The chemical whose ban is demanded by various organisations in Kerala as it has emerged as a highly controversial agrichemical due toits acute? ?->(Show Answer!)

1. The chemical whose ban is demanded by various organisations in Kerala as it has emerged as a highly controversial agrichemical due toits acute?

Answer: Toxicity: Endosulfan

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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet organisations that do it well are extraordinarily rare. This gap is not due to a lack of commitment to learning. Managers in the vast majority of enterprises that I have studied over the past 20 years —pharmaceutical. financial services, product design, telecommunications, and construction companies: hospitals; and NASA’s space shuttle program, among others— genuinely wanted to help their organisations learn from failures to improve future performance. In some cases they and their teams had devoted many hours to afteraction reviews, postmortems, and the like. But time after time I saw that these painstaking efforts led to no real change. The reason: Those managers were thinking about failure the wrong way. Most executives I’ve talked to believe that failure is bad (of course!). They also believe that learning from it is pretty straightforward: Ask people to reflect on what they did wrong and exhort them to avoid similar mistakes in the future—or, better yet, assign a team to review and write a report on what happened and then distribute it throughout the organisation. These widely held beliefs are misguided. First, failure is not always bad. In organisational life it is sometimes bad, sometimes inevitable, and sometimes even good. Second, learning from organisational failures is anything but straightforward. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyze failures are in short supply in most companies, and the need for context-specific learning strategies is underappreciated. Or – ganisations need new and better ways to go beyond lessons that are superficial (“Procedures weren’t followed”) or self-serving (“The market just wasn’t ready for our great new product”). That means jettisoning old cultural beliefs and stereotypical notions of success and embracing failure’s lessons. Leaders can begin by understanding how the blame game gets in the way. The Blame Game Failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most households. organisations, and cultures. Every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. That is why so few organisations have shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised. Executives I’ve interviewed in organisations as different as hospitals and investment banks admit to being torn: How can they respond constructively to failures without giving rise to an anything-goes attitude? If people aren’t blamed for failures, what will ensure that they try as hard as possible to do their best work? This concern is based on a false dichotomy. In actuality, a culture that makes it safe to admit and report on failure can—and in some organisational contexts must–coexist with high standards for performance. To understand why, look at the exhibit “A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure,” which lists causes ranging from deliberate deviation to thoughtful experimentation. Which of these causes involve blameworthy actions? Deliberate deviance, first on the list, obviously warrants blame. But inattention might not. If it results from a lack of effort, perhaps it’s blameworthy. But if it results from fatigue near the end of an overly long shift, the manager who assigned the shift is more at fault than the employee. As we go down the list, it gets more and more difficult to find blameworthy acts. In fact, a failure resulting from thoughtful experimentation that generates valuable information may actually be praiseworthy. When I ask executives to consider this spectrum and then to estimate how many of the failures in their organisations are truly blameworthy, their answers are usually in single digits—perhaps 2% to 5%. But when I ask how many are treated as blameworthy, they say (after a pause or a laugh) 70% to 90%. The unfortunate consequence is that many failures go unreported and their lessons are lost. Question : sophisticated understanding of failure’s causes and contexts will help to avoid the blame game and institute an effective strategy for learning from failure. Although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organisations, mistakes fall into three broad categories: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent.Which of the following statement (s) is/are true in the context of the given passage ? I. Most executives believe that failure is bad and learning from it is pretty straightforward. II. The wisdom of learning from failure is disputable. III. Deliberate deviance, first on the list of the exhibit, “A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure” obviously warrants blame....

MCQ-> The current debate on intellectual property rights (IPRs) raises a number of important issues concerning the strategy and policies for building a more dynamic national agricultural research system, the relative roles of public and private sectors, and the role of agribusiness multinational corporations (MNCs). This debate has been stimulated by the international agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), negotiated as part of the Uruguay Round. TRIPs, for the first time, seeks to bring innovations in agricultural technology under a new worldwide IPR regime. The agribusiness MNCs (along with pharmaceutical companies) played a leading part in lobbying for such a regime during the Uruguay Round negotiations. The argument was that incentives are necessary to stimulate innovations, and that this calls for a system of patents which gives innovators the sole right to use (or sell/lease the right to use) their innovations for a specified period and protects them against unauthorised copying or use. With strong support of their national governments, they were influential in shaping the agreement on TRIPs, which eventually emerged from the Uruguay Round. The current debate on TRIPs in India - as indeed elsewhere - echoes wider concerns about ‘privatisation’ of research and allowing a free field for MNCs in the sphere of biotechnology and agriculture. The agribusiness corporations, and those with unbounded faith in the power of science to overcome all likely problems, point to the vast potential that new technology holds for solving the problems of hunger, malnutrition and poverty in the world. The exploitation of this potential should be encouraged and this is best done by the private sector for which patents are essential. Some, who do not necessarily accept this optimism, argue that fears of MNC domination are exaggerated and that farmers will accept their products only if they decisively outperform the available alternatives. Those who argue against agreeing to introduce an IPR regime in agriculture and encouraging private sector research are apprehensive that this will work to the disadvantage of farmers by making them more and more dependent on monopolistic MNCs. A different, though related apprehension is that extensive use of hybrids and genetically engineered new varieties might increase the vulnerability of agriculture to outbreaks of pests and diseases. The larger, longer-term consequences of reduced biodiversity that may follow from the use of specially bred varieties are also another cause for concern. Moreover, corporations, driven by the profit motive, will necessarily tend to underplay, if not ignore, potential adverse consequences, especially those which are unknown and which may manifest themselves only over a relatively long period. On the other hand, high-pressure advertising and aggressive sales campaigns by private companies can seduce farmers into accepting varieties without being aware of potential adverse effects and the possibility of disastrous consequences for their livelihood if these varieties happen to fail. There is no provision under the laws, as they now exist, for compensating users against such eventualities. Excessive preoccupation with seeds and seed material has obscured other important issues involved in reviewing the research policy. We need to remind ourselves that improved varieties by themselves are not sufficient for sustained growth of yields. in our own experience, some of the early high yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice and wheat were found susceptible to widespread pest attacks; and some had problems of grain quality. Further research was necessary to solve these problems. This largely successful research was almost entirely done in public research institutions. Of course, it could in principle have been done by private companies, but whether they choose to do so depends crucially on the extent of the loss in market for their original introductions on account of the above factors and whether the companies are financially strong enough to absorb the ‘losses’, invest in research to correct the deficiencies and recover the lost market. Public research, which is not driven by profit, is better placed to take corrective action. Research for improving common pool resource management, maintaining ecological health and ensuring sustainability is both critical and also demanding in terms of technological challenge and resource requirements. As such research is crucial to the impact of new varieties, chemicals and equipment in the farmer’s field, private companies should be interested in such research. But their primary interest is in the sale of seed materials, chemicals, equipment and other inputs produced by them. Knowledge and techniques for resource management are not ‘marketable’ in the same way as those inputs. Their application to land, water and forests has a long gestation and their efficacy depends on resolving difficult problems such as designing institutions for proper and equitable management of common pool resources. Public or quasi-public research institutions informed by broader, long-term concerns can only do such work. The public sector must therefore continue to play a major role in the national research system. It is both wrong and misleading to pose the problem in terms of public sector versus private sector or of privatisation of research. We need to address problems likely to arise on account of the public-private sector complementarity, and ensure that the public research system performs efficiently. Complementarity between various elements of research raises several issues in implementing an IPR regime. Private companies do not produce new varieties and inputs entirely as a result of their own research. Almost all technological improvement is based on knowledge and experience accumulated from the past, and the results of basic and applied research in public and quasi-public institutions (universities, research organisations). Moreover, as is increasingly recognised, accumulated stock of knowledge does not reside only in the scientific community and its academic publications, but is also widely diffused in traditions and folk knowledge of local communities all over. The deciphering of the structure and functioning of DNA forms the basis of much of modern biotechnology. But this fundamental breakthrough is a ‘public good’ freely accessible in the public domain and usable free of any charge. Various techniques developed using that knowledge can however be, and are, patented for private profit. Similarly, private corporations draw extensively, and without any charge, on germplasm available in varieties of plants species (neem and turmeric are by now famous examples). Publicly funded gene banks as well as new varieties bred by public sector research stations can also be used freely by private enterprises for developing their own varieties and seek patent protection for them. Should private breeders be allowed free use of basic scientific discoveries? Should the repositories of traditional knowledge and germplasm be collected which are maintained and improved by publicly funded organisations? Or should users be made to pay for such use? If they are to pay, what should be the basis of compensation? Should the compensation be for individuals or (or communities/institutions to which they belong? Should individual institutions be given the right of patenting their innovations? These are some of the important issues that deserve more attention than they now get and need serious detailed study to evolve reasonably satisfactory, fair and workable solutions. Finally, the tendency to equate the public sector with the government is wrong. The public space is much wider than government departments and includes co- operatives, universities, public trusts and a variety of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Giving greater autonomy to research organisations from government control and giving non- government public institutions the space and resources to play a larger, more effective role in research, is therefore an issue of direct relevance in restructuring the public research system.Which one of the following statements describes an important issue, or important issues, not being raised in the context of the current debate on IPRs?
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MCQ-> 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 government 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. 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 centers, 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” involved 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 field. 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.The author doubts the anti-GM lobby’s contention that MNC control of the food chain will be disastrous for the poor because
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MCQ-> When people react to their experiences with particular authorities, those authorities and the organizations or institutions that they represent often benefit if the people involved begin with high levels of commitment to the organization or institution represented by the authorities. First, in his studies of people's attitudes toward political and legal institutions, Tyler found that attitudes after an experience with the institution were strongly affected by prior attitudes. Single experiences influence post- experience loyalty but certainly do not overwhelm the relationship between pre-experience and post- experience loyalty. Thus, the best predictor of loyalty after an experience is usually loyalty before that experience. Second, people with prior loyalty to the organization or institution judge their dealings with the organization’s or institution's authorities to be fairer than do those with less prior loyalty, either because they are more fairly treated or because they interpret equivalent treatment as fairer.Although high levels of prior organizational or institutional commitment are generally beneficial to the organization or institution, under certain conditions high levels of prior commitment may actually sow the seeds of reduced commitment. When previously committed individuals feel that they were treated unfavourably or unfairly during some experience with the organization or institution, they may show an especially sharp decline in commitment. Two studies were designed to test this hypothesis, which, if confirmed, would suggest that organizational or institutional commitment has risks, as well as benefits. At least three psychological models offer predictions of how individuals’ reactions may vary as a function of a: their prior level of commitment and b: the favorability of the encounter with the organization or institution. Favorability of the encounter is determined by the outcome of the encounter and the fairness or appropriateness of the procedures used to allocate outcomes during the encounter. First, the instrumental prediction is that because people are mainly concerned with receiving desired outcomes from their encounters with organizations, changes in their level of commitment will depend primarily on the favorability of the encounter. Second, the assimilation prediction is that individuals' prior attitudes predispose them to react in a way that is consistent with their prior attitudes.The third prediction, derived from the group-value model of justice, pertains to how people with high prior commitment will react when they feel that they have been treated unfavorably or unfairly during some encounter with the organization or institution. Fair treatment by the other party symbolizes to people that they are being dealt with in a dignified and respectful way, thereby bolstering their sense of self-identity and self-worth. However, people will become quite distressed and react quite negatively if they feel that they have been treated unfairly by the other party to the relationship. The group-value model suggests that people value the information they receive that helps them to define themselves and to view themselves favorably. According to the instrumental viewpoint, people are primarily concerned with the more material or tangible resources received from the relationship. Empirical support for the group-value model has implications for a variety of important issues, including the determinants of commitment, satisfaction, organizational citizenship, and rule following. Determinants of procedural fairness include structural or interpersonal factors. For example, structural determinants refer to such things as whether decisions were made by neutral, fact-finding authorities who used legitimate decision-making criteria. The primary purpose of the study was to examine the interactive effect of individuals a: commitment to an organization or institution prior to some encounter and b: perceptions of how fairly they were treated during the encounter, on the change in their level of commitment. A basic assumption of the group-value model is that people generally value their relationships with people, groups, organizations, and institutions and therefore value fair treatment from the other party to the relationship. Specifically, highly committed members should have especially negative reactions to feeling that they were treated unfairly, more so than a: less- committed group members or b: highly committed members who felt that they were fairly treated.The prediction that people will react especially negatively when they previously felt highly committed but felt that they were treated unfairly also is consistent with the literature on psychological contracts. Rousseau suggested that, over time, the members of work organizations develop feelings of entitlement, i.e., perceived obligations that their employers have toward them. Those who are highly committed to the organization believe that they are fulfilling their contract obligations. However, if the organization acted unfairly, then highly committed individuals are likely to believe that the organization did not live up to its end of the bargain.The hypothesis mentioned in the passage tests at least one of the following ideas.
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MCQ-> Read the following case and choose the best alternative.Chetan Textile Mills (CTM) has initiated various employee welfare schemes for its employees since the day the mill began its operations. Due to its various welfare initiatives and socially responsible business practices, the organisation has developed an impeccable reputation. Majority of the regular workers in Chetan Mills had membership of Chetan Mills Mazdoor Sangh (CMMS), a non political trade union. CMMS had the welfare of its member as its guiding principle. Both CTM and CMMS addressed various worker related issues on a proactive basis. As a result no industrial dispute had been reported from the organiza tion in the recent past.These days majority of the employers deploy large number of contract labourers in their production processes. In an open economy survival of an organization depends on its competitiveness. In order to become competitive, an organization must be able to reduce cost and have flexibility in employment of resources. Engaging workers through contractors (contract labourer) reduces the overall labour cost by almost 50%. Indian labour legislations make reduction of regular workers almost impossible, but organisations can overcome this limitation by employing contract labourers. Contract labourers neither get the same benefit as regular employees nor do they have any job security. According to various recent surveys, government owned public sector units and other departments are the biggest employers of contract labourers in the country. Contractors, as middle - men, often exploit the contract labourers, and these government organizations have failed to stop the exploitation.Over time CTM started engaging a large number of contract labourers. At present, more than 35% of CM’s workers (total 5,000 in number) are contract labourers. CMMS leadership was wary about the slow erosion of its support base as regular workers slowly got replaced by contract workers and feared the day when regular workers would become a minority in the mill. So far, CMMS has refused to take contract labourers as members.Recently, based on rumours, CTM management started to investigate the alleged exploitation of contract labourers by certain contractors. Some contractors felt that such investigations may expose them and reduce their profit margin. They instigated contract labourers to demand for better wages. Some of the contract labourers engaged in material handling and cleaning work started provoking CTM management by adopting violent tactics.Today’s news - paper reports that police and CTM security guards fired two or three rounds in air to quell the mob. The trouble started while a security guard allegedly slapped one of the contract labourers following a heated argument. Angry labourers set fire to several vehicles parked inside the premises, and to the police jeeps.In the wake of recent happenings, what decision is expected from CTM management? From the combinations given below, choose the best sequence of action. I. Stop the current investigation against the contractors to ensure industrial peace; after all allegations were based on rumours. II. Continue investigation to expo se exploitation and take strong actions against trouble makers. III. Get in direct touch with all contract labourers through all possible means, communicate the need for current investigation to stop their exploitation, and convince them regarding CTM’s situation due to competition. Also expose those contractors who are creating problems. IV. Promise strong action against the security guards who are guilty. V. Increase the wages of contract labourers....