Wipro WILP Placement Paper & Questions

46. Directions for the (6-8) questions:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously. As a nation we age by pushing outward from the middle--adding a few centuries on either end of the extraordinary CV. We greaten like the maturing head of a hammerhead shark with eyes looking in diametrically opposite directions.

I don't mean to put a simplistic value judgment on this peculiar form of "progress" by suggesting that Modern is Good and Traditional is Bad--or vice versa. What's hard to reconcile oneself to, both personally and politically, is the schizophrenic nature of it. That applies not just to the ancient/modern conundrum but to the utter illogic of what appears to be the current national enterprise. In the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road gangs of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber- optic cables to speed up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work by the light of a few candles.

It's as though the people of India have been rounded up and loaded onto two convoys of trucks (a huge big one and a tiny little one) that have set off resolutely in opposite directions. The tiny convoy is on its way to a glittering destination somewhere near the top of the world. The other convoy just melts into the darkness and disappears. A cursory survey that tallies the caste, class and religion of who gets to be on which convoy would make a good Lazy Person's concise Guide to the History of India.

Sixty years after independence, India is still struggling with the legacy of colonialism, still flinching from the "cultural insult." As citizens we're still caught up in the business of "disproving" the white world's definition of us. Intellectually and emotionally, we have just begun to grapple with communal and caste politics that threaten to tear our society apart. But meanwhile, something new looms on our horizon. On the face of it, it's just ordinary, day-to-day business. It lacks the drama, the large-format, epic magnificence of war or genocide or famine. It's dull in comparison. It makes bad TV. It has to do with boring things like jobs, money, water supply, electricity, irrigation. But it also has to do with a process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has few parallels in history. You may have guessed by now that I'm talking about the modern version of globalization.

What is globalization? Who is it for? What is it going to do to a country like India, in which social inequality has been institutionalized in the caste system for centuries? Is the corporatization and globalization of agriculture, water supply, electricity and essential commodities going to pull India out of the stagnant morass of poverty, illiteracy and religious bigotry? Is the dismantling and auctioning off of elaborate public sector infrastructure, developed with public money over the past sixty years, really the way forward? Is globalization going to close the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, between the upper castes and the lower castes, between the educated and the illiterate? Or is it going to give those who already have a centuries-old head start a friendly helping hand? These are huge, contentious questions. The answers vary depending on whether they come from the villages and fields of rural India, from the slums and shantytowns of urban India, from the living rooms of the burgeoning middle class or from the boardrooms of the big business houses.

Why does the author calls 'progress' as peculiar?

47. Directions for the (6-8) questions:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously. As a nation we age by pushing outward from the middle--adding a few centuries on either end of the extraordinary CV. We greaten like the maturing head of a hammerhead shark with eyes looking in diametrically opposite directions.

I don't mean to put a simplistic value judgment on this peculiar form of "progress" by suggesting that Modern is Good and Traditional is Bad--or vice versa. What's hard to reconcile oneself to, both personally and politically, is the schizophrenic nature of it. That applies not just to the ancient/modern conundrum but to the utter illogic of what appears to be the current national enterprise. In the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road gangs of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber- optic cables to speed up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work by the light of a few candles.

It's as though the people of India have been rounded up and loaded onto two convoys of trucks (a huge big one and a tiny little one) that have set off resolutely in opposite directions. The tiny convoy is on its way to a glittering destination somewhere near the top of the world. The other convoy just melts into the darkness and disappears. A cursory survey that tallies the caste, class and religion of who gets to be on which convoy would make a good Lazy Person's concise Guide to the History of India.

Sixty years after independence, India is still struggling with the legacy of colonialism, still flinching from the "cultural insult." As citizens we're still caught up in the business of "disproving" the white world's definition of us. Intellectually and emotionally, we have just begun to grapple with communal and caste politics that threaten to tear our society apart. But meanwhile, something new looms on our horizon. On the face of it, it's just ordinary, day-to-day business. It lacks the drama, the large-format, epic magnificence of war or genocide or famine. It's dull in comparison. It makes bad TV. It has to do with boring things like jobs, money, water supply, electricity, irrigation. But it also has to do with a process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has few parallels in history. You may have guessed by now that I'm talking about the modern version of globalization.

What is globalization? Who is it for? What is it going to do to a country like India, in which social inequality has been institutionalized in the caste system for centuries? Is the corporatization and globalization of agriculture, water supply, electricity and essential commodities going to pull India out of the stagnant morass of poverty, illiteracy and religious bigotry? Is the dismantling and auctioning off of elaborate public sector infrastructure, developed with public money over the past sixty years, really the way forward? Is globalization going to close the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, between the upper castes and the lower castes, between the educated and the illiterate? Or is it going to give those who already have a centuries-old head start a friendly helping hand? These are huge, contentious questions. The answers vary depending on whether they come from the villages and fields of rural India, from the slums and shantytowns of urban India, from the living rooms of the burgeoning middle class or from the boardrooms of the big business houses.

What do you infer from the sentence, “For some of us, life in …...but emotionally and intellectually”?

48. Directions for the (6-8) questions:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously. As a nation we age by pushing outward from the middle--adding a few centuries on either end of the extraordinary CV. We greaten like the maturing head of a hammerhead shark with eyes looking in diametrically opposite directions.

I don't mean to put a simplistic value judgment on this peculiar form of "progress" by suggesting that Modern is Good and Traditional is Bad--or vice versa. What's hard to reconcile oneself to, both personally and politically, is the schizophrenic nature of it. That applies not just to the ancient/modern conundrum but to the utter illogic of what appears to be the current national enterprise. In the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road gangs of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber- optic cables to speed up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work by the light of a few candles.

It's as though the people of India have been rounded up and loaded onto two convoys of trucks (a huge big one and a tiny little one) that have set off resolutely in opposite directions. The tiny convoy is on its way to a glittering destination somewhere near the top of the world. The other convoy just melts into the darkness and disappears. A cursory survey that tallies the caste, class and religion of who gets to be on which convoy would make a good Lazy Person's concise Guide to the History of India.

Sixty years after independence, India is still struggling with the legacy of colonialism, still flinching from the "cultural insult." As citizens we're still caught up in the business of "disproving" the white world's definition of us. Intellectually and emotionally, we have just begun to grapple with communal and caste politics that threaten to tear our society apart. But meanwhile, something new looms on our horizon. On the face of it, it's just ordinary, day-to-day business. It lacks the drama, the large-format, epic magnificence of war or genocide or famine. It's dull in comparison. It makes bad TV. It has to do with boring things like jobs, money, water supply, electricity, irrigation. But it also has to do with a process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has few parallels in history. You may have guessed by now that I'm talking about the modern version of globalization.

What is globalization? Who is it for? What is it going to do to a country like India, in which social inequality has been institutionalized in the caste system for centuries? Is the corporatization and globalization of agriculture, water supply, electricity and essential commodities going to pull India out of the stagnant morass of poverty, illiteracy and religious bigotry? Is the dismantling and auctioning off of elaborate public sector infrastructure, developed with public money over the past sixty years, really the way forward? Is globalization going to close the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, between the upper castes and the lower castes, between the educated and the illiterate? Or is it going to give those who already have a centuries-old head start a friendly helping hand? These are huge, contentious questions. The answers vary depending on whether they come from the villages and fields of rural India, from the slums and shantytowns of urban India, from the living rooms of the burgeoning middle class or from the boardrooms of the big business houses.

How does the author feel about 'Globalisation' in India?

49. Directions for the (9-10) question:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the vice-regal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, "My Favorite Brunette." Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment.

While the Mountbattens were sitting down to their Bob Hope movie, India's constituent assembly was convening in New Delhi. The moment demanded grandiloquence, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's closest disciple and soon to be India's first Prime Minister, provided it. "Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny," he said. "At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awaken to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.“

Posterity has enshrined this speech, as Nehru clearly intended. But today his quaint phrase "tryst with destiny" resonates ominously, so enduring have been the political and psychological scars of partition. The souls of the two new nation-states immediately found utterance in brutal enmity. In Punjab, armed vigilante groups, organized along religious lines and incited by local politicians, murdered countless people, abducting and raping thousands of women. Soon, India and Pakistan were fighting a war-the first of three-over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Gandhi, reduced to despair by the seemingly endless cycle of retaliatory mass murders and displacement, was shot dead in January, 1948, by a Hindu extremist who believed that the father of the Indian nation was too soft on Muslims. Jinnah, racked with tuberculosis and overwork, died a few months later, his dream of a secular Pakistan apparently buried with him.

What could ‘grandiloquence’ possibly mean as inferred from the context in which it has been used in the passage?

50. Directions for the (9-10) question:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the vice-regal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, "My Favorite Brunette." Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment.

While the Mountbattens were sitting down to their Bob Hope movie, India's constituent assembly was convening in New Delhi. The moment demanded grandiloquence, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's closest disciple and soon to be India's first Prime Minister, provided it. "Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny," he said. "At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awaken to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.“

Posterity has enshrined this speech, as Nehru clearly intended. But today his quaint phrase "tryst with destiny" resonates ominously, so enduring have been the political and psychological scars of partition. The souls of the two new nation-states immediately found utterance in brutal enmity. In Punjab, armed vigilante groups, organized along religious lines and incited by local politicians, murdered countless people, abducting and raping thousands of women. Soon, India and Pakistan were fighting a war-the first of three-over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Gandhi, reduced to despair by the seemingly endless cycle of retaliatory mass murders and displacement, was shot dead in January, 1948, by a Hindu extremist who believed that the father of the Indian nation was too soft on Muslims. Jinnah, racked with tuberculosis and overwork, died a few months later, his dream of a secular Pakistan apparently buried with him.

Why was Mahatma Gandhi assassinated?

51. Select the correct option that fills the blank to make the sentence meaningfully complete.

A person's shadow always ______ beside him/her, no matter what.

52. Directions for the (12-13) questions:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

When it came to promoting its new video-game console, the Wii, in America, Nintendo recruited a handful of carefully chosen suburban mothers in the hope that they would spread the word among their friends that the Wii was a gaming console the whole family could enjoy together. Nintendo thus became the latest company to use "word-of-mouth" marketing. Nestlé, Sony and Philips have all launched similar campaigns in recent months to promote everything from bottled water to electric toothbrushes. As the power of traditional advertising declines, what was once an experimental marketing approach is becoming more popular.

After all, no form of advertising carries as much weight as an endorsement from a friend. "Amway and Tupperware know you can blend the social and economic to business advantage," says Walter Carl, a marketing guru at Northeastern University. The difference now, he says, is that the internet can magnify the effect of such endorsements. Last week BzzAgent launched its service in Britain. Dave Balter, BzzAgent's founder, thinks word-of-mouth marketing will become a multi-billion dollar industry. No doubt he tells that to everyone he meets.

The difficulty for marketers is creating the right kind of buzz and learning to control it. Negative views spread just as quickly as positive ones, so if a product has flaws, people will soon find out. And Peter Kim of Forrester, a consultancy, points out that when Microsoft sent laptops loaded with its new Windows Vista software to influential bloggers in an effort to get them to write about it, the resulting online discussion ignored Vista and focused instead on the morality of accepting gifts and the ethics of word-of-mouth marketing. Bad buzz, in short.

BzzAgent, a controversial company based in Boston that is one of the leading exponents of word-of-mouth marketing, operates a network of volunteer "agents" who receive free samples of products in the post. They talk to their friends about them and send back their thoughts. In return, they receive rewards through a points program-an arrangement they are supposed to make clear. This allows a firm to create buzz around a product and to see what kind of word-of-mouth response it generates, which can be useful for subsequent product development and marketing.

What is the experimental approach being discussed in the first paragraph?

53. Directions for the (12-13) questions:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

When it came to promoting its new video-game console, the Wii, in America, Nintendo recruited a handful of carefully chosen suburban mothers in the hope that they would spread the word among their friends that the Wii was a gaming console the whole family could enjoy together. Nintendo thus became the latest company to use "word-of-mouth" marketing. Nestlé, Sony and Philips have all launched similar campaigns in recent months to promote everything from bottled water to electric toothbrushes. As the power of traditional advertising declines, what was once an experimental marketing approach is becoming more popular.

After all, no form of advertising carries as much weight as an endorsement from a friend. "Amway and Tupperware know you can blend the social and economic to business advantage," says Walter Carl, a marketing guru at Northeastern University. The difference now, he says, is that the internet can magnify the effect of such endorsements. Last week BzzAgent launched its service in Britain. Dave Balter, BzzAgent's founder, thinks word-of-mouth marketing will become a multi-billion dollar industry. No doubt he tells that to everyone he meets.

The difficulty for marketers is creating the right kind of buzz and learning to control it. Negative views spread just as quickly as positive ones, so if a product has flaws, people will soon find out. And Peter Kim of Forrester, a consultancy, points out that when Microsoft sent laptops loaded with its new Windows Vista software to influential bloggers in an effort to get them to write about it, the resulting online discussion ignored Vista and focused instead on the morality of accepting gifts and the ethics of word-of-mouth marketing. Bad buzz, in short.

BzzAgent, a controversial company based in Boston that is one of the leading exponents of word-of-mouth marketing, operates a network of volunteer "agents" who receive free samples of products in the post. They talk to their friends about them and send back their thoughts. In return, they receive rewards through a points program-an arrangement they are supposed to make clear. This allows a firm to create buzz around a product and to see what kind of word-of-mouth response it generates, which can be useful for subsequent product development and marketing.

What is the author of the passage most likely to agree with?

54. Select the option that is most nearly OPPOSITE to the given word.
Empathy

55. Rearrange the sentences given as P, Q, R and S to form a coherent paragraph. The first (S1) and the last (S6) sentences are given.

S1: The physics exam paper was quite tough this year.

P: The physics test paper is now being designed by some junior teacher.

Q: Thus, has asked all failed students to appear for exam again.

R: Only 40% of the total students scored the passing marks.

S: The principal was quite disappointed with this result.

S6: Hopefully the school will have higher passing percentage this time.

56. Read the passage given below and answer the questions.

Today, China's official unemployment rate is about 4.3 percent, but it is a gross underestimate because of underemployment among both rural and urban Chinese. They may have a job but their skills are underutilized and they are underpaid. What explains this situation? No doubt, the global economic crisis has contributed to job loss, but China is considered one of the first economies to have recovered from the recession.

Instead, three explanations may account for the relatively high unemployment among college graduates. First, geography matters. Young people from smaller places and rural areas, upon obtaining a university degree, are likely to be eager to go to or stay in big cities. This effect is crowding the labor market in cities like Beijing and Shanghai and hurting the economy of small cities and towns. Second, globalization matters. By rough estimates, one quarter of the Chinese who have studied overseas have returned. Nicknamed "Sea Turtles" (Haigui), these returnees are highly competitive and can easily push the domestic college graduates down the job hierarchy.

Finally, China's economy continues to be dominated by the industrial sector, which accounts for about 49 percent of the gross domestic product. While services - the most likely sector for college graduates - account for about 40 percent of the G.D.P., high-skilled, professional jobs are still relatively few compared with low-end service jobs like those in sales.

Creating high-end jobs and increasing the incentives for young people to live in smaller cities are obvious ways to reduce unemployment. But this is easier said than done. The Chinese economy is no longer centrally planned, and as we have observed on the other side of the Pacific, relying on the market alone - even with stimulus packages - has not yet put enough people back to work.

Which is the best measure to reduce unemployment?

57. Read the sentence to find out whether there is any grammatical error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence. The letter of that part is the answer. Ignore the error of punctuation, if any.

(A) Fishermen is (B) spotted catching fish on (C) the bank of the river.

58. Select the word or phrase which best expresses the MEANING of the given word.
Arid

59. Select the word or phrase which best expresses the MEANING of the given word.
Tranquil

60. Select the word or phrase which best expresses the MEANING of the given word.
Recluse