CAT 2018 Slot 1 — VARC Question 30
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given in this question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in this sequence of four numbers as your answer.
- But now we have another group: the unwitting enablers.
- Democracy and high levels of inequality of the kind that have come to characterize the United States are simply incompatible.
- Believing these people are working for a better world, they are, actually, at most, chipping away at the margins, making slight course corrections, ensuring the system goes on as it is, uninterrupted.
- Very rich people will always use money to maintain their political and economic power.
Answer & solution
Answer: 2413
Easy
This is a four-sentence rearrangement. Find the opener (the sentence that introduces the topic without referring back to anything), then chain the others using pronouns and connectors. Look especially for "another group" (which needs a first group already mentioned) and the "these people" reference.
Find the opener. Sentence 2 makes a clean, self-contained thesis statement: "Democracy and high levels of inequality... are simply incompatible." It introduces the topic (inequality vs. democracy) and depends on nothing before it, so it opens the paragraph.
2 to 4. Sentence 4 elaborates the thesis of 2: "Very rich people will always use money to maintain their political and economic power." This explains why inequality threatens democracy, so it naturally follows 2.
The 1 to 3 link. Sentence 1 says "But now we have another group: the unwitting enablers" — introducing a new category of people. Sentence 3 begins "Believing these people are working for a better world..." The phrase "these people" refers directly to the "unwitting enablers" just named in 1. So 1 must come immediately before 3.
Assemble. After the thesis (2) and its explanation about the rich (4) comes the pivot "But now we have another group" (1), then the description of that group (3). This gives 2–4–1–3.
The coherent order is 2413.