CAT 2021 Slot 2 · VARC · Question 5

CAT 2021 Slot 2 previous year question on Para Summary, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Para SummaryVerbal AbilityMultiple choiceMedium

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

Creativity is now viewed as the engine of economic progress. Various organizations are devoted to its study and promotion; there are encyclopedias and handbooks surveying creativity research. But this proliferating success has tended to erode creativity’s stable identity: it has become so invested with value that it has become impossible to police its meaning and the practices that supposedly identify and encourage it. Many people and organizations committed to producing original thoughts now feel that undue obsession with the idea of creativity gets in the way of real creativity.

  1. A

    The obsession with original thought, how it can be promoted and researched, has made it impossible for people and organizations to define the concept anymore.

  2. B

    The industry that has built up around researching what comprises and encourages creativity has destroyed the creative process itself.

  3. C

    Creativity has proliferated to the extent that is no longer a stable process, and its mutating identity has stifled the creative process.

  4. D

    The value assigned to creativity today has assumed such proportions that the concept itself has lost its real meaning and this is hampering the engendering of real creativity.

Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option D

The passage says:
- Creativity is now seen as the engine of economic progress and is widely studied.
- It has become 'so invested with value' that its meaning can no longer be pinned down.
- Undue obsession with the idea of creativity 'gets in the way of real creativity'.

Option 4 has all three: the value placed on creativity has grown so much that the concept has lost its real meaning, and this hinders real creativity.

Option 1 omits the harm to real creativity and wrongly says the obsession is with 'original thought'.

Option 2 is extreme – the passage says the obsession 'gets in the way', not that the creative process has been 'destroyed'.

Option 3 says creativity itself has 'proliferated'; it is the study and promotion of it that has spread.

Shortcut: look for 'too much value → meaning lost → real creativity hindered'.

Hence, the answer is option 4.

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