CAT 2024 Slot 3 — 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
The missing sentence is about displacement: "more than 1.3 million people being displaced". Find the blank where the surrounding text talks about people having to leave / not being able to return, so the sentence sits among the right idea and links forward.
Track the topic chain. Blank 1 follows the opening about the drought and precedes the line on failed rainy seasons and food insecurity (cause/scale). Blank 2 precedes the death toll. Blank 3 precedes the loss of agricultural income and livestock (economic damage). None of these is about leaving home.
Match displacement to its echo. The sentence right after Blank 4 reads "Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back as their livelihoods have been irreversibly wiped out." That sentence only makes sense if people have already left their homes. The missing sentence ("Many have had to leave their homes behind ... 1.3 million people being displaced") supplies exactly that antecedent.
Confirm the flow. Placing it at Blank 4 gives: people are displaced (missing sentence) → some can never go back (next sentence). The pronoun-like "Some" now has a referent ("Many ... displaced"). The link is seamless, while Blanks 1–3 would orphan the "go back" sentence.
The sentence best fits at blank (4) — Option 4.