CAT 2025 Question Paper | VARC Slot 1

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Question 14 : The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given 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.

1. It can in fact be integrated into any function (education, medical treatment, production, punishment); it can increase the effect of this function, by being linked closely with it; it can constitute a mixed mechanism in which relations of power (and of knowledge) may be precisely adjusted, in the smallest detail, to the processes that are to be supervised; it can establish a direct proportion between ‘surplus power’ and ‘surplus production’.
2. It’s a case of ‘it’s easy once you’ve thought of it’ in the political sphere.
3. The panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making power relations function in a function, and of making a function function through these power relations.
4. In short, it arranges things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a rigid, heavy constraint, to the functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to increase their efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact.

Explanatory Answer

Difficult para jumble, as the sentences are wordy and abstruse. For the opening sentences, 2 or 3 can work, as these are general statements. 3 and 4 seem to be related. 3 says the panoptic, i.e., overarching mechanism is not merely a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function but a way of making power relations function in a function. That is, the mechanism is not a link but something that functions within the function. 4 seems to paraphrase this idea. Power is not added on from the outside but present in the function to increase efficiency. Between 1 and 2, 1 seems to explain the idea further, so we place it right after 34. So, we have the order 341. As to where to place 2, the end of the paragraph seems a better fit than the beginning as 2 seems to be an observation made after analysing the information. So, the correct order is 3412.

The answer is '2143'

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