MAT 2013 Question Paper

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Passage III
The Election Commission (EC) has proposed an amendment to the 1950.Representation of the people Act (RPA) to ban all opinion polls once the election process is under way. which could be months before actual elections are held. Following the passing of tlhe 2009 RPA (Second Amendment) Bill, a ban on exit polls conducted while the polling process is going on is already in place. While there may be a case for banning opinion polls or their republication while polling is actually underway and poll campaigning has ceased why all opinion polls should be banned is unclear. Nevertheless major political parties argued for this at last year s consultations on electoral reform, and the EC appears to have succumbed. Proponents of the ban argue, contradictorily, that, opinion polls tend to influence voters and voting patterns besides creating confusion galore. also drawn attention to complaints about political parties funding some opinion polls. But such a draconiah ban on all opinion polls is tantamount to muzzling freedom of expression• as well as the right of the media and research organisations to undertake such pre-poll exercises. These. after all, are an important metric to assess the people 's mood and their aspirations. and their perception of political parties. Multiple opinion polls competing with each other restrict the possibility o manipulation by anyone pre-poll survey. Finally, the perception that voters are gullible enough to be duped by by opinion polls, is an affront to their intelligence and political sense.

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Passage IV
In the decade to come, the United States, Europe, and Japan are likely to grow slowly. Their sluggishness, however, will look less worrisome compared with the even bigger story in the global economy, which will be the three to four percent slowdown in China, which is already under way, with a possibly deeper slowdown in store as the economy continues to mature. China’s population is simply too big and aging too quickly for its economy to continue growing as rapidly as it has. With over 50 percent of its people now living in cities, China is nearing what economists call “the Lewis turning point”: the point at which a country’s surplus labor from rural areas has been largely exhausted. This is the result of both heavy migration to cities over the past two decades and the shrinking work force that the one-child policy has produced.As growth slows in China and in the advanced industrial world, these countries will buy less from their export-driven counterparts, such as Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, and Taiwan. During the boom of the last decade, the average trade balance in emerging market countries that have managed to sustain a five percent growth rate for a full decade, since 1930, 52 percent were democracies and 48 percent were authoritarian. Atleast over the short to medium term, what matters is not the type of political system a country has, but rather the presence of leaders who understand and can implement the reforms required for growth.

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Passage V
The larger global geo-economic backdrop to the next decade (2013-23) is the likely emergence of as the world's largest single-state economy overtaking the USA towards the end of this period. The 'critical question will be whether China under a new leadership will subscribe to the existing global status quo or adopt a revisionist approach — and seek to alter the contours of i global governance and related protocols to its own template. Within Asia, the texture and orientation of the triangular and bilateral relationship that will emerge between China, Japan and India over the next decade against the backdrop of the US in relative economic decline will exude many contradictory compulsions — the leitmotif of the 'contra-polar'world order. While China may be the world's most prosperous state in GDP terms, it will still rank low in per capita income and the US is likely to retain its military supremacy for atleast two decades. . It is instructive that India is also likely to join the ranks of the world 's three largest single-state economies by 2030 with an estimated GDP of the US - $ 6.68 trillion — though it will be a distant subaltern when 'compared to China - $25.6 trn and USA - $ 22.8 trn. Will China's intent to remain Asia's unchallenged hegemony impact Indian interests? The Chinese track-record over the last two decades (since the end of the Cold War in 1991) has been chequered and many of its initiatives have been either directly adversarial or inimical to Indian interests. The most disturbing development has been the covert nuclear weapon and missile support that China has provided to Pakistan. The Mumbai carnage of November 2008 is a case in point. But much greater pro-active perspicacity is called for than what Delhi has exuded to date.