General Comprehension (UPSC) (Part-VIII)

Benefits of good quality school education accrue only when students complete and leave school after having acquired the gateway skills. Like one learns to walk before running, similarly one picks up advanced skills only after picking the basic foundational skills.

The event of the knowledge economy poses new challenges, and one of the severe consequences of having an uneducated workforce will be our inability to keep pace with the global economy. Without a strong learning foundation at the primary level, there can be no improvement in higher education or skill development.

The paradox of choice is illustrated by the story of Buridan's ass. Jean Buridan, the 14th country philosopher, wrote about free will and the inability to choose due to numerous choices and uncertainties.

In the story, a donkey stands between two equally appealing stacks of hay. Unable to decide which to eat, it starves to death. Changes in technology and innovations such as smart phones and tablets only exacerbate our glut of choices.

Constant connectivity and overconsumption of real-time-data and social media can leave little room for self-reflection and rest, making decisions more difficult. Life is about choices. Many people are overwhelmed with attractive life choices, yet find themselves unhappy and anxious.

1. A flexible environment is needed to develop solutions.

2. Households need customised solutions.

3. Innovations in financial technology are required.

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Household finance in India is unique. We have a tendency to invest heavily in physical assets such as gold and property. Steps to encourage the financialization of savings are critical. A populace accustomed to traditional processes will not simply jump into financialization.

Hurdles to change include onerous bureaucracy, a scepticism of organized financial institutions, a lack of basic information about which of the myriad services and providers is best for each family, and how (and even if) one can make the transition between them if necessary.

1. Patent protection given to patentees puts a huge burden on public's purchasing power in accessing patented medicines.

2. Dependence on other countries for pharmaceutical products is a huge burden for developing and poor countries.

3. Providing medicines to the public at affordable prices is a key goal during the public health policy design in many countries.

4. Governments need to find an appropriate balance between the rights of patentees and the requirements of the patients.

Which of the above assumptions are valid ?

Pharmaceutical patents grant protection to the patentee for the duration of the patent term. The patentees enjoy the liberty to determine the prices of medicines, which is time-limited to the period of monopoly, the public.

Such patent protection offered to the patentees is believed to benefit the public over the longer term through innovations and research and development (R&D), although it comes at a cost, in the nature of higher prices for the patented medicine.

The patent regime and price protection - through a legally validated high price for the medicine during the currency of the patent provide the patentee with a legitimate mechanism to get returns on the costs incurred in innovation and research.

1. Protection of privacy is not just a right, but it has value to the economy.

2. There is a fundamental link between privacy and innovation.

Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?

India should ensue the growth of the digital economy while keeping personal data of citizens secure and protected. No one will innovate in a surveillance-oriented environment or in a place where an individual's personal information is compromised.

The ultimate control of data must reside with the individuals who generate it; they should be enabled to use, restrict or monetise it as they wish. Therefore, data protection laws should enable the right kind of innovation - one that is user-centric and privacy protecting.

In India, while the unemployment rate is a frequency used measure of poor performance of the economy, under conditions of rising school and college enrollment, it paints an inaccurate picture.

The reported unemployment rate is dominated by the experience of younger Indians who face higher employment challenges and exhibit greater willingness to wait for the right job than their older peers.

The unemployment challenge is greater for people with secondary or higher education, and rising education levels inflate unemployment challenges.

"Science by itself is not enough, there must be a force and discipline outside the sciences to coordinate them and point to a goal. It is not possible to run a course right when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

What science needs is philosophy the analysis of scientific method and the coordination of scientific method and the and the coordination of scientific purposes and results; without this any science must be superficial. Government suffers, precisely like science, for lack of philosophy.

Philosophy bears to science the same relationship which statesmanship bears to politics: movement guided by total knowledge and perspective, as against aimless and individual seeking. Just as the pursuit of knowledge becomes scholasticism when divorced from the actual needs of men and life, so the pursuit of politics becomes a destructive bedlam when divorced from science and philosophy."

"The last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear, rather it is so to free each man from fear that he may live and act with full security and without injury to himself or his neighbour. The end of the state, I repeat, is not to make rational beings into brute beasts and machines.

It is to enable their bodies and their minds to function safely. It is to lead men to live by, and to exercise, a free reason; that they may not waste their strength in hatred, anger and guile, nor act unfairly toward one another.

1. Without science, mankind could not have continued to exist till today.

2. It is the science that will ultimately determine the destiny of mankind.

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"The history of science is the real history of mankind." In this striking epigram, a nineteenth-century writer links science with its background. Like most epigrams, its power lies in emphasizing by contrast an aspect of truth which may be easily overlooked.

In this case, it is easy to overlook the relations between science and mankind, and to treat the former as some abstract third party, which can sometimes be praised for its beneficial influences, but frequently and conveniently blamed for the horrors of war. Science and mankind cannot be divorced from time to time at men's convenience.

Yet we have seen that, in spite of countless opportunities of improvement, the opening years of the present period of civilization have been dominated by international conflict. Is this the inevitable result of the progress of science or does the fault lie elsewhere?

1. The horrors of modern life are the inevitable result of the progress of science.

2. The aspect of truth likely to be overlooked is that science is what man has made it.

Which of the assumptions given above is/are correct?

"The history of science is the real history of mankind." In this striking epigram, a nineteenth-century writer links science with its background. Like most epigrams, its power lies in emphasizing by contrast an aspect of truth which may be easily overlooked.

In this case, it is easy to overlook the relations between science and mankind, and to treat the former as some abstract third party, which can sometimes be praised for its beneficial influences, but frequently and conveniently blamed for the horrors of war. Science and mankind cannot be divorced from time to time at men's convenience.

Yet we have seen that, in spite of countless opportunities of improvement, the opening years of the present period of civilization have been dominated by international conflict. Is this the inevitable result of the progress of science or does the fault lie elsewhere?