CAT 2024 Slot 1 — VARC Question 1
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.
Sentence: Many have had to leave their homes behind, with more than 1.3 million people being displaced due to the drought.
Passage: Somalia has been dealing with an enormous humanitarian catastrophe, driven by the longest and most severe drought the country has experienced in at least 40 years. ___(1)___. Five consecutive rainy seasons have failed, causing more than 8 million people - almost half of the country’s population – to experience acute food insecurity. ___(2)___. More than 43,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, with half of the lives lost likely being children under five. The damage the drought has caused is far-reaching. ___(3)___. Farmers have lost all their agricultural income, while pastoralists have lost more than 3 million livestock, impoverishing entire communities, and leaving them on the brink of famine. ___(4)___. Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back as their livelihoods have been irreversibly wiped out.
Answer & solution
- A
Option 3
- B
Option 2
Option 4
- D
Option 1
Easy
Slot-the-sentence questions hinge on local coherence: find the gap where the missing sentence both follows naturally from what precedes it and is picked up by what follows. The missing sentence is about people being forced to leave their homes (displacement of 1.3 million people), so it must sit beside text that talks about leaving and returning.
Option 1. Gap (1) sits right after the opening line on the "longest and most severe drought" and just before "Five consecutive rainy seasons have failed…". The surrounding text is about the cause and scale of the drought, not about displacement, so a sentence on people leaving their homes would be premature here. Reject.
Option 2. Gap (2) lies between the food-insecurity statistic and the death-toll statistic ("More than 43,000 people are believed to have lost their lives"). This stretch is a run of casualty figures; inserting displacement here breaks the chain of mortality data. Reject.
Option 3. Gap (3) introduces the "far-reaching" damage and is immediately followed by the economic losses of farmers and pastoralists ("Farmers have lost all their agricultural income…"). The slot is clearly reserved for the livelihood/economic illustration, not for displacement. Reject.
Option 4. Gap (4) comes right before "Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back as their livelihoods have been irreversibly wiped out." The pronoun-and-idea link is exact: the missing sentence says people had to leave their homes (1.3 million displaced), and the next line talks about whether they can go back. "Leave" → "go back" is the tightest cohesion in the paragraph. Accept.
Option 4. The displacement sentence sets up the very next line about whether the displaced ("Some, like the pastoralists") can ever return home.