List of top Language Comprehension Questions

Read the following passages carefully to answer these questions given at the end of each passage.
One of the basic principles of people management for most of the 20th century was to narrow an individual's tark down to a small, heavily monitored, transparently cost-effective unit of work. This was particularly the case in many areas of manufacturing, where it was felt to be a necessary route to greater competitiveness. It left the individual with little chance to show any initiative. Today, that tenet is being turned largely on its head. Much more is expected from employees; their value to a company's well-being is increasingly acknowledged, even if not necessarily properly recognised. This transition has been accompanied by the emergence of 'human resource management', a term not universally acknowledged as representing much more than 'personnel management', but one which does signify a broader ambit than in the past. Just how much broader is discussed here. along with the widely differing attitudes of trade unions to human resource management and the issues that management must confront. Also examined are the issues that have been preoccupying human resource managers themselves. An example is the rapid emergence of new technology, which puts pressures on workers that cannot always be easily resolved. It is on the nature of good management practice that nothing, in isolation, provides the answer to every prayer. As John Grapper relates, British Airways, which lays claim to being the world's favourite airline, has embraced human resource management to what is generally considered to be good effect. It sees its employees as frontline troops in the competitive battle with other airlines. Its overall success is acknowledged: witness its ability to produce profits while rivals notch up huge losses. Grapper traces the pressure to re-think heavily monitored, narrowly defined work patterns as having come from Japan, where the team approach, with decisions made by the consensus, is acknowledged to be a potent competitive weapon. Much of the shift is due to the fact that traditionally structured principles are incompatible with rapid technological change. This is especially so in service industries, where labour accounts for a large majority of total costs, and where employees can be at the forefront of enhancing standards of service. The mixed attitudes of unions to HRM emerge against a background of distrust nevitably, if responsibility is pushed further down the organisation, with established lines of authority being eroded, the union's traditional role is called into question. This suspicion is exemplified by a national officer of the Transport and General Workers' Union, who also accuses employers of often having as their real motivation, a desire to weaken collective strength. An academic's view is that HRM sits uncomfortably with industrial relations, since among other things. managers will endeavour to bypass unions achieve their ends. But not all unions are opposed to HRM, one particularly perceptive view being that it is inevitably an acknowledgement by management that workers should be more involved in decision- making. A rider to this is that it brings managers under greater pressure to deliver and opens them to accusations of merely playing lip-service to the concept if they prove unhappy about being challenged. A further view is that HRM in the United Kingdom is a pale shadow of the regimes that exist in Continental Europe, since the 'power' offered to workers is rather illusory and allows little scope for feedback from the workers to the upper echelons of management. This argument could well be supported by the attitudes which are reported in Christopher Lorenz's article about whether or not a value can be put on human resources and it, indeed, management really wishes to do so. Lorenz points to the growing number of chief executives who are at least paying attention to concepts which enhance the status of employees. But the question is whether this has any more substances than is revealed by the perfunctory acknowledgement in so many company annual reports of how valuable employees are to the organisation. One of the inevitable outcomes of 'empowerment of employees is that they will make mistakes and that they should be left (for helped) to learn by them. Yet this prospect help make some management's draw back from delegating real power of decision further down the line and thus from taking HRM to its proper conclusion. In a world of rapid technological advance, human resources play a crucial role-but not just in ensuring that the latest piece of technology performs. They are also a barometer of what is achievable and what is not, as Michael Dixon illustrates. What is particularly clear is that employees' reactions to new technology must be read carefully if they are not to be misinterpreted. For, however impressive any technology might be, some of its technical possibilities may have to be sacrificed in order to match what employees are happy-or can be persuaded to work with. Even in companies where HRM becomes very much the chief executive's remit, much of the responsibility for ensuring that employees' views are understood by management still falls to the human resource manager. Many managers still feel vulnerable in the organisational hierarchy. However, Simon Holberton suggests that while they know what their role should be, many human resource managers find themselves insufficiently informed by their companies to design programmes to meet manager's demands. Significantly, training is at the top of the list of their priorities. And while the economic climate has changed considerably for the worse with budgets slashed or put on hold, training is still widely perceived to be one of the most pressing requirements if a wide swathe of companies is not to be left unprepared to take advantage of an economic upturn.
Read the passage carefully to answer these questions.
Definitions of 'culture' are contested. In anthropological usage, the word refers to a system of shared meanings through which collective existence becomes possible. However, as many recent critiques of this position point out, this senseof culture gives no place to the idea of judgement, and hence to the relations of power by which the dominance of ideas and tastes is established. As Said says about Matthew Arnold's view of culture.
"What is at stake in society is not merely the cultivation of individuals, or the development of a class of finely tuned sensibilities, or the renaissance of interests in the classics, but rather the assertively achieved and won hegemony of an identifiable set of ideas, which Arnold honorifically colls, culture, over all other ideas in society."
The implications of Arnold's view of culture are profound; they lead us towards a position in which culture must be seen in terms of that which it eliminates as much as that which it establishes. Said argues that when culture is consecrated by the state, it becomes a system of discriminations and evaluations through which a series of exclusions can be legislated from above. By the enactment of such legislation, the state comes to be the primary giver of values. Anarchy, disorder, irrationality, inferiority, bad taste and immorality are, in this way, defined and then located outside culture and civilisation by the state and its institutions. This exclusion of alterity is an important device by which the hegemony of the state is established; either certain 'others' are defined as being outside culture, as are 'mad' people; or they are domesticated, as with penal servitude-Foucault's monumental studies on the asylum and the prison demonstrate this.
It is this context which we must understand in order to fully appreciate the challenge posed by the community to the hegemony of the state, especially to the notion that the state is the sole giver of values. At the same time, the danger is that we may in the process he tempted to valourise the community as somehow representing a more organic mode, and therefore a more authentic method of organizing culture. Many scholars feel that culture is more organically related to the traditions of groups, whereas traditions are falsely invented by the hands of state. The issues are by no means as simple, for culture and tradition are not instituted in society once and forever, but are subject to the constant change and flux which are an essential feature of every society. Indeed, the very attempt to freeze and fix cultural traditions may be inimical to their survival. Finally, in the contests between state, communities and collectivities of different kinds on one hand and the individual on the other, we can see the double life of culture: its potential to give radical recognition to the humanity of its subjects as well as its potential to keep the individual within such tightly defined bounds that the capacity to experiment with selfhood-which is also a mark humanity-may be jeopardised.
So, we arrive at this double definition of culture. By this I mean that the word 'culture' refers to both a system of shared meanings which defines the individual's collective life, as well as a system for the formulation of judgements which are used to exclude alterities. and which thus keep the individual strictly within the bounds defined by the society. It is in view of this that the question of cultural rights seems to me to be placed squarely within the question of passions rather than interests. It is time now to define passion. After the classical work of Hirschman on political passions, if was usual to think of passions as obstructions in the path of reason. Passions had to be overcome for enlightened interest to emerge. This view of passions is extremely limited. Indeed, certain kinds of revelations, including the recognition of oneself as human, become possible only through passion. If the self is constituted only through the Other-so that desire, cognition, memory and imagination become possible through the play of passion-then the revelatory role of passion must be acknowledged not only in the life of the individual but also in the life of the collective. Passion then must play a role in politics.
As we have seen, the demand for cultural rights at this historical moment is in a context, where cultural symbols have been appropriated by the state, which tries to establish a monopoly over ethical pronouncements. The state is thus experienced as a threat by smaller units, who feel that their ways of life are penetrated, if not engulfed, by this larger unit. The situation is quite the opposite of the relation between the part and the whole in hierarchical systems, a relation seen as the characteristics mark of traditional politics in South Asia. In a hierarchical system, differences between constitutional units were essential for the 'whole' to be constituted.
In other words, small units came to be defined by being bearer of special marks in a hierarchical entity. And although by definition they could not be equal in such a system, the very logic of hierarchy assured that they could not be simply engulfed into the higher totality. This was both a source of their oppression as well as a guarantee of their acceptance (though not a radical acceptance) of their place in the world, My argument is not an appeal for a return to hierarchy as a principle of organisation. Rather, it is an effort to locate the special nature of the threat which smaller groups feel.
Given below is an analysis of the employment scenario in the country. Study it critically to answer these questions.
In view of the centrality of the employment objective in the overall process of socio-economic development as also to ensure availability of work opportunities in sufficient numbers, Special Group On Targeting Ten Million Employment Opportunities Per year Over The Tenth Plan Period was constituted by the Planning Commission under the Chairmanship of Dr. S.P. Gupta, Member, Planning Commission. Considering the need for generating employment opportunities which are gainful, the Special Group has recommended the use of Current Daily Status for measuring employment, as this measure of employment is net of the varying degrees of underemployment experienced by those who are otherwise classified employed on usual status basis. The group has noted the decline in the rate of growth of population, labour and work force, but an increase in the unemployment rate during 1993-94 and 1999-2000, although the overall growth performance of the economy has been better than the previous decade. In view of the declining employment elasticity of growth, observed during the period 1994-2000, the Group has recommended that over and above the employment generated in the process of present structure of growth, there is a need to promote certain identified labour intensive activities. These sectors are agriculture and allied activities, small and medium industries, information technology, construction, tourism, financial sector, education and health, etc. With proper policy initiatives taken in these labour intensive sectors, an additional 20 million jobs will be created during the Tenth Plan. The report also identified ministrywise programmes/targets for achieving the ten million employment opportunities per year.
The Special Group recommended policies and programmes which would enable the skill levels of the labour force to match those required for the new jobs to be created during the Tenth Plan. The recommendations of the Special Group have been suitably incorporated in the employment strategy for the Tenth Five Year Plan by the Planning Commission. Organised sector employment as on March 31, 2001 was 27.8 million out of which public sector employment stood at 19.1 million and private sector 8.7 million. The public sector accounted for about 69 percent of the total employment in the organised sector in 2001. There was a marginal decrease of 0.6 percent in employment in the organised sector in 2001 as compared to the previous year. While employments in the public sector declined by 0.9 percent in 2001 over 2000, employment in the private sector increased by 0.1 percent.
Only a small percentage (8 to 9 percent) of the total workforce of the country is employed in the organised sector. While employment growth in the private organised sector significantly improved in the 1990s, the growth of employment in the public sector was negligible. Since the public sector accounts for more than two thirds of the total organised sector employment, there was slow down of the overall growth in the organised sector employment.
Read the following passage to answer these questions.
We are the failed generation-we who are now in our 40s and 50s. We do not have to look far to realise that our generation has failed. The India we inherited was wonderful, but the one that we have bequeathed our children is degraded in every way. We are the citizens of transition, with personal memories of our childhood when we lived in a good, simple world where laws and morals had their place. And now we have firsthand experience of an India stifled by corruption and injustice, with breakdowns on every front.
There is no point getting defensive about our failure. There is no point denying it either. Perhaps time has come for us to face up to reality and try and understand why we Failed. We were good and talented and grew up in a relatively safe and protected environment Then why and where did we go wrong? Perhaps we must first rewind a bit.
Our grandparents were the generation of freedom fighters. They were brave and committed men and women fired with a vision of a free India. They made sacrifices, donated money and property, their youth and even lived to achieve their goal. They were incredibly disciplined. And then came our parents generation. They wanted to build a new India, a modern India where all citizens were equal. They were incredibly thrifty. They worked hard and saved money and believed the best they could give their children was a good education. And then came my generation, born in safety and security. We benefitted from a good education. Our nationalistic goals had whittled down-we only wanted to make a difference. But we did not really manage to because we were incredibly ambitious. We wanted to create a separate identity, push the frontiers of our personal capabilities and professional parameters to a new high. We took pride in being unlike the rest. Highly individualistic, we became the generation that abrogated civic responsibility. That hurt the social fabric-we wanted the best for our family, but community and country could look after itself.
Sure, we inherited problems from our parents' generation. But we did not do anything to set it right. So they got worse and around us India started to crumble. We saw it, were conscious enough to protest, but not concerned enough to step in and stem the rot. We were unconcerned because we were caught up in our own personal pursuits. We love to make a virtue of tolerance and indifference, as also permissiveness. It is indifference, when we do not care deeply enough to do something about our problems. It is not tolerance but permissiveness when we are too lazy to intervene. As we strove to prove our worth in professional pursuits, role happily left nation building to politicians and bureaucrats. We abdicated our responsibility, our personal role in shaping India's destiny. Politics and civic action soon became too dirty for us to soil our hands, our name, our reputations. Some of us who belatedly want to do something about it, now discover that the system is too atrophied, set in its ways, to let us enter. So we stand outside wringing our hands. Perhaps secretly glad that we cannot enter this murky world. After all, we have accumulated too much to lose and in any case why bother. The system is too far gone and we would be fools to sacrifice the comforts of our cocooned world.
And our children, they worship money. And when it is their parents' money, they love it even more. Nowhere in the world do teenagers spend their parents money as freely and without compunction as they do here. We are to be blamed for that too because we are being permissive, not liberal. Parents are so involved in their work that they do not have time for their children. They buy children's affection with guilt-money. So kids now have cars, electronic gadgets, designer clothes. India is a fading figment of their parents' nostalgia. All they want is a job that will give them good money so that they can pursue their materialistic pursuits -preferably in America.But can you blame them? Look at the India they are living in-pollution is high, crime is endemic, brute power is law, civic amenities deplorable, justice non-existent, Merit has no place. It is caste or connections that work. There are cases of affluence amidst unbelievable deserts of deprivation How long is India really sustainable? Can it really remain stable and peaceful amidst such grotesque ills and inequities.
Often we are optimistic because we are afraid to be pessimistic. Impending scenarios scare the living daylights out of us. So we collectively believe that things will improve and gladly cite a variety of instances to prove that there are areas of growth and excellence. We want to be optimistic because we do not want to give in to despair. After all, what is life without hope?
Study the Following passage to answer these questions.
Nothing is sure but death and taxes, and of course that north is north and south is south, and thus it has always been, so they say. But they'd be wrong. You can perhaps be sure about death and taxes, but you might want to reconsider the rest of it. In fact, at many times in our planet's history, north has become south and south has become north, in a process called magnetic reversal.
Paleogeologists have discovered the existence of these mysterious phenomena (in a field study known as paleomagnetism) by investigating rocks. When rocks are being formed from magmas, atoms within their crystals respond to the earth's magnetic field by "pointing" towards the magnetic north people. By age dating the rocks and nothing their magnetic alignment, scientists can determine where on earth the north pole was located at that time because as the rocks solidified, they trapped that information within them. The study of ancient lava flows has revealed that at certain periods in the earth's history magnetic north was directly opposite its present location. In fact, it has been determined that the north/south reversal has occurred on average every 500,000 years and that the last reversal took place about 700,000 years ago. Scientists call those periods of "normal" polarity (the magnetic orientation of our modern era) and "reversed" polarity (the magnetic orientation of reverse situation) by the name "magnetic chrons."
Although the fact of such reversals is clear, why and how they happen and their effects on the planet are subjects of considerable debate. Because no one knows precisely how the earth's magnetic field is produced, it becomes difficult to say how it might be reversed. Among explanations proposed are a reversal of the direction of convection currents in the liquid outer core of the earth and a collision between the earth and a meteorite or comet. And while the precise effects of a reversal are not known, there can be little doubt that the earth would receive during the process a great deal more damaging ultraviolet radiation than it now does and that such occurrences have been correlated with the extinction of certain species in the geologic past.