Bureaucracy
According to the passage, colonial powers located their capitals:
CAT 2026Papers & G StrategyVerbalRC passages
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Around the world, capital cities are disgorging bureaucrats. In the post-colonial fervour of the 20th century, coastal capitals picked by trade-focused empires were spurned for “regionally neutral” new ones . . . . But decamping wholesale is costly and unpopular; governments these days prefer piecemeal dispersal. The trend reflects how the world has changed. In past eras, when information travelled at a snail’s pace, civil servants had to cluster together. But now desk-workers can ping emails and video-chat around the world. Travel for face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable, but transport links, too, have improved. . . .
Proponents of moving civil servants around promise countless benefits. It disperses the risk that a terrorist attack or natural disaster will cripple an entire government. Wonks in the sticks will be inspired by new ideas that walled-off capitals cannot conjure up. Autonomous regulators perform best far from the pressure and lobbying of the big city. Some even hail a cure for ascendant cynicism and populism. The unloved bureaucrats of faraway capitals will become as popular as firefighters once they mix with regular folk.
Beyond these sunny visions, dispersing central-government functions usually has three specific aims: to improve the lives of both civil servants and those living in clogged capitals; to save money; and to redress regional imbalances. The trouble is that these goals are not always realised.
The first aim—improving living conditions—has a long pedigree. After the second world war Britain moved thousands of civil servants to “agreeable English country towns” as London was rebuilt. But swapping the capital for somewhere smaller is not always agreeable. Attrition rates can exceed 80%. . . . The second reason to pack bureaucrats off is to save money. Office space costs far more in capitals. . . . Agencies that are moved elsewhere can often recruit better workers on lower salaries than in capitals, where well-paying multinationals mop up talent.
The third reason to shift is to rebalance regional inequality. . . . Norway treats federal jobs as a resource every region deserves to enjoy, like profits from oil. Where government jobs go, private ones follow. . . . Sometimes the aim is to fulfil the potential of a country’s second-tier cities. Unlike poor, remote places, bigger cities can make the most of relocated government agencies, linking them to local universities and businesses and supplying a better-educated workforce. The decision in 1946 to set up America’s Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta rather than Washington, D.C., has transformed the city into a hub for health-sector research and business.
The dilemma is obvious. Pick small, poor towns, and areas of high unemployment get new jobs, but it is hard to attract the most qualified workers; opt for larger cities with infrastructure and better-qualified residents, and the country’s most deprived areas see little benefit. . . .
Others contend that decentralisation begets corruption by making government agencies less accountable. . . . A study in America found that state-government corruption is worse when the state capital is isolated—journalists, who tend to live in the bigger cities, become less watchful of those in power.
Question 1 of 34
Bureaucracy
According to the passage, colonial powers located their capitals:
Bureaucracy
The “dilemma” mentioned in the passage refers to:
Bureaucracy
People who support decentralising central government functions are LEAST likely to cite which of the following reasons for their view?
Bureaucracy
The “long pedigree” of the aim to shift civil servants to improve their living standards implies that this move:
Bureaucracy
According to the author, relocating government agencies has not always been a success for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
Preservation
Based on his views mentioned in the passage, one could best characterise Dr. Watrall as being:
Preservation
By “digital colonialism”, critics of the CyArk–Google project are referring to the fact that:
Preservation
Which of the following, if true, would most strongly invalidate Dr. Watrall’s objections?
Preservation
In Dr. Thompson’s view, CyArk owning the copyright of its digital scans of archaeological sites is akin to:
Preservation
Of the following arguments, which one is LEAST likely to be used by the companies that digitally scan cultural sites?
Urban Settlements
Which one of the following statements would undermine the author’s stand regarding the greenness of cities?
Urban Settlements
According to the passage, squatter cities are environment-friendly for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
Urban Settlements
We can infer that Calthorpe’s statement “still jars” with most people because most people:
Urban Settlements
In the context of the passage, the author refers to Manaus in order to:
Urban Settlements
From the passage it can be inferred that cities are good places to live in for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that they:
Linguistics
Which of the following can be inferred from the author’s claim, “Which way is Oriental?”
Linguistics
A French ethnographer decides to study the culture of a Nigerian tribe. Which of the following is most likely to be the view of the author of the passage?
Linguistics
The author’s critics would argue that:
Linguistics
According to the passage, which of the following is not responsible for language’s ability to change us?
British Colonial Policy
All of the following statements about British colonialism can be inferred from the first paragraph, EXCEPT that it:
British Colonial Policy
All of the following statements, if true, could be seen as supporting the arguments in the passage, EXCEPT:
British Colonial Policy
“Consequently, the colonial state could not settle simply for eminence at the cost of its marginality; it began to take initiatives to introduce the logic of modernity into Indian society.” Which of the following best captures the sense of this statement?
British Colonial Policy
Which one of the following 5-word sequences best captures the flow of the arguments in the passage?
British Colonial Policy
Which of the following observations is a valid conclusion to draw from the author’s statement that “the logical structure of endogenous change does not apply here. Here transformation agendas attack as an external force”?
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) given below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequence of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer. 1. Conceptualisations of ‘women’s time’ as contrary to clock-time and clock-time as synonymous with economic rationalism are two of the deleterious results of this representation. 2. While dichotomies of ‘men’s time’, ‘women’s time’, clock-time, and caring time can be analytically useful, this article argues that everyday caring practices incorporate a multiplicity of times; and both men and women can engage in these multiple-times 3. When the everyday practices of working sole fathers and working sole mothers are carefully examined to explore conceptualisations of gendered time, it is found that caring time is often more focused on the clock than generally theorised. 4. Clock-time has been consistently represented in feminist literature as a masculine artefact representative of a ‘time is money’ perspective.
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) given below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequence of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer. 1. Living things—animals and plants—typically exhibit correlational structure. 2. Adaptive behaviour depends on cognitive economy, treating objects as equivalent. 3. The information we receive from our senses, from the world, typically has structure and order, and is not arbitrary. 4. To categorize an object means to consider it equivalent to other things in that category, and different—along some salient dimension—from things that are not.
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) given below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequence of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer. 1. To the uninitiated listener, atonal music can sound like chaotic, random noise. 2. Atonality is a condition of music in which the constructs of the music do not ‘live’ within the confines of a particular key signature, scale, or mode. 3. After you realize the amount of knowledge, skill, and technical expertise required to compose or perform it, your tune may change, so to speak. 4. However, atonality is one of the most important movements in 20th century music.
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) given below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequence of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer. 1. Such a belief in the harmony of nature requires a purpose presumably imposed by the goodness and wisdom of a deity. 2. These parts, all fit together into an integrated, well-ordered system that was created by design. 3. Historically, the notion of a balance of nature is part observational, part metaphysical, and not scientific in any way. 4. It is an example of an ancient belief system called teleology, the notion that what we call nature has a predetermined destiny associated with its component parts.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in. 1. A particularly interesting example of inference occurs in many single panel comics. 2. It’s the creator’s participation and imagination that makes the single-panel comic so engaging and so rewarding. 3. Often, the humor requires you to imagine what happened in the instant immediately before or immediately after the panel you’re being shown. 4. To get the joke, you actually have to figure out what some of these missing panels must be. 5. It is as though the cartoonist devised a series of panels to tell the story and has chosen to show you only one – and typically not even the funniest.
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in. 1. Socrates told us that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ and that to ‘know thyself’ is the path to true wisdom 2. It suggests that you should adopt an ancient rhetorical method favored by the likes of Julius Caesar and known as ‘illeism’ – or speaking about yourself in the third person. 3. Research has shown that people who are prone to rumination also often suffer from impaired decision making under pressure and are at a substantially increased risk of depression. 4. Simple rumination – the process of churning your concerns around in your head – is not the way to achieve self-realization. 5. The idea is that this small change in perspective can clear your emotional fog, allowing you to see past your biases.
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in. 1. Ocean plastic is problematic for a number of reasons, but primarily because marine animals eat it. 2. The largest numerical proportion of ocean plastic falls in small size fractions. 3. Aside from clogging up the digestive tracts of marine life, plastic also tends to adsorb pollutants from the water column. 4. Plastic in the oceans is arguably one of the most important and pervasive environmental problems today. 5. Eating plastic has a number of negative consequences such as the retention of plastic particles in the gut for longer periods than normal food particles.