Directions (Next Seven Questions) : Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
PASSAGE
Indeed the western recession is really the beginning of good news for India! But to understand that we will have to over away for a while from the topic of western recession! For years the Japanese style of management has been admired. However over the last decade or so, one key question has sprung up “if Japanese management style is as wonderful as described then why has Japan been in a recession for more than a decade?’
The answer to this question is very simple. Culture plays a very important part in shaping up economies. What succeeds in one culture fails in another. Japanese are basically non-materialistic. And however rich they become unlike others, they cannot just keep throwing and buying endlessly. And once they have everything they need; there is a saturation point. It was only when companies like Toyota realized that they cannot keep selling cars endlessly to their home market that they want really aggressive in the western markets and the rest is history. Japanese companies grew bigger by catering to the world markets when their home markets shrunk.
And the markets have to shrink finally after attaining a level of influence! And that’s great of the world because earth needs sustainable development. It does not need monstrous consumers who keep consuming at the cost of the environment and the earth. There should be limits to growth so that consumers are not converted into material dustbins for the profit of a handful of corporations. Owing to the materialistic culture elsewhere, it was possible to keep selling newer products to the consumers despite having existing ones which served equally well. They were lured through advertising and marketing techniques of ‘dustbinisation’of the customer; and then finally once they became ready customers, they were given loans and credits to help them buy more and more. When all the creditworthy people were given loans to a logical limit, they ceased to be part of the market. Even this world has understandable, if it could work as an eye opener, instead of taking the right step’ as Toyota did, they preferred to take a ‘shortcut’. Now banks went to the non creditworthy people and gave them loans. The people expectedly defaulted and the entire system collapsed.
Now like Toyota western companies will learn to find new markets. They will now lean towards India because of its common man! The billion plus population in the next 25 years will become, a consuming middle-class. Finally, the world’s attention will shift to the developing world. Finally, there will be a real surge income of these people and in the next fifty odd years, one can really hope to see an equal words in terms of material plenty, with poverty being almost nonexistent! And this will happen not by selling more cars to Americans and Europeans. It will happen by creating markets in India, china, Latin America and Africa, by giving their people purchasing power and by making products for them.
The recession has made us realize that is not because of worse management techniques, but because of limits to growth. And they will realize that it is great for planet earth. After all, how many cars and houses must the rich own before calling it enough? It’s time for them to look at others as well. Many years back, to increase his own profits, Henry Ford had started paying his workers more, so that they could buy this cars.. in similar fashion, now the developed world will pay the developing world people so that they can buy their cars and washing machines.
The recession will kick-start the process of making the entire world more prosperous, and lay the foundation of limits to growth in the west and the foundation of real globalization in the world…of the globalization of prosperity. And one of its first beneficiaries will be India.
Directions (Next three questions) : choose the word which is most similar in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
Directions (Next Seven Questions): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
PASSAGE
Capitalism is a great slave, but a pathetic master. This truth unfortunately gets lost in our chase for the elusive dream especially in the west, the land that has been marketed as the land of dreams…..the great Western dream. It’s the dream of being independent masters of our lives, of making big bucks and of being happy even if that happiness is being bought by money which all of them chase out there. No doubt, the west, on its part, has been fairly successful in creating material comforts a plenty. It has improved the living standard of its average citizen. However it has been achieved as a result of more than 200 years of unbridled growth and exploitation. And that is what has made the rest of the world mindlessly chase westernism, not necessarily happiness or an ideal form of society. All because the shop window looks very impressive and it has been marketed very well.
But a deep look inside the shop tells the different tale. A different world lies behind, a world that is not quite visible to the starry eyes millions---- for whom the western way of life seems to be the ultimate dream.
Thus we have Indians dreaming to become or to get married to an NRI and Indian middle class fathers dreaming of their son’s reaching the bay area and landing the tech jobs, unmindful of the second class life they end up leading in the west. What goes unseen and almost unheard is that the west also happens to be the land that is right amongst the top in terms of the number of divorces per thousand, the number of single parents per thousand, the number of old people in old homes, the number of suicides, homicides, and of course, the number of college/school shootouts.
And why not! After all, such societies are constantly driven towards higher profits and materialism. Expectedly, this materialism comes at a cost that the world paying today. This is the reason why we have millions dying of curable diseases in Africa and other underdeveloped countries, while the rich grow richer. Their growth will be reduced; if they were to start thinking of the poor. So what do they do justify their greed for more? They most shrewdly propagate market a ridiculously primitive law of the jungle for our 21st century civilian,’the law of the survival of the fittest’!
The interesting thing about material things is that they only give an illusion of happiness; however such happiness is always momentary in nature Ergo, at this juncture, you feel you are the happiest person in the world, after buying your new car or flat screen TV, and just a few days later, these are the very possessions that cease to make you happy. While you chase the bigger car and spend that extra bit of the wealth, you intercept someone’s shre of the daily bread and also sacrifice those who have the maximum power to make you happy family, emotions and love. Prolonged abstinence in feeling emotions finally destroys bliss; and you don’t even realize when you have become a dry-eyed cripple….and then you land up in semon workshops to find out the real meaning of life or whatever these workshops are capable of explaining. The truth is that such workshops are also driven by merchants who cash in on the dejected state of the people, a state created by their own fictional dreams. But by then it’s really too late.
By then you have made profits out of arms, and engineered wars to keep that industry alive. You have sold guns to across the counters at super markets and made profits. You’ve lobbied that guns should be made accessible to the common man, all for the sake of profit. This makes you realize one day that they are your own children who are in the line of fire against the school goer who opens fire at his schoolmates.
This is the society that finally creates an emotionless monster, who gets satisfaction in killing adults and children alike for no cause, no reason and for none, for himself. It is the utter destruction of spiritualism and the total focus on endless self gratification. Where so many single parent families and divorce exist, it is impossible to bring up children or influence the killers, any better.