CAT 2018 Question Paper | Verbal Slot 2

CAT Questions

This is a Critical Reasoning type question from the passage E-Governance that appeared in CAT 2018 Question Paper Slot 2. This question sets a wonderful example of how reasoning skills slong with the ability to comprehend the passage are required to answer such questions correctly. Reading on a daily basis is a key factor in improving the understanding and reasoning skills in your CAT Online Preparation. Solve this question and look at the video explanation below.

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Will a day come when India’s poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? No country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or dispute resolution as easy as an ATM, because the nature of these activities requires individuals to use their discretion in a positive way. Technology can certainly facilitate this in a variety of ways if it is seen as one part of an overall approach, but the evidence so far in education, for instance, is that just adding computers alone doesn’t make education any better.

The dangerous illusion of technology is that it can create stronger, top down accountability of service providers in implementation-intensive services within existing public sector organisations. One notion is that electronic management information systems (EMIS) keep better track of inputs and those aspects of personnel that are ‘EMIS visible’ can lead to better services. A recent study examined attempts to increase attendance of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) at clinics in Rajasthan, which involved high-tech time clocks to monitor attendance. The study’s title says it all: Band-Aids on a Corpse. E-governance can be just as bad as any other governance when the real issue is people and their motivation.

For services to improve, the people providing the services have to want to do a better job with the skills they have. A study of medical care in Delhi found that even though providers, in the public sector had much better skills than private sector providers their provision of care in actual practice was much worse.

In implementation-intensive services the key to success is face-to-face interactions between a teacher, a nurse, a policeman, an extension agent and a citizen. This relationship is about power. Amartya Sen’s report on education in West Bengal had a supremely telling anecdote in which the villagers forced the teacher to attend school, but then, when the parents went off to work, the teacher did not teach, but forced the children to massage his feet. As long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.

The answer to successfully providing basic services is to create systems that provide both autonomy and accountability. In basic education for instance, the answer to poor teaching is not controlling teachers more. The key is to hire teachers who want to teach and let them teach, expressing their professionalism and vocation as a teacher through autonomy in the classroom. This autonomy has to be matched with accountability for results—not just narrowly measured through test scores, but broadly for the quality of the education they provide.

A recent study in Uttar Pradesh showed that if, somehow, all civil service teachers could be replaced with contract teachers, the state could save a billion dollars a year in revenue and double student learning. Just the additional autonomy and accountability of contracts through local groups—even without complementary system changes in information and empowerment—led to that much improvement. The first step to being part of the solution is to create performance information accessible to those outside of the government.

Question 3 : Which of the following, IF TRUE, would undermine the passage’s main argument?

1. If absolute instead of moderate technological surveillance is exercised over the performance of service providers.
2. Empowerment of service providers leads to increased complacency and rigged performance results.
3. If it were proven that increase in autonomy of service providers leads to an exponential increase in their work ethic and sense of responsibility.
4. If it were proven that service providers in the private sector have better skills than those in the public sector.

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Video Explanation

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Explanatory Answer

The passage states that empowerment of service providers with additional autonomy and holding them accountable can improve the provision of service. Option 2 provides an argument against this.

Option 1 talks of ‘absolute instead of moderate technological surveillance.’ One of the key ideas of the passage is that technology alone cannot improve service delivery. Option 3 actually strengthens the main argument of the passage. Option 4 is irrelevant as the point of discussion is not the comparison between public sector and private sector.

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The question is "Which of the following, IF TRUE, would undermine the passage’s main argument?"

Hence, the answer is Empowerment of service providers leads to increased complacency and rigged performance results.

Choice B is the correct answer.