Which of the following is not correct as per the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

In the passage, the executive who told the woman how she should sit was _________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

The author is most probably a _____________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

The cynosure of the passage is the ________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

If women do not get challenging assignments, _______________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

The author is most unlikely to agree with the following, except ________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

This passage is most likely to be an extract from the following, except _________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

The message that the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which the parliament has the power to make laws is stated in __________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

The author's tone in the concluding lines of the passage is ____________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

The author categorizes the present condition of the government as ________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

The central idea of the passage is ___________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

The passage is most probably an extract from ____________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

According to the passage, the IMF has recommended to India that it should concentrate on _____________.

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows:

Banks, trading companies, leasing companies and multinational corporations have currency convertibility risk even if they don’t currently attempt to quantify the risk on their balance sheets. Buyers and sellers of currency convertibility protection must not only have a feel for pricing credit derivatives, they must be economists with a penchant for econometrics. These are negotiated transactions. Price, terms, conditions, and size are all negotiated directly between counterparties. As there are so few real counterparties for this type of protection, the broker market is usually ineffective. It is much more effective to contact well–known counterparties in the credit derivatives market and negotiate the transactions and market levels directly. This is a supply and demand driven market, and prices vary from counterparty to counterparty. Sovereign whim can drive this market. Buyers of convertibility protection have a knock–in spot trade. The knock–in is independent of currency levels; sovereign dynamics trigger the event. Credit spreads don’t matter; models don’t matter; intuition doesn’t count. There is no exact mathematical model. The market defines the price.

Recent reactions to the snap poll conducted in Bombay to gauge the atmosphere and expectations about convertibility are symptomatic. Bankers, since their assets are more liquid, and their technology frontline, are optimistic and eager. Industry, alas, is bearish. This doubtless owes in large measure to the manner in which it has been accustomed to function.

The biggest canard meanwhile is that exporters, or those involved in import substitution, alone can extricate us. As matters stand, apart from unjustly enriching a handful, the 'thrust' on exports, based on a rigging of reality and relative prices, has achieved nothing. A telling substantiation of this has been provided in a recent study by Mr. Bimal Roy in the Economic and Political Weekly. He shows how net Indian exports have been stationary over the past 20 years. The study, it may be noted, spans a period over which a variety of fiscal sops were extended to exporters.

Clearly, exports have failed, and there is still a debt to service and repay. Continued tinkering with the convertibility question, therefore, can help only those who would like to varnish the ancient regime. Consider the system now in place. Targeted at exporters and other hopefuls who fetch foreign exchange (FX), it simultaneously imposes a tax on them. This dualism involves that 40 percent of FX earning have to be surrendered to government – but at a rate, which actually undervalues foreign exchange. This is a bit, which then goes towards sustaining official monopsony, and discretionary distribution through channelizing agencies.

The remainder goes towards financing defense purchases, promotion trips, festivals and what not. With a repressed domestic market nestling behind Olympian tariff walls manufacturers who would like to export are, in turn, few. Despite discomfort with Fund–Bank suggestions that Indians, for the present, should concentrate on primary – and lesser value added – exports, that is precisely what manufacturers have been doing while supplying limited quantities of obsolescent manufactures to the domestic tariff area (DTA). Opportunism, and correct opportunity costs make strange bedfellows after all. Without doing away with conditions, which foster the former. India will, in fact, face a future much bleaker than that foretold by even the digitizes.

Note what the present focus on exporters implies. Since, till now, this has been to the exclusion of emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI)/import substitution through FDI, this implies that, somehow, official – and doubtless entrepreneurial – India prefers to allocate a relatively inferior weight to FX earned/saved through FDI. What, quite evidently disconcerts, more than the presence of aliens, is the cold fear of competition.

Meanwhile, for the intrepid who have already ventured in, the world, which exists, is cozy. Tariff walls and quota restrictions (QRs) allow rentals for all, while the relative overvaluation of exchange rates further spurs the favoured to source more from "home” than from "host'! This is precisely the ambience, which can never kick–start flaccid manufacturers to double as exporters.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to introduce competition. And to do so within the DTA, before Fund conditionalities drive the country towards an untimely acceptance of far reaching tariff reductions. This competition will be of no use, however, if all that is yielded is a pantomime confrontation between the obsolescent and the antediluvian, along with the usual rag–tag of 'foreign' add–ons. To avoid this eventuality, nothing less than complete current, and capital account convertibility, along with total industrial liberalization, will do.

Take current account convertibility first. This is the commonest form around, and even economies like Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, quite apart from OECD ones, abide by it.

The closest analogy here is with ISO 9000 certification – currently much in the news. For convertibility too proclaims the existence of certain credible standards which investors, prior to proceeding, like to take for granted. The most crucial one out of these standards has, of course, to do with the ease of profit repatriation.

This is something, which should provide no greater hurt to a nation's integrity that, for instance my banker adversely affects me by charging for his services. Better still, unlike bankers' charges – or interest – this does not entail a recurring charge, regardless of performance. Further, convertibility will happily end official seigniorage where export revenues are concerned. A particularly useful feature of convertibility, meanwhile, is that it prevents the hemorrhaging of retained earnings within the country; such earnings, whenever denied a vent, are usually diverted to speculative uses – or worse.

Secondly, great care must be taken to avoid the temptation to 'fix' the parity. Not only will that preclude needless diversion of energy for the RBI, the efficiency gains of convertibility will also thereby be preserved from sacrifice at the altar of a fetish. Because, if convertibility provides confidence to the prospective investor, floating rates (and import liberalization) serve to keep him on his toes.

The greatest impact of the capital account convertibility would be felt in the banking sector. Total deregulation of the interest rates would instill greater competition in the circle. The weaker banks would further be cornered as `narrow banks`. NPAs reduction would be at focus of attention of banks which would help regaining of its financial health. Margin of banks would be under pressure, infusing adequate asset liability management system in the banks. However, banks will have much more liberal limits for borrowing and deploying funds outside India. Indian banking system should surge ahead in this occasion and accept the challenge by eradicating its weak points and consolidating its financial health.

How many different articles of the Indian constitution have been cited in the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

The reason why RBI should not fix exchange rates is that __________.

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows:

Banks, trading companies, leasing companies and multinational corporations have currency convertibility risk even if they don’t currently attempt to quantify the risk on their balance sheets. Buyers and sellers of currency convertibility protection must not only have a feel for pricing credit derivatives, they must be economists with a penchant for econometrics. These are negotiated transactions. Price, terms, conditions, and size are all negotiated directly between counterparties. As there are so few real counterparties for this type of protection, the broker market is usually ineffective. It is much more effective to contact well–known counterparties in the credit derivatives market and negotiate the transactions and market levels directly. This is a supply and demand driven market, and prices vary from counterparty to counterparty. Sovereign whim can drive this market. Buyers of convertibility protection have a knock–in spot trade. The knock–in is independent of currency levels; sovereign dynamics trigger the event. Credit spreads don’t matter; models don’t matter; intuition doesn’t count. There is no exact mathematical model. The market defines the price.

Recent reactions to the snap poll conducted in Bombay to gauge the atmosphere and expectations about convertibility are symptomatic. Bankers, since their assets are more liquid, and their technology frontline, are optimistic and eager. Industry, alas, is bearish. This doubtless owes in large measure to the manner in which it has been accustomed to function.

The biggest canard meanwhile is that exporters, or those involved in import substitution, alone can extricate us. As matters stand, apart from unjustly enriching a handful, the 'thrust' on exports, based on a rigging of reality and relative prices, has achieved nothing. A telling substantiation of this has been provided in a recent study by Mr. Bimal Roy in the Economic and Political Weekly. He shows how net Indian exports have been stationary over the past 20 years. The study, it may be noted, spans a period over which a variety of fiscal sops were extended to exporters.

Clearly, exports have failed, and there is still a debt to service and repay. Continued tinkering with the convertibility question, therefore, can help only those who would like to varnish the ancient regime. Consider the system now in place. Targeted at exporters and other hopefuls who fetch foreign exchange (FX), it simultaneously imposes a tax on them. This dualism involves that 40 percent of FX earning have to be surrendered to government – but at a rate, which actually undervalues foreign exchange. This is a bit, which then goes towards sustaining official monopsony, and discretionary distribution through channelizing agencies.

The remainder goes towards financing defense purchases, promotion trips, festivals and what not. With a repressed domestic market nestling behind Olympian tariff walls manufacturers who would like to export are, in turn, few. Despite discomfort with Fund–Bank suggestions that Indians, for the present, should concentrate on primary – and lesser value added – exports, that is precisely what manufacturers have been doing while supplying limited quantities of obsolescent manufactures to the domestic tariff area (DTA). Opportunism, and correct opportunity costs make strange bedfellows after all. Without doing away with conditions, which foster the former. India will, in fact, face a future much bleaker than that foretold by even the digitizes.

Note what the present focus on exporters implies. Since, till now, this has been to the exclusion of emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI)/import substitution through FDI, this implies that, somehow, official – and doubtless entrepreneurial – India prefers to allocate a relatively inferior weight to FX earned/saved through FDI. What, quite evidently disconcerts, more than the presence of aliens, is the cold fear of competition.

Meanwhile, for the intrepid who have already ventured in, the world, which exists, is cozy. Tariff walls and quota restrictions (QRs) allow rentals for all, while the relative overvaluation of exchange rates further spurs the favoured to source more from "home” than from "host'! This is precisely the ambience, which can never kick–start flaccid manufacturers to double as exporters.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to introduce competition. And to do so within the DTA, before Fund conditionalities drive the country towards an untimely acceptance of far reaching tariff reductions. This competition will be of no use, however, if all that is yielded is a pantomime confrontation between the obsolescent and the antediluvian, along with the usual rag–tag of 'foreign' add–ons. To avoid this eventuality, nothing less than complete current, and capital account convertibility, along with total industrial liberalization, will do.

Take current account convertibility first. This is the commonest form around, and even economies like Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, quite apart from OECD ones, abide by it.

The closest analogy here is with ISO 9000 certification – currently much in the news. For convertibility too proclaims the existence of certain credible standards which investors, prior to proceeding, like to take for granted. The most crucial one out of these standards has, of course, to do with the ease of profit repatriation.

This is something, which should provide no greater hurt to a nation's integrity that, for instance my banker adversely affects me by charging for his services. Better still, unlike bankers' charges – or interest – this does not entail a recurring charge, regardless of performance. Further, convertibility will happily end official seigniorage where export revenues are concerned. A particularly useful feature of convertibility, meanwhile, is that it prevents the hemorrhaging of retained earnings within the country; such earnings, whenever denied a vent, are usually diverted to speculative uses – or worse.

Secondly, great care must be taken to avoid the temptation to 'fix' the parity. Not only will that preclude needless diversion of energy for the RBI, the efficiency gains of convertibility will also thereby be preserved from sacrifice at the altar of a fetish. Because, if convertibility provides confidence to the prospective investor, floating rates (and import liberalization) serve to keep him on his toes.

The greatest impact of the capital account convertibility would be felt in the banking sector. Total deregulation of the interest rates would instill greater competition in the circle. The weaker banks would further be cornered as `narrow banks`. NPAs reduction would be at focus of attention of banks which would help regaining of its financial health. Margin of banks would be under pressure, infusing adequate asset liability management system in the banks. However, banks will have much more liberal limits for borrowing and deploying funds outside India. Indian banking system should surge ahead in this occasion and accept the challenge by eradicating its weak points and consolidating its financial health.

Which of the following could be an appropriate title for the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
The broad consensus that emerged at the Inter–State Council meeting over what is arguably the Constitution's most contentious provision — Article 356 — is a most welcome thing. The spirit of cooperative federalism has raised the hope of a constitutional amendment that will build safeguards into this emergency provision to prevent its misuse. The Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley's press briefing suggested that these safeguards will incorporate the essence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1994 judgment in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case and include recommendations made by bodies such as the Sarkaria Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC). Article 356 gives the Centre the power to take over the functions of a State Government in the event of a failure of the constitutional machinery in that State. However, the history of its use clearly reveals that it was invoked more often to fix politically inconvenient State Governments, precipitate fresh elections and for other reasons that have no relevance to the purpose of the Article.

In recent years, the judgment in the Bommai case has served as a salutary check — and indeed bar — against such misuse. The Court's ruling that the Centre cannot dissolve State legislatures unless the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha has served as an effective restraint during a period when no party or combination of parties has enjoyed a majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Court also held that any such proclamation is open to judicial review to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of relevant material or whether it was a mala fideexercise of power. This pronouncement has deterred the use of the Article for narrow, political ends. Between 1950 and 1994, when the Bommai judgment was delivered, Article 356 was used on more than 90 occasions. In many cases, State Governments were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and in other cases, without being given an opportunity to prove their strength on the floor of the House. Instances of such misuse have all but vanished in recent years, but it is important to strengthen and institutionalize the safeguards through a constitutional amendment.

Among other things, such an amendment must ensure that, if used at all, the recourse to Article 356 must be a last resort — one that is embraced after exhausting the options provided by other Articles in the Constitution such as 256, 257 and, more importantly, 355. Other measures, such as the condition that the Centre must formally communicate to a State the facts and reasons for proposing to bring it under President's Rule and give the State an opportunity to reply, are essentially intended to ensure that the proposed use of Article 356 is based on a rigorous method. Mr. Jaitley's suggestion that the Governor's report recommending President's Rule should be in the nature of a "speaking order" is virtually identical to the recommendation made by the NCRWC. This was that such a report should contain "a precise and clear statement of all the material facts and grounds, on the basis of which the President may satisfy himself as to the existence or otherwise of the situation contemplated in Article 356." Like some other emergency provisions in the Constitution, Article 356 was introduced as an extraordinary safeguard, not something that is invoked in non–extreme circumstances. During the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar even hoped it would be a "dead letter," something that would "never be called into operation." The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment should be to ensure that this democratic vision of cooperative federalism comes true, however late in the day.

The broad consensus that emerged at the Inter–State Council meeting over what is arguably the Constitution's most contentious provision — Article 356 — is a most welcome thing. The spirit of cooperative federalism has raised the hope of a constitutional amendment that will build safeguards into this emergency provision to prevent its misuse. The Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley's press briefing suggested that these safeguards will incorporate the essence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1994 judgment in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case and include recommendations made by bodies such as the Sarkaria Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC). Article 356 gives the Centre the power to take over the functions of a State Government in the event of a failure of the constitutional machinery in that State. However, the history of its use clearly reveals that it was invoked more often to fix politically inconvenient State Governments, precipitate fresh elections and for other reasons that have no relevance to the purpose of the Article.

In recent years, the judgment in the Bommai case has served as a salutary check — and indeed bar — against such misuse. The Court's ruling that the Centre cannot dissolve State legislatures unless the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha has served as an effective restraint during a period when no party or combination of parties has enjoyed a majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Court also held that any such proclamation is open to judicial review to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of relevant material or whether it was a mala fideexercise of power. This pronouncement has deterred the use of the Article for narrow, political ends. Between 1950 and 1994, when the Bommai judgment was delivered, Article 356 was used on more than 90 occasions. In many cases, State Governments were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and in other cases, without being given an opportunity to prove their strength on the floor of the House. Instances of such misuse have all but vanished in recent years, but it is important to strengthen and institutionalize the safeguards through a constitutional amendment.

Among other things, such an amendment must ensure that, if used at all, the recourse to Article 356 must be a last resort — one that is embraced after exhausting the options provided by other Articles in the Constitution such as 256, 257 and, more importantly, 355. Other measures, such as the condition that the Centre must formally communicate to a State the facts and reasons for proposing to bring it under President's Rule and give the State an opportunity to reply, are essentially intended to ensure that the proposed use of Article 356 is based on a rigorous method. Mr. Jaitley's suggestion that the Governor's report recommending President's Rule should be in the nature of a "speaking order" is virtually identical to the recommendation made by the NCRWC. This was that such a report should contain "a precise and clear statement of all the material facts and grounds, on the basis of which the President may satisfy himself as to the existence or otherwise of the situation contemplated in Article 356." Like some other emergency provisions in the Constitution, Article 356 was introduced as an extraordinary safeguard, not something that is invoked in non–extreme circumstances. During the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar even hoped it would be a "dead letter," something that would "never be called into operation." The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment should be to ensure that this democratic vision of cooperative federalism comes true, however late in the day.

The ''ceiling'' mentioned in the passage is ___________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Ten years passed since U.S. corporations began hiring more than token numbers of women for jobs at the bottom rung of the management ladder. A decade into their careers, how far up have these women climbed? The answer: not as far as their male counterparts. Despite impressive progress at the entry level and in middle management, women are having trouble breaking into senior management. There is an invisible ceiling for women at that level, says Janet Jones-Parker, executive director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants Inc. After eight or ten years, they hit a barrier.

The trouble begins at about the $ 75,000 to $ 100,000 salary level, and seems to get worse the higher one looks. Only one company on Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations has a woman chief executive. That woman, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post Co. (No. 3 42), readily admits she got the job because her family owns a controlling share of the corporation.

More surprising, given that women have been on the ladder for ten years, is that none currently seems to have a shot at the top rung. Executive recruiters, asked to identify women who might become presidents or chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, draw a blank. Even companies that have women in senior management privately concede that these women aren't going to occupy the chairman's office.

Women have only four of the 154 spots this year at the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program a prestigious 13-week conclave to which companies send executives they are grooming for the corridors of power. The numbers aren't much better at comparable programs at Stanford and at Dartmouth's Tuck School. But perhaps the most telling admission of trouble comes from men at the top. The women aren't making it, confessed the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to a consultant. Can you help us find out why?”

All explanations are controversial to one faction or another in this highly charged debate. At one extreme, many women - and some men - maintain that women are the victims of blatant sexism. At the other extreme, many men - and a few women - believe women are unsuitable for the highest managerial jobs: they lack the necessary assertiveness, they don't know how to get along in this rarefied world, or they have children and lose interest in- or time for- their careers. Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see discrimination as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean by the term.

The discrimination they talk about is not the simple minded sexism of dirty jokes and references to girls it is not born of hatred or indeed of any ill will that the bearer may be conscious of. What they call discrimination consists simply of treating women differently from men. The notion dumbfounds some male managers. You mean to say they ask, that managerial women don't want to be treated differently from men in any respect, and that by acting otherwise as I was raised to think only decent and gentlemanly I’m somehow prejudicing their chances for success? You the women respond.

Men I talk to would like to see more women in senior management says Ann Carol Brown, a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies. “But they don’t recognize the subtle barriers that stand in the way”, Brown thinks the biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence. At senior management levels, competence is assumed she says. What you looking for is someone who fits someone who gets along someone you trust. Now that subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel that a women is going to fit? Think it's very hard.

The experience of an executive at a large North-eastern bank illustrates how many managerial women see the problem Promoted to senior vice president several years ago, she was the first woman named to that the position. But she now believes it will be many years before the bank appoints a woman executive vice president. The men just don't feel comfortable she says. They make all sorts of excuses that I'm not a banker (she worked as a consultant originally), that I don't know the culture. There's a smoke screen four miles thick. I attribute it to being a woman Similarly, 117 to 300 women executive polled recently by UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Korn/Ferry International an executive search firm felt that being a woman was the greatest obstacle to their success.

A common concern among women, particularly in law and investment banking is that the best assignments go to men, Some departments like sales and trading or mergers and acquisitions are considered more macho, hence more prestigious”, says a woman at a New York investment bank. It's nothing explicit. But if women can't get the assignments that allow them to shine, how can they advance”.

Women also worry that they don't receive the same kind of constructive criticism that men do. While these women probably overestimate the amount of feedback their male colleagues receive, even some men acknowledge wide spread male reluctance to criticize a woman. There are vast number of men who can't do it says Eugene Jennings, professor of business administration at Michigan State University and a consultant to a dozen large companies. A male banking executive agrees; “A male boss will haul a guy aside and just kick his ass if large the subordinate performs badly in front of a client. But I heard about a woman here who gets nervous and tends to giggle in front of customers. She's unaware of it and her boss hasn't told her. But behind her back he downgrades her for not being smooth with customers.

Sometimes the message that has to be conveyed to a woman manager is much more sensitive. An executive at a large company says he once had to tell a woman that she should either cross her legs or keep her legs together when she sat. The encounter was obviously painful to him. She listened to me and thanked me and expressed shock at what she was doing he recalls, with a touch of agony in his voice. My God, this is something only your mother tells you. I'm a fairly direct person and a great believer in equal opportunity. But it was damn difficult for me to say this to a woman whom I view to be very proper in all other respects.

Research by Anne Harlan a human resource manager at the Federal Aviation Administration. And Carol Weiss, a managing associate of Charles Hamilton Associates, a Boston consulting firm, suggests that the situation doesn't necessarily improve as the number of women in an organization increases. Their study conducted at the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women and completed in 1982. Challenges the theory advanced by some expect that when a corporation attained a critical mass of executive women defined as somewhere between 30% and 35% job discrimination would vanish naturally as men and women began to take each other for granted.

Harlan and Weiss observed the effects of different numbers of women in an organization during a three-year study of 100 men and women managers at two North-eastern retailing corporations. While their sample of companies was not large, after their results were published other companies said they had similar experiences Harlan and Weiss found that while overt resistance drops quickly after the first few women become managers it seems to pick up again as the number of women reaches 15%. In one company they studied only 6% of the managers were women, compared with 19% in the second company. But more women in the second company complained of discrimination, ranging from sexual harassment to inadequate feedback. Could something other than discrimination- very different corporate cultures, say have accounted for the result? Harlen and Weiss say no, that the two companies were eminently comparable.

What is the real reason that Indian industry is not interested in import substitution and the corresponding foreign direct investment?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows:

Banks, trading companies, leasing companies and multinational corporations have currency convertibility risk even if they don’t currently attempt to quantify the risk on their balance sheets. Buyers and sellers of currency convertibility protection must not only have a feel for pricing credit derivatives, they must be economists with a penchant for econometrics. These are negotiated transactions. Price, terms, conditions, and size are all negotiated directly between counterparties. As there are so few real counterparties for this type of protection, the broker market is usually ineffective. It is much more effective to contact well–known counterparties in the credit derivatives market and negotiate the transactions and market levels directly. This is a supply and demand driven market, and prices vary from counterparty to counterparty. Sovereign whim can drive this market. Buyers of convertibility protection have a knock–in spot trade. The knock–in is independent of currency levels; sovereign dynamics trigger the event. Credit spreads don’t matter; models don’t matter; intuition doesn’t count. There is no exact mathematical model. The market defines the price.

Recent reactions to the snap poll conducted in Bombay to gauge the atmosphere and expectations about convertibility are symptomatic. Bankers, since their assets are more liquid, and their technology frontline, are optimistic and eager. Industry, alas, is bearish. This doubtless owes in large measure to the manner in which it has been accustomed to function.

The biggest canard meanwhile is that exporters, or those involved in import substitution, alone can extricate us. As matters stand, apart from unjustly enriching a handful, the 'thrust' on exports, based on a rigging of reality and relative prices, has achieved nothing. A telling substantiation of this has been provided in a recent study by Mr. Bimal Roy in the Economic and Political Weekly. He shows how net Indian exports have been stationary over the past 20 years. The study, it may be noted, spans a period over which a variety of fiscal sops were extended to exporters.

Clearly, exports have failed, and there is still a debt to service and repay. Continued tinkering with the convertibility question, therefore, can help only those who would like to varnish the ancient regime. Consider the system now in place. Targeted at exporters and other hopefuls who fetch foreign exchange (FX), it simultaneously imposes a tax on them. This dualism involves that 40 percent of FX earning have to be surrendered to government – but at a rate, which actually undervalues foreign exchange. This is a bit, which then goes towards sustaining official monopsony, and discretionary distribution through channelizing agencies.

The remainder goes towards financing defense purchases, promotion trips, festivals and what not. With a repressed domestic market nestling behind Olympian tariff walls manufacturers who would like to export are, in turn, few. Despite discomfort with Fund–Bank suggestions that Indians, for the present, should concentrate on primary – and lesser value added – exports, that is precisely what manufacturers have been doing while supplying limited quantities of obsolescent manufactures to the domestic tariff area (DTA). Opportunism, and correct opportunity costs make strange bedfellows after all. Without doing away with conditions, which foster the former. India will, in fact, face a future much bleaker than that foretold by even the digitizes.

Note what the present focus on exporters implies. Since, till now, this has been to the exclusion of emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI)/import substitution through FDI, this implies that, somehow, official – and doubtless entrepreneurial – India prefers to allocate a relatively inferior weight to FX earned/saved through FDI. What, quite evidently disconcerts, more than the presence of aliens, is the cold fear of competition.

Meanwhile, for the intrepid who have already ventured in, the world, which exists, is cozy. Tariff walls and quota restrictions (QRs) allow rentals for all, while the relative overvaluation of exchange rates further spurs the favoured to source more from "home” than from "host'! This is precisely the ambience, which can never kick–start flaccid manufacturers to double as exporters.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to introduce competition. And to do so within the DTA, before Fund conditionalities drive the country towards an untimely acceptance of far reaching tariff reductions. This competition will be of no use, however, if all that is yielded is a pantomime confrontation between the obsolescent and the antediluvian, along with the usual rag–tag of 'foreign' add–ons. To avoid this eventuality, nothing less than complete current, and capital account convertibility, along with total industrial liberalization, will do.

Take current account convertibility first. This is the commonest form around, and even economies like Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, quite apart from OECD ones, abide by it.

The closest analogy here is with ISO 9000 certification – currently much in the news. For convertibility too proclaims the existence of certain credible standards which investors, prior to proceeding, like to take for granted. The most crucial one out of these standards has, of course, to do with the ease of profit repatriation.

This is something, which should provide no greater hurt to a nation's integrity that, for instance my banker adversely affects me by charging for his services. Better still, unlike bankers' charges – or interest – this does not entail a recurring charge, regardless of performance. Further, convertibility will happily end official seigniorage where export revenues are concerned. A particularly useful feature of convertibility, meanwhile, is that it prevents the hemorrhaging of retained earnings within the country; such earnings, whenever denied a vent, are usually diverted to speculative uses – or worse.

Secondly, great care must be taken to avoid the temptation to 'fix' the parity. Not only will that preclude needless diversion of energy for the RBI, the efficiency gains of convertibility will also thereby be preserved from sacrifice at the altar of a fetish. Because, if convertibility provides confidence to the prospective investor, floating rates (and import liberalization) serve to keep him on his toes.

The greatest impact of the capital account convertibility would be felt in the banking sector. Total deregulation of the interest rates would instill greater competition in the circle. The weaker banks would further be cornered as `narrow banks`. NPAs reduction would be at focus of attention of banks which would help regaining of its financial health. Margin of banks would be under pressure, infusing adequate asset liability management system in the banks. However, banks will have much more liberal limits for borrowing and deploying funds outside India. Indian banking system should surge ahead in this occasion and accept the challenge by eradicating its weak points and consolidating its financial health.

Which of the following uses of surrendered foreign exchange are not put to use?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows:

Banks, trading companies, leasing companies and multinational corporations have currency convertibility risk even if they don’t currently attempt to quantify the risk on their balance sheets. Buyers and sellers of currency convertibility protection must not only have a feel for pricing credit derivatives, they must be economists with a penchant for econometrics. These are negotiated transactions. Price, terms, conditions, and size are all negotiated directly between counterparties. As there are so few real counterparties for this type of protection, the broker market is usually ineffective. It is much more effective to contact well–known counterparties in the credit derivatives market and negotiate the transactions and market levels directly. This is a supply and demand driven market, and prices vary from counterparty to counterparty. Sovereign whim can drive this market. Buyers of convertibility protection have a knock–in spot trade. The knock–in is independent of currency levels; sovereign dynamics trigger the event. Credit spreads don’t matter; models don’t matter; intuition doesn’t count. There is no exact mathematical model. The market defines the price.

Recent reactions to the snap poll conducted in Bombay to gauge the atmosphere and expectations about convertibility are symptomatic. Bankers, since their assets are more liquid, and their technology frontline, are optimistic and eager. Industry, alas, is bearish. This doubtless owes in large measure to the manner in which it has been accustomed to function.

The biggest canard meanwhile is that exporters, or those involved in import substitution, alone can extricate us. As matters stand, apart from unjustly enriching a handful, the 'thrust' on exports, based on a rigging of reality and relative prices, has achieved nothing. A telling substantiation of this has been provided in a recent study by Mr. Bimal Roy in the Economic and Political Weekly. He shows how net Indian exports have been stationary over the past 20 years. The study, it may be noted, spans a period over which a variety of fiscal sops were extended to exporters.

Clearly, exports have failed, and there is still a debt to service and repay. Continued tinkering with the convertibility question, therefore, can help only those who would like to varnish the ancient regime. Consider the system now in place. Targeted at exporters and other hopefuls who fetch foreign exchange (FX), it simultaneously imposes a tax on them. This dualism involves that 40 percent of FX earning have to be surrendered to government – but at a rate, which actually undervalues foreign exchange. This is a bit, which then goes towards sustaining official monopsony, and discretionary distribution through channelizing agencies.

The remainder goes towards financing defense purchases, promotion trips, festivals and what not. With a repressed domestic market nestling behind Olympian tariff walls manufacturers who would like to export are, in turn, few. Despite discomfort with Fund–Bank suggestions that Indians, for the present, should concentrate on primary – and lesser value added – exports, that is precisely what manufacturers have been doing while supplying limited quantities of obsolescent manufactures to the domestic tariff area (DTA). Opportunism, and correct opportunity costs make strange bedfellows after all. Without doing away with conditions, which foster the former. India will, in fact, face a future much bleaker than that foretold by even the digitizes.

Note what the present focus on exporters implies. Since, till now, this has been to the exclusion of emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI)/import substitution through FDI, this implies that, somehow, official – and doubtless entrepreneurial – India prefers to allocate a relatively inferior weight to FX earned/saved through FDI. What, quite evidently disconcerts, more than the presence of aliens, is the cold fear of competition.

Meanwhile, for the intrepid who have already ventured in, the world, which exists, is cozy. Tariff walls and quota restrictions (QRs) allow rentals for all, while the relative overvaluation of exchange rates further spurs the favoured to source more from "home” than from "host'! This is precisely the ambience, which can never kick–start flaccid manufacturers to double as exporters.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to introduce competition. And to do so within the DTA, before Fund conditionalities drive the country towards an untimely acceptance of far reaching tariff reductions. This competition will be of no use, however, if all that is yielded is a pantomime confrontation between the obsolescent and the antediluvian, along with the usual rag–tag of 'foreign' add–ons. To avoid this eventuality, nothing less than complete current, and capital account convertibility, along with total industrial liberalization, will do.

Take current account convertibility first. This is the commonest form around, and even economies like Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, quite apart from OECD ones, abide by it.

The closest analogy here is with ISO 9000 certification – currently much in the news. For convertibility too proclaims the existence of certain credible standards which investors, prior to proceeding, like to take for granted. The most crucial one out of these standards has, of course, to do with the ease of profit repatriation.

This is something, which should provide no greater hurt to a nation's integrity that, for instance my banker adversely affects me by charging for his services. Better still, unlike bankers' charges – or interest – this does not entail a recurring charge, regardless of performance. Further, convertibility will happily end official seigniorage where export revenues are concerned. A particularly useful feature of convertibility, meanwhile, is that it prevents the hemorrhaging of retained earnings within the country; such earnings, whenever denied a vent, are usually diverted to speculative uses – or worse.

Secondly, great care must be taken to avoid the temptation to 'fix' the parity. Not only will that preclude needless diversion of energy for the RBI, the efficiency gains of convertibility will also thereby be preserved from sacrifice at the altar of a fetish. Because, if convertibility provides confidence to the prospective investor, floating rates (and import liberalization) serve to keep him on his toes.

The greatest impact of the capital account convertibility would be felt in the banking sector. Total deregulation of the interest rates would instill greater competition in the circle. The weaker banks would further be cornered as `narrow banks`. NPAs reduction would be at focus of attention of banks which would help regaining of its financial health. Margin of banks would be under pressure, infusing adequate asset liability management system in the banks. However, banks will have much more liberal limits for borrowing and deploying funds outside India. Indian banking system should surge ahead in this occasion and accept the challenge by eradicating its weak points and consolidating its financial health.

What is most likely to cause tariff reductions within the Indian economy?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows:

Banks, trading companies, leasing companies and multinational corporations have currency convertibility risk even if they don’t currently attempt to quantify the risk on their balance sheets. Buyers and sellers of currency convertibility protection must not only have a feel for pricing credit derivatives, they must be economists with a penchant for econometrics. These are negotiated transactions. Price, terms, conditions, and size are all negotiated directly between counterparties. As there are so few real counterparties for this type of protection, the broker market is usually ineffective. It is much more effective to contact well–known counterparties in the credit derivatives market and negotiate the transactions and market levels directly. This is a supply and demand driven market, and prices vary from counterparty to counterparty. Sovereign whim can drive this market. Buyers of convertibility protection have a knock–in spot trade. The knock–in is independent of currency levels; sovereign dynamics trigger the event. Credit spreads don’t matter; models don’t matter; intuition doesn’t count. There is no exact mathematical model. The market defines the price.

Recent reactions to the snap poll conducted in Bombay to gauge the atmosphere and expectations about convertibility are symptomatic. Bankers, since their assets are more liquid, and their technology frontline, are optimistic and eager. Industry, alas, is bearish. This doubtless owes in large measure to the manner in which it has been accustomed to function.

The biggest canard meanwhile is that exporters, or those involved in import substitution, alone can extricate us. As matters stand, apart from unjustly enriching a handful, the 'thrust' on exports, based on a rigging of reality and relative prices, has achieved nothing. A telling substantiation of this has been provided in a recent study by Mr. Bimal Roy in the Economic and Political Weekly. He shows how net Indian exports have been stationary over the past 20 years. The study, it may be noted, spans a period over which a variety of fiscal sops were extended to exporters.

Clearly, exports have failed, and there is still a debt to service and repay. Continued tinkering with the convertibility question, therefore, can help only those who would like to varnish the ancient regime. Consider the system now in place. Targeted at exporters and other hopefuls who fetch foreign exchange (FX), it simultaneously imposes a tax on them. This dualism involves that 40 percent of FX earning have to be surrendered to government – but at a rate, which actually undervalues foreign exchange. This is a bit, which then goes towards sustaining official monopsony, and discretionary distribution through channelizing agencies.

The remainder goes towards financing defense purchases, promotion trips, festivals and what not. With a repressed domestic market nestling behind Olympian tariff walls manufacturers who would like to export are, in turn, few. Despite discomfort with Fund–Bank suggestions that Indians, for the present, should concentrate on primary – and lesser value added – exports, that is precisely what manufacturers have been doing while supplying limited quantities of obsolescent manufactures to the domestic tariff area (DTA). Opportunism, and correct opportunity costs make strange bedfellows after all. Without doing away with conditions, which foster the former. India will, in fact, face a future much bleaker than that foretold by even the digitizes.

Note what the present focus on exporters implies. Since, till now, this has been to the exclusion of emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI)/import substitution through FDI, this implies that, somehow, official – and doubtless entrepreneurial – India prefers to allocate a relatively inferior weight to FX earned/saved through FDI. What, quite evidently disconcerts, more than the presence of aliens, is the cold fear of competition.

Meanwhile, for the intrepid who have already ventured in, the world, which exists, is cozy. Tariff walls and quota restrictions (QRs) allow rentals for all, while the relative overvaluation of exchange rates further spurs the favoured to source more from "home” than from "host'! This is precisely the ambience, which can never kick–start flaccid manufacturers to double as exporters.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to introduce competition. And to do so within the DTA, before Fund conditionalities drive the country towards an untimely acceptance of far reaching tariff reductions. This competition will be of no use, however, if all that is yielded is a pantomime confrontation between the obsolescent and the antediluvian, along with the usual rag–tag of 'foreign' add–ons. To avoid this eventuality, nothing less than complete current, and capital account convertibility, along with total industrial liberalization, will do.

Take current account convertibility first. This is the commonest form around, and even economies like Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, quite apart from OECD ones, abide by it.

The closest analogy here is with ISO 9000 certification – currently much in the news. For convertibility too proclaims the existence of certain credible standards which investors, prior to proceeding, like to take for granted. The most crucial one out of these standards has, of course, to do with the ease of profit repatriation.

This is something, which should provide no greater hurt to a nation's integrity that, for instance my banker adversely affects me by charging for his services. Better still, unlike bankers' charges – or interest – this does not entail a recurring charge, regardless of performance. Further, convertibility will happily end official seigniorage where export revenues are concerned. A particularly useful feature of convertibility, meanwhile, is that it prevents the hemorrhaging of retained earnings within the country; such earnings, whenever denied a vent, are usually diverted to speculative uses – or worse.

Secondly, great care must be taken to avoid the temptation to 'fix' the parity. Not only will that preclude needless diversion of energy for the RBI, the efficiency gains of convertibility will also thereby be preserved from sacrifice at the altar of a fetish. Because, if convertibility provides confidence to the prospective investor, floating rates (and import liberalization) serve to keep him on his toes.

The greatest impact of the capital account convertibility would be felt in the banking sector. Total deregulation of the interest rates would instill greater competition in the circle. The weaker banks would further be cornered as `narrow banks`. NPAs reduction would be at focus of attention of banks which would help regaining of its financial health. Margin of banks would be under pressure, infusing adequate asset liability management system in the banks. However, banks will have much more liberal limits for borrowing and deploying funds outside India. Indian banking system should surge ahead in this occasion and accept the challenge by eradicating its weak points and consolidating its financial health.

In a parliamentary democracy like India, ________________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The current phase or judicial intervention has often been termed judicial activism, but the Supreme Court has held the view that far from being an activist court, it has only tried to do what it should have done long ago. i.e., enforce the law. In the process if the corrupt come to grief or the executive is called to account for its acts of omission or commission, that is all to the good.

Because we have a written Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of whether laws have constitutional validity or whether the actions of the executive conform to the law will always be the courts. With this there can be no quarrel. When we look at the constitutional provisions for the establishment of the Supreme Court and its powers we find that the basic function of the courts is to adjudicate, which means to determine judicially in a matter in which there are conflicting opinions or adversaries in a case.

It is only Article 141 that confers on the Supreme Court a power which goes beyond adjudication and that is to declare a law that will be binding on all courts in India. The declaration of such a law can be through an interpretation of the existing law, or by a judgment that a particular law is ultra vires or by laying down guidelines of how courts will decide a matter where the law is silent or where there is a legal lacuna.

One example of this is a case which came before the then Chief Justice of India, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, relating to the quantum of compensation which should be paid to persons who had strayed on to an army firing range and sustained injury while trying to retrieve what they thought was an empty shell but which turned out to be live. Justice Bhagwati ruled that whereas there was no specific law governing such compensation, there were other –laws which lay down the guidelines of compensation to victims of motor accidents, rail accidents, air accidents, etc. He then fixed compensation at an amount more or less equivalent to what the law permitted in the case of an air accident. This judgement is now law for all courts.

That, by itself, does not mean that the power which vests in Parliament under Part V, chapter 2 of the Constitution to enact laws under lists I and 3 of the Seventh Schedule also vests in the Supreme Court under Article 141. Unless the court decides that the law itself is unconstitutional, it is bound by every law of Parliament and Stale Legislatures. This is the fine-tuning of separation of power in India between the legislature and the judiciary.

In all this where does the executive fit in? Parts V and VI of the Constitution make, a specific provision for the Union and the State executive that the executive power of the Union vests in the President, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him, and the executive power of each State vests in the Governor, to be exercised by officers subordinate to him. If we take legislation to be the responsibility of the legislatures and adjudication to be that of the judiciary, then the residuary function of implementing the laws and acting according to the policy of the Government is the responsibility of the executive. This is not a delegated or subordinate function - it is the constitutional responsibility of the executive.

Under Article 73 the Union has executive powers in all matters with respect to which Parliament has the power to make laws, just as under Article 162 the executive power of the State extends to all matters which fall within the legislative jurisdiction of the State Legislature. How the Government will exercise this executive power is determined by rules framed under Articles 77 and 166.

In a parliamentary democracy, because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature, it is the executive that takes the lead in legislation. Unless the executive supports a particular Bill there is almost no chance of its being enacted into law because it would not muster enough support in the House. It is the executive. Therefore, this is the initiator of legislature. It is the executive which prepares the annual statement of estimated receipts and expenditure under Articles 112 and 202 respectively, popularly known as the budget, and then pilots the discussion on grants, the Appropriation Bill, etc. which gives the Government the legislative sanction for incurring expenditure. It also places before Parliament appropriate proposals for taxation.

Just as there is a finely tuned balance between the legislature and the judiciary the executive also is subject to constitutional checks and balances. The biggest check is law itself and if any member of the executive violates it he is liable for action before a court of law. Then there is the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Courts, whereby the executive can be directed to desist from a particular course of action or, conversely, directed to perform a particular function. The legislature, to whom the Ministers are responsible, can call the Government to account through discussions, resolutions, adjournment motions, budget debates, questions, and no-confidence motions. If need be the legislature can even oust the Government. However, these checks and balances by themselves do not give the other organs of the State - the legislature and the judiciary - the power to interfere in the working of the executive or to place it in a subordinate position.

All matters relating to governance being the responsibility of the executive, there is no authority in India that can interfere with its day-to-day working. Let me try and illustrate this point. The postings and transfers of officers fall within the exclusive purview of the executive.

Provided that there is no arbitrariness in this, the courts cannot interfere. This means that the courts cannot decide that an extension should be given to the Director of CBI, that his subordinate officers should bypass him in an investigation or that a particular officer should be transferred to a particular place.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the Supreme Court and the High Courts have been doing in a number of cases and a weak and pusillanimous Government has been surrendering in every case. The investigation of an offence may lead to a judicial process, but provided that the investigation is done according to law, the investigating agency is certainly within the supervisory control of the executive.

For the courts to order that the Government will not exercise its power of supervision and direction under Section 4 of the Police Act is an undue interference. For the Government to direct that before an investigation is undertaken into a particular case prior approval should be sought is perfectly valid, unless the law prohibits it. Nowhere in the world is the power of the police to investigate unfettered, except in a dictatorship, and the power to supervise, direct and control the police must vest in the executive. The courts may intervene only if the Government uses its power arbitrarily.

The executive has every right to decide how it will dispose of public property, provided that this is done according to a predetermined policy, clearly enunciated rules and in the public interest. Certainly it cannot be done to favour individuals or to cause pecuniary loss to the State.

When Ravi Shankar Shukla was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the capital shifted from Nagpur to Bhopal, he ordered the construction of several thousand residential units for Government servants. An objection was raised in the Vidhan Sabha to the effect that the work was awarded to a consortium without inviting tenders. The Chief Minister stated that there was paucity of time, that he had ordered the sanction of the work and its award to the consortium and that no officer was to blame.

Seven years later one of his successors, D. P. Mishra, made a similar statement in the legislature when an objection was raised about resettling 25,000 East Pakistan refugees in a district, for which purpose only seven days were given to the local officials to prepare the camps. As the person in charge, I had invited no tenders but had completed the work in time. The Chief Minister fully supported me and no further questions were asked.

What, then, is the role of the executive in a democracy? First, foremost, it is to govern, to provide governance and to implement the provisions of the Constitution and the law. For that you need a political head of the executive who, like D. P. Mishra, could say "I ordered it and so it has been done". The present lot who masquerade as ministers neither have the capacity to govern, nor have the courage. Between them they have reduced our executive to a position of impotence and subordination.

Which among the following is not true about the proposed amendment of Art 356?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
The broad consensus that emerged at the Inter–State Council meeting over what is arguably the Constitution's most contentious provision — Article 356 — is a most welcome thing. The spirit of cooperative federalism has raised the hope of a constitutional amendment that will build safeguards into this emergency provision to prevent its misuse. The Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley's press briefing suggested that these safeguards will incorporate the essence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1994 judgment in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case and include recommendations made by bodies such as the Sarkaria Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC). Article 356 gives the Centre the power to take over the functions of a State Government in the event of a failure of the constitutional machinery in that State. However, the history of its use clearly reveals that it was invoked more often to fix politically inconvenient State Governments, precipitate fresh elections and for other reasons that have no relevance to the purpose of the Article.

In recent years, the judgment in the Bommai case has served as a salutary check — and indeed bar — against such misuse. The Court's ruling that the Centre cannot dissolve State legislatures unless the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha has served as an effective restraint during a period when no party or combination of parties has enjoyed a majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Court also held that any such proclamation is open to judicial review to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of relevant material or whether it was a mala fideexercise of power. This pronouncement has deterred the use of the Article for narrow, political ends. Between 1950 and 1994, when the Bommai judgment was delivered, Article 356 was used on more than 90 occasions. In many cases, State Governments were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and in other cases, without being given an opportunity to prove their strength on the floor of the House. Instances of such misuse have all but vanished in recent years, but it is important to strengthen and institutionalize the safeguards through a constitutional amendment.

Among other things, such an amendment must ensure that, if used at all, the recourse to Article 356 must be a last resort — one that is embraced after exhausting the options provided by other Articles in the Constitution such as 256, 257 and, more importantly, 355. Other measures, such as the condition that the Centre must formally communicate to a State the facts and reasons for proposing to bring it under President's Rule and give the State an opportunity to reply, are essentially intended to ensure that the proposed use of Article 356 is based on a rigorous method. Mr. Jaitley's suggestion that the Governor's report recommending President's Rule should be in the nature of a "speaking order" is virtually identical to the recommendation made by the NCRWC. This was that such a report should contain "a precise and clear statement of all the material facts and grounds, on the basis of which the President may satisfy himself as to the existence or otherwise of the situation contemplated in Article 356." Like some other emergency provisions in the Constitution, Article 356 was introduced as an extraordinary safeguard, not something that is invoked in non–extreme circumstances. During the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar even hoped it would be a "dead letter," something that would "never be called into operation." The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment should be to ensure that this democratic vision of cooperative federalism comes true, however late in the day.

The broad consensus that emerged at the Inter–State Council meeting over what is arguably the Constitution's most contentious provision — Article 356 — is a most welcome thing. The spirit of cooperative federalism has raised the hope of a constitutional amendment that will build safeguards into this emergency provision to prevent its misuse. The Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley's press briefing suggested that these safeguards will incorporate the essence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1994 judgment in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case and include recommendations made by bodies such as the Sarkaria Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC). Article 356 gives the Centre the power to take over the functions of a State Government in the event of a failure of the constitutional machinery in that State. However, the history of its use clearly reveals that it was invoked more often to fix politically inconvenient State Governments, precipitate fresh elections and for other reasons that have no relevance to the purpose of the Article.

In recent years, the judgment in the Bommai case has served as a salutary check — and indeed bar — against such misuse. The Court's ruling that the Centre cannot dissolve State legislatures unless the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha has served as an effective restraint during a period when no party or combination of parties has enjoyed a majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Court also held that any such proclamation is open to judicial review to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of relevant material or whether it was a mala fideexercise of power. This pronouncement has deterred the use of the Article for narrow, political ends. Between 1950 and 1994, when the Bommai judgment was delivered, Article 356 was used on more than 90 occasions. In many cases, State Governments were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and in other cases, without being given an opportunity to prove their strength on the floor of the House. Instances of such misuse have all but vanished in recent years, but it is important to strengthen and institutionalize the safeguards through a constitutional amendment.

Among other things, such an amendment must ensure that, if used at all, the recourse to Article 356 must be a last resort — one that is embraced after exhausting the options provided by other Articles in the Constitution such as 256, 257 and, more importantly, 355. Other measures, such as the condition that the Centre must formally communicate to a State the facts and reasons for proposing to bring it under President's Rule and give the State an opportunity to reply, are essentially intended to ensure that the proposed use of Article 356 is based on a rigorous method. Mr. Jaitley's suggestion that the Governor's report recommending President's Rule should be in the nature of a "speaking order" is virtually identical to the recommendation made by the NCRWC. This was that such a report should contain "a precise and clear statement of all the material facts and grounds, on the basis of which the President may satisfy himself as to the existence or otherwise of the situation contemplated in Article 356." Like some other emergency provisions in the Constitution, Article 356 was introduced as an extraordinary safeguard, not something that is invoked in non–extreme circumstances. During the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar even hoped it would be a "dead letter," something that would "never be called into operation." The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment should be to ensure that this democratic vision of cooperative federalism comes true, however late in the day.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage? I. The S.R. Bommai case judgement acted as a salutary check against the misuse of Art 356. II. The possibility judicial review of the imposition of Article 356 deterred the use of the article for narrow political ends. III. State governments cannot be dismissed under condition if they have majority in the assembly.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
The broad consensus that emerged at the Inter–State Council meeting over what is arguably the Constitution's most contentious provision — Article 356 — is a most welcome thing. The spirit of cooperative federalism has raised the hope of a constitutional amendment that will build safeguards into this emergency provision to prevent its misuse. The Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley's press briefing suggested that these safeguards will incorporate the essence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1994 judgment in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case and include recommendations made by bodies such as the Sarkaria Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC). Article 356 gives the Centre the power to take over the functions of a State Government in the event of a failure of the constitutional machinery in that State. However, the history of its use clearly reveals that it was invoked more often to fix politically inconvenient State Governments, precipitate fresh elections and for other reasons that have no relevance to the purpose of the Article.

In recent years, the judgment in the Bommai case has served as a salutary check — and indeed bar — against such misuse. The Court's ruling that the Centre cannot dissolve State legislatures unless the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha has served as an effective restraint during a period when no party or combination of parties has enjoyed a majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Court also held that any such proclamation is open to judicial review to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of relevant material or whether it was a mala fideexercise of power. This pronouncement has deterred the use of the Article for narrow, political ends. Between 1950 and 1994, when the Bommai judgment was delivered, Article 356 was used on more than 90 occasions. In many cases, State Governments were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and in other cases, without being given an opportunity to prove their strength on the floor of the House. Instances of such misuse have all but vanished in recent years, but it is important to strengthen and institutionalize the safeguards through a constitutional amendment.

Among other things, such an amendment must ensure that, if used at all, the recourse to Article 356 must be a last resort — one that is embraced after exhausting the options provided by other Articles in the Constitution such as 256, 257 and, more importantly, 355. Other measures, such as the condition that the Centre must formally communicate to a State the facts and reasons for proposing to bring it under President's Rule and give the State an opportunity to reply, are essentially intended to ensure that the proposed use of Article 356 is based on a rigorous method. Mr. Jaitley's suggestion that the Governor's report recommending President's Rule should be in the nature of a "speaking order" is virtually identical to the recommendation made by the NCRWC. This was that such a report should contain "a precise and clear statement of all the material facts and grounds, on the basis of which the President may satisfy himself as to the existence or otherwise of the situation contemplated in Article 356." Like some other emergency provisions in the Constitution, Article 356 was introduced as an extraordinary safeguard, not something that is invoked in non–extreme circumstances. During the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar even hoped it would be a "dead letter," something that would "never be called into operation." The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment should be to ensure that this democratic vision of cooperative federalism comes true, however late in the day.

The broad consensus that emerged at the Inter–State Council meeting over what is arguably the Constitution's most contentious provision — Article 356 — is a most welcome thing. The spirit of cooperative federalism has raised the hope of a constitutional amendment that will build safeguards into this emergency provision to prevent its misuse. The Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley's press briefing suggested that these safeguards will incorporate the essence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1994 judgment in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case and include recommendations made by bodies such as the Sarkaria Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC). Article 356 gives the Centre the power to take over the functions of a State Government in the event of a failure of the constitutional machinery in that State. However, the history of its use clearly reveals that it was invoked more often to fix politically inconvenient State Governments, precipitate fresh elections and for other reasons that have no relevance to the purpose of the Article.

In recent years, the judgment in the Bommai case has served as a salutary check — and indeed bar — against such misuse. The Court's ruling that the Centre cannot dissolve State legislatures unless the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha has served as an effective restraint during a period when no party or combination of parties has enjoyed a majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Court also held that any such proclamation is open to judicial review to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of relevant material or whether it was a mala fideexercise of power. This pronouncement has deterred the use of the Article for narrow, political ends. Between 1950 and 1994, when the Bommai judgment was delivered, Article 356 was used on more than 90 occasions. In many cases, State Governments were dismissed even when they enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and in other cases, without being given an opportunity to prove their strength on the floor of the House. Instances of such misuse have all but vanished in recent years, but it is important to strengthen and institutionalize the safeguards through a constitutional amendment.

Among other things, such an amendment must ensure that, if used at all, the recourse to Article 356 must be a last resort — one that is embraced after exhausting the options provided by other Articles in the Constitution such as 256, 257 and, more importantly, 355. Other measures, such as the condition that the Centre must formally communicate to a State the facts and reasons for proposing to bring it under President's Rule and give the State an opportunity to reply, are essentially intended to ensure that the proposed use of Article 356 is based on a rigorous method. Mr. Jaitley's suggestion that the Governor's report recommending President's Rule should be in the nature of a "speaking order" is virtually identical to the recommendation made by the NCRWC. This was that such a report should contain "a precise and clear statement of all the material facts and grounds, on the basis of which the President may satisfy himself as to the existence or otherwise of the situation contemplated in Article 356." Like some other emergency provisions in the Constitution, Article 356 was introduced as an extraordinary safeguard, not something that is invoked in non–extreme circumstances. During the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar even hoped it would be a "dead letter," something that would "never be called into operation." The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment should be to ensure that this democratic vision of cooperative federalism comes true, however late in the day.

From the passage, it can be inferred that _______________.

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows:

Banks, trading companies, leasing companies and multinational corporations have currency convertibility risk even if they don’t currently attempt to quantify the risk on their balance sheets. Buyers and sellers of currency convertibility protection must not only have a feel for pricing credit derivatives, they must be economists with a penchant for econometrics. These are negotiated transactions. Price, terms, conditions, and size are all negotiated directly between counterparties. As there are so few real counterparties for this type of protection, the broker market is usually ineffective. It is much more effective to contact well–known counterparties in the credit derivatives market and negotiate the transactions and market levels directly. This is a supply and demand driven market, and prices vary from counterparty to counterparty. Sovereign whim can drive this market. Buyers of convertibility protection have a knock–in spot trade. The knock–in is independent of currency levels; sovereign dynamics trigger the event. Credit spreads don’t matter; models don’t matter; intuition doesn’t count. There is no exact mathematical model. The market defines the price.

Recent reactions to the snap poll conducted in Bombay to gauge the atmosphere and expectations about convertibility are symptomatic. Bankers, since their assets are more liquid, and their technology frontline, are optimistic and eager. Industry, alas, is bearish. This doubtless owes in large measure to the manner in which it has been accustomed to function.

The biggest canard meanwhile is that exporters, or those involved in import substitution, alone can extricate us. As matters stand, apart from unjustly enriching a handful, the 'thrust' on exports, based on a rigging of reality and relative prices, has achieved nothing. A telling substantiation of this has been provided in a recent study by Mr. Bimal Roy in the Economic and Political Weekly. He shows how net Indian exports have been stationary over the past 20 years. The study, it may be noted, spans a period over which a variety of fiscal sops were extended to exporters.

Clearly, exports have failed, and there is still a debt to service and repay. Continued tinkering with the convertibility question, therefore, can help only those who would like to varnish the ancient regime. Consider the system now in place. Targeted at exporters and other hopefuls who fetch foreign exchange (FX), it simultaneously imposes a tax on them. This dualism involves that 40 percent of FX earning have to be surrendered to government – but at a rate, which actually undervalues foreign exchange. This is a bit, which then goes towards sustaining official monopsony, and discretionary distribution through channelizing agencies.

The remainder goes towards financing defense purchases, promotion trips, festivals and what not. With a repressed domestic market nestling behind Olympian tariff walls manufacturers who would like to export are, in turn, few. Despite discomfort with Fund–Bank suggestions that Indians, for the present, should concentrate on primary – and lesser value added – exports, that is precisely what manufacturers have been doing while supplying limited quantities of obsolescent manufactures to the domestic tariff area (DTA). Opportunism, and correct opportunity costs make strange bedfellows after all. Without doing away with conditions, which foster the former. India will, in fact, face a future much bleaker than that foretold by even the digitizes.

Note what the present focus on exporters implies. Since, till now, this has been to the exclusion of emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI)/import substitution through FDI, this implies that, somehow, official – and doubtless entrepreneurial – India prefers to allocate a relatively inferior weight to FX earned/saved through FDI. What, quite evidently disconcerts, more than the presence of aliens, is the cold fear of competition.

Meanwhile, for the intrepid who have already ventured in, the world, which exists, is cozy. Tariff walls and quota restrictions (QRs) allow rentals for all, while the relative overvaluation of exchange rates further spurs the favoured to source more from "home” than from "host'! This is precisely the ambience, which can never kick–start flaccid manufacturers to double as exporters.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to introduce competition. And to do so within the DTA, before Fund conditionalities drive the country towards an untimely acceptance of far reaching tariff reductions. This competition will be of no use, however, if all that is yielded is a pantomime confrontation between the obsolescent and the antediluvian, along with the usual rag–tag of 'foreign' add–ons. To avoid this eventuality, nothing less than complete current, and capital account convertibility, along with total industrial liberalization, will do.

Take current account convertibility first. This is the commonest form around, and even economies like Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, quite apart from OECD ones, abide by it.

The closest analogy here is with ISO 9000 certification – currently much in the news. For convertibility too proclaims the existence of certain credible standards which investors, prior to proceeding, like to take for granted. The most crucial one out of these standards has, of course, to do with the ease of profit repatriation.

This is something, which should provide no greater hurt to a nation's integrity that, for instance my banker adversely affects me by charging for his services. Better still, unlike bankers' charges – or interest – this does not entail a recurring charge, regardless of performance. Further, convertibility will happily end official seigniorage where export revenues are concerned. A particularly useful feature of convertibility, meanwhile, is that it prevents the hemorrhaging of retained earnings within the country; such earnings, whenever denied a vent, are usually diverted to speculative uses – or worse.

Secondly, great care must be taken to avoid the temptation to 'fix' the parity. Not only will that preclude needless diversion of energy for the RBI, the efficiency gains of convertibility will also thereby be preserved from sacrifice at the altar of a fetish. Because, if convertibility provides confidence to the prospective investor, floating rates (and import liberalization) serve to keep him on his toes.

The greatest impact of the capital account convertibility would be felt in the banking sector. Total deregulation of the interest rates would instill greater competition in the circle. The weaker banks would further be cornered as `narrow banks`. NPAs reduction would be at focus of attention of banks which would help regaining of its financial health. Margin of banks would be under pressure, infusing adequate asset liability management system in the banks. However, banks will have much more liberal limits for borrowing and deploying funds outside India. Indian banking system should surge ahead in this occasion and accept the challenge by eradicating its weak points and consolidating its financial health.