China’s rising power is based on its remarkable economic success. Shanghai’s overall economy is currently growing at around 13% per year, thus doubling in size every five or six years. Everywhere there are start-ups, innovations, and young entrepreneurs hungry for profits. In a series of high level meetings between chinese and African officials, the advice that the African leaders
received from the Chinese was sound, and more practical than they typically get from the World Bank. Chinese officials stress the crucial role of public investments, especially in agriculture and infrastructure, to lay the basis for private sector-led growth. In a hungry and poor rural economy, as China was in the 1970s and as most of Africa is today, a key starting point is to raise farm
productivity. Farmers need the benefits of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield seeds, all of which were a core part of China’s economical take off. Two other equally critical investments are also needed : roads and electricity, without which there cannot be a modern economy. Farmers might be able to increase their output, but it won’t be able to reach the cities, and the cities won’t be able to provide the countryside with inputs. The government has taken pains to ensure that the electricity grids and transportation networks reach every village in China. China is prepared to help Africa in substantial ways in agriculture, roads, power, health and education. And that is not an empty boast. Chinese leaders are prepared to share new high yield rice varieties, with their African counterparts and, all over Africa, China is financing and constructing basic infrastructure.
This illustrates what is wrong with the World Bank. The World Bank has often forgotten the most basic lessons of development, preferring to lecture the poor and force them to privatise basic infrastructure, which is untenable, rather than to help the poor to invest in infrastructure and other crucial sectors. The Banks’s failure began in the early 1980s when under the ideological sway of them American President and British Prime Minister it tried to get Africa and other poor regions to cut back or close down government investments and services. For 25 years, the bank tries to get governments out of agriculture, leaving impoverished peasants to fend for themselves. The result has been a disaster in Africa, with farm productivity stagnant for decades. The bank also pushed for privatization of national health systems, water utilities, and road and power networks, and has grossly underfinanced these critical sectors. This extreme free-market ideology, also called “structural adjustment”, went against the
practical lessons of development successes in China and the rest or Asia. Practical development strategy recognises that public investments - in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure- are necessary complements to private investments. The World Bank has instead wrongly seen such vital public investments as an enemy of private sector development. Whenever the banks’
ideology failed, it has blamed the poor for corruption, mismanagement, or lack of initiative. Instead of focusing its attention on helping the poorest countries to improve their infrastructure, there has been a crusade against corruption. The good news is that African governments are getting the massage on how to spur economic growth and are getting crucial help from China and other
partners that are less wedded to extreme free-market ideology than the world Bank. They have declared their intention to invest in infrastructure, agriculture modernistation, public health, and education. It is clear the Bank can regain its relevance only if it becomes practical once again, by returning its focus to financing public investments in priority sectors. If that happens, the Bank can still do justice to the bold vision of a world of shared prosperity that prompted its creation after World War II.
What effect has the World Bank policy had on African nations?
Answer: D
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
Which of the following cannot be said about structural adjustment?
Answer: A
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
At this stage of civilisation, when many nations are brought in to close and vital contact for good and evil, it is essential, as never before, that their gross ignorance of one another should be diminished, that they should begin to understand a little of one another's historical experience and resulting mentality. It is the fault of the English to expect the people of other countries to react as they do, to political and international situations. Our genuine goodwill and good intentions are often brought to nothing, because we expect other people to be like us. This would be corrected if we knew the history, not necessarily in detail but in broad outlines, of the social and political conditions which have given to each nation its present character.
According to the author of 'Mentality' of a nation is mainly product of its ...
Answer: D
Refer passge for answer.
Enter details here
The need for a greater understanding between nations..
Answer: A
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
The character of a nation is the result of its...
Answer: C
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
Englishmen like others to react to political situations like..
Answer: C
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
According to the author his countrymen should..
Answer: C
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
In the world today we make health and end in itself. We have forgotten that health is really means to enable a person to do his work and do it well. a lot of modern medicine and this includes many patients as well as many physicians pays very little attention to health but very much attention to those who imagine that they are ill. Our great concern with health is shown by the medical columns in newspapers. the health articles in popular magazines and the popularity of television programmes and all those books on medicine. We talk about health all the time. Yet for the most part the only result is more people with imaginary illness. The healthy man should not be wasting time talking about health: he should be using health for work. The work does the work that good health possible.
Modern medicine is primarily concerned with
Answer: B
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
A healthy man should be concerned with
Answer: A
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here
Talking about the health all time makes people
Answer: D
Refer passage for answer.
Enter details here