CAT (VARC) PYQs

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: For millennia, ghee has been a venerated staple of the subcontinental diet, but it fell out of favour a few decades ago when saturated fats were largely considered to be unhealthy ___ (1) ___ . But more recently, as the thinking around saturated fats is shifting globally, Indians are finding their own way back to this ingredient that is so integral to their cuisine ___ (2) ___ . For Karmakar, a renewed interest in ghee is emblematic of a return-to-basics movement in India ___ (3) ___ This movement is also part of an overall trend towards "slow food". In keeping with the movement's philosophy, ghee can be produced locally (even at home) and has inextricable cultural ties ___ (4) ___ At a basic level, ghee is a type of clarified butter believed to have originated in India as a way to preserve butter from going rancid in the hot climate.

Sentence: This was years in the making but fast-tracked during the pandemic, when "people started being more mindful about their food", he explained.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: The first phase of globalization occurred long before the introduction of either steam or electric power...Chinese consumers at all social levels consumed vast quantities of spices, fragrant woods and unusual plants. The peoples of Southeast Asia who lived in forests gave up their traditional livelihoods and completely reoriented their economies to supply Chinese consumers ___ (1) ___ . These exchanges of the year 1000 opened some of the routes through which goods and peoples continued to travel after Columbus traversed the mid-Atlantic. ___ (2) ___ . Yet the world of 1000 differed from that of 1492 in important ways....the travellers who encountered one another in the year 1000 were much closer technologically. ___ (3) ___ . They changed and augmented what was already there since 1000. ___ (4) ___ . If globalization hadn't yet begun, Europeans wouldn't have been able to penetrate the markets in so many places as quickly as they did after 1492.

Sentence: The Europeans did not invent globalization.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: ___ (1) ___ At the core of development economics lies the idea of 'productive dualism': that poor countries' economies are split between a narrow 'modern' sector that uses advanced technologies and a larger 'traditional' sector characterized by very low productivity ___ (2) ___ . While this distinction between developing and advanced economies may have made some sense in the 1950s and 1960s, it no longer appears to be very relevant. A combination of forces have produced a widening gap between the winners and those left behind ___ (3) ___ . Convergence between poor and rich parts of the economy was arrested and regional disparities widened ___ (4) ___ . As a result, policymakers in advanced economies are now grappling with the same questions that have long pre-occupied developing economies: mainly how to close the gap with the more advanced parts of the economy.

Sentence: Dualism was long held as the defining feature of developing countries in contrast to developed countries, where frontier technologies and high productivity were assumed to prevail.