CAT 2002 Question Paper
If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, businesspeople, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere â among boat designers and baseball fans, say â the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economistâs favourite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien. They may be seen as figures of speech - metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority.
Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an âinvisible handâ and the organization of work as a âproduction functionâ and his coefficients as being âsignificantâ, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language.
If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data. Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks.
The paying of attention to oneâs audience is called ârhetoricâ, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the presidentâs âheated rhetoricâ in a press conference or the âmere rhetoricâ to which our enemies stoop. Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse.
The question is whether the scholar- who usually fancies himself an announcer of âresultsâ or a stater of âconclusionsâ free of rhetoric â speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesnât speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honoured, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means. Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech.
Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard. It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners when they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office or the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship.
The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economistâs role in the economy. The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well-known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last, come rank upon rank of people in grey business suits. A bystander asks, âWho are those?â âAha!â comes the reply, âthose are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!â Their conversations do it.
Based on your understanding of the passage, which of the following conclusions would you agree with?
For the following questions answer them individually
Out of the four possibilities given, select the one that has all the definitions and their usages most closely matched.
"Measure"
A. Size or quantity found by measuring
B. Vessel of standard capacity
C. Suitable action
D. Ascertain extent or quantity
E. A measure was instituted to prevent outsiders from entering the campus
F. Sheila was asked to measure each item that was delivered.
G. The measure of the cricket pitch was 22 yards.
H. Ramesh used a measure to take out one litre of oil.
Out of the four possibilities given, select the one that has all the definitions and their usages most closely matched.
"Bound"
A. Obliged, constrained
B. Limiting value
C. Move in a specified direction
D. Destined or certain to be
E. Dinesh felt bound to walk out when the discussion turned to kickbacks.
F. Buffeted by contradictory forces he was bound to lose his mind.
G. Vidya's story strains the bounds of credulity.
H. Bound for a career in law, Jyoti was reluctant to study Milton.
Out of the four possibilities given, select the one that has all the definitions and their usages most closely matched.
"Catch"
A. Capture
B. Grasp with senses of mind
C. Deception
D. Thing or person worth trapping
E. All her friends agreed that Prasad was a good catch.
F. The proposal sounds very good but where is the catch?
G. Hussain tries to catch the spirit of India in this painting.
H. Sorry, I couldn't catch you.
Out of the four possibilities given, select the one that has all the definitions and their usages most closely matched.
"Deal"
A. Manage, attend to
B. Stock, sell
C. Give out to a number of people
D. Be concerned with
E. Dinesh insisted on dealing the cards.
F. This contract deals with handmade cards.
G. My brother deals in cards.
H. I decided not to deal with handmade cards.
Out of the four possibilities given, select the one that has all the definitions and their usages most closely matched.
"Turn"
A. Give new direction to
B. Send
C. Change in form
D. Opportunity coming successively for each person
E. It was now his turn to be angry.
F. Leena never turned away a beggar.
G. Ashish asked Laxman to turn his face to the left.
H. The old school building has been turned into a museum.
The sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. Branded disposable diapers are available at many supermarkets and drug stores.
B. If one supermarket sets a higher price for a diaper, customers may buy that brand elsewhere.
C. By contrast, the demand for private-label products may be less price sensitive since it is available only at a corresponding supermarket chain.
D. So the demand for branded diapers at any particular store may be quite price sensitive.
E. For instance, only SavOn Drugs stores sell SavOn Drugs diapers.
F. Then stores should set a higher incremental margin percentage for private label diapers.
The sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. Having a strategy is a matter of discipline.
B. It involves the configuration of a tailored value chain that enables a company to offer unique value.
C. It requires a strong focus on profitability and a willingness to make tough tradeoffs in choosing what not to do.
D. Strategy goes far beyond the pursuit of best practices.
E. A company must stay the course even during times of upheaval, while constantly improving and extending its distinctive positioning.
F. When a companyâs activities fit together as a self-reinforcing system, any competitor wishing to imitate a strategy must replicate the whole system.
The sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. As officials, their vision of a country shouldnât run too far beyond that of the local people with whom they have to deal.
B. Ambassadors have to choose their words.
C. To say what they feel they have to say, they appear to be denying or ignoring part of what they know.
D. So, with ambassadors as with other expatriates in black Africa, there appears at a first meeting a kind of ambivalence.
E. They do a specialized job and it is necessary for them to live ceremonial lives.
The sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. âThis face-off will continue for several months given the strong convictions on either side,â says a senior functionary of the high-powered task force on drought.
B. During the past week-and-half, the Central Government has sought to deny some of the earlier apprehensions over the impact of drought.
C. The recent revival of the rains had led to the emergence of a line of divide between the two.
D. The state governments, on the other hand, allege that the Centre is downplaying the crisis only to evade its full responsibility of financial assistance that is required to alleviate the damage.
E. Shrill alarm about the economic impact of an inadequate monsoon had been sounded by the Centre as well as most of the states, in late July and early August.
