SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 10 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
The pursuit of global equity in the anthropocene is less a matter of distributive justice and more a theatre of ontological misrecognition. While the Global North presents technocratic solutions as universally applicable, such solutions often encode assumptions of temporal supremacy and civilizational [1] _______. Climate finance, for instance, masquerades as benevolence while entrenching hierarchies of surveillance and dependence. The epistemes of the South, rather than being engaged on their own terms, are often reconfigured through extractive logics of “capacity building,” a term whose etymology betrays its colonial [2] _______. Embedded within these discourses is the idea that certain populations must be “readied” for modernity—thus reproducing a pedagogical asymmetry that masks itself as aid.Meanwhile, planetary imaginaries are increasingly framed through cartographies of emergency. The language of “tipping points” and “irreversible loss” evokes a moral urgency that, paradoxically, facilitates a form of ecological [3] _______, wherein radical structural reform is substituted by incremental techno-fixes. Carbon offsets, biodiversity credits, and green financialization proliferate not as correctives, but as symptoms of an underlying refusal to dislodge anthropocentric capitalism. In such a milieu, protest is not silence-breaking but often met with strategic [4] _______, where rhetorical accommodation obscures institutional inertia. Civil society is co-opted, not crushed. The subaltern voice is archived, not amplified. Thus, to reclaim ecological justice is not merely to demand inclusion, but to interrogate the ontologies that define inclusion itself. Absent this, the dream of planetary stewardship will remain a ceremonial [5] _______, rich in symbolism, barren in substance.

What should come in the place of blank number [3]?

(a)minimalism
(b)mobilization
(c)desist
(d)containment

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The sentence: 'a moral urgency that, paradoxically, facilitates a form of ecological [3] _______, wherein radical structural reform is substituted by incremental techno-fixes.'

Paradoxically says the urgency produces the opposite of action. The wherein clause then defines the blank: reform is swapped for small fixes that leave the system standing.

Keeping a crisis managed and within limits, without removing its cause, is containment → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
minimalism — Minimalism is a style or way of living that uses as little as possible. The passage has offsets and credits that 'proliferate', and reform swapped out, not a paring-down.
(b)
mobilization — Mobilization is what moral urgency would normally produce. 'Paradoxically' marks the reverse outcome, and the wherein clause shows reform being replaced, not people organized for action.
(c)
desist — Desist is a verb meaning to stop. After 'a form of ecological' the slot needs a noun, so desist fails on grammar before meaning is even tested.

Concept

In this blank the clause after the gap does the work. Wherein means 'in which', so 'wherein radical structural reform is substituted by incremental techno-fixes' describes the ecological [3] itself.

Paradoxically adds the second clue: moral urgency should spur change, yet here it helps hold change back.

Containment means keeping something harmful under control or within limits. Managing a crisis without reforming its cause fits that sense.

The passage's next sentence backs the reading: offsets and credits appear 'not as correctives, but as symptoms of an underlying refusal to dislodge anthropocentric capitalism'.

Key facts

Containment means keeping something harmful under control or within limits.
Wherein means 'in which' and opens a clause describing the noun before it.
Desist is a verb meaning to stop, as in cease and desist.
Paradoxically signals an outcome that runs against what the reader expects.

Study next

Reading relative clauses (wherein, whereby, where) as glosses in cloze passagesContrast signals in cloze: paradoxically, yet, ironicallyPart-of-speech elimination: ruling out a verb in a noun slot

Common traps

Choosing mobilization because the sentence talks of urgency, and missing that paradoxically reverses the expected result.
Choosing minimalism because techno-fixes are small, when the passage says these measures proliferate.

Blank [1] of this passage is English Q.8, blank [2] is English Q.9, blank [4] is English Q.11 and blank [5] is English Q.12.

The same read-past-the-blank method settles 23 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.10, where the gloss after a dash, 'the destitution of legibility', names the keyed word.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
The pursuit of global equity in the anthropocene is less a matter of distributive justice and more a theatre of ontological misrecognition. While the Global North presents technocratic solutions as universally applicable, such solutions often encode assumptions of temporal supremacy and civilizational [1] _______. Climate finance, for instance, masquerades as benevolence while entrenching hierarchies of surveillance and dependence. The epistemes of the South, rather than being engaged on their own terms, are often reconfigured through extractive logics of “capacity building,” a term whose etymology betrays its colonial [2] _______. Embedded within these discourses is the idea that certain populations must be “readied” for modernity—thus reproducing a pedagogical asymmetry that masks itself as aid.Meanwhile, planetary imaginaries are increasingly framed through cartographies of emergency. The language of “tipping points” and “irreversible loss” evokes a moral urgency that, paradoxically, facilitates a form of ecological [3] _______, wherein radical structural reform is substituted by incremental techno-fixes. Carbon offsets, biodiversity credits, and green financialization proliferate not as correctives, but as symptoms of an underlying refusal to dislodge anthropocentric capitalism. In such a milieu, protest is not silence-breaking but often met with strategic [4] _______, where rhetorical accommodation obscures institutional inertia. Civil society is co-opted, not crushed. The subaltern voice is archived, not amplified. Thus, to reclaim ecological justice is not merely to demand inclusion, but to interrogate the ontologies that define inclusion itself. Absent this, the dream of planetary stewardship will remain a ceremonial [5] _______, rich in symbolism, barren in substance.