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Question
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:
Options
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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Solution
The export gains many countries came to associate with a rulebased system.
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In Mann Joseph's debut novel Serious Men, the protagonist, Ayyan Mani, is a U1, scheming Dalit-Buddhist who almost gets away with passing off his partially deaf son, Adi, as a prodigy, a genius who can recite the first 1,000 prime numbers. The garb of satire-where almost every character cuts a sorry figure-gives the author the licence to offer one' of the most bleak and pessimistic portrayals of urban Dalits. Despite his savage portrayal of Dalit (and female) characters-or perhaps because of it? Serious Men has won critical appreciation front a cross-section of readers and critics.
At a time when a formidable body of Dalit literature writing by Dalits about Dalit lives has created a distinct space for itself, how and why is it that a novel such as Serious Men, with its gleefully skewed portrayal of an angry Dalit man, manages to win such accolades? In American literature and particularly in the case of African- American authors and characters these issues of representation have been debated for decades. But in India, the sustained refusal to address issues related to caste in everyday life and the continued and unquestioned predominance of a Brahminical stranglehold over cultural production have led us to a place where non-Dalit portrayal of Dalits in literature, cinema and art remains the norm. The journey of modem Dalit literature has been a difficult one. But even though it has not necessarily enjoyed the support of numbers, we must engage with what Dalits are writing not simply for reasons of authenticity, or as a concession to identity politics, but simply because of the aesthetic value of this body of writing, and for the insights it offers into the human condition. In a society that is still largely unwilling to recognise Dalits as equal, rights bearing human beings, in a society that is inherently indifferent to the everyday violence against Dalits, in a society unwilling to share social and cultural resources equitably with Dalits unless mandated by law (as seen in the anti-reservation discourse), Dalit literature has the potential to humanise non- Dalits and sensitise them to a world into which they have no insight. But before we can understand what Dalit literature is seeking to accomplish, we need first to come to terms with the stranglehold of non-Dalit representations of Dalits.
Rohinton Miary's (A Fine Balance), published 15 years ago, chronicles the travails of two Dalit characters uncle Ishvar and nephew Omprakash who migrate to Bombay and yet cannot escape brutality. While the present of the novel is set at the time of the Emergency, Ishvar's father Dukhy belongs to the era of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. During one of Dukhi's visits to the town, he chances upon a meeting of the Indian National Congress, where speakers spread the "Mahatma's message regarding the freedom struggle, the struggle for justice," and wiping out "the disease of untouchability; ravaging us for centuries, denying dignity to our fellow human beings."
Neither in the 1940s, where the novel's past is set nor in the Emergency period of the 1970swhen the minds and bodies Ishvar and Omprakash, are savaged by the state-do we find any mention of a figure like BR Ambedkar or of Dalit movements. In his 'nationalist' understanding of modem Indian history, Mistry seems to have not veered too far from the road charted by predecessors like Mulk Raj Anand and Premchand. Sixty years after Premchand, Mistry's literary imagination seems stuck in the empathy realism mode, trapping Dalits in abjection. Mistry happily continues the broad stereotype of the Dalit as a passive sufferer, without consciousness of caste politics.
Which of the following is not among the reasons suggested by the writer for engaging with Dalit writing:
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.
Economic reductionism' in this passage means;
The question in this section is based on what is stated or implied in the passage given below. For the question, choose the option that most accurately and completely answers the question.
The words invention and Innovation are closely linked, but they are not interchangeable. The inventor is a genius who uses his intellect, imagination, time and resources to create something that does not exist. But this invention may or may not be of utility to the masses. It is the enterprising innovator who uses various resources, skills and time to make the invention available for use. The innovator might use the invention as it is, modifies it or even blend two or more inventions to make one marketable product. A great example is that of the iPhone which is a combination of various inventions. If an invention is the result of countless trials and errors, so can be the case with innovation. Not every attempt to make an invention is successful. Not every innovation sees the light of the day. Benjamin Franklin had the belief that success doesn‘t come without challenge, mistake, and in a few cases failure.
One of the world‘s most famous innovators, Steve Jobs says, ―Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.‖ Thus, inventors and innovators have to be intrepid enough to take risks; consider failures as stepping stones and not stumbling blocks. Some inventions are the result of a keen observation or a simple discovery. The inventor of Velcro, also called the zipless zipper, is the Swiss engineer George de Mestral. He was hiking in the woods when he found burrs clinging to his clothes and his dog‘s fur. Back at home, he studied the burrs. He discovered that each burr was a collection of tiny hooks which made it cling on to another object. A few years later, he made and patented the strips of fabric that came to us like Velcro. The world of inventions and innovations is a competitive one. But the race does not end here; it is also prevalent in the case of getting intellectual property rights. There have been inventors who failed to get a single patent while there have been some who managed to amass numerous patents in their lifetime. Thomas Edison had 1,093 patents to his credit! We relate the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell. It is believed that around the same time, Antonio Meucci had also designed the telephone, but due to a lack of resources and various hardships, he could not proceed with the patent of his invention. It is also believed that Elisha Gray had made a design for the telephone and applied for the patent at the U.S. patent office on the same day as Graham Bell did. By sheer chance, Graham‘s lawyer‘s turn to file the papers came first. Hence, Graham was granted the first patent for the telephone. It is not easy, and at times almost impossible, for an inventor to be an innovator too. There are very few like Thomas Edison who graduated from being an incredible inventor to a successful manufacturer and businessman with brilliant marketing skills. While innovations that have helped to enhance the quality of life are laudable, equally laudable are the inventions that laid the foundation of these very innovations.
The author believes that
Paragraph: One of the most intriguing stories of the Russian Revolution concerns the identity of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II. During his reign over Russia, the czar had planned to revoke many of the harsh laws established by previous czars. Some workers and peasants, however, clamored for more rapid social reform. In 1918, a group of these people known as Bolsheviks overthrew the government. On July 17 or 18, they murdered the czar and what was thought to be his entire family.
Although witnesses vouched that all the members of the czar's family had been executed, there were rumors suggesting that Anastasia had survived. Over the years, a number of women claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia. Perhaps the most famous claimant was Anastasia Tschaikovsky, who was also known as Anna Anderson.
In 1920, 18 months after the czar's execution, this terrified young woman was rescued from drowning in a Berlin river. She spent two years in a hospital, where she attempted to reclaim her health and shattered mind. The doctors and nurses thought that she resembled Anastasia and questioned her about her background. She disclaimed any connection with the czar's family. Eight years later, however, she claimed that she was Anastasia. She said that she had been rescued by two Russian soldiers after the czar and the rest of her family had been killed. Two brothers named Tschaikovsky had carried her into Romania. She had married one of the brothers, who had taken her to Berlin and left her there, penniless and without a vocation. Unable to invoke the aid of her mother's family in Germany, she had tried to drown herself.
During the next few years, scores of the czar's relatives, ex-servants, and acquaintances interviewed her. Many of these people said that her looks and mannerisms were evocative of the Anastasia that they had known. Her grandmother and other relatives denied that she was the real Anastasia, however.
Tired of being accused of fraud, Anastasia immigrated to the United States in 1928 and took the name Anna Anderson. She still wished to prove that she was Anastasia, though, and returned to Germany in 1933 to bring suit against her mother's family. There she declaimed to the court, asserting that she was indeed Anastasia and deserved her inheritance.
In 1957, the court decided that it could neither confirm nor deny Anastasia's identity. Although it will probably never be known whether this woman was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, her search to establish her identity has been the subject of numerous books, plays, and movies.
Tschaikovsky initially ______ any connection with the czar's family.
Read the passage and answer the question following it
Artists should treat their art as art and take the process of making it as seriously as anyone takes their chosen profession. Great skill and insight are required in order to create truly original art. Transforming an idea or concept into a technically thought-provoking or emotion-arousing work of art in any medium is a talent that few people possess. And there you have the "purist's vision."
Now if an artist wants to create art and never sell it, then he or she never has to worry about how to price it. That artist can afford to be a "purist." as you put it, produce art free of any encumbrances or concerns about what the art world or anyone else might think, and avoid "prostituting" or "debasing" that art by placing dollar values on it." But if you're an artist who wants to sell your art or who has to sell it in order to survive as an artist, you must use whatever tools are available to figure out how much it's worth and how best to sell it.
Let's say you're just starting out as an artist, you have little or no experience showing or selling your work, and in a period of two minutes, you produce a pencil drawing on a piece of paper. You view this drawing as highly significant in your evolution as an artist and rank its creation as the single most important creative moment of your life.
Consequently, you put a price of $20, 000 on it because only for that amount of money will you agree to part with such an important work of art. This is a "purist's vision" approach to pricing as opposed to a "realities of the marketplace" approach. From a business standpoint, you'll have an extremely difficult time selling your drawing, as you won't be able to justify the $20,000 price to real art buyers in the real art world. You have no track record of selling artin that price range, and you have few or no shows, critical reviews, or supporting data from outside sources indicating that your art has that kind of value or collectibility in the marketplace. The overwhelming majority of art buyers who have $20,000to spend look for works of art by established artists with documented track records of showing and selling art in that price range.
Your drawing is still highly significant to you, but what someone is willing to pay for it on the open market is a matter for art buyers to decide. You can price it however you wish, but you can never force anyone to buy it. That's the way the art business works. So if you want to sell it, you have to figure out what dollar amount someone is likely to pay for it on the open market and then price it at that amount. But the tale of your drawing does not end here.
The art world may, one agree with you that the product of your two-minute moment precipitates a major transformational turning point in your career, and is well worth a $20,000 asking price, but you're going to have to prove first. Aspects of that drawing will have to be reflected in your art from the moment you created it onwards, the art world will have to recognize your art both critically and from the marketing standpoints, and you will have to successfully produce, show, and sell for many years. Then one day, when your first retrospective exhibition opens at the Four-Star Museum of Art, that drawing will hang framed and captioned as the first inspiration for all subsequent work. The art world will then understand and respect its significance, and a serious collector may well be willing to pay an extraordinary price to own this historically important document of your career.
Returning for a moment to the concept of a purist artist who creates art and never sells it, sooner or later (hopefully later), that purist will pass on and leave behind a body of work. Unless that artist leaves specific instructions in his or her will for that body of work to be destroyed, it will become subject to those market forces that the artist strived for a lifetime to avoid. At the very least, it'll have to be appraised for tax, donation, or inheritance purposes. In most cases, it eventually comes onto the market either through a probable sale, an auction, or as represented by a dealer, gallery, or family member. The moral of the story is that one way or another, someone somewhere at some point in time will use tried and true methods to realistically price and either sell, donate, trade or otherwise transact any work of art that comes onto the market in any way, shape, or form. I hope that that person will be you, the artist and that you'll price your art according to what the market will bear, sell plenty of it, and have a long and rewarding career. Answer the following question indicating your option for question:
For an artist to sell his piece of art at a higher price range, he/ she has to
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?
The question in this section is based on the passage. The question is to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The Constitution of the United States protects both property rights and freedom of speech. At times these rights conflict. Resolution then requires a determination as to the type of property involved. If the property is private and not open to the general public, the owner may absolutely deny the exercise of the right of free speech thereon. On the other hand, if public land is at issue, the First Amendment protections of expression are applicable. However, the exercise of free speech thereon is not absolute. Rather it is necessary to determine the appropriateness of the forum. This requires that consideration be given to a number of factors including character and normal use of the property, the extent to which it is open to the public, and the number and types of persons who frequent it. If the forum is clearly public or clearly private, the resolution of the greater rights is relatively straight forward.
In the area of quasi-public property, balancing these rights has produced a dilemma. This is the situation when a private owner permits the general public to use his property. When persons seek to use the land for passing out handbills or picketing, how is a conflict between property rights and freedom of expression resolved?
The precept that a private property owner surrenders his rights in proportion to the extent to which he opens up his property to the public is not new. In 1675, Lord Chief Justice Hale wrote that when private property is “affected with a public interest, it ceases to be private.” Throughout the development of AngloAmerican law, the individual has never possessed absolute dominion over property. Land becomes clothed with a public interest when the owner devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest. In support of this position the chairman of the board of the Wilde Lake Shopping Centre in Columbia, Maryland said:
The only real purpose and justification of any of these centres are to serve the people in the area -not the merchants, not the developers, not the architects. The success or failure of a regional shopping centre will be measured by what it does for the people it seeks to serve.
These doctrines should be applied when accommodation must be made between a shopping centre owner’s private property rights and the public’s right to free expression. It is hoped that when the Court is asked to balance these conflicting rights it will keep in mind what Justice Black said in 1945: “When we balance the constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy (First Amendment) freedom(s) ......... we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position.”
We can infer from the passage that the author believes that shopping malls in America
The question in this section is based on the passage. The question is to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The Constitution of the United States protects both property rights and freedom of speech. At times these rights conflict. Resolution then requires a determination as to the type of property involved. If the property is private and not open to the general public, the owner may absolutely deny the exercise of the right of free speech thereon. On the other hand, if public land is at issue, the First Amendment protections of expression are applicable. However, the exercise of free speech thereon is not absolute. Rather it is necessary to determine the appropriateness of the forum. This requires that consideration be given to a number of factors including character and normal use of the property, the extent to which it is open to the public, and the number and types of persons who frequent it. If the forum is clearly public or clearly private, the resolution of the greater rights is relatively straight forward.
In the area of quasi-public property, balancing these rights has produced a dilemma. This is the situation when a private owner permits the general public to use his property. When persons seek to use the land for passing out handbills or picketing, how is a conflict between property rights and freedom of expression resolved?
The precept that a private property owner surrenders his rights in proportion to the extent to which he opens up his property to the public is not new. In 1675, Lord Chief Justice Hale wrote that when private property is “affected with a public interest, it ceases to be private.” Throughout the development of AngloAmerican law, the individual has never possessed absolute dominion over property. Land becomes clothed with a public interest when the owner devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest. In support of this position the chairman of the board of the Wilde Lake Shopping Centre in Columbia, Maryland said:
The only real purpose and justification of any of these centres are to serve the people in the area -not the merchants, not the developers, not the architects. The success or failure of a regional shopping centre will be measured by what it does for the people it seeks to serve.
These doctrines should be applied when accommodation must be made between a shopping centre owner’s private property rights and the public’s right to free expression. It is hoped that when the Court is asked to balance these conflicting rights it will keep in mind what Justice Black said in 1945: “When we balance the constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy (First Amendment) freedom(s) ......... we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position.”
According to the passage, the idea that a property owner’s rights decline as the property is more used by the general public
Choose the word that is most similar to the meaning of the given word.
Diminish
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Teaching, more even than most other professions, has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of public service. The profession has a great and honourable tradition, extending from the dawn of history until recent times, but any teacher in the modern world who allows himself to be inspired by the ideals of his predecessors is likely to be made sharply aware that it is not his function to teach what he thinks, but to instill such beliefs and prejudices as are thought useful by his employers.
The author seems to be in favour of
