SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 11 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 [4]?

(a)co-optation
(b)indifference
(c)disdain
(d)surveillance

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The sentence: 'protest is not silence-breaking but often met with strategic [4] _______, where rhetorical accommodation obscures institutional inertia.'

The where clause defines the blank: protest is welcomed in words while institutions stay put. Absorbing a challenge so that it loses its force is co-optation.

The next sentence uses the verb itself: 'Civil society is co-opted, not crushed.' → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
indifference — Indifference means not caring, or ignoring. 'Rhetorical accommodation' is the opposite of ignoring: the protest is answered and taken in.
(c)
disdain — Disdain is open contempt. The passage says protest is met with accommodation and that civil society is 'not crushed', so hostility is the reverse of what it describes.
(d)
surveillance — Surveillance echoes 'hierarchies of surveillance' earlier in the passage, but the where clause describes accommodating protest, not watching it.

Concept

A clause after a cloze blank can define it. Where here means 'in which', so 'rhetorical accommodation obscures institutional inertia' describes the strategic [4] itself: talk that yields, institutions that do not move.

To co-opt is to absorb a group or its ideas into an established system, so that its challenge loses force. Co-optation is the noun.

Not crushed sharpens the contrast: co-optation disarms opposition by including it, where repression would crush it.

Rhetorical accommodation means giving way in words only. Set against 'institutional inertia', it describes a response that sounds open and changes nothing.

Key facts

To co-opt is to absorb a group or its ideas into an established system, blunting its challenge.
Co-optation is the noun formed from co-opt.
Disdain means contempt, the feeling that something is unworthy of respect.
Surveillance means close watching or monitoring of a person or group.

Study next

Using the sentence after a blank to confirm a cloze answerWords for absorbing opposition: co-optation, appropriation, assimilationWhere and wherein as relative words meaning 'in which'

Common traps

Choosing surveillance because the word already appears in the passage, without testing it in the where clause.
Choosing indifference or disdain from the idea that power ignores protest, when the passage says protest is accommodated.

Blank [3] of this passage is English Q.10 and blank [5] is English Q.12.

Here the sentence after the blank repeats the keyed word as a verb (co-opted), so the passage itself confirms the answer.

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.