CAT 2017 Slot 1 — VARC Question 28
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 five sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) given in this question, when properly sequenced, from a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in this sequence of five numbers as your answer.
- The process of handing down implies not a passive transfer, but some contestation in defining what exactly is to be handed down.
- Wherever Western scholars have worked on the Indian past, the selection is even more apparent and the inventing of a tradition much more recognizable.
- Every generation selects what it requires from the past and makes its innovations, some more than others.
- It is now a truism to say that traditions are not handed down unchanged, but are invented.
- Just as life has death as its opposite, so is tradition by default the opposite of innovation.
Answer & solution
Answer: 54132
Rather than search for the beginning of the paragraph, you could easily spot the two mandatory pairs in the set of five sentences. “… the selection is even more apparent…” in 2 has to be preceded by “Every generation selects” in 3. So, you can be sure that 3-2 is a mandatory pair. The next mandatory pair that you can see is 5-4. Though there is a mention of life and death in sentence 5, all the other sentences talk about tradition – sentence 5 introduces the idea of tradition and sentence 4 continues with what the writer has to say about tradition – that traditions are opposite of innovation but traditions are also invented. In the discovery of 5-4 as a mandatory pair, you can also understand that 5 introduces the theme and is the best sentence for the starter. Hence, 5-4 is the beginning of the answer sequence. After you find these two mandatory pairs, your only task left is to figure out where to place sentence 1. Sentence 1 is ruled out at the beginning. It can be either at the end or between the two mandatory pairs 5-4 and 3-2. “… traditions are not handed down…” in 4 links to “the process of handing down implies…’ in sentence 1. Hence, 5-4-1 is a sequence which is followed by the mandatory pair 3-2.
Hence, the correct answer is 54132.