CSAT Solved Papers/ 2025/Q22
2025 CSAT — Q22
Passage
One of the dismal realities of the agricultural sector in independent India has been that it never experienced a high-growth phase, unlike the non-agricultural economy. The highest decadal growth (compound annual growth rate or CAGR) for agriculture has been just 3·5% in the 1980s. Also, after experiencing a spurt in decadal growth during the 1980s, agricultural growth suffered relative stagnation thereafter. This is in sharp contrast to non-agricultural growth, which consistently increased from the 1980s to 2000s.
With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made: The growing divergence between the fortunes of the agricultural and non-agricultural economy in India could have been reduced/contained by:
I. adapting large-scale cultivation of commercial crops and viable corporate farming.
II. providing free insurance for all crops and heavily subsidizing seeds, fertilizers, electricity and farm machinery at par with developed countries.
Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?
Thinking pathway
Locate. This is a valid-assumption question, so distinguish what the passage argues from what a reader might propose. This passage’s argument is purely diagnostic: agriculture never grew fast and stagnated relative to the non-agricultural economy. It offers no cure. So the candidate “assumptions” — both of which are fixes — have to be tested against an argument that never reaches for a fix.
Test (the negation test). Negate I (suppose commercial-crop/corporate-farming adoption would not have reduced the gap) — the passage’s diagnosis is untouched, because it never claimed any remedy. Negate II likewise. Neither remedy is a premise the argument leans on; both are policy ideas imported from outside. So neither is valid.
Eliminate by anatomy. (a), (b) and (c) all admit at least one remedy — a claim the passage never actually makes: a world-plausible agricultural policy (corporate farming, subsidies “at par with developed countries”) that the passage never raises. A diagnostic passage does not assume the efficacy of cures it never mentions. The transferable rule: when a passage only describes a problem, a proposed solution is an assumption only if the text leans on it — here it leans on nothing. Key: (d).
Evidence in the text
The passage only diagnoses the divergence (agriculture stagnant, non-agriculture rising) and proposes no remedy whatsoever: it contains no mention of commercial crops, corporate farming, crop insurance, or subsidies. Both proposed remedies are wholly outside the text, so neither is an assumption the passage’s argument makes.
Worked rationale
The passage describes a divergence — agriculture stagnant, the rest of the economy rising — and stops there. It proposes no policy and mentions neither commercial-crop cultivation, corporate farming, crop insurance, nor subsidies.
Statement I (commercial crops + corporate farming) and Statement II (free insurance + heavy subsidies) are both remedies the passage never raises. The argument needs neither; negating either leaves the diagnosis intact. Both are out of scope. Answer: (d) Neither I nor II.
Why the other options miss
- A a claim the passage never actually makes: imports corporate-farming policy the passage never discusses.
- B a claim the passage never actually makes: imports a subsidy/insurance regime “at par with developed countries” found nowhere in the text.
- C a claim the passage never actually makes: commits both imports at once.
Specialist insight
The trap is that both remedies are plausible economic policy — a reader who knows agriculture nods along. But a diagnostic passage assumes no cure; it merely states a problem. On a valid-assumption question, a proposed solution counts as a valid assumption only when the argument relies on it, and this argument relies on nothing beyond the data it reports. “Sounds like a sensible fix” is not “the passage presumed it.”
Both statements are plausible farm-policy remedies, but the passage only diagnoses and proposes no cure — neither is assumed — (d).