2025 CSAT — Q21

Locate. A “corollary” asks for the best-supported inference: pick the statement the passage’s content entails, not a plausible new claim. So find the passage’s load-bearing fact first: agriculture “never experienced a high-growth phase,” peaked at 3·5% in the 1980s, then stagnated “in sharp contrast to non-agricultural growth, which consistently increased.” The fact is: agriculture lags the rest of the economy, persistently.

Test (find the line, then match it). A valid corollary must be a re-description of that lag. (a) — benefits reach agriculture “more slowly… than other sectors” — is exactly a corollary of agriculture trailing the rest of the economy. Check the others for whether the passage entails them: each introduces a cause (green revolution, mechanization, migration) the passage never mentions.

Eliminate by anatomy. (b), (c) and (d) are all claims the passage never actually makes — each names a cause (green-revolution failure, lagging mechanization, rural-to-urban migration) that the passage neither states nor implies; they “sound like reasons agriculture lagged” but are reader-supplied, not entailed. The transferable rule on a corollary item: the answer re-states what the passage established; it never diagnoses a cause the passage didn’t raise. Key: (a).

“agricultural growth suffered relative stagnation thereafter. This is in sharp contrast to non-agricultural growth, which consistently increased from the 1980s to 2000s.” The passage’s one established fact is that agriculture persistently trailed the rest of the economy; the only option that is a corollary OF that fact (rather than a new, unmentioned cause) is (a).

The passage establishes a single comparative fact: agriculture’s growth was low and stagnant while the non-agricultural economy “consistently increased from the 1980s to 2000s.” A corollary is a statement that follows from this.

(a) “The benefit of economic reforms percolates down more slowly to the agriculture sector than in other sectors” is a direct corollary — it restates that agriculture trails the broader economy. The other options each assert an unmentioned cause of agricultural stagnation. Answer: (a).

A “corollary” question rewards restraint. Three of the options are tempting because they each name a reason agriculture might have lagged — and a reader who wants to “explain” the passage reaches for one. But the passage explains nothing; it only reports the lag. The corollary must therefore be the option that merely re-expresses the lag (a), not the option that supplies a cause (b/c/d). On a best-inference question, prefer the entailed re-description over the plausible diagnosis.