Government by the nobles ?->(Show Answer!)

1. Government by the nobles

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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold to help you answer some of the questions.At the heart of what makes India a better regime than China is a healthy respect for the civil rights and liberties of its citizens. There are checks and balances in our government. But India’s new surveillance programme, the Central Monitoring system (CMS), resembles a dystopian society akin to George Orwell’s 1984.According to several news reports, the CMS gives the government, Indian security agencies and income tax (IT) officials the authority to listen to, and tape phone conversions, read emails and text messages, monitor Posts on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin and track searches on Google of selected targets, without oversight by the courts or parliament. To call it sweeping is an understatement.Typically, Indian Security agencies need a court order for surveillance, or depend on Internet/telephone service providers for data, provided they supply a warrant. CMS allows the government to bypass the court. Milind Deora, India’s Minister of State for Information Technology says the new system will actually improve citizens’ privacy because telecommunication agencies would no longer be directly involved in the surveillance; only government officials would have these details – missing the point that in a democracy, there has to be freedom from government surveillance. This is hardly comforting in a nation riddled with governmental corruption.India does not have a privacy law. CMS will operate under the Indian Telegraph Act (ITA). The ITA is a relic of the British Raj from 1885, and gives the government the freedom to monitor private conversations. News reports quote anonymous telecommunications ministry officials as saying that CMS has been introduced for security purposes, and “this is to protect you and your country”.That is irrational. For one, there are no ‘security purposes’ that prevent the government from having a rational debate on this programme and getting approval from our elected representatives before authorizing such wide-reaching surveillance. If the government is worried that a public debate in a paralysed parliament would half the programme’s progress, then it can convene a committee of individuals or an individual body such as CAG to oversee the programme. It can seek judicial approval from the Supreme Court, and have a judge sign off on surveillance requests without making these requests public.As of now, the top bureaucrat in the interior ministry and his/her state level deputies will have the power to approve surveillance requests. Even the recently revealed US surveillance Programme, had ‘behind the doors’ bipartisan surveillance approval. Furthermore, US investigation agencies such as the CIA and NSA are not the ruling party’s marionettes; in India, that the CBI is an arm of the government is a fait accompli. Even the Supreme Court recently lambasted the CBI and asked it to guarantee its independence from government influences after it was proved that it shared unreleased investigation reports with the government.There is no guarantee that this top bureaucrat will be judicious or not use this as a tool to pursue political and personal vendettas against opposition parties or open critics of the government. Security purposes hardly justify monitoring an individual’s social media usage. No terrorist announces plans to bomb a building on Facebook. Neither do Maoists espouse Twitter as their preferred form of communication.Presumably, security purposes could be defined as the government’s need to intercept terrorist plans. How does giving the IT department the same sweeping surveillance powers justify security purposes? The IT office already has expansive powers to conduct investigations, summon individuals or company executives, and raid premises to catch tax evaders. In a world where most financial details are discussed and transferred online, allowing the IT departments to snoop on these without any reasonable cause is akin to airport authorities strip searching everyone who boards a flight.What happened on 26/11 or what happens regularly in Naxal – affected areas is extremely sad and should ideally, never take place again. But targeting terrorists means targeting people who show such inclinations, or those who arouse suspicions, either by their travels or heir associations with militant or extremist groups. And in a country where a teenager has been arrested for posting an innocent comment questioning the need for a bandh on the death of a political leader, gives us reason to believe that this law is most likely to be misused, if not abused. Select the word which is MOST OPPOSITE in meaning to the word printed in bold, as used in the passage. AKIN....

MCQ-> To summarize the Classic Maya collapse, we can tentatively identify five strands. I acknowledge, however, that Maya archaeologists still disagree vigorously among themselves in part, because the different strands evidently varied in importance among different parts of the Maya realm; because detailed archaeological studies are available for only some Maya sites; and because it remains puzzling why most of the Maya heartland remained nearly empty of population and failed to recover after the collapse and after re-growth of forests. With those caveats, it appears to me that one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: a dilemma similar to the one foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798 and being played out today in Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. As the archaeologist David Webster succinctly puts it, “Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of landscape.” Compounding that mismatch between population and resources was the second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion, which caused a decrease in the amount of useable farmland at a time when more rather than less farmland was needed, and possibly exacerbated by an anthropogenic drought resulting from deforestation, by soil nutrient depletion and other soil problems, and by the struggle to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields. The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when one reflects that at least five million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller than the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have decreased further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man’s lands between principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies. As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them. Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we must already he struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island’s coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan’s inhabitants alsoexpanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster — reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.According to the passage, which of the following best represents the factor that has been cited by the author in the context of Rwanda and Haiti?
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MCQ-> Read the following passage to answer the given question Some words have been printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions. We tend to be harsh on our bureaucracy,but nowhere do citizens enjoy dealing with their government. They do it because they have to. But that doesn’t mean that the experience has to be dismal. Now there is a new wind blowing through government departments around the world, which could takes some of the pain away. In the next five years it may well transform not only the way public services are delivered but also the fundamental relationship between government and citizens. Not surprisingly, it is the Internet that is behind it. After e-commerce and e-business the next revolution may be e-governance. Examples abound. The municipality of Phoenix, Arizona, allows its citizens to renew their car registrations, pay traffic fines, replace lost identity cards etc. online without having to stand in endless queues in a grubby municipal office. The municipality is happy because it saves $5 a transaction it costs only $1.60 to do it across the counter. In Chile people routinely submit their income tax returns over the Internet Which has increased transparency, drastically reduced the time taken and the number of errors and litigation with the tax department. Both taxpayers and the revenue department are happier. The furthest ahead not surprisingly is the small, rich and entrepreneurial civil service of singapore which allows citizens to do more functions online than any other As in many private companies the purchasing and buying of Singapore’s government departments is now on the Web and cost benefits come through more competitive bidding easy access to global suppliers and time saved by online processing of orders. They can post their catalogues on their sites, bid for contracts submit in voices and check their payments status over the Net. The most useful idea for Indians municipalities is Gov Works a private sector site that collects local taxes fines and utility bills for 3,600 municipalities across the United States. It is citizen's site which provides information on government jobs, tenders, etc .The most ambitious is the British government, which has targeted to convert 100 per cent of its transactions with its citizens to the Internet by 2005. Cynics in India will say, 'Oh, e-government will never work in India. We are so poor and we dont have computers but they are wrong. There are many experiments afoot in India as well Citizens in Andhra Pradesh can download government forms and applications on the net without having bribe clerks.In many district land records are online and this had created transparency Similary, in Dhar district to Madhya Pradesh villagers have begun to file applications for land transfers and follow their progress on the net. In seventy village in the Kolhapur and Sangli districts in Maharashtra Internet booths have come up where farmers daily check the markets rates of agricultural commodities in Marathi along with data on agriculture schemes information on crop technology. When to spray and plant the crops and buds and railway timetables. They also find vocational guidance on jobs, applications for ration cards kerosene/gas burners and land records extracts with details of landownership. Sam pitroda’s World Tel, Reliance Industries and the Tamil Nadu government are jointly laying 3,000 km of optic fibre cables to create a, Tamil Network which will offers ration cards schools college and hospital admission forms land records and pension records. If successful World Tel will expand the network to Gujarat, Karnataka and West Bengal. In kerala all the villages are getting linked online to the district headquarters allowing citizens to compare the development properties of their village with other villagers in the state. Many are still skeptical of the real impact because so few Indians have computers. The answer lies in interactive cable T.V and in Internet kiosks, Although India has only five million computers and thirty-eight million telephones it has thirty four million homes with cable TV and these are growing eight percent a year By 2005 most cable homes will have access to the Internet from many of the 700,000 local STD/PCO booths. Internet usage may be low today, but it is bound to grow rapidly in the future, and e-government in India may not be a dream.According to the passage which country has the most ambitious plan for e-governance ?
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MCQ-> I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of governments which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most government are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objection which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rules in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? -- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment or in the least degree, resign his conscience to legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice.According to the author of the paragraph, army is _____________ ?
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MCQ-> Read the following caselet and choose the best alternative: Head of a nation in the Nordic region was struggling with the slowing economy on one hand and restless citizens on the other. In addition, his opponents were doing everything possible to discredit his government. As a famous saying goes, "There is no smoke without a fire", it cannot be said that the incumbent government was doing all the right things. There were reports of acts of omission and commission coming out every other day. Distribution of public resources for private businesses and for private consumption had created a lot of problems for the government. It was being alleged that the government has given the right to exploit these public resources at throw-away prices to some private companies. Some of the citizens were questioning the government policies in the Supreme Court of the country as well as in the media. In the midst of all this, the head of the nation called his cabinet colleagues for a meeting on the recent happenings in the country. He asked his minister of water resources about the bidding process for allocation of rights to setup mini-hydel power plants. To this, the minister replied that his ministry had followed the laid out policies of the government. Water resources were allocated to those private companies that bid the highest and were technically competent. The minister continued that later on some new companies had shown interest and they were allowed to enter the sector as per the guidelines of the Government. This, the minister added, would facilitate proper utilization of water resources and provide better services to the citizens. The new companies were allocated the rights at the price set by the highest bidders in the previous round of bidding. After hearing this, the head of the nation that one would expect the later allocations to be done after a fresh round of bidding. The minister of water resources replied that his ministry had taken permissions from the concerned ministries before allocating the resources to the new companies.Media reports suggested that the minister of water resources had deliberately allocated the water resources at old prices to the new companies, and in return some received kickbacks. However, the minister denied these charges. His counter argument was that he followed the stated policies of the Government and it is very difficult to price a scarce resource. He also said that the loss that the media is talking about is notional and in reality the Government and the citizens have gained by the entry of new players. Which of the following is the most appropriate inference?
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