IPMAT Indore 2024 · Verbal Ability · Question 2

IPMAT Indore 2024 previous year question on RC Inference Questions, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

RC Inference QuestionsReading Comprehension - Question TypesMultiple choiceMedium

RC passage 1: Passage 1 – India’s air quality and the right to clean air — this question belongs to a set. Read the full set with all 6 questions →

Read the following passage and choose the answer that is closest to each of the questions that are based on the passage.

Recently, India was in the news again as a world leader – but this time for the wrong reason. According to the Swiss firm IQAir’s assessment of the air quality of world cities 2023, New Delhi is back to being the world’s most polluted capital. New Delhi’s annual air quality rating is 19 times the World Health Organization’s annual limit recommended in 2021 for its pollutant level. The picture is no better as far as the larger Union Territory of Delhi is considered – its annual record of pollutant levels makes it the third most polluted region globally.

Delhi may have hogged the headlines on air pollution, but the problem is far from unique to metropolises. IQAir’s findings reveal that even lower-tier cities and towns in India are choking because of very poor air quality. Indeed, Begusarai in Bihar is the world’s most polluted city. Partly industrialized, housing among others an oil refinery, Begusarai is primarily agrarian. And Begusarai is not an outlier: Mullanpur in Punjab, which is transitioning to an urban settlement, and Siwan in Bihar are among the 42 Indian cities/towns that are among the 50 most polluted globally.

Many judicial pronouncements have upheld “the right to clean air” as a corollary to the fundamental right to life and pushed governments to act. But Delhi’s bad air is despite the introduction of CNG in public transport and the building of a metro network in the early years of this decade, and in spite of the presence of a Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) that kicks in when the air quality turns bad and becomes more stringent as the air quality worsens.

Improving air quality across Indian cities requires three fundamental changes. One, governments must turn to science to understand, measure, and monitor the problem. Two, they have to understand that the response will have to include behavioural changes and use a combination of incentives and penalties to achieve this. And three, clean air has to be seen as a common public good. To be sure, it is not just the responsibility of the Centre or a battle for courts to wage, but a fight that states and municipal governments have to be a part of. This is the battle for our future.

In the last sentence of the passage, “This is the battle for our future”, the writer is
  1. A
    projecting a bleak future for India.
  2. B
    being melodramatic.
  3. C
    being ambivalent.
  4. D
    emphasizing the need to fight for clean air.
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option D

Step 1 — read the sentence in its context. The final paragraph lists three “fundamental changes” needed and then insists that clean air is “not just the responsibility of the Centre or a battle for courts to wage, but a fight that states and municipal governments have to be a part of.”

The closing line caps a call to collective action.

Step 2 — test each option.

(a) Bleak future — the paragraph is prescriptive, not despairing. It says what can be done, which is the opposite of projecting hopelessness.

(b) Melodramatic — this is a judgement against the writer. The passage builds its case on IQAir data, WHO limits and policy measures; a sober, evidence-led argument does not become melodrama in one closing line.

(c) Ambivalent — ambivalence means being pulled both ways. The writer’s position could hardly be more single-minded.

(d) Emphasizing the need to fight ✔ — the sentence literally extends the “fight”/“battle” metaphor already running through the paragraph, and gives it urgency.

Answer: Option 4

Shortcut. Match the rhetorical function, not the vocabulary. The word battle sounds dramatic, which is exactly the bait in option (b).

Ask instead: what is this sentence doing in the paragraph? It closes a list of required actions — so it is emphasis, not prophecy (a), not theatre (b), not hesitation (c).

A reliable rule for tone questions: options that criticise the author (melodramatic, confused, biased) are almost never right in a passage drawn from editorial journalism, unless the passage is explicitly quoting someone else.

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