Read the passage given below and then answer the questions given below the passage. Some words may be highlighted for your attention. Read carefully.
The Supreme Court’s decision to lay down stringent “safeguards” in the enforcement of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, threatens to undermine the court’s own formidable record of acting as a custodian of the rights of the most disprivileged. A two-member bench said the SC/ST Act is being abused by “vested interests” for political or personal reasons and that procedural safeguards were necessary “to avoid false implication” of innocents under the Act. There must be checks and balances to prevent abuse of the law as well. But these cannot be of a kind that render the law ineffective. For instance, The Supreme Court’s decision to issue guidelines to check the abuse of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, has raised many eyebrows with several political parties and Dalit activists demanding its review. The apex court ordered that under the Act, a public servant can be arrested after approval of the appointing authority and a non-public servant only after a sanction by the Senior Superintendent of Police. It opened a window of anticipatory bail and a way to ascertain whether complaints against the accused were frivolous or motivated.
“Any harassment of an innocent citizen, irrespective of caste or religion, is against the guarantee of the Constitution. This court must enforce such a guarantee.” The court has rightly noted that the Act should promote fraternity and integration of society as the Constitution envisages “a cohesive, unified and casteless society.” In India, SCs and STs have suffered social ostracisation and economic deprivation for centuries. Over the last 10 years (2007-2017), there has been a 66% growth in crime against Dalits. Rape of Dalit women has doubled in the last 10 years. The figures represent only a tip of the iceberg since most Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by higher castes. In fact, political mobilisations by the Dalits and Adivasis to secure their constitutional rights have been met in recent times with communal backlash and state unresponsiveness across the country even as dominant caste groups have made repeal of the SC/ST Act a major political demand. These trends underline that power relations in society continue to be loaded against Dalits and other marginal groups.
To address this social deficit and achieve the "dignity of the individual'' was set out as one of the objectives in the Preamble to the Constitution. Article 17 abolished untouchability and made it “an offence punishable in accordance with law”. Despite laws, the abhorrent practice of discrimination and violence against the SCs and STs continues. The decline in the conviction rate for crimes against Dalits has created an impression that this may be driven by false filing of cases. The conviction had in fact improved — from 23.8% in 2013 to 28.8% in 2014. Why it dropped in 2015 after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power has to be probed. While attempting to achieve the mandate of Article 17, courts cannot be oblivious to the rampant misuse of the law in question. The accused too has a right to fair trial. “The legislature never intended to use the Atrocities Act as an instrument to blackmail or to wreak personal vengeance. It has also been used against public servants performing their bona fide duties,” noted the apex court and has sought to address the issue by striking a balance with the spirit of the law and protecting liberty of an individual by introducing safeguards.
Read the passage given below carefully and answer the questions that follow. Some words have been highlighted for your attention.
In a globalised world, no country can hope to impose tariffs without affecting its own economic interests. Apart from disadvantaging its consumers, who will have to pay higher prices for certain goods, tariffs will also disrupt the supply chain of producers who rely on foreign imports. So both the U.S. and China, which have blamed each other for the ongoing trade war, are doing no good to their own economic fortunes by engaging in this tit-for-tat tariff battle. The minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve June policy meeting show that economic uncertainty due to the trade war is already affecting private investment in the U.S., with many investors deciding to scale back or delay their investment plans.
China, which is fighting an economic slowdown, will be equally affected. The ongoing trade war also threatens the rules-based global trade order which has managed to amicably handle trade disputes between countries for decades. It could also isolate the U.S., which has refused to settle differences through serious negotiations, as other global economies strike trade deals on their own. In March, for instance, 11 Asia-Pacific countries went ahead to sign a trans-Pacific trade deal while leaving out the U.S., which had pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in early 2017. If global trade tensions continue to simmer, however, it may not be too long before countries resort to other destructive measures such as devaluing their currencies to support domestic exporters. The world economy, which is on a slow path to recovery, can do without such unnecessary shocks.
From the following options, choose the one which most closely remebles the meaning of the phrase (from the passage) given:
Tit for Tat
Read the passage and answer the following questions.
When we came out of the cafe it had started to rain. ‘We must get a ´ taxi,’ my mother said. We were wearing ordinary hats and coats, and it was raining quite hard. ‘Why don’t we go back into the cafe and wait for it to stop?’ I said. I ´ wanted another of those banana splits. They were gorgeous. ‘It isn’t going to stop,’ my mother said. ‘We must get home.’ We stood on the pavement in the rain, looking for a taxi. Lots of them came by but they all had passengers inside them. ‘I wish we had a car with a chauffeur,’ my mother said. Just then a man came up to us. He was a small man and he was pretty old, probably seventy or more. He raised his hat politely and said to my mother, ‘Excuse me, I do hope you will excuse me . . . ’He was sheltering under an umbrella which he held high over his head. ‘Yes?’ my mother said, very cool and distant. ‘I wonder if I could ask a small favour of you,’ he said. ‘It is only a very small favour.’ I saw my mother looking at him suspiciously. With strange men, she has a golden rule which says, ‘The nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become.’ This little old man was particularly nice. He was polite. He was well-spoken. The little man shifted his umbrella from one hand to the other. ‘I’ve never forgotten it before,’ he said. ‘You’ve never forgotten what?’ my mother asked sternly. ‘My wallet,’ he said. ‘I must have left it in my other jacket. Isn’t that the silliest thing to do?’ ‘Are you asking me to give you money?’ my mother said. ‘Oh, good gracious me, not!’ he cried. ‘Heaven forbid I should ever do that!’ ‘Then what are you asking?’ my mother said. ‘Do hurry up. We’re getting soaked to the skin here.’ ‘I know you are,’ he said. ‘And that is why I’m offering you this umbrella of mine to protect you, and to keep forever, if . . . if only . . . ’ ‘If only what?’ my mother said. ‘If only you would give me in return a pound for my taxi-fare just to get me home.’ My mother was still suspicious. ‘If you had no money in the first place,’ she said, ‘then how did you get here?’ ‘I walked,’ he answered. ‘Every day I go for a lovely long walk and then I summon a taxi to get me home. I do it every day of the year.’ ’Why don’t you walk home now?’ my mother asked. ’Oh, I wish I could,’ he said. ’I do wish I could. But I don’t think I could manage it on these silly old legs of mine. I’ve gone too far already.’ My mother stood there chewing her lower lip. She was beginning to melt a bit, I could see that. And the idea of getting an umbrella to shelter under must have tempted her a good deal. ‘It’s a lovely umbrella,’ the little man said. ‘So I’ve noticed,’ my mother said. ‘It’s silk,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’ ‘Then why don’t you take it, madam,’ he said. ‘It cost me over twenty pounds, I promise you. But now it’s of no importance so long as I can get home and rest these old legs of mine.’ I saw my mother’s hand feeling for the clasp of her purse. She saw me watching her. I was giving her one of my own frosty-nosed looks this time and she knew exactly what I was telling her. Now listen, mummy, I was telling her, you simply mustn’t take advantage of a tired old man in this way. It’s a rotten thing to do. My mother paused and looked back at me. Then she said to the little man, ‘I don’t think it’s quite right that I should take an umbrella from you worth twenty pounds. I think I’d better just give you the taxi-fare and be done with it.’
Read the passage given below and then answer the questions given below the passage. Some words may be highlighted for your attention. Read carefully.
With the growth of humankind, technology has simultaneously grown enormously especially in the past few decades. Technology has been linked with our lives to a great extent, our purchasing, communicating, traveling, learning, living and more so has been drastically affected. A simple example to look into technological advancement with which many can relate is mobile phones and how immensely they have been developed because a phone used in the 19th century must have even been stopped production in the present times. The changing strides in the mobile phone industry can be primarily associated with higher demand and innovation from the people, resulting in today’s era where mobiles are considered to be person’s lifeline.
Technological advances have majorly been about increasing efficiency by saving time and cost of the people and this criteria is the driving force for industries and organizations. This advancement created and fueled by humans inherently has both a negative and a positive side. For positive impacts, it has created better living standards, achieved better health benefits, simplified human performing tasks, been expanding educational area to greater strides and such. For negative impacts, it is safe to say that we have hugely degraded the environment which may lead to our own doom. It is a “Terminator”- the movie- reference which depicts how robots, created by humans, slowly rise to wipe out the human race to dominate over the planet. It may seem to be unrealistic but at the speed that we are moving, it might as well be real.
Read the following passage and answer the questions given below.
The Hegelian notion of dialectic holds that all matter (or the thesis) always and inevitably creates its own opposite (or antithesis) from the contradiction between the thesis and antithesis results the ''synthesis''. But this is not the end as the synthesis for the dialectical continues and transforms to become the new thesis, which creates its own antithesis and so the dialectical process goes on. Marx applied the dialectical scheme to the analysis of the mode of production. The central point of Marx's thought is the dialectical relationship between the material world and the people in the society wherein people create the material world to fulfil their needs.
In this process, they change their needs and new needs are generated. This requires a change of relationships with the material world. Thus the material world which was to fulfil man's need turns into a constraint. There is a contradiction between the material world and the people in the society. So Marx, in his early works, argued that man was a 'product' of society rather than the other way round. This simple inversion of Hegel is the starting point for Marx's ''dialectical materialism''. According to Marx, dialectical materialism enables society to be studied empirically and scientifically rather than on speculation and metaphysical deductions. Marx further shows how materialism is more important than ideas and is driven by productive forces.
The most fundamental aspect of human existence is the absolute necessity to produce the means of subsistence. Marx states that the production of the means of subsistence is prior to all other human activities: society can function only when it can organise the means of production of its basic needs. Therefore, Marx's philosophy of human history has become his historical materialism. Marx regards man as both the producer and the product of society.
Man makes society and himself by his own actions. History is, therefore, the process of man's self-creation. Yet, man is also a product of society. He is shaped and moulded by the social relationships and systems of thought which he creates. An understanding of society, therefore, involves a historical perspective which examines the process whereby man both produces and is produced by social reality.
A society forms a totality of which the various parts are interconnected and influence each other. Thus economic, political, legal and religious institutions can only be understood in terms of their mutual effect. Economic factors, however, exert the primary influence and largely shape other aspects of society. The mode of production of economic goods determine the relationships between and among people. Thus society is patterned according to economic organisation. The history of society is a process of tension and conflict. Social change progresses out of contradictions built into the society which become a source of tension and ultimately the source of open conflict and radical change.
It is often argued that Marx's view of history is based on the idea of the dialectic. From this viewpoint, any process of change involves a tension between incompatible forces. Dialectical movement, therefore, represents a struggle of opposites, a conflict of contradictions. Conflict provides the dynamic principle, the source of change. The struggle between incompatible forces grows in intensity until there is a final collision. The result is a sudden leap forward which creates a new set of forces on a higher level of development. The dialectical process then begins again as the contradiction between the new set of forces propel change.
Consider the following statements. Which of these are incorrect?
A. The dialectical movement of a society is not a continuous process.
B. According to Marx, the fundamental aspect of human life is to find means of sustenance.
C. Marx sees the relationship between man and society as primarily an economic one.
Only A
Only B
Only C
Both A and B