Directions for the following 6 (six) items:
Read the following two passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only
Passage-1(next four questions)
Accountability, or the lack of it, in governance generally, and civil services, in particular, is a major factor underlying the deficiencies in governance and public administration. Designing an effective framework for accountability has been a key element of the reform agenda. A fundamental issue is whether civil services should be accountable to the political executive of the day or to society at large. In other words, how should internal and external accountability be reconciled? Internal accountability is sought to be achieved by internal performance monitoring, official supervision by bodies like the ---Central-Vigilance Commission-and-Comptroller and Auditor—General, and judicial review of executive decisions. Articles 311 and 312 of the Indian Constitution provide job security and safeguards to the civil services, especially the All India Services. The framers of the Constitution had envisaged that provision of these safeguards would result in a civil service that is not totally subservient to the political executive but will have the strength to function in larger public interest. The need to balance internal and external accountability is thus built into the Constitution. The issue is where to draw the line. Over the years, the emphasis seems to have tilted in favour of greater internal accountability of the civil services to the political leaders of the day who in turn are expected to be externally accountable to the society at large through the election process. This system for seeking accountability to Society has not worked out, and has led to several adverse consequences for governance.
Some special measures can be considered for improving accountability in civil services. Provisions of articles 311 and 312 should be reviewed and laws and regulations framed to ensure external accountability of civil services. The proposed Civil Services Bill seeks to address some of these requirements. The respective roles of professional civil services and the political executive should he defined so that professional managerial functions and management of civil services are depoliticized. For this purpose, effective statutory civil service boards should be created at the centre and in the states. Decentralization and devolution of authority to bring government and decision making closer to the people also helps to enhance accountability.
Passage-2(next two questions)
In general, religious traditions stress our duty to god, or to some universal ethical principle. Our duties to one another derive from these. The religious concept of rights is primarily derived from our relationship to this divinity or principle and the implication it has on our other relationships. This correspondence between rights and duties is critical to any further understanding of justice. But, for justice to be practiced; rights and duties cannot remain formal abstraction. They must be grounded in a community (common unity) bound together by a sense of common union (communion). Even as a personal virtue, this solidarity is essential to the practice and understanding of justice.
Directions for the following 5 (five) items : Read the following two passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only.
Passage-1(next four questions)
Biomass as fuel for power, heat, and transport has the highest mitigation potential of all renewable sources. It comes from agriculture and forest residues as well as from energy crops. The biggest challenge in using biomass residues is a long-term reliable supply delivered to the power plant at reasonable costs; the key problems are logistical constraints and the costs of fuel collection. Energy crops, if not managed properly, compete with food production and may have undesirable impacts on food prices. Biomass production is also sensitive to the physical impacts of a changing climate.
Projections of the future role of biomass are probably overestimated, given the limits to the sustainable biomass supply, unless breakthrough technologies substantially increase productivity. Climate-energy models project that biomass use could increase nearly four-fold to around 150 — 200 exajoules, almost a quarter of world primary energy in 2050. However the maximum sustainable technical potential of biomass resources (both residues and energy crops) without disruption of food and forest resources ranges from 80 — 170 exajoules a year by 2050, and only part of this is realistically and economically feasible. In addition, some climate models rely on biomass-based carbon capture and storage, an unproven technology, to achieve negative emissions and to buy some time during the first half of the century.
Some liquid biofuels such as corn-based ethanol, mainly for transport, may aggravate rather than ameliorate carbon emissions on a life-cycle basis. Second generation biofuels, based on ligno-cellulosic feedstocks — such as straw, bagasse, grass and wood — hold the promise of sustainable production that is high-yielding and emit low levels of greenhouse gases, but these are still in the R & D stage.
Passage-2(next two questions)
We are witnessing a dangerous dwindling of biodiversity in our food supply. The green revolution is a mixed blessing. Over time farmers have come to rely heavily on broadly adapted, high yield crops to the exclusion of varieties adapted to the local conditions. Monocropping vast fields with the same genetically uniform seeds helps boost yield and meet immediate hunger needs. Yet high-yield varieties are also genetically weaker crops that require expensive chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides. In our focus on increasing the amount of food we produce today, we have accidentally put ourselves at risk for food shortages in future.
Direction for the following 3 (three) items: Consider the given -formation and answer the three items that follow.
Six boxes A, B, C, D, E and F have been painted with six different colours viz., violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow and orange and arranged from left to right (not necessarily either kept or painted with the colours in the same order). Each box contains a ball of any one of the following six games: cricket, hockey, tennis, golf, football and volleyball (not necessarily in the same order). The golf ball is in violet box and is not in the box D. The box A which contains tennis ball is orange in colour and is at the extreme right. The hockey ball is neither in box D nor in box E. The box C having cricket ball is painted green. The hockey ball is neither in the box painted blue nor in the box painted yellow. The box C is fifth from right and next to box B. The box B contains volleyball. The box containing the hockey ball is between the boxes containing golf ball and volleyball.
Directions for the following 8 (eight) items :
Read the following eight passages and answer the item that follows each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only.
Passage-1(next question)
By killing transparency and competition, crony capitalism is harmful to free enterprise, opportunity and economic growth. Crony capitalism, where rich and the influential are alleged to have received land and natural resources and various licences in return forpayoffs to venal politicians, is now a major issue to be tackled. One of the greatest dangers to growth of developing economies like India is the middle-income where crony capitalism creates oligarchies that slow down the growth.
Passage-2(next question)
Climate adaptation may be rendered ineffective if policies are not designed in the context of other development concerns. For instance, a comprehensive strategy that seeks to improve food security in the context of climate change may include a set of coordinated measures related to agricultural extension, crop diversification, integrated water and pest management and agricultural information series. Some of these measures may have to do with climate changes and others with economic development.
Passage-3(next question)
Understanding of the role of biodiversity in the hydrological cycle enables better policy-making. The term biodiversity refers to the variety of plants, animals, microorganisms, and the ecosystems in which they occur. Water and biodiversity are interdependent. In reality, the hydrological cycle decides how biodiversity functions. In turn, vegetation and soil drive the movement of water. Every glass of water we drink has, at least in part, passed through fish, trees, bacteria, soil and other organisms. Passing through these ecosystems, it is cleansed and made fit for consumption. The supply of water is a critical service that the environment provides.
Passage-4(next question)
In the last decade, the banking sector has been restructured with a high degree of automation and products that mainly serve middle-class and upper middle-class society. Today there is need for a new agenda for the banking and non-banking financial services that does not exclude the common man
Passage-5(next question)
Safe and sustainable sanitation in slums has immeasurable benefits to women and girls in terms of their health, safety, privacy and dimity. However, women do not feature in most of the schemes and policies on urban sanitation. The fact that even now the manual scavenging exists, ones to show that not enough has been done to promote pour-flush toilets and discontinue the use of dry latrines. A more sustained and rigorous campaign needs to be launched towards the right to sanitation on a very large scale. This should primarily focus on the abolition of manual scavenging.
Passage-6(next question)
To understand the nature and quantity of Government proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character. As nature created him for social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants; and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them into society.
Passage-7(next question)
The nature of the legal imperatives in any given state corresponds to the effective demands that state encounters, and that these, in their turn, depend, in a general way, upon the manner in which economic power is distributed in the society which the state controls.
Passage-8(next question)
About 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agricultural practices. This includes nitrous oxide fertilizers; methane from livestock, rice production, and manure storage; and carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning biomass, but this excludes CO2 emissions from soil management practices, sayannah burning and deforestation. Foresty and use, and land-use change account for another percent of greenhouse gas emissions each ear, three quarters of which come from tropical deforestation. The remainder is largely from draining and burning tropical peatland. About the same amount of carbon is stored in the world's peatlands as is stored in the Amazon rainforest.
Direction for the following 3 (three) items : Consider the given information and answer the three items that follow.
When three friends A, B and C met, it was found that each of them wore an outer garment of a different colour. In random order, the garments are: jacket, sweater and tie; and the colours are: blue, white and black. Their surnames in random order Kumar and Singh.
Further, we know that :
1. neither B nor Ribeiro wore a white sweater
2. C wore a tie
3. Singh's garment was not white
4. Kumar does not wear a jacket
5. Ribeiro does not like to wear the black colour
6. Each of the friends wore only one outer garment of only one colour
Directions for the following 8 (eight) items: Read the following five passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only.
Passage-1(next question)
As we look to 2050, when we will need to feed two billion more people, the question of which diet is best hartaen on new urgency. The foods we choose to eat in the coming decades will have dramatic ramifications for the planet. Simply put, a diet that revolves around meat and dairy a way of eating that is on the rise throughout the developing. world, will take a greater toll on the world's resources than one that revolves around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
Passage-2(next question)
All humans digest mother's milk as infants, but until cattle began being domesticated 10,000 years ago, children once weaned no longer needed to digest milk. As a result, they stopped making the enzyme lactase, which breaks down the sugar lactose into simple sugars. After humans began herding cattle, it became tremendously advantageous to digest milk, and lactose tolerance evolved independently among cattle herders in Europe, the middle East and Africa. Groups not dependant on cattle, such as the Chinese and Thai, remain lactose intolerant.
Passage-3(next question)
"The conceptual difficulties in National Income comparisons between underdeveloped and industrialised countries are particularly serious because a part of the national output in various underdeveloped countries is produced without passing through the commercial channels."
Passage-4(next question)
An increase in human-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could initiate a chain reaction between plant and microorganisms that would unsettle one of the largest carbon reservoirs on the planet soil In a study, it was found that the soil, which contains twice the amount of carbon present in a plants and Earth's atmosphere combined, could become increasingly volatile people add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This is largely because of increased plant growth. Although a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, carbon dioxide also supports plant growth. As trees and other vegetation flourish in a carbon dioxide-rich future, their roots could stimulate microbial activity in soil that may in turn accelerate the decomposition of soil carbon and its relsase into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Passage-5(next four questions)
Historically, the biggest Challenge to world agriculture has been to achieve a balance between demand for and supply of food. At the level of individual countries, the demand-supply balance can be a critical issue for a closed economy, especially if it is a populous economy and its domesticagriculture is not growing sufficiently enough to ensure food supplies, on an enduring basis; it is not so much and not always, of a constraint for an open, and growing economy, which has adequate exchange surplues to buy food abroad. For the world as a whole, Spply-demand balance is always an inescapable prerequisite for warding off hunger and starvation. However, global availability of adequate supply does not necessarily mean that food would automatically move from countries of surplus to of deficit if the latter lack in purchasing power. The uneven distribution of Inoger, starvation, under or malnourishment, etc., at the world-level, thus owes itself to the presence of empty-pock hungry mouths, overwhelmingly confined to the underdeveloped economies. Inasmuch as 'a two-square meal' is of elemental significance to basic human existence, the issue of worldwide supply` of food has been gaining significance, in recent times, both because the quantum and the composition of demand has been undergoing big changes, and because, in recent years, the capailities individual countries to generate uninterrupted chain of food supplies have come under strain. Food production, marketing and prices, especially price-affordability by the poor in the developing world, have become global issues that need global thinking and global solutions.
