CSAT DAILY MISSION #89 & #90

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow based on your understanding of the passage:

What is the ultimate cause of poverty? Is democracy good for the poor? Does foreign aid have a role to play? Jeffrey Sachs, adviser to the United Nations, has an answer to all these questions: Poor countries are poor because they are hot, infertile, malaria infested, often landlocked; and all this makes it hard for them to be productive without a large initial investment to help them deal with these endemic problems. But they cannot pay for the investments precisely because they are poor. They are in what economists call a ”poverty trap.” Until something is done about these problems, neither free market nor democracy will do much for them. That is why foreign aid is key: It can kick start a virtuous cycle by helping poor countries invest in these critical areas and make them more productive. The resulting higher incomes will generate further investments; and this beneficial spiral will continue. In his bestselling 2005 book, “The End of Poverty”, Sachs argues that if the rich world had committed $195 billion in foreign aid per year between 2005 & 2025, poverty could have been entirely eliminated by the end of this period.
But there are others, equally vocal, who believe that all of Sachs’ answers are wrong. William Easterly, who battles Sachs from New York University at the other end of Manhattan, has become one of the most influential anti-aid public figures following the publication of two books: “The Elusive Quest for Growth” and “he White Man’s Burden”. Dambisa Moyo, an economist who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and at the World Bank, has joined her voice to Easterly’s with her recent book “Dead Aid”. Both argue that aid does more bad than good: It prevents people from searching for their own solutions, while corrupting and undermining local institutions and creating a selfperpetuating lobby of aid agencies. The best bet for poor countries is to rely on one simple idea: When markets are free and the incentives are right, people can find ways to solve their problem. They do not need handouts, from foreigners or from their own governments. In this sense, the aid pessimists are actually quite optimistic about the way the world works. According to Easterly, there are no such things as poverty trap.

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Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow based on your understanding of the passage:

Partition took place when human rights movements were more or less unknown, in a world just getting accustomed to genocide and ethnic cleansing and the wanton destruction of two World Wars. Ideologically driven, handy justifications of such violence were still floating around in the global culture of knowledge. The main ideological movements in the world were all perfectly comfortable with the idea of bloodshed as a part of normal politics. The civilizing mission of colonialism, the pursuit of national interest, revolutionary violence and people’s war, even the concept of reason and scientific rationality that were brought to bear upon public affairs through social evolutionism, eugenics, and ‘scientized’ history they all enjoyed wide legitimacy not merely among political actors but also among the intelligentsia. Even those who fought against the psychopathic violence of European authoritarianism in the name of democracy contributed handsomely to the culture of violence.
Understandably, neither the British Indian government nor the successor states of India & Pakistan ever tried to apprehend the killers or launch criminal investigations into the violence of Partition. In any case, efforts to do so would have been futile. The Police and law enforcement agencies were hopelessly compromised; their partisan behaviour and, sometimes, direct collusion with the mob are well known to anyone who has talked with any victim of the violence. And the violence was decentralized enough for the state to be primarily a spectator. The only central force that seemed to function during the period was the personality, and the political and moral presence of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , whom the last British Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, called “a one-man boundary force”.

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Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow based on your understanding of the passage:

As I searched myself deeper, the necessity for changes, both internal and external, began to grow on me. As soon as, or even before, I made alterations in my expenses and my way of living, I began to make changes in my diet. I saw that the writers on vegetarianism had examined the question very minutely, attacking it in its religious, scientific, practical, and medial aspects. Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man’s supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two, as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man in nature eats not for enjoyment but to live. And some of them accordingly suggested, and effected in their lives, abstention not only from flesh and meat but also from eggs and milk.
Scientifically some had concluded that man’s physical structure showed that he was not meant to be a cooking but a frugivorous animal, that he could take only his mother’s milk and, as soon as he had teeth, should begin to take solid foods. Medically they had suggested the rejection of all spices and condiments. According to the practical and economic argument, a vegetarian diet had been demonstrated to be the least expensive. All these considerations had their effect on me, and I came across vegetarians of all these types in vegetarian restaurants. There was a Vegetarian Society in England with a weekly journal of its own. I subscribed to the weekly, joined the society, and very shortly found myself on the Executive Committee. Here I came in contact with those who were regarded as pillars of vegetarianism, and began my own experiments in dietetics.

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