One Blank, Three Judgement Calls
A bank's annual financial-inclusion report contains this draft paragraph, with a blank marked (A):
"Between 2014 and 2017, banks opened more than 28 crore accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana, a logistical achievement by any standard. (A) ______. A 2018 survey found that nearly one in five of these accounts had seen no transaction for over a year, and one of the main reasons cited by respondents were the distance to the nearest banking point. Unless usage improves, the scheme's central promise - funding the unfunded - will remain only partly fulfilled."
Four sentences are on offer for (A):
- However, opening an account is not the same as using one.
- Therefore, the scheme was a complete failure.
- Besides, the government also launched a pension scheme.
- For instance, bank branches were computerised in the same period.
The editor wants a decision on the blank, a ruling on the clause "one of the main reasons cited by respondents were", and a revision of the last sentence that makes the responsibility for action explicit.
1. Which sentence belongs in the blank, and why do the other three fail on cohesion rather than on grammar?
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Sentence 1. The paragraph's first sentence praises a "logistical achievement", so the next move must be a contrast, which "However" signals. It also introduces the key word using, which the following sentence picks up ("no transaction for over a year") and the last sentence repeats ("Unless usage improves"). The whole paragraph is built on an opened-versus-used chain, and sentence 1 is the hinge of that chain.
The others fail on cohesion:
- 2 - "Therefore ... complete failure." "Therefore" claims a conclusion the paragraph never establishes; the survey reports partial dormancy, not collapse, and the final sentence speaks of a promise "partly fulfilled". The connector is logically wrong and the claim is overstated.
- 3 - "Besides ... pension scheme." It introduces a new topic with no lexical link to accounts, transactions or usage; "Besides" adds a point, but nothing in the paragraph invites one.
- 4 - "For instance ... computerised." "For instance" promises an example of the achievement, but computerisation is not an example of opening accounts, and it leaves the following evidence about dormancy unconnected.
2. Rule on the clause "one of the main reasons cited by respondents were the distance to the nearest banking point." Is the plural verb defensible?
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No. The grammatical subject is one, not reasons. The phrase of the main reasons cited by respondents is a prepositional phrase modifying one, and a prepositional phrase cannot supply the subject's number, however many plurals it contains. The verb must therefore be singular: "one of the main reasons cited by respondents was the distance to the nearest banking point."
This is one of the commonest traps in the error-detection section: the eye lands on the nearest noun (reasons) rather than on the head word (one). Note that the same structure is correct with a plural verb only when the subject itself is plural, e.g. "two of the main reasons were...". A cleaner rewrite also removes the slight ambiguity of cited by respondents - "one of the main reasons respondents gave was the distance to the nearest banking point".
3. Rewrite the final sentence so that the agent responsible for raising usage is explicit, and explain what changes if "Unless usage improves" becomes "If usage improves".
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Revision: "Unless banks and the government give account holders a reason to transact - routing subsidies and wages through these accounts, or enabling merchant and insurance payments - the scheme's central promise of funding the unfunded will remain only partly fulfilled."
This keeps the conditional structure, keeps the key word usage (as transact), and names who must act; the original leaves an abstract noun as the only actor, which reads as if usage improved by itself.
On the substitution: "Unless P, Q" means "if not P, Q". Replacing it with "If usage improves, the promise will remain only partly fulfilled" reverses the logic - it makes partial fulfilment the consequence of improvement, which is incoherent. If a positive if-clause is wanted, the second half must also be inverted: "If usage improves, the promise of funding the unfunded can be fully met." Connector and consequence must move together.