CAT Test 1 Question 77 to 80

PASSAGE VIII 

At the heart of the enormous boom in wine consumption that has taken place in the English-speaking world over the last two decades or so is a fascinating, happy paradox. In the days when wine was exclusively the preserve of a narrow cultural elite, bought either at auctions or from gentleman wine merchants in wing collars and bow-ties, to be stored in rambling cellars and decanted to order by one's butler, the ordinary drinker didn't get a look-in. Wine was considered a highly technical subject, in which anybody without the necessary ability could only fall flat on his or her face in embarrassment. It wasn't just that you needed a refined aesthetic sensibility for the stuff if it wasn't to be hopelessly wasted on you. It required an intimate knowledge of what came from where, and what it was supposed to taste like.

Those were times, however, when wine appreciation essentially meant a familiarity with the great French classics, with perhaps a smattering of other wines—like sherry and port. That was what the wine trade dealt in. These days, wine is bought daily in supermarkets and high-street chains to be consumed that evening, hardly anybody has a cellar to store it in and most don't even possess a decanter. Above all, the wines of literally dozens of countries are available on our market. When a supermarket offers its customers a couple of fruity little numbers from Brazil, we scarcely raise an eyebrow.

It seems, in other words, that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumers are no longer intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fume from their Pouilly-Fuisse, just at the very moment when there is more to know than ever before.

The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States: the name of the grape from which the wine is made. At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native Englishspeakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names, and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian upstarts.

In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend—not because they think their wine isn't as good as the best from California or South Australia (what French winemaker will ever admit that?) but because they don't traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. They call them Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren't about to change. Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the varietal names on their labels and are tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way if France is to avoid simply becoming a specialty source of old-fashioned wines for old fashioned connoisseurs.

Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud, who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble, can be dispersed by the tannins in wine. Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK, largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly, the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a bottle of red wine every day!

77. Which one of the following CANNOT be reasonably attributed to the labelling strategy followed by wine producers in English-speaking countries?

[1] Consumers buy wines on the basis of their familiarity with a grape variety's name.

[2] Even ordinary customers now have more access to technical knowledge about wine.

[3] Consumers are able to appreciate better quality wines.

[4] Some non-English speaking countries like Brazil indicate grape variety names on their labels.

78. The tone that the author uses while asking "What French winemaker will ever admit that?" is best described as

[1] caustic. [2] satirical. [3] critical. [4] hypocritical.

79. What according to the author should the French do to avoid becoming a producer of merely oldfashioned wines?

[1] Follow the labelling strategy of the English-speaking countries.

[2] Give their wines English names.

[3] Introduce fruity wines as Brazil has done.

[4] Produce the wines that have become popular in the English-speaking world.

80. Which one of the following, if true, would provide most support for Dr. Renaud's findings about the effect of tannins?

[1] A survey showed that film celebrities based in France have a low incidence of coronary heart disease.

[2] Measurements carried out in southern France showed red wine drinkers had significantly higher levels of coronary heart incidence than white wine drinkers did.

[3] Data showed a positive association between sales of red wine and incidence of coronary heart disease.

[4] Long-term surveys in southern France showed that the incidence of coronary heart disease was significantly lower in red wine drinkers than in those who did not drink red wine.

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CAT Test 1 Question 73 to 76

PASSAGE VII

The viability of the multinational corporate system depends upon the degree to which people will tolerate the unevenness it creates. It is well to remember that the 'New Imperialism' which began after 1870 in a spirit of Capitalism Triumphant, soon became seriously troubled and after 1914 was characterized by war, depression, breakdown of the international economic system and war again, rather than Free Trade, Pax Britannica and Material Improvement. A major reason was Britain's inability to cope with the by-products of its own rapid accumulation of capital; i.e., a class-conscious labour force at home; a middle class in the hinterland; and rival centres of capital on the Continent and in America. Britain's policy tended to be atavistic and defensive rather than progressive-more concerned with warding off new threats than creating new areas of expansion. Ironically, Edwardian England revived the paraphernalia of the landed aristocracy it had just destroyed. Instead of embarking on a 'big push' to develop the vast hinterland of the Empire, colonial administrators often adopted policies to arrest the development of either a native capitalist class or a native proletariat which could overthrow them.

As time went on, the centre had to devote an increasing share of government activity to military and other unproductive expenditures; they had to rely on alliances with an inefficient class of landlords, officials and soldiers in the hinterland to maintain stability at the cost of development. A great part of the surplus extracted from the population was thus wasted locally. .

The New Mercantilism (as the Multinational Corporate System of special alliances and privileges, aid and tariff concessions is sometimes called) faces similar problems of internal and external division. The centre is troubled: excluded groups revolt andeven some of the affluent are dissatisfied with the roles. Nationalistic rivalry between major capitalist countries remains an important divisive factor. Finally,

there is the threat presented by the middle classes and the excluded groups of the underdeveloped countries. The national middle classes in the underdeveloped countries came to power when the centre weakened but could not, through their policy of import substitution manufacturing, establish a viable basis for sustained growth. They now face a foreign exchange crisis and an unemployment (or population) crisis-the first indicating their inability to function in the international economy and the second indicating their alienation from the people they are supposed to lead. In the immediate future, these national middle classes will gain a new lease of life as they take advantage of the spaces created by the rivalry between American and non-American oligopolists striving to establish global market positions.

The native capitalists will again become the champions of national independence as they bargain with multinational corporations. But the conflict at this level is more apparent than real, for in the end the fervent nationalism of the middle class asks only for promotion within the corporate structure and not for a break with that structure. In the last analysis their power derives from the metropolis and they cannot easily afford to challenge the international system. They do not command the loyalty of their own population and cannot really compete with the large, powerful, aggregate capitals from the centre. They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumption standards' set at the centre.

The main threat comes from the excluded groups. It is not unusual in underdeveloped countries for the top 5 per cent to obtain between 30 and 40 per cent of the total national income, and for the top one-third to obtain anywhere from 60 to 70 per cent. At most, one-third of the population can be said to benefit in some sense from the dualistic growth that characterizes development in the hinterland. The reaining two-thirds, who together get only one-third of the income, are outsiders, not because they do not contribute to the economy, but because they do not share in the benefits. They provide a source of cheap labour which helps keep exports to the developed world at a low price and which has financed the urbanbiased growth of recent years. In fact, it is difficult to see how the system in most underdeveloped countries could survive without cheap labour since removing it (e.g. diverting it to public works projects as is done in socialist countries) would raise consumption costs to capitalists and professional elites.

73. According to the author, the British policy during the 'New Imperialism' period tended to be defensive because

1. it was unable to deal with the fallouts of a sharp increase in capital.

2. its cumulative capital had undesirable side-effects.

3. its policies favoured developing the vast hinterland.

4. it prevented the growth of a set-up which could have been capitalistic in nature.

74. The author is in a position to draw parallels between New Imperialism and New Mercantilism because

1. both originated in the developed Western capitalist countries.

2. New Mercantilism was a logical sequel to New Imperialism.

3. they create the same set of outputs-a labour force, middle classes and rival centres of capital.

4. both have comparable uneven and divisive effects.

75. Under New Mercantilism, the fervent nationalism of the native middle classes does not create conflict with the multinational corporations because they (the middle classes)

1. negotiate with the multinational corporations.

2. are dependent on the international system for their continued prosperity.

3. are not in a position to challenge the status quo.

4. do not enjoy popular support.

76. In the sentence, "They are prisoners of the taste patterns and consumption standards set at the centre." (fourth paragraph), what is the meaning of 'centre'?

1. National government.

2. Native capitalists.

3. New capitalists.

4. None of the above.

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CAT Test 1 Question 64 to 72

PASSAGE VI

I want to stress this personal helplessness we are all stricken with in the face of a system that has passed beyond our knowledge and control. To bring it nearer home, I propose that we switch off from the big things like empires and their wars to little familiar things. Take pins for example! I do not know why it is that I so seldom use a pin when my wife cannot get on without boxes of them at hand; but it is so, and I will therefore take pins as being for some reason specially important to women.

There was a time when pinmakers could buy the material, shape it, make the head and the point, ornament it, and take it to market or to your door and sell it to you. They had to know three trades: buying, making, and selling; and the making required skill in several operations. They not only knew how the thing was done from beginning to end, but could do it. But they could not afford to sell you a box of pins for a farthing. Pins cost so much that a woman’s dress allowance was calling pin money.

By the end of the eighteenth century Adam Smith boasted that it took eighteen men to make a pin, each man doing a little bit of the job and passing the pin on to the next, and none of them being able to make a whole pin or to buy the materials or to sell it when it was made. The most you could say for them was that at least they had some idea of how it was made, though they could not make it. Now as this meant that they were clearly less capable and knowledgeable men than the old pinmakers, you may ask why Adam Smith boasted of it as a triumph of civilisation when its effect was so clearly a degrading effect. The reason was that by setting each man to do just one little bit of the work and nothing but that, over and over again, he became very quick at it. The men, it is said, could turn out nearly five thousand pins a day each; and thus pins became plentiful and cheap. The country was supposed to be richer because it had more pins, though it had turned capable men into mere machines doing their work without intelligence and being fed by the spare food of the capitalist as an engine is fed with coals and oil. That was why the poet Goldsmith, who was a farsighted economist as well as a poet, complained that ‘wealth accumulates, and men decay’.

Nowadays Adam Smith’s eighteen men are as extinct as the diplodocus. The eighteen flesh-and-blood machines are replaced by machines of steel, which spout out pins by the hundred million. Even sticking them into pink papers is done by machinery. The result is that with the exception of a few people who design the machines, nobody knows how to make a pin or how a pin is made: that is to say, the modern worker in pin manufacture need not be one-tenth so intelligent and skilful and accomplished as the old pinmaker; and the only compensation we have for this deterioration is that pins are so cheap that a single pin has no expressible value at all. Even with a big profit stuck on to the cost-price you can buy dozens for a farthing; and pins are so recklessly thrown away and wasted that verses have to be written to persuade children (without success) that it is a sin to steal a pin.

Many serious thinkers, like John Ruskin and William Morris, have been greatly troubled by this, just as Goldsmith was, and have asked whether we really believe that it is an advance in wealth to lose our skill and degrade our workers for the sake of being able to waste pins by the ton. We shall see later on, when we come to consider the Distribution of Leisure, that the cure for this is not to go back to the old ways; for if the saving of time by modern machinery was equally divided among us, it would set us all free for higher work than pinmaking or the like. But in the meantime the fact remains that pins are now made by men and women who cannot make anything by themselves, and could not arrange between themselves to make anything even in little bits. They are ignorant and helpless, and cannot lift their finger to begin their day’s work until it has all been arranged for them by their employers who themselves do not understand the machines that buy, and simply pay other people to set them going by carrying out the machine maker’s directions.

The same is true of clothes. Formerly the whole work of making clothes, from the shearing of the sheep to the turning out of the finished and washed garment ready to put on, had to be done in the country by the men and women of the household, especially the women; so that to this day an unmarried woman is called a spinster. Nowadays nothing is left of all this but the sheep shearing; and even that, like the milking of cows, is being done by machinery, as the sewing is. Give a woman a sheep today and ask her to produce a woollen dress for you; and not only will she be quite unable to do it, but you are as likely as not to find that she is not even aware of any connection between sheep and clothes. When she gets her clothes, which she does by buying them at a shop, she knows that there is a difference between wool and cotton and silk, between flannel and merino, perhaps even between stockinet and together wefts; but as to how they are made, or what they are made of, or how they came to be in the shop ready for her to buy, she knows hardly anything. And the shop assistant from whom she buys is no wiser. The people engaged in the making of them know even less; for many of them are too poor to have much choice of materials when they buy their own clothes.

Thus the capitalist system has produced an almost universal ignorance of how things are made and done, whilst at the same time it has caused them to be made and done on a gigantic scale. We have to buy books and encyclopaedias to find out what it is we are doing all day; and as the books are written by people who are not doing it, and who get their information from other books, what they tell us is from twenty to fifty years out of date, and impractical at that. And of course most of us are too tired of our work when we come home to want to read about it; what we need is a cinema to take our minds off it and feed our imagination.

It is a funny place, this word of Capitalism, with its astonishing spread of ignorance and helplessness, boasting all the time of its spread of education and enlightenment. There stand the thousands of property owners and the millions of wage workers; none of them able to make anything, none of them knowing what to do until somebody tells them, none of them having the least notion of how it is that they find people paying them money, and things in the shops to buy with it. And when they travel they are surprised to find that savages and Esquimaux and villagers who have to make everything for themselves are more intelligent and resourceful! The wonder would be if they were anything else. We should die of idiocy through disuse of our mental faculties if we did not fill our heads with romantic nonsense out of illustrated newspapers and novels and plays and films. Such stuff keeps us alive; but it falsifies everything for us so absurdly that it leaves us more or less dangerous lunatics in the real world.

Excuse my going on like this; but as I am a writer of books and plays myself; I know the folly and peril of it better than you do. And when I see that this moment of our utmost ignorance and helplessness, delusion and folly, has been stumbled on by the blind forces of Capitalism as the moment for giving votes to everybody, so that the few wise women are hopelessly overruled by the thousands whose political minds, as far as they can be said to have any political minds at all, have been formed in the cinema, I realise that I had better stop writing plays for a while to discuss political and social realities in this book with those who are intelligent enough to listen to me.

64. A suitable title to the passage would be…

           

[1] You can’t hear a pin drop nowadays.            

[2] Capitalism and labour disintegration: pinning the blame.

            [3] The saga of the non-safety pins.      

            [4] Reaching the pinnacle of capitalistic success.

65. Which of the following is true as far as pins are concerned?

           

[1] The cost of pins is more nowadays to produce.        

            [2] Earlier, workmen made pins with a lot of love and care.

            [3] Pinball machines are the standard pin producing gadgets nowadays.

            [4] It took far longer to make a pin earlier.

66. Why do you think that the author gives the example of Adam Smith?

[1] Because he thinks that Adam Smith was a boaster without any facts to back his utterance.

[2] Because he wants to give us an example of something undesirable that Adam Smith was proud of.

[3] Because he is proud to be a believer in a tenet of production that even a great man like Adam Smith boasted about.

[4] Because he feels that Adam Smith was right when he said that it took eighteen men to make a pin.

67.        It may be inferred from the passage that the author…

            [1] is a supporter of craftsmanship over bulk mechanised production.

            [2] is a supporter of assembly line production over socialistic systems of the same.

            [3] is a defender of the faith in capitalistic production.

            [4] None of the above.

68. The reason that children have to be taught that stealing a pin is wrong is that:

[1] they have an amazing proclivity to steal them right from childhood.

[2] pins are so common and cheap that taking one would not even be considered stealing by them.

[3] stealing a pin would lead to stealing bigger things in the future.

[4] stealing an insignificant thing like a pin smacks of kleptomania.

69. Which of the following is not against the modern capitalistic system of mass production?

            [1] John Ruskin            

[2] Goldsmith   

[3] Adam Smith

[4] William Morris

70. Which of the following can be a suitable first line to introduce the hypothetical next paragraph at the end of the passage?

            [1] The distribution of leisure is not a term that can be explained in a few words.

            [2] If people wear clothes they hardly seem to think about the method of production.

            [3] Machines are the gods of our age and there seems to be no atheists.

            [4] Cannot be determined from the passage.

71.  When the author says that a woman now is not likely to know about any connection between sheep and clothes, he is probably being:

            [1] vindictive    

[2] chauvinistic             

[3] satirical       

[4] demeaning

72. Goldsmith’s dictum, “wealth accumulates, and men decay,” in the context of the passage, probably means:

            [1] the more wealthy people get, they become more and more corrupt.

            [2] the more rich people get, they forget the nuances of individual ability.

            [3] people may have a lot of money, but they have to die and decay someday.

            [4] the more a company gets wealthy the less they take care of people.

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CAT Test 1 Question 55 to 59

PASSAGE IV 

The controversy over genetically-modified food continues unabated in the West. Genetic modification (GM) is the science by which the genetic material of a plant is altered, perhaps to make it more resistant to pests or killer weeds, or to enhance its nutritional value. Many food biotechnologists claim that GM will be a major contribution of science to mankind in the 21st century. On the other hand, large numbers of opponents, mainly in Europe, claim that the benefits of GM are a myth propagated by multinational corporations to increase their profits, that they pose a health hazard, and have therefore called for governments to ban the sale of genetically-modified food.

The anti-GM campaign has been quite effective in Europe, with several European Union member countries imposing a virtual ban for five years over genetically-modified food imports. Since the genetically modified food industry is particularly strong in the United States of America, the controversy also constitutes another chapter in the US-Europe skirmishes which have become particularly acerbic after the US invasion of Iraq.

To a large extent, the GM controversy has been ignored in the Indian media, although Indian biotechnologists have been quite active in GM research. Several groups of Indian biotechnologists have been working on various issues connected with crops grown in India. One concrete achievement which has recently figured in the news is that of a team led by the former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Asis Datta—it has successfully added an extra gene to potatoes to enhance the protein content of the tuber by at least 30 percent. Not surprisingly, the new potato has been called the protato. The protato is now in its third year of field trials. It is quite likely that the GM controversy will soon hit the headlines in India since a spokesperson of the Indian Central government has recently announced that the government may use the protato in its midday meal programme for schools as early as next year.

Why should "scientific progress", with huge potential benefits to the poor and malnourished, be so controversial? The anti-GM lobby contends that pernicious propaganda has vastly exaggerated the benefits of GM and completely evaded the costs which will have to be incurred if the genetically-modified food industry is allowed to grow unchecked. In particular, they allude to different types of costs.

This group contends that the most important potential cost is that the widespread distribution and growth of genetically-modified food will enable the corporate world (alias the multinational corporations—MNCs) to completely capture the food chain. A "small" group of biotech companies will patent the transferred genes as well as the technology associated with them. They will then buy up the competing seed merchants and seed-breeding centres, thereby controlling the production of food at every possible level. Independent farmers, big and small, will be completely wiped out of the food industry. At best, they will be reduced to the status of being subcontractors.

This line of argument goes on to claim that the control of the food chain will be disastrous for the poor since the MNCs, guided by the profit motive, will only focus on the high-value food items demanded by the affluent. Thus, in the long run, the production of basic staples which constitute the food basket of the poor will taper off. However, this vastly overestimates the power of the MNCs. Even if the research promoted by them does focus on the high-value food items, much of biotechnology research is also funded by governments in both developing and developed countries. Indeed, the protato is a by-product of this type of research. If the protato passes the field trials, there is no reason to believe that it cannot be marketed in the global potato market. And this type of success story can be repeated with other basic food items.

The second type of cost associated with the genetically-modified food industry is environmental damage. The most common type of "genetic engineering" involves gene modification in plants designed to make them resistant to applications of weed-killers. This then enables farmers to use massive dosages of weedkillers so as to destroy or wipe out all competing varieties of plants in their fields. However, some weeds through genetically-modified pollen contamination may acquire resistance to a variety of weed-killers. The only way to destroy these weeds is through the use of ever-stronger herbicides which are poisonous and linger on in the environment.

55. The author doubts the anti-GM lobby's contention that MNC control of the food chain will be disastrous for the poor because

[1] MNCs will focus on high-value food items.

[2] MNCs are driven by the motive of profit maximization.

[3] MNCs are not the only group of actors in genetically-modified food research.

[4] economic development will help the poor buy MNC-produced food.

56. Using the clues in the passage, which of the following countries would you expect to be in the forefront of the anti-GM campaign?

[1] USA and Spain.

[2] India and Iraq.

[3] Germany and France.

[4] Australia and New Zealand.

57. Genetic modification makes plants more resistant to killer weeds. However, this can lead to environmental damage by

[1] wiping out competing varieties of plants which now fall prey to killer weeds.

[2] forcing application of stronger herbicides to kill weeds which have become resistant to weak herbicides.

[3] forcing application of stronger herbicides to keep the competing plants weed-free.

[4] not allowing growth of any weeds, thus reducing soil fertility.

58. Which of the following about the Indian media's coverage of scientific research does the passage seem to suggest?

[1] Indian media generally covers a subject of scientific importance when its mass application is likely.

[2] Indian media's coverage of scientific research is generally dependent on MNCs' interests.

[3] Indian media, in partnership with the government, is actively involved in publicizing the results of scientific research.

[4] Indian media only highlights scientific research which is funded by the government.

59. According to the passage, biotechnology research

[1] is of utility only for high value food items.

[2] is funded only by multinational corporations.

[3] allows multinational corporations to control the food basket of the poor.

[4] is funded mainly by the government of both the rich and poor countries.

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CAT Test 1 Question 60 to 63

PASSAGE V 

The dismal science of economics lies at the heart of many public policy debates, but the range and quality of economic opinion appearing in Canada.s news media has never been more dismal. Not that long ago, editors seeking expert advice on economic policy would canvass a wide range of opinion in the nation.s universities. Their sources would be scholarly economists whose research appeared in peer-reviewed economics journals. Today news coverage of economic issues ignores academic voices in favour of business-supported study mills flogging neo-conservative nostrums for the nation.s economic ills.

Cloaked in pseudo-academic garb by virtue of their self-designation as .institutes,. the Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies seek to influence news coverage and public policy toward a consistent agenda: less government, lower and less progressive taxes, fewer social programs, more freedom for the owners of capital, and less power for the purveyors of labour. Their .studies,. often penned by junior-varsity economists, are assiduously promoted to key journalists and influential bureaucrats with news releases and executive summaries that distil complex topics into easily digested simplicities.

Lars Osberg, a distinguished emeritus professor of economics at Dalhousie, recently compared his relationship to the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies as that of a geographer to the Flat Earth Society. Economist Michael Bradfield refers to AIMS.s Ontario counterpart as the .Seedy. Howe Institute. Such criticism hasn.t blunted the success of these organizations, which has been astonishing. Newspapers eat them up. A host of policy issues, the shift from income taxes to consumption taxes, the crippling of Canada.s generic drug industry and the consequent stratospheric rise in drug prices, the pursuit of international trade unhampered by environmental safeguards or worker rights were all promoted heavily by these study mills. The left has responded haltingly with counter-institutions like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, publisher of the Alternative Budget, but its effectiveness has been hindered by the stigma of union financing in a way that business financing has not impeded the right-wing institutes.

Readers with Internet access can find a useful antidote to the tendentiousness of media economic coverage in the work of Brian MacLean, an economist at Laurentian University. Every few weeks, MacLean distributes an e-mail newsletter called Canada.s Economy in the Newspapers. Each issue reviews several recent articles on economics, pointing out questionable assumptions, faulty interpretations, and logical contradictions. His style is engaging and easy to follow without sacrificing academic credibility. In one recent example, a pair of AIMS papers portrayed Canada.s system of equalization as a millstone that, far from assisting have-not provinces, had imprisoned them in a welfare trap. The gist of the argument is that increased provincial revenues from economic development, particularly resource based developments, are largely offset by reductions in equalization payments, with the result that provincial government.s have little or no incentive to promote economic development. Readers probably don.t need MacLean.s help to detect the real -world absurdity of this conclusion.

Since the Second World War; and likely for decades before that, economic development has been a nearly universal obsession for provincial and federal governments alike. In the logic of AIMS.s researchers, attempts by provincial governments to wheedle better royalty deals out of oil companies and mining corporations are misguided policies that could be eliminated if only the equalization program were gutted. MacLean points out other distortions in the AIMS analysis, such as the fundamental misconception that equalization is somehow supposed to be a tool for economic development, and Atlantic Canada.s continued lack of prosperity is proof of its failure. But equalization has nothing to do with economic development; its purpose is to ensure reasonable comparable levels of critical government services like health, education, and welfare, without wildly different levels of taxation.

60. Brian MacLean is:

(1) An economist

(2) Director of AIMS

(3) Producer of the newsletter .Canada.s Economy in the Newspapers.

(4) Both (1) and (3)

61. According to the passage, the quality of economic reporting and analysis in Canadian media till ome

time back was:

(1) Deplorable

(2) Academic

(3) Well researched

(4) The best in the world

62. Lars Osberg.s opinion about AIMS, according to the passage is:

(1) Excellent

(2) Unimpressed

(3) Critical

(4) Unbiased

63. AIMS is most likely to agree with which of the following economic opinions?

(1) The government should increase the expenditure on social reforms

(2) The government should increase the tax rates

(3) The government should interfere less with the market

(4) The educational system in Canada should be completely revamped

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CAT Test 1 Question 51 to 54

PASSAGE III

Recently I spent several hours sitting under a tree in my garden with the social anthropologist William Ury, a Harvard University professor who specializes in the art of negotiation and wrote the bestselling book, Getting to Yes. He captivated me with his theory that tribalism protects people from their fear of rapid change. He explained that the pillars of tribalism that humans rely on for security would always counter any significant cultural or social change. In this way, he said, change is never allowed to happen too fast. Technology, for example, is a pillar of society. Ury believes that every time technology moves in a new or radical direction, another pillar such as religion or nationalism will grow stronger -in effect, the traditional and familiar will assume greater importance to compensate for the new and untested. In this manner, human tribes avoid rapid change that leaves people insecure and frightened.

But we have all heard that nothing is as permanent as change. Nothing is guaranteed. Pithy expressions, to be sure, but no more than cliches. As Ury says, people don't live that way from day-to-day. On the contrary, they actively seek certainty and stability. They want to know they will be safe.

Even so, we scare ourselves constantly with the idea of change. An IBM CEO once said: 'We only re-structure for a good reason, and if we haven't re-structured in a while, that's a good reason.' We are scared that competitors, technology and the consumer will put us out of business -so we have to change all the time just to stay alive. But if we asked our fathers and grandfathers, would they have said that they lived in a period of little change? Structure may not have changed much. It may just be the speed with which we do things.

Change is over-rated, anyway. Consider the automobile. It's an especially valuable example, because the auto industry has spent tens of billions of dollars on research and product development in the last 100 years. Henry Ford's first car had a metal chassis with an internal combustion, gasoline-powered engine, four wheels with rubber tyres, a foot operated clutch assembly and brake system, a steering wheel, and four seats, and it could safely do 18 miles per hour. A hundred years and tens of thousands of research hours later, we drive cars with a metal chassis with an  internal combustion, gasoline-powered engine, four wheels with rubber tyres, a foot operated clutch assembly and brake system, a steering wheel, four seats -and the average speed in London in 2001 was 17.5 miles per hour!

That's not a hell of a lot of return for the money. Ford evidently doesn't have much to teach us about change. The fact that they're still manufacturing cars is not proof that Ford Motor Co. is a sound organization, just proof that it takes very large companies to make cars in great quantities -making for ~ almost impregnable entry barrier.

Fifty years after the development of the jet engine, planes are also little changed. They've grown bigger, wider and can carry more people. But those are incremental, largely cosmetic changes.

Taken together, this lack of real change has come to mean that in travel –whether driving or flying -time and technology have not combined to make things much better. The safety and design have of course accompanied the times and the new volume of cars and flights, but nothing of any significance has changed in the basic assumptions of the final product.

At the same time, moving around in cars or aeroplanes becomes less and less efficient all the time. Not only has there been no great change, but also both forms of transport have deteriorated as more people clamour to use them. The same is true for telephones, which took over hundred years to become mobile, or photographic film, which also required an entire century to change.

The only explanation for this is anthropological. Once established in calcified organizations, humans do two things: sabotage changes that might render people dispensable, and ensure industry-wide emulation. In the 1960s, German auto companies developed plans to scrap the entire combustion engine for an electrical design. (The same existed in the 1970s in Japan, and in the 1980s in France.) So for 40 years we might have been free of the wasteful and ludicrous dependence on fossil fuels. Why didn't it go anywhere? Because auto executives understood pistons and carburetors, and would be loath to cannibalize their expertise, along with most of their factories.

51. Which of the following best describes one of the main ideas discussed in the passage?

1. Rapid change is usually welcomed in society.

2. Industry is not as innovative as it is made out to be.

3. We should have less change than what we have now.

4. Competition spurs companies into radical innovation.

52. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?

1. Executives of automobile companies are inefficient and ludicrous.

2. The speed at which an automobile is driven in a city has not changed much in a century.

3. Anthropological factors have fostered innovation in automobiles by promoting use of new technologies.

4. Further innovation in jet engines has been more than incremental.

53. Which of the following views does the author fully support in the passage?

1. Nothing is as permanent as change.

2. Change is always rapid.

3. More money spent on innovation leads to more rapid change.

4. Over decades, structural change has been incremental.

54. According to the passage, the reason why we continued to be dependent on fossil fuels is that:

1. Auto executives did not wish to change.

2. No alternative fuels were discovered.

3. Change in technology was not easily possible.

4. German, Japanese and French companies could not come up with new technologies.

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CAT Test 1 SECTION II

Number of Questions: 40

DIRECTIONS for Questions 41 to 80: Read the passages and answer the questions based on them.

PASSAGE-I

On a Saturday afternoon in late May 1993, I flew north from Ho Chi Minh City - the former Saigon - to Hanoi on a Vietnam Airlines Tupolev 134B-3. A Soviet-built mid-range jetliner, the airplane had a proletarian blue and white exterior, but the cabin hinted of something different. Hand carved, darkly varnished cabinets in the forward bulkhead and circular portholes beside the seats created the illusion of an Art Deco sky-going yacht. It would have been the perfect setting for the opening scene in a remake of Lost Horizon, updated to jet but retaining an austere, 1930s panache.

That brief echo from one of the great survival classics was the first clue to what lay just ahead. A twice recycled boarding pass directed me to Seat 1A. In the Tupolev, all four positions in the first row allow a scant five inches between the seat and the polished wall. This was going to be a problem.

The cabin was stifling. When at long last all the passengers were seated and the boarding ladder had been rolled away, the air conditioning system erupted. Billows of frosty air blew down diagonally from spigots in the ceiling and crisscrossed in the aisle. In moments the windows were opaque and the walls ran with condensed moisture. Shangri-la had vanished in the vapour.

But the flight attendants were beautiful, dressed in powder blue skirts, stylized neckties, and impeccably white blouses. It was a minor matter that not one of them knew a word of English, or that when a friendly translator in the next seat asked about the type of airplane, they told him they didn.t know. All the smoking and seatbelt signs, at least, were in Vietnamese and English; until a few months before, the second language had been Russian. One of the smiling attendants emerged from the mist with Saigon Coke. It tasted like the old soft drink Moxie.

Ten minutes into the flight, the vapour dispersed, the porthole cleared, and far below the airplane, smoke from farms and factories rose up to join the general haze. To the left, the mountains drifted off toward Cambodia in folds of green and purple velvet. Here and there, patches of more brilliant green suggested rainforest, and one imagined tigers. The landscape was so vast and serene it was hard to reconcile it with the labour that took place there building and traversing the Ho Chi Minh Trail. From 25,000 feet there were no signs of the war, nothing to connect this land to remembered images of the long-ago struggle, the noise, the suffering, the terrible assault on the earth that made a moonscape of the DMZ. Now it all appeared to be washed over with new growth and salved by the haze of heat and altitude and time.

The Tupolev flew over the long barrier beaches north of Hue, where the river waters flowing down from the Annam Cordillera are filtered in the tidal marshes before they mix with the South China Sea. Then the shore bends inward toward the west, nearing the narrowest section of this hourglass country, and the jetliner headed out over the Tonkin Gulf.

I visited Hanoi two and a half years ago to observe discussions between Vietnam Airlines and Continental, one of several U.S. airlines then exploring business opportunities with the Vietnamese flag carrier. Even before President Clinton lifted the trade embargo in February 1994, Continental, Northwest, Delta, United, and American had all sent representatives to Vietnam, each hoping to share with VNA the traffic that would be possible between the two countries once diplomatic relations were normalized. Which of the U.S. carriers will prevail, however, depends not only on VNA.s preference but on a tangle of bureaucratic procedures.

First, the number of routes available must be determined by negotiations between the Vietnamese aviation authority and the U.S. departments of state and transportation. Once that number has been announced, the airlines will file applications with the DOT, and the department will either make a ruling or send the case to an administrative law judge for a recommendation. The process is long and complicated, but so is the establishment of a business relationship with a state-owned institution in a communist country. So the American executives started laying the groundwork for cooperation in 1992, and they found through the course of their negotiations that both sides had a lot to learn.

41. The author of the passage could be any of the following except:

(1) A professional belonging to the airline industry

(2) A bureaucrat belonging to the aviation and transportation ministry

(3) An executive belonging to an airline company

(4) An aircraft engineer

42. The Tupolev aircraft was built by:

(1) The Vietnamese

(2) Continental

(3) The Soviets

(4) None of these

43. It can be inferred from the passage that .Lost Horizon. was a/an:

(1) Name of World War II aircraft

(2) Movie

(3) Yacht

(4) None of these

44. It can be inferred from the passage that the author.s opinion about the Tupolev aircraft was:

(1) Appreciative

(2) Negative

(3) Disinterested

(4) Uninterested

45. The journey mentioned in the passage was undertaken in the year:

(1) 1930 (2) 1993 (3) 1994 (4) 1992

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CAT Test 1 Question 46 to 50

PASSAGE II 

Now let us turn back to inquire whether sending our capital abroad, and consenting to be taxed to pay emigration fares to get rid of the women and men who are left without employment in consequence, is all that Capitalism can do when our employers, who act for our capitalists in industrial affairs, and are more or less capitalists themselves in the earlier stages of capitalistic development, find that they can sell no more of their goods at a profit, or indeed at all, in their own country.

Clearly they cannot send abroad the capital they have already invested, because it has all been eaten up by the workers, leaving in its place factories and railways and mines and the like; and these cannot be packed into a ship’s hold and sent to Africa. It is only the freshly saved capital that can be sent out of the country. This, as we have seen, does go abroad in heaps. But the British employer who is working with capital in the shape of works fixed to British land held by him on long lease, must; when once he has sold all the goods at home that his British customers can afford to buy, either shut up his works until the customers have worn out their stock of what they have bought, which would bankrupt him (for the landlord will not wait), or else sell his superfluous goods somewhere else: that is, he must send them abroad. Now it is not easy to send them to civilised countries, because they practise Protection, which means that they impose heavy taxes (customs duties) on foreign goods. Uncivilised countries, without Protection, and inhabited by natives to whom gaudy calicoes and cheap showy brassware are dazzling and delightful novelists, are the best places to make for at first.

But trade requires a settled government to put down the habit of plundering strangers. This is not a habit of simple tribes, who are often friendly and honest. It is what civilised men do where there is no law to restrain them. Until quite recent times it was extremely dangerous to be wrecked on our own coasts, as wrecking, which meant plundering wretched ships and refraining from any officious efforts to save the lives of their crews, was a well-established business in many places on our shores. The Chinese still remember some astonishing outbursts of looting perpetrated by English ladies of high position, at moments when law was suspended and priceless works of art were to be had for the grabbing. When trading with aborigines begins with the visit of a single ship, the cannons and cutlasses it carries may be quite sufficient to overawe the natives if they are troublesome. The real difficulty begins when so many ships come, that a little trading station of white men grows up and attracts the white ne’er-do-wells and violent roughs who are always being squeezed out of civilisation by the pressure of law and order. It is these riffraff who turn the place into a sort of hell in which sooner or later missionaries are murdered and traders plundered. Their home governments are appealed to put a stop to this. A gunboat is sent out and inquiry made. The report after the inquiry is that there is nothing to be done but to set up a civilised government, with a post office, police, troops, and a navy in the offing. In short, the place is added to some civilised Empire. And the civilised taxpayer pays the bill without getting a farthing of the profits.

Of course the business does not stop there. The riffraff who have created the emergency move out just beyond the boundary of the annexed territory, and are as great a nuisance as ever to the traders when they have exhausted the purchasing power of the included natives and push on after fresh customers. Again they call on their home government to civilise a further area; and so bit by bit the civilised Empire grows at the expense of the home taxpayers, without any intention or approval on their part, until at last, though all their real patriotism is centred on their own people and confined to their own country, their own rulers, and their own religious faith, they find that the centre of their beloved realm has shifted to the other hemisphere. That is how we in the British Islands have found our centre moved from London to the Suez Canal, and are now in the position that out of every hundred of our fellow-subjects, in whose defence we are expected to shed the last drop of our blood, only eleven are whites or even Christians. In our bewilderment some of us declare that the Empire is a burden and a blunder, whilst others glory in it as a triumph. You and I need not argue with them just now, our point for the moment being that, whether blunder or glory, the British Empire was quite unintentional. What should have been undertaken only as a most carefully considered political development has been a series of commercial adventures thrust on us by capitalists forced by their own system to cater for foreign customers before their own country’s needs were one-tenth satisfied.

46.        It may be inferred that the passage was written:

            [1] when Britain was still a colonial power.          

            [2] when the author was in a bad mood.

            [3] when the author was working in the foreign service of Britain.

            [4] when the author’s country was overrun by the British.

47.        According to the author, the main reason why capitalists go abroad to sell their goods is:

[1] that they want to civilise the underdeveloped countries of the world by giving them their goods.

            [2] that they have to have new places to sell their surplus goods

            [3] that they actually want to rule new lands and selling goods is an excuse.

            [4] None of the above.

48.        Why do the capitalistic traders prefer the uncivilised countries to the civilised ones?

            [1] Because they find it easier to rule there.

            [2] Because civilised countries would make them pay protection duties.

            [3] Because civilised countries would make their own goods.

[4] Because uncivilised countries like the cheap and gaudy goods of bad quality all capitalists produce.

49.        According to the author, the habit of plundering strangers:

            [1] is usually not found in simple tribes but civilised people.

            [2] is usually found in the barbaric tribes of the uncivilised nations.

            [3] is a habit limited only to English ladies of high position.

            [4] is a usual habit with all white skinned people.

50.        Which of the following may be called the main complaint of the author?

            [1] The race of people he belongs to are looters and plunderers.

            [2] The capitalists are taking over the entire world.

            [3] It is a way of life for English ladies to loot and plunder.

            [4] The English taxpayer has to pay for the upkeep of territories he did not want.

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