UPSC Prelims 2018— Question 47

**Concept and analysis:** A free public good or service still uses real resources, so its opportunity cost does not disappear. If the government provides it without charging users, the cost is borne through public resources, including taxation or foregone alternative public expenditure. Hence the relevant opportunity cost is shifted away from the immediate consumers toward the public/tax-paying community rather than becoming zero. The question is testing precise UPSC-level identification rather than a broad association. The key is to distinguish the exact institutional, constitutional, historical, geographical, economic or scientific feature being asked. **Option-wise evaluation** **Option A:** Incorrect. the opportunity cost is zero. is a different institution, place, definition, proposition or description and does not satisfy the specific requirement of the question. **Option B:** Incorrect. the opportunity cost is ignored. is a different institution, place, definition, proposition or description and does not satisfy the specific requirement of the question. **Option C:** Correct. the opportunity cost is transferred from the consumers of the product to the tax-paying public. directly matches the concept or factual identification established in the analysis. **Option D:** Incorrect. the opportunity cost is transferred from the consumers of the product to the Government. is a different institution, place, definition, proposition or description and does not satisfy the specific requirement of the question. **UPSC takeaway:** The safest way to solve this type of question is to anchor the answer in the defining feature of the concept and then test every option against that feature. Closely related institutions or terms are often used as distractors. In statement-based questions, do not judge the option as a whole before checking each statement independently. In factual questions, compare the wording of each option with the exact definition, location, institutional role, chronology or scientific property. The correct answer follows from that verification rather than from familiarity with a keyword.