In which one of the following countries, coalition governments have been functioning with stability? ?->(Show Answer!)

1. In which one of the following countries, coalition governments have been functioning with stability?

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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 past quarter of a century has seen several bursts of selling by the world’s governments, mostly but not always in benign market conditions. Those in the OECD, a rich-country club, divested plenty of stuff in the 20 years before the global financial crisis. The first privatisation wave, which built up from the mid-1980s and peaked in 2000, was largely European. The drive to cut state intervention under Margaret Thatcher in Britain soon spread to the continent. The movement gathered pace after 1991, when eastern Europe put thousands of rusting state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the block. A second wave came in the mid-2000s, as European economies sought to cash in on buoyant markets. But activity in OECD countries slowed sharply as the financial crisis began. In fact, it reversed. Bailouts of failing banks and companies have contributed to a dramatic increase in government purchases of corporate equity during the past five years. A more lasting fea ture is the expansion of the state capitalism practised by China and other emerging economic powers. Governments have actually bought more equity than they have sold in most years since 2007, though sales far exceeded purchases in 2013. Today privatisation is once again “alive and well”, says William Megginson of the Michael Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. According to a global tally he recently completed, 2012 was the third-best year ever, and preliminary evidence suggests that 2013 may have been better. However, the geography of sell-offs has changed, with emerging markets now to the fore. China, for instance, has been selling minority stakes in banking, energy, engineering and broadcasting; Brazil is selling airports to help finance a $20 billion investment programme. Eleven of the 20 largest IPOs between 2005 and 2013 were sales of minority stakes by SOEs, mostly in developing countries. By contrast, state-owned assets are now “the forgotten side of the balance-sheet” in many advanced economies, says Dag Detter, managing partner of Whetstone Solutions, an adviser to governments on asset restructuring. They shouldn’t be. Governments of OECD countries still oversee vast piles of assets, from banks and utilities to buildings, land and the riches beneath (see table). Selling some of these holdings could work wonders: reduce debt, finance infrastructure, boost economic efficiency. But governments often barely grasp the value locked up in them. The picture is clearest for companies or company-like entities held by central governments. According to data compiled by the OECD and published on its website, its 34 member countries had 2,111 fully or majority-owned SOEs, with 5.9m employees, at the end of 2012. Their combined value (allowing for some but not all pension-fund liabilities) is estimated at $2.2 trillion, roughly the same size as the global hedge-fund industry. Most are in network industries such as telecoms, electricity and transport. In addition, many countries have large minority stakes in listed firms. Those in which they hold a stake of between 10% and 50% have a combined market value of $890 billion and employ 2.9m people. The data are far from perfect. The quality of reporting varies widely, as do definitions of what counts as a state-owned company: most include only centralgovernment holdings. If all assets held at sub-national level, such as local water companies, were included, the total value could be more than $4 trillion. Reckons Hans Christiansen, an OECD economist. Moreover, his team has had to extrapolate because some QECD members, including America and Japan, provide patchy data. America is apparently so queasy about discussions of public ownership of -commercial assets that the Treasury takes no part in the OECD’s working group on the issue, even though it has vast holdings, from Amtrak and the 520,000-employee Postal Service to power generators and airports. The club’s efforts to calculate the value that SOEs add to, or subtract from, economies were abandoned after several countries, including America, refused to co-operate. Privatisation has begun picking up again recently in the OECD for a variety of reasons. Britain’s Conservative-led coalition is fbcused on (some would say obsessed with) reducing the public debt-to-GDP ratio. Having recently sold the Royal Mail through a public offering, it is hoping to offload other assets, including its stake in URENCO, a uranium enricher, and its student-loan portfolio. From January 8th, under a new Treasury scheme, members of the public and businesses will be allowed to buy government land and buildings on the open market. A website will shortly be set up to help potential buyers see which bits of the government’s /..337 billion-worth of holdings ($527 billion at today’s rate, accounting for 40% of developable sites round Britain) might be surplus. The government, said the chief treasury secretary, Danny Alexander, “should not act as some kind of compulsive hoarder”. Japan has different reasons to revive sell-offs, such as to finance reconstruction after its devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Eyes are once again turning to Japan Post, a giant postal-to-financial-services conglomerate whose oftpostponed partial sale could at last happen in 2015 and raise (Yen) 4 trillion ($40 billion) or more. Australia wants to sell financial, postal and aviation assets to offset the fall in revenues caused by the commodities slowdown. In almost all the countries of Europe, privatisation is likely “to surprise on the upside” as long as markets continue to mend, reckons Mr Megginson. Mr Christiansen expects to see three main areas of activity in coming years. First will be the resumption of partial sell-offs in industries such as telecoms, transport and utilities. Many residual stakes in partly privatised firms could be sold down further. France, for instance, still has hefty stakes in GDF SUEZ, Renault, Thales and Orange. The government of Francois Hollande may be ideologically opposed to privatisation, but it is hoping to reduce industrial stakes to raise funds for livelier sectors, such as broadband and health. The second area of growth should be in eastern Europe, where hundreds of large firms, including manufacturers, remain in state hands. Poland will sell down its stakes in listed firms to make up for an expected reduction in EU structural funds. And the third area is the reprivatisation of financial institutions rescued during the crisis. This process is under way: the largest privatisation in 2012 was the $18 billion offering of America’s residual stake in AIG, an insurance company.Which of the following statements is not true in the context of the given passage ?
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MCQ-> Read the following passage and answer the given questions.Politics is local but most problems are international. That is the fundamental problem for national governments caught between the twin forces of globalisation and voters' anger. Tfie European refugee crisis, for example, seems to cry out for a continentwide solution. But the tide of migrants has been vast and national governments have been tempted to put up barriers first, and answer questions later. The latest example saw Sweden introduce checks on those travelling from Denmark, leading the turn country, in turn, to impose temporary controls on its southern border with Germany. Antiimmigration parties have been gaining in the polls, with the exception of the German Chancellor; mainstream politicians want to head off the challenge. In a way, this looks like the same mismatch that has plagued the euro a single currency without a unitary fiscal and political authority. Many economists have advocated much greater integration of the euro zone in the wake of the bloc's crisis. The European banking system. would be stronger if there was a comprehensive depositinsurance scheme, the economy would be more balanced if there were fiscal transfers from rich to poor countries. But such plans are unpopular with voters in rich countries (who perceive them as handouts) Fand in poor countries (who worry about the implied loss of local control that reforms would require). All that the European Union's (EU) leaders have managed so far is to cobble together solutions (such as the Greek bailouts) at the last minute. Gone is the pledge of unity of the G20's summit in London in 2009, when leaders agreed on a coordinated stimulus in response to the financial crisis. Central banks are now heading in different directions, the Federal Reserve has just tightened monetary policy while the European Central Bank and the. Bank of Japan are committed to easing. Trade creates tighter links between countries, but global trade growth has been sluggish in recent years. The OECD thinks that trade grew by only 2% in volume in 2015. No longer is trade rising faster than Global GDP, as it was before the crisis. International agreements require compromise, which leaves politicians vulnerable to criticism from inflexiblecomponents. Voters are already dissatisfied with their lot after years of sluggish gains (or declines) in living standards. When populist politicians suggest that voters' woes are all the fault of foreigners, they find a ready audience. Furthermore, economic woes can lead to much more aggressive foreign policy. In the developed world, demographic constraints ( a static or shrinking workforce) may limit the scope for the kind of rapid growth needed to reduce the debt burden and make voters happier. Boosting that sluggish growth rate through domestic reforms (breaking up producer cartels, making labour markets more flexible) is very hard because such reforms arouse strong opposition from those affected. The danger is that a vicious cycle sets in. Global problems are not tackled because governments fail to cooperate, voters get angrier and push their leaders into more nationalistic positions and conflict which poses a threat to all.What can be concluded from the example of the Greek bailout cited in the passage?
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MCQ-> Direction : 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.Governments have traditionally equated economic progress with steel mills and cement factories. While urban centers thrive and city dwellers get rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remain mired in poverty. However, fears of food shortages, a rethinking of antipoverty priorities and the crushing recession in 2008 are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favour of greater support for agriculture. The last time when the world's farmers felt such love was in the '70s. At that time, as food prices spiked, there was real concern that the world was facing a crisis in which the planet was simply unable to produce enough grain and meat for an expanding population. Governments across the developing world and international aid organisations plowed investment into agriculture in the early '70s, while technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution and food production exploded. But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% by the late '80s from their peak in the mid- '70s. Policymakers and aid workers turned their attention to the poor's other pressing needs, such as health care and education. Farming got starved of resources and investment. By 2004, aid directed at agriculture sank to 3.5% and 'Agriculture lost its glitter'. Also, as consumers in high-growth giants such as China and India became wealthier, they began eating more meat, so grain once used for human consumption got diverted to beef up livestock. By early 2008, panicked buying by importing countries and restrictions slapped on grain exports by some big producers helped drive prices upto heights not seen for three decades. Making matters worse, land and resources got reallocated to produce cash crops such as biofuels and the result was that voluminous reserves of grain evaporated. Protests broke out across the emerging world and fierce food riots toppled governments. This spurred global leaders into action. This made them aware that food security is one of the fundamental issues in the world that has to be dealt with in order to maintain administrative and political stability. This also spurred the U.S. which traditionally provisioned food aid from American grain surpluses to help needy nations, to move towards investing in farm sectors around the globe to boost productivity. This move helped countries become more productive for themselves and be in a better position to feed their own people. Africa, which missed out on the first Green Revolution due to poor policy and limited resources, also witnessed a 'change'. Swayed by the success of East Asia, the primary poverty?fighting method favoured by many policymakers in Africa was to get farmers off their farms and into modern jobs in factories and urban centers. But that strategy proved to be highly insufficient. Income levels in the countryside badly trailed those in cities while the FAO estimated that the number of poor going hungry in 2009 reached an all time high at more than one billion. In India on the other hand, with only 40% of its farmland irrigated, entire economic boom currently underway is held hostage by the unpredictable monsoon. With much of India's farming areas suffering from drought this year, the government will have a tough time meeting its economic growth targets. In a report, Goldman Sachs predicted that if this year too receives weak rains, it could cause agriculture to contract by 2% this fiscal year, making the government's 7% GDP-growth target look 'a bit rich'. Another green revolution is the need of the hour and to make it a reality, the global community still has much backbreaking farm work to do.Direction: Choose the word/group of words which is most similar it meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage. STARVED
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MCQ-> Governments looking for easy popularity have frequently been tempted into announcing giveaways of all sorts; free electricity, virtually free water, subsidized food, cloth at half price, and so on. The subsidy culture has gone to extremes. The richest farmers in the country get subsidized fertilizers. University education, typically accessed by the wealthier sections, is charged at a fraction of cost. Postal services are subsidized, and so are railway services. Bus fares cannot be raised to economical levels because there will be violent protest, so bus travel is subsidized too. In the past, price control on a variety of items, from steel to cement, meant that industrial consumer of these items got them at less than actual cost, while the losses of the public sector companies that produced them were borne by the taxpayer! A study done a few years ago, came to the conclusion that subsidies in the Indian economy total as much as 14.5 per cent of gross domestic product. At today's level, that would work out to about 1,50,000 crore. And who pay the bill? The theoryand the Political fiction on the basis of I which it is sold to unsuspecting votersis that subsidies go the poor. and are paid for by the rich. The fact is that most subsidies go the 'rich' (defined in the Indian context as those who are above the poverty line), and much of the tab goes indirectly to the poor. Because the hefty subsidy bill results in fiscal deficits, which in turn push up rates of inflationwhich, as everyone knows, hits the poor the hardest of all. That is why taxmen call inflation the most regressive form of taxation. The entire subsidy system is built on the thesis that people cannot help themselves, therefore governments must do so. That people cannot afford to pay for variety of goods and services, and therefore the government must step in. This thesis has been applied not just in the poor countries but in the rich ones as well; hence the birth of the welfare state in the west, and an almost Utopian social security system; free medical care, food aid, old age security, et.al. But with the passage of time, most of the wealthy nations have discovered that their economies cannot sustain this social safety net, which in fact reduces the desire among people to pay their own way, and takes away some of the incentive to work, in short, the bill was unaffordable, and their societies were simply not willing to pay. To the regret of many, but because of the laws of economies are harsh, most Western societies have been busy pruning the welfare bill. In India, the lessons of this experience over several decades, and in many countriesdo not seem to have been learnt. Or they are simply ignored in the pursuit of immediate votes. People who are promised cheap food or clothing do not in most cases look beyond the gift horsesto the question of who picks up the tab. The uproar over higher petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices ignored this basic question; if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its cost, who should pay? Diesel in the country is subsidised, and if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its full cost, who does he or she think should pay the balance of the cost? It is a simple question, nevertheless if remains unasked. The Deva Gowda government has shown some courage in biting the bullet when it comes to the price of petroleum products. But it has been bitten by much bigger subsidy bug. It wants to offer food at half its cost to everyone below the poverty line, supposedly estimated at some 380 million people. What will be the cost? And of course, who will pick up the tab? The Andhra Pradesh Government has been bankrupted by selling rice as 2 per kg. Should the Central Government be bankrupted too, before facing up to the question of what is affordable and what is not? Already, India is perennially short of power because the subsidy on electricity has bankrupted most electricity boards, and made private investment wary unless it gets all manner of state guarantees. Delhi's subsidised bus fares have bankrupted the Delhi Transport Corporation, whose buses have slowly disappeared from the capital's streets. It is easy to be soft and sentimental, by looking at programmes that will be popular. After all, who does not like a free lunch? But the evidence is surely mounting that the lunch isn't free at all. Somebody is paying the bill. And if you want to know who, take at the country's poor economic performance over the years. Which of the following should not be subsidised over the years ?
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MCQ-> Governments looking for easy popularity have frequently been tempted into announcing give-aways of all sorts; free electricity, virtually free water, subsidised food, cloth at half price, and so on. The subsidy culture has gone to extremes. The richest farmers in the country get subsidised fertiliser. University education, typically accessed by the wealtier sections, is charged at a fraction of cost. Postal services are subsidised, and so are railway services. Bus fares cannot be raised to economical levels because there will be violent protests, so bus travel is subsidised too. In the past, price control on a variety of items, from steel to cement, meant that industrial consumers of these items got them at less than actual cost, while the losses of the public sector companies that produced them were borne by the taxpayer! A study, done a few years ago, came to the conclusion that subsidies in the Indian economy total as much as 14.5 per cent of gross domestic product. At today's level, that would work out to about Rs. 1,50,000 crore.And who pays the bill? The theory — and the political fiction on the basis of which it is sold to unsuspecting voters — is that subsidies go to the poor, and are paid for by the rich. The fact is that most subsidies go to the ‘rich’ (defined in the Indian context as those who are above the poverty line, and much of the tab goes indirectly to the poor. Because the hefty subsidy bill results in fiscal deficits, which in turn push up rates of inflation — which, as everyone knows, hits the poor the hardest of all. Indeed, that is why taxmen call inflation the most regressive form of taxation.The entire subsidy system is built on the thesis that people cannot help themselves, therefore governments must do so. That people cannot afford to pay for a variety of goods and services, and therefore the government must step in. This thesis has been applied not just in the poor countries but in the rich ones as well; hence the birth of the welfare state in the West, and an almost Utopian social security system; free medical care, food aid, old age security, et al. But with the passage of time, most of the wealthy nations have discovered that their economies cannot sustain this social safety net, which infact reduces the desire among people to pay their own way, and takes away some of the incentive to work. In short, the bill was unaffordable, and their societies were simply not willing to pay. To the regret of many, but because of the laws of economics are harsh, most Western societies have been busy pruning the welfare bill.In India, the lessons of this experience — over several decades, and in many countries — do not seem to have been learnt. Or, they are simply ignored in the pursuit of immediate votes. People who are promised cheap food or clothing do not in most cases look beyond the gift horses — to the question of who picks up the tab The uproar over higher petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices ignored this basic question: if the user of cooking gas does not want to pay for its cost, who should pay? Diesel in the country is subsidised, and if the trucker or owner of a diesel generator does not want to pay for its full cost, who does he or she think should pay the balance of the cost? It is a simple question, nevertheless it remains unasked.The Deve Gowda government has shown some courage in biting the bullet when it comes to the price of petroleum products. But it has been bitten by a much bigger subsidy bug. It wants to offer food at half its cost to everyone below the poverty line, supposedly estimated at some 380 million people. What will be the cost? And, of course, who will pick up the tab? The Andhra Pradesh Government has been bankrupted by selling rice at Rs. 2 per kg. Should the Central Government be bankrupted too, before facing up to the question of what is affordable and what is not? Already, India is perenially short of power because the subsidy on electricity has bankrupted most electricity boards, and made private investment wary unless it gets all manner of state guarantees.Delhi’s subsidised bus fares have bankrupted the Delhi Transport Corporation., whose buses have slowly disappeared from the capital's streets. It is easy to be soft and sentimental, by looking at programmes that will be popular. After all, who doesn't like a free lunch? But the evidence is surely mounting that the lunch isn't free at all. Somebody is paying the bill. And if you want to know who, take a look at the country's poor economic performance over the years.Which of the following should not be subsidised now, according to the passage?
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