CAT 2018 Question Paper | Verbal Slot 2

CAT Questions

This is a specific detail question from the passage E-Governance that appeared in CAT 2018 Question Paper Slot 2. This question sets a wonderful example of how you need to completely understand the paragraph from which the detail is asked, so that you are able to answer the question correctly. Read plenty of articles from Bharath’s curated reading list for your CAT Online Preparation and master the CAT Exam.

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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 4 : The author questions the use of monitoring systems in services that involve face-to-face interaction between service providers and clients because such systems:

1. do not improve services that need committed service providers.
2. are not as effective in the public sector as they are in the private sector.
3. improve the skills but do not increase the motivation of service providers
4. are ineffective because they are managed by the government.

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Video Explanation

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Explanatory Answer

See paragraphs 2 and 3. The passage argues that in implementation-intensive services involving face-to-face interactions between service providers and clients, ‘the real issue is people and their motivation’ and that ‘as long as the system empowers providers over citizens, technology is irrelevant.’

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The question is "The author questions the use of monitoring systems in services that involve face-to-face interaction between service providers and clients because such systems:"

Hence, the answer is do not improve services that need committed service providers.

Choice A is the correct answer.