2023 CSAT — Q21

Locate. This asks for the best-supported inference: the keyed option restates a conclusion the passage’s lines force. The passage catalogues drastic actions (odd-even, closing schools/factories, banning fuels/car types), notes “even then the air is not clean,” shows each blunt measure is mis-targeted (15-year-old vehicles are 1% of the total; diesel vs CNG trade PM2.5 for NOx), calls “arbitrary bans… unfair,” and ends: “what is needed is the scientific and reliable information about the source of pollutants… and the technologies that will work to reduce pollution.” The forced implication: drastic/knee-jerk measures fail; an evidence-based approach is needed.

Test (find-the-line-then-match + scope-fit). (b) “knee-jerk reactions cannot solve… but an evidence-based approach will be more effective” matches the passage’s whole arc — the failure of blunt actions plus the closing call for scientific information. Test others: (a) “difficult to implement” is a claim the passage never makes at all — it says these actions were implemented (odd-even ran, closures happened, bans were imposed) and failed on effectiveness and fairness, not on feasibility of execution; (c) “heavy penalty on those without periodic pollution tests” reverses the passage, which calls penalising fitness-passed vehicles unfair; (d) “absence of laws → arbitrary decisions” is an unstated causal claim.

Eliminate by anatomy. (a) borrows the passage’s real skepticism about blunt bans but relabels the reason as an implementation problem the passage never raises — out-of-scope, not a supported claim, and even read as charitably as possible it still only carries the failure mood, not the constructive half; (c) gets the direction backwards — it punishes exactly the compliant vehicles the passage defends; (d) is a step the text doesn’t license — the law-absence cause is never stated. The transferable rule: the best implication must capture both halves of a “X fails, Y is needed” passage; a fragment that keeps only the failure half is incomplete, and an option that names a reason the passage never gives isn’t even a fragment — it’s an import. Key: (b).

“Even then the air is not clean… Arbitrary bans on vehicles that have passed mandated fitness tests and periodic pollution tests are unfair. What is needed is the scientific and reliable information about the source of pollutants on a continuing basis and the technologies that will work to reduce pollution from them.” The implication: drastic/arbitrary (knee-jerk) actions don’t clean the air; a scientific, evidence-based approach is what is needed — exactly (b). (a) is out-of-scope (the passage never claims curbs are hard to implement — it says they were implemented and failed on effectiveness/fairness grounds, which (a) never names); (c) inverts the passage (it calls penalising fitness-passed vehicles unfair); (d) is an unstated causal claim → (b).

The passage’s two-part message: blunt, arbitrary anti-pollution actions don’t clean the air and unfairly hit compliant vehicles; what works is continuous scientific information on pollutant sources plus effective technologies.

(b) states both halves — knee-jerk reactions fail; evidence-based action is more effective. (a) relabels the passage’s actual complaint (ineffective, unfair) as a different, unstated one (hard to implement) — the passage’s own text shows these measures were implemented, so this isn’t in the passage at all. (c) reverses the passage by demanding penalties on fitness-passed drivers, whom the passage explicitly defends. (d) invents a cause (no laws → arbitrariness).

Answer: (b).

The passage is a classic “blunt action fails → evidence-based action needed” structure, and the best inference must carry both clauses. (a) sounds like it’s on-topic (curbs, arbitrariness) but actually argues from a claim — implementation difficulty — the passage never makes; the passage’s own complaint is effectiveness and fairness, not feasibility. (c) actively reverses the passage’s fairness point. (b) alone preserves the full message: stop the knee-jerk bans, base policy on continuous scientific source-data. Capturing both the negative and the constructive half — and not importing a reason the text doesn’t give — is the move. (b).