CAT 2017 Slot 1 — VARC Question 25
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Do sports mega events like the Summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting… several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the Summer Olympic games themselves generate total revenue of 5 billion, but the lion’s share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefits is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the bird’s Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities – not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?Further, cities must consider the human cost, Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
To me, a “classic” means precisely the opposite of what my predecessors understood: a work is classical by reason of its resistance to contemporaneity and supposed universality, by reason of its capacity to indicate human particularity and difference in that past epoch. The classic is not what tells me about shared humanity–or, more truthfully put, what lets me recognize myself as already present in the past, what nourishes in me the illusion that everything has been like me and has existed only to prepare the way for me. Instead, the classic is what gives access to radically different forms of human consciousness for any given generation of readers, and thereby expands for them the range of possibilities of what it means to be a human being.
Answer & solution
- A
A classic is able to focus on the contemporary human condition and a unified experience of human consciousness.
- B
A classical work seeks to resist particularity and temporal difference even as it focuses on a common humanity.
A classic is a work exploring the new, going beyond the universal, the contemporary, and the notion of a unified human consciousness.
- D
A classic is work that provides access to a universal experience of the human race as opposed to radically different forms of human consciousness.
The main points in the passage are:
- A classic (for me) is the opposite of what it is understood to be:
- It doesn’t resist the contemporary.
- It doesn’t highlight the universal.
- It is not about shared humanity
- To me it is: the possibilities of individual human consciousness.
Option 1 talks about what traditionally classic is understood to be – it does not capture the author’s position. Eliminate option 1.
Option 2 is similar to option 1 – it highlights what a classical work is and does not capture the author’s unique definition of what is a classic. Eliminate option 2.
Option 3 is correct – it captures what the author means by a classic and briefly captures all the points.
Retain option 3.
Option 4 is incorrect. Option 4 is contrary to the author’s conception of what is a classic. Eliminate option 4.
Hence, the correct answer is option 3.