SSC CGL 2025 PYQ — Question 14

SSC CGL - 23 Sep 2025 - Shift 3 • English • Q14

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]?

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A

Explanation

The correct answer is option 1 i.e. pageantry.

Context: The sentence suggests that planetary stewardship remains full of symbolic display but lacks real substance or effectiveness.

Meaning of the words:

Pageantry: Elaborate display or ceremony with little real value.

Deliverance: Rescue or liberation.

Placation: The act of calming or pacifying.

Mimicry: Imitation or copying.

Correct word: Pageantry

Reason: The phrase “rich in symbolism, barren in substance” clearly indicates something ceremonial and superficial, which perfectly matches “pageantry”.

Final Sentence: Absent this, the dream of planetary stewardship will remain a ceremonial pageantry, rich in symbolism, barren in substance.

Hence the chosen option is correct.