Type : MCQ

Intructions :

Directions: A paragraph is given below from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the one that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.

Question Statement :

The East India Company no longer exists, and it has, thankfully, no exact modern equivalent. Walmart, which is the world’s largest corporation in revenue terms, does not number among its assets a fleet of nuclear submarines; neither Facebook nor Shell possesses regiments of infantry. Yet the East India Company - the first great multinational corporation, and the first to run amok - was the ultimate model for many of today’s joint-stock corporations. The most powerful among them do not need their own armies: they can rely on governments to protect their interests and bail them out. The East India Company remains history’s most terrifying warning about the potential for the abuse of corporate power - and the insidious means by which the interests of shareholders become those of the state. Three hundred and fifteen years after its founding, its story has never been more current. _____________________________

The East India Company's story is the first example of a nation state extracting, as its price for saving a failing corporation, the right to regulate and severely rein it in.
For all the power wielded today by the world’s largest corporations - whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google – they are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarized East India Company.
Answerable only to its shareholders and with no stake in the just governance of the region, or its long-term wellbeing, the East India Company’s rule quickly turned into the straightforward pillage of India, and the rapid transfer westwards of its wealth.
If history shows anything, it is that in the intimate dance between the power of the state and that of the corporation, while the latter can be regulated, it will use all the resources in its power to resist.