It was an extremely pleasant surprise for the hutment-dweller when the Government officials told him that ...... ?->(Show Answer!)

1. It was an extremely pleasant surprise for the hutment-dweller when the Government officials told him that ......

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MCQ->It was an extremely pleasant surprise for the hutment-dweller when the Government officials told him that ..........

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-> The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so. Some British military historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open-field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia. The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier. In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbor. Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low-level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening to him until it's too late. History holds many examples. The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army. The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just a logistical detail, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own. More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention. The Japanese early in World War II used a modern form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also "invisible." Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West. The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. U.S. technical intelligence – the location of enemy units and their movements was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border. The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow's worldview and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country. The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good. When things don't work out quite this way, the Western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night. According to the author, the main reason for the U.S. losing the Vietnam war was
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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. There was a country long time ago where the people would change a king every year. The person who would become the king had to agree to a contract that he would be sent to an island after one year of his being a king. One King had finished his term and it was time for him to go to the island and live there.The people dressed him up in expensive clothes and put him on an elephant and took him to around the cities to say goodbye to all the people. This was a moment of sadness for all kings who ruled for one year. After bidding farewell the people took the king to a remote island in a boat and left him there. On their way back they discovered a ship that had sunk just recently.They saw a young man who survived by holding on to a floating piece of wood. As they needed a new king, they picked up the young man and took him to their country. They requested him to be king for a year. First he refused but later he agreed to be the king. People told him about all the rules and regulations and about how he would be sent to an island after one year. After three days of being a king he asked the ministers if they could show him the island where all the other kings were sent. They agreed and took him to the island. The island was covered with a thick jungle and sounds of vicious animals were heard coming out of it. The king went a little bit further to check. Soon he discovered dead bodies of all the past kings.He understood that as soon as they were left on the island the wild animals had come and killed them. The king went back to the country and collected 100 strong workers. He took them to the island and instructed them to clean the jungle, remove all the deadly animals and cut down all excess trees. He would visit the island every month to see how the work was progressing. In the first month all the animals were removed and many trees were cut down. In the second month all the island were cleaned out. The king then told the workers to plant gardens in various parts of the island. He also took with himself useful animals like chickens, ducks, birds, goats,cows etc. In the third month he ordered the workers to build big house and docking stations for ships. Over the months the island turned into a beautiful place. The young king would wear simple clothes and spend very little from his earning as a king. He sent all the earnings to the island for storage. When nine months passed like this the king called the ministers and told them “I know that I have go to the island after one year but I would like to go there right now. But the ministers didn’t agree to this and said that he had to wait for another three months to complete the year. Three months passed and now it was a full year. The people dressed up the young king and put on an elephant to take him around the country to say goodbye to others. However this king was unusually happy to leave the kingdom. People asked him "All the other kings would cry at this moment. Why is it that you are laughing?". He replied “Don’t you know what the wise people say? They say that when you come to this world as a baby you are crying and everyone else is smiling. Live such a life that when you die you will be smiling and everyone around you will be crying. I have lived that life. While all the other kings were lost into the luxuries of the kingdom, I always thought about the future and planned for it. I turned the deadly island into a beautiful abode for me where I can stay peacefully”.Why did the people of the kingdom change the king every year ?
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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions. Once upon a time there lived a queen in the city of Benaras. Her name was Khema and she was the wife of King Bahuputtaka:One night, the Queen had a dream of a beautiful golden goose that spoke with great wisdom, almost as if he was a sage: She told her husband that she desperately wanted to see a bird just like the one in her dream. So the King aksed his ministers to find out all that they could about a bird such as this. He was told that such a bird did exist but was extremely rare and difficult to find: They advised him to build a beautiful lake aon the outskirts of Benaras so that he may attract such rare and lovely creatures to reside there: In this way the queen might have her wish. Towards the norh, on Mount Cittakuta, there lived about ninety thousand wild geese headed by a beautiful golden goose called King Dhatarattha He got to hear of this exquisite lake surrounded by water lilies and lotuses floating on the surface: The kKing had invited all the birds to come and live on it, promising that one of them would ever be harmed: Corn was acattered on a daily basis in order to attract the birds. So a couple of geese went up to their King, the golden goose and told him that they were quite tired of living up on the mountains and would like to see this wonderful lake where they had been promised food and protection. The king agreed to their request and took the floc down south towards Benaras. Meanwhile, at the lake ing Bahuputtaka had placed hunters all around in order to capture any golden goose that happened to pass by. So the next morning when the headhunter saw this flock of geese approaching he was very excited to see their golden leader. He immediatey went about setting up a snare amongst the water lilies and lotuses, as he knew that the leader would definitely be the first to alight. The whole flock came flying down in one mighty seoop and as expected it was the King’s foot that touched the water first. He was esnsnared and could not escape: Seeing this, the other geese flew into a panic: But none had the courage to try to free their king and so flew back to Mount Cittacuta for safety. All except one: He was the chief captain, Sumukha:King Dhatarattha entreated him to fly to safety too, as he would surely be captured if he stayed by his sid: But Sumukha replied that he would never desert his master in the face of danger and swould either try to save him or die by his side: At this point the hunter approached and as Sumukha saw him he decided to appeal to his compassion. The hunter asked the golden goose how come he had not noticed the trap that was set. The golden goose replied that when one’s time was up it was no use to struggle against what was fated and one must just accept it. The huntsman was very impressed with his grace and wisdom. He then turned to Sumukha and asked why he had not fled with the other birds even though he was free to do so. Sumukha answered that the golden goose was his King, best friend and master and that he could never desert him even at the cost of his own life: Hearing this, the hunter realised that these were a couple of rare birds of great nobility. He did not much care for his own King’s reward and decided to do the right thing and set them free: He told Sumukha that as he was ready to die for his ing he would set them both free to fly wherever they wish.Why were the geese keen on visiting the lake in Benaras?
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