Statements: Prime age school-going children in urban India have now become…
2026
Statements: Prime age school-going children in urban India have now become avid as well as more regular viewers of television, even in households without a TV. As a result there has been an alarming decline in the extent of readership of newspapers.
Conclusions:
i. Method of increasing the readership of newspapers should be devised.
ii. A team of experts should be sent to other countries to study the impact of TV. on the readership of newspapers.
- A.
Only conclusion I follows
- B.
Only conclusion II follows
- C.
Either I or II follows
- D.
Neither I nor II follows
Attempted by 6 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept: In Statement-and-Conclusion questions, a conclusion "follows" only if it is an inference that must be true from the statement alone, without importing outside knowledge or unstated assumptions. Two kinds of conclusions are systematically ruled out: (a) a conclusion that recommends an action ("X should be done") does not follow from a statement that is purely descriptive, because describing a situation does not by itself imply what ought to be done about it; and (b) a conclusion that brings in information, entities, or comparisons not present in the statement cannot follow, since the statement gives no basis for it.
Application: The given statement records only two facts — urban schoolgoing children now watch more TV, and newspaper readership has fallen as a result. It makes no recommendation and mentions no other country.
Conclusion I recommends devising a method to raise newspaper readership — a course of action the statement never calls for. Describing the decline as "alarming" flags its severity, not a directive: a statement can characterize how serious a trend is without committing to any specific remedy, since many different, unstated responses (or none at all) could equally address a serious trend. A conclusion must be the one inference the statement forces — and severity language alone does not force this particular prescriptive one.
- Conclusion II brings in "other countries" and a comparative study — neither is mentioned anywhere in the statement, so it cannot be inferred from it.
Cross-check: Since neither conclusion is individually derivable, the "either/or" reading also fails — that pattern applies only when two conclusions are mutually exclusive alternatives arising from an ambiguity within the statement's own data, not when both conclusions independently import content the statement never supplies. With both I and II failing on separate, unrelated grounds, the statement supports neither conclusion.