CAT 2025 Slot 1 · VARC · Question 23

CAT 2025 Slot 1 previous year question on Para Jumbles, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Para JumblesVerbal AbilityType in the answer (TITA)Hard

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.
Answer & solution

Answer: 2143

This is a hard jumble because the sentences are abstract and three of them begin with the bare pronoun 'it'. Work from the connectives rather than the content.

Sentence 2 is the only short, general remark – 'It's a case of "it's easy once you've thought of it" in the political sphere.' It passes judgement on the device as a whole without adding detail, which makes it the opener.

Sentence 1 begins 'It can in fact be integrated into any function...' and then piles up four parallel 'it can' clauses. 'In fact' confirms an opening claim and elaborates it, so 1 follows 2.

Sentence 4 begins 'In short'. That phrase can only follow a list, and the only list in the set is the chain of 'it can' clauses in sentence 1. So 4 follows 1 directly – this is the strongest link in the set.

Sentence 3 is the generalising statement about what the panoptic mechanism is and is not. Having described what it does (1) and compressed that into a principle (4), the paragraph ends by naming the mechanism and stating its nature. It also introduces the term 'panoptic mechanism' as a summing-up, which fits a closing position.

The sequence is 2143.

Shortcut: when a set contains 'In short', find the sentence it is shortening and lock that pair first. Here 'In short' (4) can only compress the four-part list (1), giving the block 1–4; the remaining two sentences then fall into place around it.

Hence, the answer is 2143.

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