Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

Core competencies and focus are now the mantras of corporate strategists in Western economies. But while managers in the West have dismantled many conglomerates assembled in the 1960s and 1970s, the large, diversified business group remains the dominant form of enterprise throughout most emerging markets. Some groups operate as holding companies with full ownership in many enterprises, others are collections of publicly traded companies, but all have some degree of central control.

As emerging markets open up to global competition, consultants and foreign investors are increasingly pressuring these groups to conform to Western practice by scaling back the scope of their business activities. The conglomerate is the dinosaur of organizational design, they argue, too unwieldy and slow to compete in today's fast-paced markets. Already a number of executives have decided to break up their groups in order to show that they are focusing on only a few core businesses. 

There are reasons to worry about this trend. Focus is good advice in New York or London, but something important gets lost in translation when that advice is given to groups in emerging markets. Western companies take for granted a range of institutions that support their business activities, but many of these institutions are absent in other regions of the world. Without effective securities regulation and venture capital firms, for example, focused companies may be unable to raise adequate financing; and without strong educational institutions, they will struggle to hire skilled employees.

Communicating with customers is difficult when the local infrastructure is poor, and unpredictable government behavior can stymie any operation, although a focused strategy may enable a company to perform a few activities well, companies in emerging markets must take responsibility for a wide range of functions in order to do business effectively. 

In the case of product markets, buyers and sellers usually suffer from a severe dearth of information for three reasons. First, the communications infrastructure in emerging markets is often under-developed. Even as wireless communication spreads throughout the West, vast stretches in countries such as China and India remain without telephones. Power shortages often render the modes of communication that do exist ineffective. The postal service is typically inefficient, slow, or unreliable; and the private sector rarely provides efficient courier services. High rates of illiteracy make it difficult for marketers to communicate effectively with customers. 

Second, even when information about products does get around, there are no mechanisms to corroborate the claims made by sellers. Independent consumer - information organizations are rare, and government watchdog agencies are of little use. The few analysts who rate products are generally less sophisticated than their counterparts in advanced economies. 

Third, consumers have no redress mechanisms if a product does not deliver on its promise. Law enforcement is often capricious and so slow that few who assign any value to time would resort to it. Unlike in advanced markets, there are few extrajudicial arbitration mechanisms to which one can appeal. 

As a result of this lack of information, companies in emerging markets face much higher costs in building credible brands than their counterparts in advanced economies. In turn, established brands wield tremendous power. A conglomerate with a reputation for quality products and services can use its group name to enter new businesses, even if those businesses are completely unrelated to its current lines. Groups also have an advantage when they do try to build up a brand because they can spread the cost of maintaining it across multiple lines of business. Such groups then have a greater incentive not to damage brand quality in anyone business because they will pay the price in their other businesses as well.

What suggestions have been cited by the writer in regard to raising adequate financing and hiring skilled employees ?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

Core competencies and focus are now the mantras of corporate strategists in Western economies. But while managers in the West have dismantled many conglomerates assembled in the 1960s and 1970s, the large, diversified business group remains the dominant form of enterprise throughout most emerging markets. Some groups operate as holding companies with full ownership in many enterprises, others are collections of publicly traded companies, but all have some degree of central control.

As emerging markets open up to global competition, consultants and foreign investors are increasingly pressuring these groups to conform to Western practice by scaling back the scope of their business activities. The conglomerate is the dinosaur of organizational design, they argue, too unwieldy and slow to compete in today's fast-paced markets. Already a number of executives have decided to break up their groups in order to show that they are focusing on only a few core businesses. 

There are reasons to worry about this trend. Focus is good advice in New York or London, but something important gets lost in translation when that advice is given to groups in emerging markets. Western companies take for granted a range of institutions that support their business activities, but many of these institutions are absent in other regions of the world. Without effective securities regulation and venture capital firms, for example, focused companies may be unable to raise adequate financing; and without strong educational institutions, they will struggle to hire skilled employees.

Communicating with customers is difficult when the local infrastructure is poor, and unpredictable government behavior can stymie any operation, although a focused strategy may enable a company to perform a few activities well, companies in emerging markets must take responsibility for a wide range of functions in order to do business effectively. 

In the case of product markets, buyers and sellers usually suffer from a severe dearth of information for three reasons. First, the communications infrastructure in emerging markets is often under-developed. Even as wireless communication spreads throughout the West, vast stretches in countries such as China and India remain without telephones. Power shortages often render the modes of communication that do exist ineffective. The postal service is typically inefficient, slow, or unreliable; and the private sector rarely provides efficient courier services. High rates of illiteracy make it difficult for marketers to communicate effectively with customers. 

Second, even when information about products does get around, there are no mechanisms to corroborate the claims made by sellers. Independent consumer - information organizations are rare, and government watchdog agencies are of little use. The few analysts who rate products are generally less sophisticated than their counterparts in advanced economies. 

Third, consumers have no redress mechanisms if a product does not deliver on its promise. Law enforcement is often capricious and so slow that few who assign any value to time would resort to it. Unlike in advanced markets, there are few extrajudicial arbitration mechanisms to which one can appeal. 

As a result of this lack of information, companies in emerging markets face much higher costs in building credible brands than their counterparts in advanced economies. In turn, established brands wield tremendous power. A conglomerate with a reputation for quality products and services can use its group name to enter new businesses, even if those businesses are completely unrelated to its current lines. Groups also have an advantage when they do try to build up a brand because they can spread the cost of maintaining it across multiple lines of business. Such groups then have a greater incentive not to damage brand quality in anyone business because they will pay the price in their other businesses as well.

Which of the following statements is correct in regard to the given passage? 

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
 It is generally acknowledged that children learn a lot from their parents. It is not so commonly admitted that parents learn a great deal from their children. As adults, it is easy to assume that we are always right, but the laugh was on me one beautiful day.
 My daughter Kashmira knew how much I loved flowers. One day when she was of nine years, she picked some branches from our neighbour's blossoming fruit tree. Realising she intended to please me, I didn't scold her, but chose a different approach. "These are lovely, dear, but do you realise that if you had left them on the tree, each of these blossoms would have become a cherry?" "No, they wouldn't have", she said firmly.
"Oh, yes they would have. Each of these blossoms would have grown into a cherry". "Well okay, mother, if you insist", she finally conceded, "but they were plums last year".

What the daughter picked from the neighbour's garden were- 

Read the passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.
A glass bottle that is sent to a landfill can take up to a million years to break down. By contrast, it takes as little as 30 days for a recycled glass bottle to leave your kitchen recycling bin and appear on a store shelf as a new glass container. Glass container are 100 percent recyclable, which means they can be recyclable repeatedly, again and again, with no loss of purify or quality in the glass. Recovered glass from glass recycling is the primary ingredient in all new glass containers. A typical glass container is made of as much as 70 percent recycled glass. According to industry estimates, 80 percent of all recycled glass eventually ends up as new glass containers. Every ton of glass that is recycled save more than a ton of the raw materials needed to create new glass, including 13,00 pounds of sand, 410 pounds of soda ash, and 380 pounds of limestone.
Because glass is made from natural materials such as sand and limestones, glass containers have a low rate of chemical interaction with their contents. As a result, glass can be safety reused.
Besides serving as the primary ingredient in new glass containers, recycled glass also has many other commercial uses-from creating decorative tiles and landscaping materials to rebuilding eroded beaches.

Complete the following statement:
It is important to send used glass bottles to a recycling plant because____

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
   
Indeed the western recession is really the beginning of good news for India! But to understand that we will have to move away for a while from the topic of western recession . . . . . . . to the Japanese recession! For years the Japanese style of management has been admired. However, over the last decade or so, one key question has sprung up ‘if Japanese management style is as wonderful as described then why has Japan been in a recession for more than a decade?'
The answer to this question is very simple. Culture plays a very important part in shaping up economies. What succeeds in one culture fails in another. Japanese are basically nonmaterialistic. And however rich they become, unlike others, they cannot just keep throwing and buying endlessly. And once they have everything they need; there is a saturation point. It was only when companies like Toyota realized that they cannot keep selling cars endlessly to their home market that they went really aggressive in the western markets-and the rest is history. Japanese companies grew bigger by catering to the world markets when their home markets shrunk.

served equally well. They were lured through advertising and marketing techniques of ‘dustbinisation' of the customer; and then finally, once they became ready customers, they were given loans and credits to help them buy more and more. When all the creditworthy people were given loans to a logical limit, they ceased to be a part of the market. Even this would have been understandable if it could work as an eye-opener. Instead of taking the 'Right Step' as Toyota did, they preferred to take a 'shortcut'. Now banks went to the noncredit worthy people and gave them loans. The people expectedly defaulted and the entire system collapsed.

Now like Toyota western companies will learn to find new markets. They will now lean towards India because of its common man! The billion-plus population in the next 25 years will become, a consuming middle-class. Finally, there will be a real surge in income of these people and in the next fifty odd years, one can really hope to see an equal world in terms of material plenty, with poverty being almost nonexistent! And this will happen not by selling more cars to Americans and Europeans. It will happen by creating markets in India, China, Latin America and Africa, by giving their people purchasing power and by making products for them.
The recession has made us realize that it is not because of worse management techniques, but because of limits to growth. And they will realize that it is great for planet earth. After all, how many cars and houses must the rich own before calling it enough? It's time for them to look at others as well. Many years back, to increase his own profits, Henry Ford had started paying his workers more, so that they could buy his cars. In similar fashion, now the developed world will pay the developing world people so that they can buy their cars and washing machines.
The recession will kick - start the process of making the entire world more prosperous, and lay the foundation of limits to growth in the west and the foundation of real globalization in the world - of the globalization of prosperity. And one of its first beneficiaries will be India. 

Directions: Choose the word/phrase which is most opposite in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.  
SURGE 

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
   
Indeed the western recession is really the beginning of good news for India! But to understand that we will have to move away for a while from the topic of western recession . . . . . . . to the Japanese recession! For years the Japanese style of management has been admired. However, over the last decade or so, one key question has sprung up ‘if Japanese management style is as wonderful as described then why has Japan been in a recession for more than a decade?'
The answer to this question is very simple. Culture plays a very important part in shaping up economies. What succeeds in one culture fails in another. Japanese are basically nonmaterialistic. And however rich they become, unlike others, they cannot just keep throwing and buying endlessly. And once they have everything they need; there is a saturation point. It was only when companies like Toyota realized that they cannot keep selling cars endlessly to their home market that they went really aggressive in the western markets-and the rest is history. Japanese companies grew bigger by catering to the world markets when their home markets shrunk.

served equally well. They were lured through advertising and marketing techniques of ‘dustbinisation' of the customer; and then finally, once they became ready customers, they were given loans and credits to help them buy more and more. When all the creditworthy people were given loans to a logical limit, they ceased to be a part of the market. Even this would have been understandable if it could work as an eye-opener. Instead of taking the 'Right Step' as Toyota did, they preferred to take a 'shortcut'. Now banks went to the noncredit worthy people and gave them loans. The people expectedly defaulted and the entire system collapsed.

Now like Toyota western companies will learn to find new markets. They will now lean towards India because of its common man! The billion-plus population in the next 25 years will become, a consuming middle-class. Finally, there will be a real surge in income of these people and in the next fifty odd years, one can really hope to see an equal world in terms of material plenty, with poverty being almost nonexistent! And this will happen not by selling more cars to Americans and Europeans. It will happen by creating markets in India, China, Latin America and Africa, by giving their people purchasing power and by making products for them.
The recession has made us realize that it is not because of worse management techniques, but because of limits to growth. And they will realize that it is great for planet earth. After all, how many cars and houses must the rich own before calling it enough? It's time for them to look at others as well. Many years back, to increase his own profits, Henry Ford had started paying his workers more, so that they could buy his cars. In similar fashion, now the developed world will pay the developing world people so that they can buy their cars and washing machines.
The recession will kick - start the process of making the entire world more prosperous, and lay the foundation of limits to growth in the west and the foundation of real globalization in the world - of the globalization of prosperity. And one of its first beneficiaries will be India. 

Direction: Choose the word which is most similar in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
AGGRESSIVE 

A vexed problem facing us is the clamour to open more colleges and to reserve more seats for backward classes. But it will be a sheer folly to expand such facilities recklessly without giving any thought to the quality of education imparted. If admissions are made far more selective, it will automatically reduced the number of entrants. This should apply particularly colleges, many of which are little more than degree factories. Only then can the authorities hope to bring down the teacher-student ratio to manageable proportion. What is more, teachers should be given refresher courses, every summer to brush up their knowledge. Besides, if college managements increase their library budget it will help both the staff and the to new students a great deal. 
At the same time, however, it will be unfair to deny college education to thousands of young men and women, unless employers stop insisting on degrees even for clerical jobs. For a start, why can't the Government disqualify graduates from securing certain jobs, say class III and IV posts? Once the link between degrees and jobs is severed at least in some important departments, in will make young people think twice before joining college. 

What can automatically help to reduce admission:

Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow based on the information given in the passage.

IN GORILLA society, power belongs to silverback males. These splendid creatures have numerous status markers besides their back hair: they are bigger than the rest of their band, strike space-filling postures, produce deeper sounds, thump their chests lustily and, in general, exude an air of physical fitness. Things are not that different in the corporate world. The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair and, for his age, a fit body. Bosses spread themselves out behind their large desks. They stand tall when talking to subordinates. Their conversation is laden with prestige pauses and declarative statements. The big difference between gorillas and humans is, of course, that human society changes rapidly. The past few decades have seen a striking change in the distribution of power—between men and women, the West and the emerging world and geeks and non-geeks.

Women run some of America’s largest firms, such as General Motors (Mary Barra) and IBM (Virginia Rometty). More than half of the world’s biggest 2,500 public companies have their headquarters outside the West. Geeks barely out of short trousers run some of the world’s most dynamic businesses. Peter The, one of Silicon Valley’s leading investors, has introduced a blanket rule: never invest in a CEO who wears a suit. Yet it is remarkable, in this supposed age of diversity, how many bosses still conform to the stereotype. First, they are tall: in research for his 2005 book, “Blink”, Malcolm Gladwell found that 30% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are 6 feet 2 inches or taller, compared with 3.9% of the American population. People who “sound right” also have a marked advantage in the race for the top. Quantified Communications, a Texas-based company, asked people to evaluate speeches delivered by 120 executives. They found that voice quality accounted for 23% of listeners’ evaluations and the content of the speech only accounted for 11%.
 Academics from the business schools of the University of California, San Diego and Duke University listened to 792 male CEOs giving presentations to investors and found that those with the deepest voices earned $187,000 a year more than the average.
 Physical fitness seems to matter too: a study published this month, by Peter Limbach of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Florian Sonnenburg of the University of Cologne, found that companies in America’s S&P 1500 index whose CEOs had finished a marathon were worth 5% more on average than those whose bosses had not.

Choose the word which is most nearly the SAME in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
Stereotype