IPMAT Indore 2024 · Verbal Ability · Question 41

Step 1 — find the opener. Sentence 3 is the only one that introduces its subject in full (“A strategic sort of giving…”) with no backward reference. Every other sentence either begins with a connective (By contrast, By any measure however) or supplies a specific country figure that needs a frame.

Crucially, sentence 3 ends with “It differs, of course, between countries” — an explicit promise that country-by-country figures are coming.

Step 2 — follow the promise. Sentence 2 delivers the first figures, opening with the caveat “There are no comparable data on different countries” — which answers sentence 3’s “it differs between countries” directly — and gives India’s $13 billion.

Step 3 — continue the Asian figures. Sentence 4 adds China’s $21 billion. It must follow 2 rather than precede it, because 2 carries the data caveat that frames all the estimates that follow.

Step 4 — the contrast. Sentence 1 opens with “By contrast, in America” — it needs the Asian figures ($13 bn, $21 bn) already on the table to contrast against $500 billion.

Step 5 — the conclusion. Sentence 5 begins “By any measure, however” and generalises: “organised philanthropy across Asia is on a much smaller scale than in the West.” This summarises the comparison just drawn, so it closes.

The sequence:

\$3\to 2\to 4\to 1\to 5$

Answer: 32415

Shortcut. Connectives fix almost the whole order here.

That pins 3 first and 5 last immediately, leaving only 2 and 4 to order in the middle — and 2 must precede 4 because it carries the “no comparable data” caveat that licenses every estimate.

The reliable rule: a sentence containing a summary word (by any measure, in short, overall) plus a comparison that covers everything already said is the closer, never the opener.