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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-> There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed ‘guardians’ of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty per cent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 per cent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in that year. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They abserve that the defintion and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism,traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, govenments, usually controlled by men, have ‘given’ women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, that right had been absent. Until the 19th century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a ‘quickening’, when the first movements of the fetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abrotions were widely advertised in local newpapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sancity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practiced abortion.The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and upper-classes Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first 65 years of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed ‘flipper-like’ hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy led a number of states to pass abortion permitting legislation.On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves ‘pro-life’. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore, they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro lifers point to the rise in legalised abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves ‘pro-choice’. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of ‘backroom’ abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and prolife activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual bahaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identified ‘pro-choice’ women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts, ‘pro-life’ women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Public documents and newspaper accounts over a 26-year period were analysed and over 200 interviews were held withheld with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender. Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement of having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the ‘women’s sphere’. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or ‘natural’ role. In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that centre around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represent the battleground for the justification of their respective views.According to your understanding of the author’s arguments, which countries are more likely to allowabortion?
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MCQ-> People are continually enticed by such "hot" performance, even if it lasts for brief periods. Because of this susceptibility, brokers or analysts who have had one or two stocks move up sharply, or technicians who call one turn correctly, are believed to have established a credible record and can readily find market followings. Likewise, an advisory service that is right for a brief time can beat its drums loudly. Elaine Garzarelli gained near immortality when she purportedly "called" the 1987 crash. Although, as the market strategist for Shearson Lehman, her forecast was never published in a research report, nor indeed communicated to its clients, she still received widespread recognition and publicity for this call, which was made in a short TV interview on CNBC. Still, her remark on CNBC that the Dow could drop sharply from its then 5300 level rocked an already nervous market on July 23, 1996. What had been a 40-point gain for the Dow turned into a 40-point loss, a good deal of which was attributed to her comments.The truth is, market-letter writers have been wrong in their judgments far more often than they would like to remember. However, advisors understand that the public considers short-term results meaningful when they are, more often than not, simply chance. Those in the public eye usually gain large numbers of new subscribers for being right by random luck. Which brings us to another important probability error that falls under the broad rubric of representativeness. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman call this one the "law of small numbers.". The statistically valid "law of large numbers" states that large samples will usually be highly representative of the population from which they are drawn; for example, public opinion polls are fairly accurate because they draw on large and representative groups. The smaller the sample used, however (or the shorter the record), the more likely the findings are chance rather than meaningful. Yet the Tversky and Kahneman study showed that typical psychological or educational experimenters gamble their research theories on samples so small that the results have a very high probability of being chance. This is the same as gambling on the single good call of an advisor. The psychologists and educators are far too confident in the significance of results based on a few observations or a short period of time, even though they are trained in statistical techniques and are aware of the dangers.Note how readily people over generalize the meaning of a small number of supporting facts. Limited statistical evidence seems to satisfy our intuition no matter how inadequate the depiction of reality. Sometimes the evidence we accept runs to the absurd. A good example of the major overemphasis on small numbers is the almost blind faith investors place in governmental economic releases on employment, industrial production, the consumer price index, the money supply, the leading economic indicators, etc. These statistics frequently trigger major stock- and bond-market reactions, particularly if the news is bad. Flash statistics, more times than not, are near worthless. Initial economic and Fed figures are revised significantly for weeks or months after their release, as new and "better" information flows in. Thus, an increase in the money supply can turn into a decrease, or a large drop in the leading indicators can change to a moderate increase. These revisions occur with such regularity you would think that investors, particularly pros, would treat them with the skepticism they deserve. Alas, the real world refuses to follow the textbooks. Experience notwithstanding, investors treat as gospel all authoritative-sounding releases that they think pinpoint the development of important trends. An example of how instant news threw investors into a tailspin occurred in July of 1996. Preliminary statistics indicated the economy was beginning to gain steam. The flash figures showed that GDP (gross domestic product) would rise at a 3% rate in the next several quarters, a rate higher than expected. Many people, convinced by these statistics that rising interest rates were imminent, bailed out of the stock market that month. To the end of that year, the GDP growth figures had been revised down significantly (unofficially, a minimum of a dozen times, and officially at least twice). The market rocketed ahead to new highs to August l997, but a lot of investors had retreated to the sidelines on the preliminary bad news. The advice of a world champion chess player when asked how to avoid making a bad move. His answer: "Sit on your hands”. But professional investors don't sit on their hands; they dance on tiptoe, ready to flit after the least particle of information as if it were a strongly documented trend. The law of small numbers, in such cases, results in decisions sometimes bordering on the inane. Tversky and Kahneman‘s findings, which have been repeatedly confirmed, are particularly important to our understanding of some stock market errors and lead to another rule that investors should follow.Which statement does not reflect the true essence of the passage? I. Tversky and Kahneman understood that small representative groups bias the research theories to generalize results that can be categorized as meaningful result and people simplify the real impact of passable portray of reality by small number of supporting facts. II. Governmental economic releases on macroeconomic indicators fetch blind faith from investors who appropriately discount these announcements which are ideally reflected in the stock and bond market prices. III. Investors take into consideration myopic gain and make it meaningful investment choice and fail to see it as a chance of occurrence. IV. lrrational overreaction to key regulators expressions is same as intuitive statistician stumbling disastrously when unable to sustain spectacular performance.....

MCQ-> Lately it seems everyone’s got an opinion about women’s speech. Everybody has been getting his two cents in about vocal fry, up-speak, and women’s allegedly over-liberal use of apologies. The ways women live and move in the world are subject to relentless scrutiny, their modes of speech are assessed against a (usually) masculine standard. This is increasingly true as women have entered previously male-dominated fields like industry and politics.In his essay “On Speech and Public Release,” Joshua Gunn highlights the field of public address as an important arena where social roles and norms are contested, reshaped, and upheld. Gunn argues that the field of public address is an important symbolic arena where we harbor an “[ideological] bias against the feminine voice,” a bias, that is rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity (and the corresponding devaluation of femininity, the voice that constrains and nags—the mother, the droning Charlie Brown schoolteacher, the wife).Gunn contends that masculine speech is the cultural standard. It’s what we value and respect. The low pitch and assertive demeanor that characterize the adult male voice signify reason, control, and authority, suitable for the public domain. Women’s voices are higher pitched, like those of immature boys, and their characteristic speech patterns have a distinctive cadence that exhibits a wider range of emotional expression. In Western cultures, this is bad because it comes across as uncontrolled. We associate uncontrolled speech - “the cry, the grunt, the scream, and the yawp” - with things that happen in the private, domestic spheres (both coded as feminine). Men are expected to repress passionate, emotional speech, Gunn explains, precisely because it threatens norms of masculine control and order. The notion of control also relates to the cultural ideal of eloquence. Language ideologies in the U.S. are complex and highly prescriptive, but not formal or explicit. They are internalized by osmosis, from early observations of adult language use, criticism from teachers (i.e., telling little girls not to “be so bossy” and boys to “act like gentlemen”), and sanctions imposed by peers. These norms become most obvious when they are violated. When men fall off the “control and reason” wagon, they suffer for it. Gunn recalls Howard Dean’s infamous 2004 “I Have a Scream” speech, in which Dean emitted a spontaneous high-pitched screech of joy after he rattled off a list of planned campaign stops. The rest, as they say, is history. Women face a different dilemma—how to please like a woman and impress like a man. Women in the public sphere have, historically, been expected to “perform” femininity and they usually do this by adopting a personal tone, giving anecdotal evidence, using domestic metaphors, and making emotional appeals to ideals of wifely virtue and motherhood.Gunn arrives at the conclusion that “eloquence” is, essentially, code for values associated with masculinity, saying, “Performances of femininity are principally vocal and related, not to arguments, but to tone; not to appearance, but to speech; not to good reasons, but to sound. This implies that the ideology of sexism is much more insidious, much more deeply ingrained than many might suppose.” Which of the following statements if true, is contrary to the ideas developed in the passage?
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MCQ-> The income disparity in the new India is massive: 36 billionaires in India and 800 million people living on less than $2 a day. The challenge for achieving inclusive growth relates to the revival of agriculture. Farming is becoming a non-viable activity. A confluence of factors, from poor rainfall to the new availability of consumer goods which consume much of Indian familie's incomes, has driven many farmers into crushing debt. The agriculture sector has many problems with a growth rate of less than 2% in the last decade. Further scope for increase in net sown area is limited. Disparity in productivity across regions and crops has persisted. Far from benefiting from the economic boom, many complain that banks don't offer the rural poor credit, forcing them to turn to greedy money-lenders, who typically charge up to 20% interest on a four-month loan. Healthcare and education costs have risen dramatically, while the global price of cotton has become depressed, largely due to the billions of dollars in subsidies Washington hands out to U.S. farmers. The approach to the revival of Indian agriculture seems to be incremental, rather than a holistic strategy. It is important to stress that growth and equity should be pursued simultaneously rather than following the 'growth first and equity next' approach. What are the challenges for achieving 4% growth and equity in agriculture? Policy makers like the National Commission on Farmers mention cost reduction in agriculture as important to compete in a globalised world. The most important problem for the farmers is output price fluctuations. There is a big gap between producer prices and consumer prices. In order to protect farmers from National and international price volatility, a price stabilization fund is needed. The supply and demand side constraints have to be removed to raise growth. The support systems have to be tuned to improve productivity and incomes of farmers with emphasis on small and marginal farmers and dry land areas. One of the differences between the green revolution in the 1960s / 70s and the present 'second green revolution' is that risk is higher in the latter approach as it has to concentrate more on dry-land areas. Trade liberalisation has also raised the risk and uncertainty. Thus, policymakers have to keep in mind the increasing risk in agriculture. Agriculture policies have to be gender sensitive too since the share of women is increasing. The Government is aware that the crop sector may not be able to grow at 4% per annum but horticulture and allied activities like dairying, poultry and fisheries have to grow at the rate 6 % to 7 % to achieve 4% growth in agriculture. Investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure is important for agricultural growth. It is known that public investment in agriculture is lower than the requirements needed for achieving 4% growth. Bharat Nirman Programme is in the right direction but the progress has to be much fasterWhat does the author view as a challenge for achieving inclusive growth?
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