The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Dams and Sacrifice Zones | RC Passage | Verbal CAT 2025 Slot 3
Over the course of the twentieth century, humans built, on average, one large dam a day, hulking structures of steel and concrete designed to control flooding, facilitate irrigation, and generate electricity. Dams were also lucrative contracts, large-scale employers, and the physical instantiation of a messianic drive to conquer territories and control nature. Some of the results of that drive were charismatic mega-infrastructure—the Hoover on the Colorado River or the Aswan on the Nile—but most of the tens of thousands of dams that dot the Earth’s landscape have drawn little attention. These are the smaller, though not inconsequential, barriers that today impede the flow of water on nearly two-thirds of the world’s large waterways. Chances are, what your map calls a “lake” is actually a reservoir, and that thin blue line that emerges from it once flowed very differently.
Damming a river is always a partisan act. Even when explicit infrastructure goals—irrigation, flood control, electrification—were met, other consequences were significant and often deleterious. Across the world, river control displaced millions of people, threatening livelihoods, foodways, and cultures. In the western United States, dams were often an instrument of colonialism, used to dispossess Indigenous people and subsidize settler agriculture. And as dams slowed the flow of water, inhibited the movement of nutrients, and increased the amount of toxic algae and other parasites, they snuffed out entire river ecologies. Declining fish populations are the most evident effect, but dams also threaten a host of other animals—from birds and reptiles to fungi and plants—with extinction. Every major dam, then, is also a sacrifice zone, a place where lives, livelihoods, and ways of life are eliminated so that new sorts of landscapes can support water-intensive agriculture and cities that sprout downstream of new reservoirs.
Such sacrifices have been justified as offerings at the temples of modernity. Justified by—and for—whom, though? Over the course of the twentieth century, rarely were the costs and benefits weighed thoughtfully and decided democratically. As Kader Asmal, chair of the landmark 2000 World Commission on Dams, concluded, “There have been precious few, if any, comprehensive, independent analyses as to why dams came about, how dams perform over time, and whether we are getting a fair return from our $2 trillion investment.” A quarter-century later, Asmal’s words ring ever truer. A litany of dams built in the mid-twentieth century are approaching the end of their expected lives, with worrying prospects for their durability. Droughts, magnified and multiplied by the effects of climate change, have forced more and more to run below capacity. If ever there were a time to rethink the mania for dams, it would be now.
There is some evidence that a combination of opposition, alternative energy sources, and a lack of viable projects has slowed the construction of major dams. But a wave of recent and ongoing construction, from India and China to Ethiopia and Canada, continues to tilt the global balance firmly in favor of water impoundment.
The word “instantiation” is used in the first paragraph. Which one of the following pairs of terms would be the best substitute for it in the context of its usage in the paragraph? Easy
1. Exemplification and manifestation
2. Concreteness and viability
3. Durability and timeliness
4. Development and construction
Answer & Explanation
Correct Option: 1
Rationale: In the passage, dams are described as the physical instantiation of a messianic drive to conquer nature. Instantiation here means the concrete embodiment or manifestation of an abstract idea. Option 1 best reflects this meaning.
Why other options wrong: Option 4 focuses on physical construction rather than symbolic embodiment. Options 2 and 3 do not convey the abstract-to-concrete relationship central to the term.
Difficulty: Easy
Which one of the following sets of terms is closest to mapping the key arguments of the passage? Moderate
1. Mega-infrastructure – Sacrifice zone – Worshipping modernity – Water impoundment
2. Physical instantiation – Partisan act – Decided democratically – Alternative energy
3. Lucrative contracts – Sacrifice zone – Expected lives – Global balance
4. Partisan act – Threatened livelihoods – Toxic algae – Quarter century
Answer & Explanation
Correct Option: 1
Rationale: Option 1 accurately reflects the progression of the passage, beginning with large infrastructure projects, moving to their human and environmental costs, then questioning the ideology of modernity behind them, and finally noting the continued expansion of water impoundment.
Why other options wrong: Other options list isolated details or introduce claims not supported by the passage, such as democratic consent or economic profitability being the primary issue.
Difficulty: Medium
All of the following statements may be considered valid inferences from the passage EXCEPT that: Easy
1. processes of colonisation have used dam-building to make people vacate their territories.
2. dam-building has proved to be an extremely costly enterprise that may not be justifiable.
3. smaller, though not inconsequential, dams are safer than large dam projects.
4. despite increasing evidence of opposition to dams as well as alternatives to them, they continue to be built.
Answer & Explanation
Correct Option: 3
Rationale: The passage states that small dams are not inconsequential but does not compare their safety with that of large dams. Therefore, the claim that smaller dams are safer than large ones is not supported by the text.
Why other options wrong: Options 1, 2, and 4 are all directly or indirectly supported by the passage’s discussion of colonial control, economic cost, and continued construction despite opposition.
Difficulty: Easy
What does the author wish to communicate by referring to the Hoover and Aswan dams in the first paragraph? Moderate
1. The drive to control nature is evident not only in mega-infrastructures like the Hoover and Aswan dams, but in smaller dams as well.
2. By building dams like the Hoover and Aswan dams, large-scale employers became messianic figures.
3. The designers and builders of these mega-structures were highly charismatic individuals.
4. The Colorado and Nile rivers may be seen as thin blue lines on a map.
Answer & Explanation
Correct Option: 1
Rationale: Hoover and Aswan dams are cited to contrast charismatic mega-projects with the thousands of smaller dams that receive little attention. The author’s point is that the same mindset operates across both, shaping waterways globally.
Why other options wrong: Other options focus on superficial details or misinterpret the examples as praise or technical comparison rather than a structural critique.
Difficulty: Medium
