XAT 2015 Question Paper

Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers for questions that follow.

Alone – he was alone again – again condemned to silence – again face to face with nothingness! Alone! – never again to see the face, never again to hear the voice of the only human being who united him to earth! Was not Faria’s fate the better, after all – to solve the problem of life at its source, even at the risk of horrible suffering? The idea of suicide, which his friend had driven away and kept away by his cheerful presence, now hovered like a phantom over the abbe’s dead body.

“If I could die,” he said, “I should go where he goes, and should assuredly find him again. But how to die? It is very easy,” he went on with a smile; “I will remain here, rush on the first person that opens the door, strangle him, and then they will guillotine me.” But excessive grief is like a storm at sea, where the frail bark is tossed from the depths to the top of the wave. Dantes recoiled from the idea of so infamous a death, and passed suddenly from despair to an ardent desire for life and liberty.

“Die? Oh, no,” he exclaimed – “not die now, after having lived and suffered so long and so much! Die? yes, had I died years ago; but now to die would be, indeed, to give way to the sarcasm of destiny. No, I want to live; I shall struggle to the very last; I will yet win back the happiness of which I have been deprived. Before I die I must not forget that I have my executioners to punish, and perhaps, too, who knows, some friends to reward. Yet they will forget me here, and I shall die in my dungeon like Faria, ” As he said this, he became silent and gazed straight before him like one overwhelmed with a strange and amazing thought. Suddenly he arose, lifted his hand to his brow as if his brain were giddy, paced twice or thrice round the dungeon, and then paused abruptly by the bed.

“Just God!” he muttered, “whence comes this thought? Is it from thee? Since none but the dead pass freely from this dungeon, let me take the place of the dead!” Without giving himself time to reconsider his decision, and , indeed, that he might not allow his thoughts to be distracted from his desperate resolution, he bent over the appalling shroud, opened it with the knife which Faria had made, drew the corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his own chamber, laid it on his couch, tied around its head the rag he wore at night around his own, covered it with his counterpane, once again kissed the ice - cold brow, and tried vainly to close the resisting eyes, which glared horribly, turned the head towards the wall, so that the jailer might, when he brought the evening meal, believe that he was asleep, as was his frequent custom; entered the tunnel again, drew the bed against the wall, returned to the other cell,
took from the hiding – place the needle and thread, flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack, placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the sack from the inside.

Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers for questions that follow.

Creative thinking can be used by management teams to produce actions that will potentially increase innovation and identify opportunities. Brainstorming is one technique that can enhance creativity. Brainstorming is usually regarded as a method to be used with groups of people. Although, it can be employed with individuals, the benefit of involving a group is that one person’s idea can help to stimulate even more ideas by other group members.

Underlying brainstorm is the idea that people’s creativity is restricted because they tend to reject ideas at too early a stage. This can be because they may be imposing imaginary constraints on a problem or making false assumptions. Alternatively, they may be unable to see a problem from multiple perspectives or they may be stereotyping problems and possible solutions and hence failing to see their wider potential. Involvement of people with different perspectives enriches the idea generation.

Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers for questions that follow.

For private goods, competitive markets ensure efficiency despite the decentralized nature of the information about individual’s tastes and firm technologies. Implicitly, market competition solved adverse selection problems and the fixed - price contracts associated with exogenous prices solve moral hazard problems. However, markets fail for pure public goods and public intervention is thus needed. In this case, the mechanisms used for those collective decisions must solve the incentive problem of acquiring the private information that agents have about their references for public goods. Voting mechanisms are particular incentive mechanisms without any monetary transfers for which the same question of strategic voting, i.e., not voting according to the true preferences, can be raised. For private goods, increasing returns to scale create a situation of natural monopoly far away from the world of competitive markets. When the monopoly has private information about its cost or demand, its regulation by a regulatory commission becomes a principal - agent problem.

(Note: Public goods are those in which individuals cannot be excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others, while an individual can be excluded in case of private goods.)

Answer questions on the basis of information given in the following case.

The Disciplinary Committee of Nation Political Party (NPP) is meeting today to decide on the future of two of their party members, Mr. Loyal and his son Mr. Prodigal. Mr. Prodigal is the prime accused in the brutal murder of Mr. Victim, an opposition party leader. Mr. Prodigal is in police custody and his appeal for bail has got rejected. Mr. Loyal claims that his son is innocent and Mr. Victim’s death was the result of internal rivalry in the opposition party. Though Mr. Loyal is not accused in this case, his weakness for his son is well known. The media is blaming him for influencing key witnesses to protect his son. Severe criticism of his father - son duo, both by the media and some social activists, is damaging the image of the party. However, Mr. Loyal has significant followers within the party and is considered an asset to the party. Any harsh
decision against Mr. Loyal would adversely affect the future of NPP and could even lead to a split in the party. This would benefit the opposition.