felt triumphant. Solomon soon ordered that the windows be opened. A number of bees flew into the hall from the garden and settled on the garland in the right-hand. "The flowers in the right-hand are real", said Solomon. The Queen was greatly impressed with his wisdom.
Solomon could have identified the garlands by touching them of smelling them himself. But, doing so wouldn't have proved
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
One of South America's mysteries is Easter Island. Easter Island, also called Rapa Nui and Isla de Pascua, 3600 Ion (2,237mi) west of Chile, is a volcanic island with an interesting and partly unknown history. The island was named by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen because he encountered it on Easter Sunday 1722. He was the first European to find the island. The official name of the island, Isla de Pascua, means Easter Island in Spanish. This island is famous because of the approximately 887 huge statues which were found there. The statues consist of heads and complete torsos, the largest of which weight 84 tons! These monuments, called moai, were carved out of compressed volcanic ash, called tuff, which was found at a quarry ar a place called Rano Raraku. Statues are still being found. Some of the monuments were left only half-carved. Nobody knows why Rano Raraku was abandoned. It is thought that the statues were carved by the ancestors of the modern Polynesian inhabitants. But, the purpose of the statues and the reason they have abandoned remain mysteries.
Why the quarry, where the compressed volcanic ash was found, abandoned?
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Once upon a time, there was a royal elephant that used to reside in the premises of the king's palace. The elephant was very dear to the king, so he was well-fed and well treated. There was also a Dog who lived near the Elephant's shed. He was very weak and skinny. He was always fascinated by the smell of rich sweet rice being fed to the royal elephant. One day, the Dog could no longer resist the aroma of the rice and somehow managed to sneak into the Elephant's shed. He ate the grains of sweet rice that fell from the Elephant's mouth. He liked the rice so much, that he started going there daily to eat the rice. For days, the huge Elephant didn't notice the small dog as he was busy enjoying the delicious food. Gradually, the Dog grew bigger and stronger eating such rich food. Finally, the Elephant noticed him and allowed him access to the food. The Elephant enjoyed the company of the Dog and started sharing his food with him. They also started spending time with each other and soon became good friends. They ate together, slept together and played together. While playing, the Elephant would hold the Dog in his trunk and swing him back and forth. Soon neither of them was happy without the other. They became great friends and didn't want to be separated from each other.
Then one day, a man saw the Dog and asked the Elephant-keeper, "I want to buy this Dog. What price do you want for it?" The Elephant keeper didn't own the Dog but sold it and extracted a sum of money from this deal. The man took the Dog to his home village, which was quite far away. The King's Elephant became very sad after this incident. He missed his friend a lot and started neglecting everything. He didn't want to do anything without his dear friend, so he stopped eating, drinking and even bathing. Finally, the Elephant-keeper reported this to the King; however, he didn't mention anything about the Dog. The King had a wise minister, who was known for his keen understanding of animals. The King ordered the minister, "Go to the Elephant shed and find out the reason for the Elephant's condition". The intelligent minister went to the Elephant's shed and found the Elephant very sad. He examined the Elephant and asked the Elephant keeper, "There is nothing wrong with this Elephant's body, then why does he look so sad?" I think this Elephant is grief-stricken, possibly due to the loss of a dear friend.
Do you know if this Elephant shared a close friendship with anyone? The Elephant-keeper said, "There was a Dog who used to eat, sleep and play with the Elephant. He was taken by a stranger three days ago''. The minister went back to the King and said, "Your majesty, in my opinion, the royal Elephant is not sick, but he is lonesome without his dear friend, the Dog". The King said, "You're right, friendship is one of the most wonderful things of life. Do you know where that ·Dog is?" The Minister replied, "Elephant keeper has informed me that a stranger took him away and he doesn't know his whereabouts". The King asked, "how can we bring back my Elephant's friend and make him happy again?" The Minister suggested, "Your Majesty, make a declaration that whoever has the dog that used to live at the royal Elephant's shed will be penalised". The King did the same and the man who had taken the dog, instantly turned him loose when he heard the proclamation. As soon as he was freed, the Dog ran back as fast as he could to the Elephant's shed. The Elephant was so delighted to see the Dog that he picked his friend up with his trunk and swung him back and forth. The Dog wagged his tail, while the Elephant's eyes sparkled with happiness. The King was content to see the Elephant happy once again and rewarded the Minister for his wise judgment.
What did the Elephant-keeper do to the Dog?
