UPSC Prelims 2025 · CSAT (Paper 2) · Q22

Comprehension

Medium · Passage: assumption validity

Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

One of the persistent features of India's post-liberalisation economy has been that manufacturing never experienced a sustained high growth phase, unlike the services economy. The highest decadal growth (compound annual growth rate) for manufacturing has been just around 8% in the 2000s. Also, after experiencing a spurt in decadal growth during the 2000s, manufacturing growth suffered relative stagnation thereafter. This is in sharp contrast to services growth, which consistently increased from the 2000s to the 2020s.

With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made:

1. Adapting large-scale automation and viable export-oriented manufacturing could have reduced the divergence between manufacturing and services growth.

2. Providing free insurance for all factories and heavily subsidising raw material, power and machinery at par with developed countries could have reduced the divergence.

Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?