CAT 2021 Slot 2 — VARC Question 18
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) below, when properly sequenced would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
- But today there is an epochal challenge to rethink and reconstitute the vision and practice of development as a shared responsibility – a sharing which binds both the agent and the audience, the developed world and the developing, in a bond of shared destiny.
- We are at a crossroads now in our vision and practice of development.
- This calls for the cultivation of an appropriate ethical mode of being in our lives which enables us to realize this global and planetary situation of shared living and responsibility.
- Half a century ago, development began as a hope for a better human possibility, but in the last fifty years, this hope has lost itself in the dreary desert of various kinds of hegemonic applications.
Answer & solution
Answer: 2413
Easy
This is a para-jumble. Find the opener (the sentence that introduces the topic without depending on anything before it), fix any mandatory pairs, and let transition words signal sequence. The topic here is the vision and practice of development.
Opener: 2. "We are at a crossroads now in our vision and practice of development" is a clean, self-contained statement that introduces the subject (development) and the present moment ("now"). Sentences 1, 3, 4 all refer back to ideas already in play, so 2 must lead.
Pair 4→1 (history then today). Sentence 4 gives the backstory: "Half a century ago, development began as a hope... but in the last fifty years this hope has lost itself." Sentence 1 answers it with "But today there is an epochal challenge to rethink..." The past-to-present arc (4 = past, 1 = today) makes 41 a mandatory pair, and it naturally follows the "crossroads now" framing of 2.
Closer: 3. "This calls for the cultivation of an appropriate ethical mode of being... to realize this global and planetary situation of shared living and responsibility." The phrase "shared living and responsibility" picks up the "shared responsibility / bond of shared destiny" introduced in sentence 1, so 3 concludes by prescribing the response. Chain: 2 → 4 → 1 → 3.
The coherent order is 2413.