SSC CGL 2012 Tier 1

Directions : In the following questions, you have two brief passages with 5 questions in each passage, Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE -I Stuck with be development dilemma? Stay away from management courses. Seriously, one of the biggest complaints that organisations have about management courses is that they fail to impact the participants' on-the-job behaviour. Some management trainers stress the need for follow-up and reinforcement on the job. Some go so far as briefing the participants' managers on what behaviour they should be reinforcing back on the job. Others include a follow-up training day to review the progress of the participants. None of this is really going far enough. The real problem is that course promoters view development as something which primarily, takes place in a classroom. A course is an event and events are, by definition limited in time. When you talk about follow-up after a course, it is seen as a nice idea, but not as an essential part of the participants' development programme. Any rational, empowered individual should be able to take what has been learnt in a course and transfer it to the work place or so the argument goes. Another negative aspect of the course mindset is that, primarily, development is thought to be about skill-acquisition. So, it is felt that the distinction between taking the course and behaving differently in the work place parallels the distinction between skill-acquisition and skill-application. But can such a sharp distinction be maintained ? Skills are really acquired only in the context of applying them on the job, finding them effective and therefore, reinforcing them. The problem with courses is that they are events, while development is an on-going process which, involves, within a complex environment, continual interaction, regular feedback and adjustment. As we tend to equate development with a one-off event, it is difficult to get seriously motivated about the follow-up. Anyone paying for a course tends to look at follow-up as an unnecessary and rather costly frill.

PASSAGE II One may look at life, events, society, history, in another way. A way which might, at a stretch, be described as the Gandhian way, though it may be from times before Mahatma Gandhi came on the scene. The Gandhian reaction to all the grim poverty, squalor and degradation of the human being would approximate to effort at self-change and self-improvement, to a regime of living regulated by discipline from within. To change society, the individual must first change himself. In this way of looking at life and society, words too begin to mean differently. Revolution, for instance, is a term frequently used, but not always in the sense it has been in the lexicon of the militant. So also with words like peace and struggle. Even society may mean differently, being some kind of organic entity for the militant, and more or less a sum of individuals for the Gandhian. There is yet another way, which might, for want of a better description, be called the mystic. The mystic's perspective measures these concerns that transcend political ambition and the dynamism of the reformer, whether he be militant or Gandhian. The mystic measures the terror of not knowing the remorseless march of time:he seeks to know what was before birth, what comes after death. The continuous presence of death, of the consciousness of death, sets his priorities. and values: militants and Gandhians kings and prophets must leave all that they have built:all that they have un-built and depart when messengers of the buffalo-riding Yama come out of the shadows. Water will to water, dust to dust. Think of impermanence. Everything passes.