Read carefully the passages given below and answer the questions.

Who is this man? You see him every day, sometimes on the street, sometimes in the ration shop, an ageless and timeless entity in the ever-changing world around him. And yet he is elusive. The man-in- the-street is no flesh-and-bone creature but a mere statistic, an apocryphal figure who is invoked by politicians  and  economists  alike  but  with  whom  they  are  most  comfortable  as  long  as  he  remains abstract.

Let us go beyond abstraction and get to the concrete reality of this common man. This particular man is middle-aged, literate, obviously urban and with an income much higher than the average per capita income.  This man lives with the very rich with their  indifference to wealth and  the very poor with their resignation towards misfortune. But can one define him merely in terms of the average per capita income or calorific intake of food or is there something more tangible about this man, his lifestyle, his work, his ambition, his struggles?

With a steady acceleration in the rate of inflation from 2.1 per cent in 1950-1960 to 9.2 percent in

1980-87, the dismal real per capita income growth of barely 1.5 per cent per annum has obviously eluded even this common man. What can this man buy with his one rupee note, which was worth 100 paise in 1950 and is now worth only 11 paise? Without inheritance and without really knowing the art of  making  easy  money,  he  hardly  has  anything  to  fall  back  on  in  his  old  age  except  his  meager pension, if he is what goes under the curious name of ‘government servant’ – and his son. After all, discharge of filial obligations still represents the most important element of social security in India.

Given the population growth rate of 2.2 persons per annum an average family size is 6.2. However, this  man  being  urban  and  literate is likely to  have a  smaller  family of  only four  members.  Having reached  the  plateau  of  his  life,  his  aspirations  are  directed  towards  his  children  –  probably  most towards his son. The desire to make his son as engineer or a doctor from the moment he is born takes the  shape  of  nurturing  him  in  an  expensive  English  medium  “convent  school”.  However,  the aspiration level may soon slide down to reconciling with reality, of the son becoming a bank clerk or a section officer. Even in that, luck will have to play a role because given the total educated job seekers being more than 16,452,000 the son may ultimately have to settle for any kind or job.

The common man’s desire to rise higher on the social scale is quite great and he is thus unlikely to withstand  consumerist pressures.  He  may succumb  to  acquiring  second-hand  assets  or  wait for  his son’s  Lakshmi  to  bring  the  goodies  home.  At  the  same  time,  the  preparation  for  his  daughter’s marriage starts from the time she is born while her education may or may not be in a “public” school. The social cancellation effect of this Lakshmi give-and-take, however, does not reflect in the case of individual households, as the gruesome figures of dowry deaths make clear.

The common man’s efforts to meet the requirements of roti, kapadaaurmakan are valiant enough. He realises the importance of a good diet but the forbidding prices more or less make it imperative for him to  go  for  something  cheaper.  Figures of availability of many important items of  consumption, themselves ensure that the overall consumption level of his family is not very high. For instance, per capita availability of sugar in 1986-87 was only 11.1 kg per annum, which works down to merely 30.2 gm. per day, sufficient only for a cup of tea or two. Although this man is depicted as wearing a dhoti, given the average per capita availability of cloth at less than 15 metres per annum, he is unlikely to wear such a garment.

However, his simple thinking and simple living does not deter the common man from aspiring to be a ‘lakhpati’  through  the  medium  of  a  bumper  lottery ticket  or  take  refuge  like  ‘MungeriLal’  in  his ‘hasinsapne’. (A popular television serial where the protagonist is an economically average man who dreams of extraordinary riches). The top priority in his dream world is of course to own a flat or a small house.

The common man’s familial and interpersonal links are strong enough to take him to his ‘native place’ once in every two or three years. And in ordinary dreary life, he manages to draw enough from his memories, his traditions, his religion, even without being overtly religious. The Club culture of the rich  and  the  community  culture  of  the  poor  are  both  absent  from  his  life  but  he  does  take  part enthusiastically  in  popular  festivals.  However,  apart  from  his  occasional  picnic  outings  with  his neighbours and friends, the prime time peep at the outside world through the Doordarshan window, the occasional movie in a cinema house, does he have anything else to distract him from his over- burdened and ever-growing responsibilities?

The common man is aware of political conditions, and feels strongly about corruption, annual budgets, high prices, his personal deprivation …. But does he voice them loud enough; does he have a solution or are his concerns lost somewhere in his daily struggle for a decent living? Is he happy with the state, which  arises  out  of  the  wants  of  man?  Is  the  common  man  optimistic  about his  future?  Does  this common man have a future?

In  surveying  the  Indian economic  context,  in the end since we come up  with questions rather  than answers, the only conclusion that we can arrive at is that in the economy, as in society and politics, since so little can be said, much must be invented. Action is the essence of economic analysis.

Read carefully the passages given below and answer the questions.

In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) succeeded in its campaign to rid the world of smallpox. It has never let anyone forget the fact since. And rightly so. Given the effort it took to eradicate this scourge, the WHO richly deserves to make certain that smallpox, though gone, is not forgotten. Leprosy, however, appears to have endured the opposite fate. This ancient blight is forgotten, but not gone -- an unhappy predicament for its sufferers and for the WHO, which is still fighting against it.

So far, the WHO is committed to “eliminating” leprosy but not to “eradicating” it. That might seem a strange distinction to a layman, but in the argot, elimination is defined as a reduction in the number of cases in a population to below one per 10,000 people; eradication implies that no cases exist at all. The WHO Leprosy Elimination Programme, inaugurated in 1991, aimed to complete its task by 2000.

The campaign has made a lot of progress. It has reduced the number of people with the disease from more than five million to less than one million, and eliminated leprosy from 98 countries. But several South-East Asian and African states, as well as Brazil, still report from four to six cases of leprosy per 10,000 people. So at the Asian Leprosy Congress in Agra, the target date for global elimination was postponed to 2005.

A pity. But on the face of it, a five-year delay in “eliminating” a scourge that has horrified people since biblical times is a mere blip. There is, however, a fear that having allowed the deadline to slip once, the project’s momentum may be lost -- and even that the eventual result may be worse than if no grand plans had been laid in the first place.

The WHO originally accepted the idea of “eliminating” leprosy because in 1989, a symposium of experts decided that eradicating the disease was not feasible. In 1998, a workshop convened by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, echoed that advice. However, it added a new worry: that eliminating leprosy might not be possible either. Given the current state of knowledge of the biology of the disease, these epidemiologists argued, an elimination campaign could not guarantee to stop transmission, and thus keep the caseload down.

That is because a lot of basic information about leprosy is still missing. Doctors cannot, for example, diagnose it before a patient starts to show symptoms. Nor do they know how likely a treated patient is to relapse. More significantly, they remain unsure exactly how the disease is transmitted, how it infects the human body, and at what point a carrier of the bacterium may infect others.

As a result, and despite its success in treating those already infected, the campaign has not had much impact on the rate of new infections. That figure still exceeds 650,000 a year, or around 4.5 cases per 10,000 individuals in the worst-off countries; it has shown little sign of falling in the past 15 years.

The solution should be more research. Given the recent unraveling, by the Pasteur Institute in France, of the genome of Mycobacteriumleprae, the organism that causes the disease, science is better poised to carry out such research than ever before. But the loudly proclaimed 2000 deadline caused research funding to tail off. Funding bodies assumed that basic research into leprosy was becoming irrelevant, since the problem was being solved where it counted -- in the field. So they turned their attention elsewhere. In 1990, for example, the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations spent $6.5m on research projects. By 1998, its spending had declined to $3m. A lot of nifty public-relations work is going to be needed to repair the damage.

Fortunately, public relations is something that leprosy officials seem to be good at. They have already been pretty successful at “rebranding” the infection as “Hansen’s disease”, at least in medical circles. The Hansen in question, a 19th-century Norwegian doctor, did not, of course, recognize leprosy for the first time -- the usual reason to dub an illness after an individual. But he did identify Mycobacterium leprae, and that is good enough cover for the spin-doctors. Indeed, the Brazilian government went so far as to ban the “L” word completely, even in the names of aid organizations such as the British group LEPRA.

Cynicism aside, there may be good medical reasons for abandoning the old term. Most illness attracts sympathy for the victim. Leprosy often elicits repugnance. In some clinics, therefore, patients are now told only that they are suffering from a “skin infection”, and may complete their recovery without ever learning the details. Indeed, there is evidence that not telling people the whole truth gives better results than leveling with them - perhaps because they can take their medicine openly, without having to lie to their family and friends to avoid the stigma of being branded a leper.

Rebranding may also come to the rescue of the Leprosy Elimination Programme. The latest talk is not of elimination, but of “very good control” -- accepting, and being honest about, the fact that the disease will be around for the foreseeable future. As one participant in the CDC workshop remarked, “a number of us would like to eradicate the word elimination.”

This would alter expectations again since “control” is not, like elimination and eradication, a euphemism for abolition. And that might backfire. For although the elimination campaign put research funding on the back burner, it did, with its promise of an achievable goal, galvanize efforts in the clinic and the surgery. The WHO programme has already spent $50m and has another $50m pledged -- but on the understanding that there is a clear end in sight. If the language changes again, and particularly if the 2005 deadline also proves a mirage, the WHO may have to work hard to keep the money flowing; 1980 was, after all, a long time ago.

Read carefully the passages given below and answer the questions.

In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) succeeded in its campaign to rid the world of smallpox. It has never let anyone forget the fact since. And rightly so. Given the effort it took to eradicate this scourge, the WHO richly deserves to make certain that smallpox, though gone, is not forgotten. Leprosy, however, appears to have endured the opposite fate. This ancient blight is forgotten, but not gone -- an unhappy predicament for its sufferers and for the WHO, which is still fighting against it.

So far, the WHO is committed to “eliminating” leprosy but not to “eradicating” it. That might seem a strange distinction to a layman, but in the argot, elimination is defined as a reduction in the number of cases in a population to below one per 10,000 people; eradication implies that no cases exist at all. The WHO Leprosy Elimination Programme, inaugurated in 1991, aimed to complete its task by 2000.

The campaign has made a lot of progress. It has reduced the number of people with the disease from more than five million to less than one million, and eliminated leprosy from 98 countries. But several South-East Asian and African states, as well as Brazil, still report from four to six cases of leprosy per 10,000 people. So at the Asian Leprosy Congress in Agra, the target date for global elimination was postponed to 2005.

A pity. But on the face of it, a five-year delay in “eliminating” a scourge that has horrified people since biblical times is a mere blip. There is, however, a fear that having allowed the deadline to slip once, the project’s momentum may be lost -- and even that the eventual result may be worse than if no grand plans had been laid in the first place.

The WHO originally accepted the idea of “eliminating” leprosy because in 1989, a symposium of experts decided that eradicating the disease was not feasible. In 1998, a workshop convened by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, echoed that advice. However, it added a new worry: that eliminating leprosy might not be possible either. Given the current state of knowledge of the biology of the disease, these epidemiologists argued, an elimination campaign could not guarantee to stop transmission, and thus keep the caseload down.

That is because a lot of basic information about leprosy is still missing. Doctors cannot, for example, diagnose it before a patient starts to show symptoms. Nor do they know how likely a treated patient is to relapse. More significantly, they remain unsure exactly how the disease is transmitted, how it infects the human body, and at what point a carrier of the bacterium may infect others.

As a result, and despite its success in treating those already infected, the campaign has not had much impact on the rate of new infections. That figure still exceeds 650,000 a year, or around 4.5 cases per 10,000 individuals in the worst-off countries; it has shown little sign of falling in the past 15 years.

The solution should be more research. Given the recent unraveling, by the Pasteur Institute in France, of the genome of Mycobacteriumleprae, the organism that causes the disease, science is better poised to carry out such research than ever before. But the loudly proclaimed 2000 deadline caused research funding to tail off. Funding bodies assumed that basic research into leprosy was becoming irrelevant, since the problem was being solved where it counted -- in the field. So they turned their attention elsewhere. In 1990, for example, the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations spent $6.5m on research projects. By 1998, its spending had declined to $3m. A lot of nifty public-relations work is going to be needed to repair the damage.

Fortunately, public relations is something that leprosy officials seem to be good at. They have already been pretty successful at “rebranding” the infection as “Hansen’s disease”, at least in medical circles. The Hansen in question, a 19th-century Norwegian doctor, did not, of course, recognize leprosy for the first time -- the usual reason to dub an illness after an individual. But he did identify Mycobacterium leprae, and that is good enough cover for the spin-doctors. Indeed, the Brazilian government went so far as to ban the “L” word completely, even in the names of aid organizations such as the British group LEPRA.

Cynicism aside, there may be good medical reasons for abandoning the old term. Most illness attracts sympathy for the victim. Leprosy often elicits repugnance. In some clinics, therefore, patients are now told only that they are suffering from a “skin infection”, and may complete their recovery without ever learning the details. Indeed, there is evidence that not telling people the whole truth gives better results than leveling with them - perhaps because they can take their medicine openly, without having to lie to their family and friends to avoid the stigma of being branded a leper.

Rebranding may also come to the rescue of the Leprosy Elimination Programme. The latest talk is not of elimination, but of “very good control” -- accepting, and being honest about, the fact that the disease will be around for the foreseeable future. As one participant in the CDC workshop remarked, “a number of us would like to eradicate the word elimination.”

This would alter expectations again since “control” is not, like elimination and eradication, a euphemism for abolition. And that might backfire. For although the elimination campaign put research funding on the back burner, it did, with its promise of an achievable goal, galvanize efforts in the clinic and the surgery. The WHO programme has already spent $50m and has another $50m pledged -- but on the understanding that there is a clear end in sight. If the language changes again, and particularly if the 2005 deadline also proves a mirage, the WHO may have to work hard to keep the money flowing; 1980 was, after all, a long time ago.

Read carefully the passages given below and answer the questions.

In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) succeeded in its campaign to rid the world of smallpox. It has never let anyone forget the fact since. And rightly so. Given the effort it took to eradicate this scourge, the WHO richly deserves to make certain that smallpox, though gone, is not forgotten. Leprosy, however, appears to have endured the opposite fate. This ancient blight is forgotten, but not gone -- an unhappy predicament for its sufferers and for the WHO, which is still fighting against it.

So far, the WHO is committed to “eliminating” leprosy but not to “eradicating” it. That might seem a strange distinction to a layman, but in the argot, elimination is defined as a reduction in the number of cases in a population to below one per 10,000 people; eradication implies that no cases exist at all. The WHO Leprosy Elimination Programme, inaugurated in 1991, aimed to complete its task by 2000.

The campaign has made a lot of progress. It has reduced the number of people with the disease from more than five million to less than one million, and eliminated leprosy from 98 countries. But several South-East Asian and African states, as well as Brazil, still report from four to six cases of leprosy per 10,000 people. So at the Asian Leprosy Congress in Agra, the target date for global elimination was postponed to 2005.

A pity. But on the face of it, a five-year delay in “eliminating” a scourge that has horrified people since biblical times is a mere blip. There is, however, a fear that having allowed the deadline to slip once, the project’s momentum may be lost -- and even that the eventual result may be worse than if no grand plans had been laid in the first place.

The WHO originally accepted the idea of “eliminating” leprosy because in 1989, a symposium of experts decided that eradicating the disease was not feasible. In 1998, a workshop convened by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, echoed that advice. However, it added a new worry: that eliminating leprosy might not be possible either. Given the current state of knowledge of the biology of the disease, these epidemiologists argued, an elimination campaign could not guarantee to stop transmission, and thus keep the caseload down.

That is because a lot of basic information about leprosy is still missing. Doctors cannot, for example, diagnose it before a patient starts to show symptoms. Nor do they know how likely a treated patient is to relapse. More significantly, they remain unsure exactly how the disease is transmitted, how it infects the human body, and at what point a carrier of the bacterium may infect others.

As a result, and despite its success in treating those already infected, the campaign has not had much impact on the rate of new infections. That figure still exceeds 650,000 a year, or around 4.5 cases per 10,000 individuals in the worst-off countries; it has shown little sign of falling in the past 15 years.

The solution should be more research. Given the recent unraveling, by the Pasteur Institute in France, of the genome of Mycobacteriumleprae, the organism that causes the disease, science is better poised to carry out such research than ever before. But the loudly proclaimed 2000 deadline caused research funding to tail off. Funding bodies assumed that basic research into leprosy was becoming irrelevant, since the problem was being solved where it counted -- in the field. So they turned their attention elsewhere. In 1990, for example, the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations spent $6.5m on research projects. By 1998, its spending had declined to $3m. A lot of nifty public-relations work is going to be needed to repair the damage.

Fortunately, public relations is something that leprosy officials seem to be good at. They have already been pretty successful at “rebranding” the infection as “Hansen’s disease”, at least in medical circles. The Hansen in question, a 19th-century Norwegian doctor, did not, of course, recognize leprosy for the first time -- the usual reason to dub an illness after an individual. But he did identify Mycobacterium leprae, and that is good enough cover for the spin-doctors. Indeed, the Brazilian government went so far as to ban the “L” word completely, even in the names of aid organizations such as the British group LEPRA.

Cynicism aside, there may be good medical reasons for abandoning the old term. Most illness attracts sympathy for the victim. Leprosy often elicits repugnance. In some clinics, therefore, patients are now told only that they are suffering from a “skin infection”, and may complete their recovery without ever learning the details. Indeed, there is evidence that not telling people the whole truth gives better results than leveling with them - perhaps because they can take their medicine openly, without having to lie to their family and friends to avoid the stigma of being branded a leper.

Rebranding may also come to the rescue of the Leprosy Elimination Programme. The latest talk is not of elimination, but of “very good control” -- accepting, and being honest about, the fact that the disease will be around for the foreseeable future. As one participant in the CDC workshop remarked, “a number of us would like to eradicate the word elimination.”

This would alter expectations again since “control” is not, like elimination and eradication, a euphemism for abolition. And that might backfire. For although the elimination campaign put research funding on the back burner, it did, with its promise of an achievable goal, galvanize efforts in the clinic and the surgery. The WHO programme has already spent $50m and has another $50m pledged -- but on the understanding that there is a clear end in sight. If the language changes again, and particularly if the 2005 deadline also proves a mirage, the WHO may have to work hard to keep the money flowing; 1980 was, after all, a long time ago.

Read carefully the passages given below and answer the questions.

A number of effective methods for generating new ideas are based on the use of analogies. One of the major difficulties in generating new ideas is to get going. The advantage of an analogy is that it has a life of its own. For instance, in the analogy of going fishing the process is so well known that one moves from one step to another without difficulty: finding time, choosing a stretch of water, perhaps getting a license, preparing the rod and tackle, choosing a position by the water, selecting bait,  changing  bait,  moving  about,  patience,  catching  something,  or  the  fish  that  got  away, fisherman’s stories, and so on.

In using  the analogy  method,  one  translates  the  problem  situation  in  to  an  analogy  and  then develops the analogy in its own right. From time to time, one translates back to the real problem to see  what  would  happen  if  the  process  taking  place  in  the analogy  took  place  in  the  problem situation.  For  instance,  the  fishing  analogy  might  have  been used  in  considering  a  management recruitment  problem.  “Stretch  of  water”  would  now  read  area  of  exploration,  perhaps  campus, perhaps  business  college,  perhaps  other  corporations.  “Bait”  would  now  read  salary,  fringe benefits, stock options, promotion prospects, status, responsibility, location, or others.

“Fishing tackle” would now read advertising media, personal contact, interviews, word of mouth, and  the  like.  One  would  then  come  to  the  point  when  no  fish?  Perhaps  those  waters  were overfished, perhaps the bait was unsuitable, perhaps the weather conditions were not right, perhaps it was a matter of too little patience. One might then consider whether the object of the fishing was sport, the odd chance of getting something really worthwhile, or the need to have some fish to eat. If it was the last, one might consider buying fish from a professional fish catcher, buying frozen fish from a store and spending extra time cooking it, or even changing the menu so that frozen fish fitted in (fresh salmon might dominate a menu but fish fingers would not). Translated back in to the problem situation, this would all mean that if changing the incentives and the search area were unsuccessful,  then  one  ought to  have more patience, or  employ professional search agencies, or decide to spend more time on executive training on the job, or even tailor the job in such a way that exceptional executive talent was no longer required.

In mathematics, one translates a situation in to the symbols of a formula and then lets the formula run along its own course of development. At the end, one translates back. This is the way one uses analogies except that one does not only translate back at the end but all the way along as well.

Analogies serve as vehicles for processes, functions, relationships, and it is these which are being transferred to the original problem and tried out to see if they fit or what ideas they set off. The natural  development  of  an analogy is quite unrelated  to  the actual problem and  so  it provides a source of discontinuity. The problem is forced (or encouraged) to develop along a line different from its natural development.

The use of an analogy to get a problem moving is quite a different thing from arguing by analogy. No  matter  how  good  the  fit,  the  development  of  an  analogy  can  prove  nothing  about  the development of the problem situation. As usual in lateral thinking, the way one arrives at a new idea can never by itself justify that idea. The idea must stand in its own right.

How does one choose an analogy? There is a danger that if the analogy is too natural and too good a  fit,  then  its  development  will  simply  carry  the  problem  along  a  path  it  might  have  followed anyway. On the other hand, if the analogy is too outrageous it might be so difficult to translate it back in to the terms of the problem that no development at all occurs. The fishing analogy chosen earlier was probably too close an analogy, so the ideas turned up by its use were rather routine. Other analogies might have been buying a new suit, looking for antiques, stamp collecting, frying an egg. All these analogies except the last one involve a search procedure for something that has to fit in to some specific setting. Though very different in nature, the egg-frying analogy could set off ideas about job appeal (different taste in fried eggs, sunny-side up, et cetera), about timing, about sticking to the present job (sticking to the pan), and transfer devices (egg slices).