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In view of the passage given below. Choose the best option for question.
When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of Independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased. So has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledging, has grown tremendously. And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetually on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still on walking backwards.
Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing 'world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had. It suffered hardly or not at all during the Second World War. It had advantages like an English speaking elite, quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet, today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness. it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top. Hong Kong is an export powerhouse. So is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back. note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India, no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car. The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism.
The government discouraged imports and encouraged self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and, therefore. became absolutely uncompetitive. only when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent. The years since then have been spent merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it operated under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crookS how were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, how we're to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, how we're to be tolerated in the same way as an inexcusable wan. The high expropriation rates of taxation. the licensing Jaws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector, and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude. The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created.
The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been a but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide. But most of these Changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 ana the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds of support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself. or that of more than handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations. Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no exit policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labour is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business If one industry is not allowed to retrench labour, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labour. In other way too, the government hurts industries.
Public sector monopolies like the department of telecommunications and Yidesh sanchar Nigam Ltd. make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad The infrastructure is in a shambles partly because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business, and partly because it does not have the stomach to change market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government iS dragging itS feet. At the rate, it is going. it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy By then, of course, the world would have moved even further ahead.
The Government was compelled to open the economy due to...
Options
pressure from international market
pressure from domestic market
foreign change bankruptcy and pauotr or funds wilh the government
All of the above
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Solution
foreign change bankruptcy and pauotr or funds wilh the government
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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 have won critical appreciation in front of 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 statements is least likely to be inferred from this passage:
Which of the following statements is least likely to be inferred from this passage:
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.
According to the author, what makes Har’s art fun?
In view of the passage given below. Choose the best option for question.
When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of Independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased. So has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledging, has grown tremendously. And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetually on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still on walking backwards.
Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing 'world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had. It suffered hardly or not at all during the Second World War. It had advantages like an English speaking elite, quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet, today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness. it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top. Hong Kong is an export powerhouse. So is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back. note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India, no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car. The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism.
The government discouraged imports and encouraged self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and, therefore. became absolutely uncompetitive. only when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent. The years since then have been spent merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it operated under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crookS how were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, how we're to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, how we're to be tolerated in the same way as an inexcusable wan. The high expropriation rates of taxation. the licensing Jaws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector, and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude. The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created.
The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been a but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide. But most of these Changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 ana the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds of support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself. or that of more than handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations. Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no exit policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labour is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business If one industry is not allowed to retrench labour, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labour. In other way too, the government hurts industries.
Public sector monopolies like the department of telecommunications and Yidesh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad The infrastructure is in a shambles partly because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business, and partly because it does not have the stomach to change market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government iS dragging itS feet. At the rate, it is going. it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy By then, of course, the world would have moved even further ahead.
The writer ends the passage on a note of...
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 indicates that the social effects of the unpredictability of water supplies in Mesopotamia was
Paragraph: China’s rising power is based on its remarkable economic success. Shanghai’s overall economy is currently growing at around 13% per year, thus doubling in size every five or six years. Everywhere there are start-ups, innovations, and young entrepreneurs hungry for profits. In a series of high-level meetings between Chinese and African officials, the advice that the African leaders received from the Chinese was sound and more practical than they typically get from the World Bank. Chinese officials stress the crucial role of public investments, especially in agriculture and infrastructure, to lay the basis for private sector-led growth. In a hungry and poor rural economy, as China was in the 1970s and as most of Africa is today, a key starting point is to raise farm productivity. Farmers need the benefits of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield seeds, all of which were a core part of China’s economical take off. Two other equally critical investments are also needed: roads and electricity, without which there cannot be a modern economy. Farmers might be able to increase their output, but it won’t be able to reach the cities, and the cities won’t be able to provide the countryside with inputs. The government has taken pains to ensure that electricity grids and transportation networks reach every village in China. China is prepared to help Africa in substantial ways in agriculture, roads, power, health and education. And that is not an empty boast. Chinese leaders are prepared to share new high yield rice varieties, with their African counterparts and, all over Africa, China is financing and constructing basic infrastructure.
This illustrates what is wrong with the World Bank. The World Bank has often forgotten the most basic lessons of development, preferring to lecture the poor and force them to privatize basic infrastructure, which is untenable, rather than to help the poor to invest in infrastructure and other crucial sectors. The Banks’ failure began in the early 1980s when under the ideological sway of the American President and British Prime Minister tried to get Africa and other poor regions to cut back or close down government investments and services. For 25 years, the bank tries to get governments out of agriculture, leaving impoverished peasants to fend for themselves. The result has been a disaster in Africa, with farm productivity stagnant for decades. The bank also pushed for privatization of national health systems, water utilities, and road and power networks, and has grossly underfinanced these critical sectors. This extreme free-market ideology, also called “structural adjustment”, went against the practical lessons of development successes in China and the rest of Asia. Practical development strategy recognizes that public investments - in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure- are necessary complements to private investments. The World Bank has instead wrongly seen such vital public investments as an enemy of private sector development. Whenever the banks’ ideology failed, it has blamed the poor for corruption, mismanagement, or lack of initiative. Instead of focusing its attention on helping the poorest countries to improve their infrastructure, there has been a crusade against corruption. The good news is that African governments are getting the message on how to spur economic growth and are getting crucial help from China and other partners that are less wedded to extreme free-market ideology than the world Bank. They have declared their intention to invest in infrastructure, agriculture modernistation, public health, and education. It is clear the Bank can regain its relevance only if it becomes practical once again, by returning its focus to financing public investments in priority sectors. If that happens, the Bank can still do justice to the bold vision of a world of shared prosperity that prompted its creation after World War II.
What effect has the World Bank policy had on African nations?
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"
What is the most important problem in understanding the condition of rural labour markets in India?
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"
What sort of tension exists between the decline of poverty and the slow growth of agricultural employment and the increased casualisation of the labour force?
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".
Why are changes in the working and living conditions of rural manual workers of utmost significance to the country as a whole?
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 ?”
According to the passage, constructivists employed which of the following to promote their argument?
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
A new analysis has determined that the threat of global warming can still be greatly diminished if nations cut emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 70% this century. The analysis was done by scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). While global temperatures- would· rise, the most dangerous potential aspects of climate change, including massive losses of Arctic sea ice and permafrost and significant sea-level rise, could be partially avoided.
This research indicates that we can no longer avoid significant warming during this century, said NCAR scientist Warren Washington, the study paper's lead author. But, if the world were to implement this level of mission cuts, we could stabilise the threat of climate change, he added. Average global temperatures have armed by close to I C since the pre-industrial era.
Much of the warming is due to human-produced emissions of greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide. This heat-trapping gas has increased from a pre-industrial level of about 284 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere to more than 380 ppm today. With research showing that additional warming of about l °C may be the threshold for dangerous climate change, the European Union has called for dramatic cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
To examine the impact of such cuts on the world's climate. Washington and his colleagues ran a series of global studies with the NCAR based Community Climate System Model (CCSM). They assumed that carbon dioxide levels could be held to 450 ppm at the end of this century. In contrast, emissions are now on track to reach about 750 ppm by 2100 if unchecked.
The team's results showed that If carbon dioxide were held to 450 ppm, global temperatures would increase by 0.6 ·c above current readings by the end of the century.
What would not be one of the impacts of cutting greenhouse gas emissions?
