SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 9 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 [2]?

(a)genealogy
(b)imperative
(c)residue
(d)parable

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The clause: 'a term whose etymology betrays its colonial [2] _______'.

Etymology is the history of where a word comes from. What an etymology betrays, gives away without meaning to, is the term's origin.

Genealogy, a line of descent, names that origin: the passage says the term capacity building descends from colonial thinking → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
imperative — Imperative means an essential or urgent need. Etymology records a word's history: it shows where a term came from, not what it demands.
(c)
residue — Residue is what is left over after the main part has gone. Etymology looks back to a word's origin, its source, not a leftover trace in its present use.
(d)
parable — Parable means a short story that teaches a moral lesson. A term like capacity building is not a story, and its etymology does not tell one.

Concept

This blank is decided by the word before it in the clause. Etymology, the history of a word's origin, sets up a noun about origins.

The verb betrays, here 'reveals without meaning to', adds the author's charge: the term's colonial origin shows through despite its helpful sound.

The next sentence supports the reading. Populations must be readied for modernity, which the author calls 'a pedagogical asymmetry that masks itself as aid'.

Genealogy is used here in its extended sense, an account of how an idea or practice developed, not a family tree. Dictionaries list that sense alongside the family one.

Key facts

Genealogy: a line of descent, or an account of how something originated and developed.
Etymology: the origin of a word and the history of its meaning.
Betray, in this sense: to reveal something unintentionally.
Residue: a small amount of something that remains after the main part has gone.

Study next

Words for origins: genealogy, lineage, provenance, pedigreeEtymology against entomology, the study of insects

Common traps

Choosing residue because colonial residue sounds like a familiar phrase. The clause is about what the etymology shows, which is a word's origin.
Reading betrays as 'is disloyal to', which makes no sense with etymology. Here it means reveals.

Blank [1] of the same passage is English Q.8, keyed preeminence, and blanks [3] to [5] are English Q.10 to Q.12, keyed containment, co-optation and pageantry.

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.