MAT 2003 Question Paper

Given below is an analysis of the employment scenario in the country. Study it critically to answer these questions.
Passage I:

In view of the centrality of the employment objective in the overall process of socio - economic development as also to ensure availability of work opportunities in sufficient numbers, Special/ Group On Targeting Ten Million Employment Opportunities Per year Over The Tenth Plan Period was constituted by the Planning Commission under the Chairmanship of Dr. S.P. Gupta, Member, Planning Commission. Considering the need for generating employment opportunities which are gainful, the Special Group has recommended the use of Current Daily Status for measuring employment, as this measure of employment is net of the varying degrees of underemployment experienced by those who are otherwise classified employed on usual status
basis. The group has noted the decline in the rate of growth of population, labour and work force, but an increase in the unemployment rate during 1993-94 and 1999-2000, although the overall growth performance of the economy has been better than the previous decade. In view of the declining employment elasticity of growth, observed during the period 1994-2000, the Group has recommended that over and above the employment generated in the process of present structure of growth, there is a need to promote certain identified labour intensive activities. These sectors are agriculture and allied activities, small and medium industries, information technology, construction, tourism, financial sector, education and health, etc. With proper policy initiatives taken in these labour intensive sectors, an additional 20 million jobs will be created during the Tenth Plan. The report also identified ministry wise programmes/targets for achieving the ten million employment opportunities per year.

The Special Group recommended policies and programmes which would enable the skill levels of the labour force to match those required for the new jobs to be created during the Tenth Plan. The recommendations of the Special Group have been suitably incorporated in the employment strategy for the Tenth Five Year Plan by the Planning Commission.

Organised sector employment as on March 31, 2001 was 27.8 million out of which public sector employment stood at 19.1 million and private sector 8.7 million. The public sector accounted for about 69 percent of the total employment in the organised sector in 2001. There was a marginal decrease of 0.6 percent in employment in the organised sector in 2001 as compared to the previous year. While employments in the public sector declined by 0.9 percent in 2001 over 2000, employment in the private sector increased by 0.1 percent. Only a small percentage (8 to 9 percent) of the total workforce of the country is employed in the organised sector. While employment growth in the private organised sector significantly improved in the 1990s, the growth of employment in the public sector was negligible. Since the public sector accounts for more than two thirds of the total organised sector employment, there was slow down of the overall growth in the organised sector employment.

Read the following passage to answer these questions.

Passage II:

We are the failed generation—we who are now in our 40s and 50s. We do not have to look far to realise that our generation has failed. The India we inherited was wonderful, but the one that we have bequeathed our children is degraded in every way. We are the citizens of transition, with personal memories of our childhood when we lived in a good, simple world where laws and morals had their place. And now we have first hand experience of an India stifled by corruption and injustice, with breakdowns on every front. There is no point getting defensive about our failure. There is no point denying it either. Perhaps time has come for us to face up to reality and try and understand why we Failed. We were good and talented and grew up in a relatively safe and protected environment Then why and where did we go wrong? Perhaps we must first rewind a bit. Our grandparents were the generation of freedom fighters. They were brave and committed men and women fired with a vision of a free India. They made sacrifices, donated money and property, their youth and even lived to achieve their goal. They were incredibly disciplined. And then came our parents generation. They wanted to build a new India, a modern India where all citizens were equal. They were incredibly thrifty. They worked hard and saved money and believed the best they could give their children was a good education. And then came my generation, born in safety and security. We benefitted from a good education. Our nationalistic goals had whittled down—we only wanted to make a difference. But we did not really manage to because we were incredibly ambitious. We wanted to create a separate identity, push the frontiers of our personal capabilities and professional parameters to a new high. We took pride in being unlike the rest. Highly individualistic, we became the generation that abrogated civic responsibility. That hurt the social fabric—we wanted the best for our family, but community and country could look after itself. Sure, we inherited problems from our parents’ generation. But we did not do anything to set it right. So they got worse and around us India started to crumble. We saw it, were conscious enough to protest, but not concerned enough to step in and stem the rot. We were unconcerned because we were caught up in our own personal pursuits. We love to make a virtue of tolerance and indifference, as also permissiveness.It is indifference, when we do not care deeply enough to do something about our problems.It is not tolerance but permissiveness when we are too lazy to intervene. As we strove to prove our worth in professional pursuits, role happily left nation building to politicians and bureaucrats. We abdicated our responsibility, our personal role in shaping India's destiny. Politics and civic action soon became too dirty for us to soil our hands, our name, our reputations. Some of us who belatedly want to do something about it, now discover that the system is too atrophied, set in its ways, to let us enter. So we stand outside wringing our hands. Perhaps secretly glad that we cannot enter this murky world. After all, we have accumulated too much to lose and in any case why bother. The system is too far gone and we would be fools to sacrifice the comforts of our cocooned world. And our children, they worship money. And when it is their parents’ money, they love it even more. Nowhere in the world do teenagers spend their parents money as freely and without compunction as they do here. We are to be blamed for that too because we are being permissive, not liberal. Parents are so involved in their work that they do not have time for their children. They buy children's affection with guilt-money. So kids now have cars, electronic gadgets, designer clothes. India is a fading figment of their parents’ nostalgia. All they want is a job that will give them good money so that they can pursue their materialistic pursuits —preferably in America. But can you blame them? Look at the India they are living in—pollution is high, crime is endemic, brute power is law, civic amenities deplorable, justice nonexistent, Merit has no place. It is caste or connections that work. There are cases of affluence amidst unbelievable deserts of deprivation How long is India really sustainable? Can it really remain stable and peaceful amidst such grotesqueills and inequities. Often we are optimistic because we are afraid to be pessimistic. Impending scenarios scare the living daylights out of us. So we collectively believe that things will improve and gladly cite a variety of instances to prove that there are areas of growth and excellence. We want to be optimistic because we do not want to give in to despair. After all, what is life without hope?

Study the Following passage to answer these Questions:

Passage III:
Nothing is sure but death and taxes, and of course that north is north and south is south, and thus it has always been, so they say. But they'd be wrong. You can perhaps be sure about death and taxes, but you might want to reconsider the rest of it. In fact, at many times in our planet's history, north has become south and south has become north, in a process called magnetic reversal. 

Paleogeologists have discovered the existence of these mysterious phenomena(in a field study known as paleomagnetism) by investigating rocks. When rocks are being formed from magmas, atoms within their crystals respond to the earth's magnetic field by "pointing" towards the magnetic north people. By age dating the rocks and nothing their magnetic alignment, scientists can determine where on earth the north pole was located at that time because as the rocks solidified, they trapped that information within them. The study of ancient lava flows has revealed that at certain periods in the earth's history magnetic north was directly opposite its presentlocation. In fact, it has been determined that the north/south reversal has occurred on average every 500,000 years and that the last reversal took place about 700,000 years ago. Scientists call those periods of "normal" polarity (the magnetic orientation of our modern era) and “reversed” polarity (the magnetic orientation of reverse situation) by the name "magnetic chrons." 

Although the fact of such reversals is clear, why and how they happen and their effects on the planet are subjects of considerable debate. Because no one knows precisely how the earth's magnetic field is produced, it becomes difficult to say how it might be reversed. Among explanations proposed are a reversal of the direction of convection currents in the liquid outer core of the earth and a collision between the earth and a meteorite or comet. And while the precise effects of a reversal are not known, there can belittle doubt that the earth would receive during the process a great deal more damaging ultraviolet radiation than it now does and that such occurrences have been correlated with the extinction of certain species in the geologic past.