SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 12 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 [5]?

(a)pageantry
(b)deliverance
(c)placation
(d)mimicry

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The sentence: 'the dream of planetary stewardship will remain a ceremonial [5] _______, rich in symbolism, barren in substance.'

The words around the blank describe a show: ceremonial before it, and rich in symbolism, barren in substance after it.

The noun for elaborate display and ceremony is pageantry, and 'barren in substance' supplies the empty-show sense → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
deliverance — Deliverance means rescue or release. A rescue would be substance, the very thing the sentence says the dream will lack.
(c)
placation — Placation means calming someone's anger. The phrase after the blank describes a display rich in symbols, and the sentence names nobody being calmed.
(d)
mimicry — Mimicry means imitation. Nothing in the sentence is copying anything, and 'rich in symbolism' describes ceremony, not a copy.

Concept

Two clues frame this blank. Ceremonial before it asks for a noun that can be ceremonial: a rite, a display, a show.

The phrase after the comma, rich in symbolism, barren in substance, describes that noun: all form, no content.

Pageantry means elaborate display or ceremony. Beside 'barren in substance', it takes on the sense of empty spectacle.

Absent this refers back to interrogating 'the ontologies that define inclusion itself'. Without that, the passage says, stewardship stays symbolic.

Key facts

Pageantry means elaborate display or ceremony.
Placation is the act of calming someone's anger, from placate.
Deliverance means rescue or release from danger or captivity.
Mimicry means the imitation of someone or something.

Study next

Using an adjective before a blank (ceremonial) to narrow the nounPaired contrast phrases in cloze: rich in X, barren in YWords for empty display: pageantry, spectacle, tokenism, window-dressing

Common traps

Choosing placation because the passage has just described protest met with 'rhetorical accommodation', when blank [5] describes a display, not a soothing.
Choosing deliverance because stewardship sounds like rescue, and ignoring 'barren in substance'.

Blanks [1] to [4] of this passage are English Q.8 to Q.11.

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.