IPMAT Indore 2025 · Verbal Ability · Question 34
IPMAT Indore 2025 previous year question on RC Tone and Attitude, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.
RC passage 2: Passage — this question belongs to a set. Read the full set with all 6 questions →
According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, commodities available for consumption are not inherently negative things. Baudrillard tried to interpret consumption in modern societies by engaging with the 'cargo myth' prevalent among the indigenous Melanesian people living in the South Pacific. The Melanesians did not know what aeroplanes were. However, they saw that these winged entities descended from the air for white people and appeared to make them happy. They also noted that aeroplanes never descended for the Melanesian people.
The Melanesian natives noted that the white people had placed objects similar to the aeroplane on the ground. They concluded that these objects were attracting the aeroplanes in the air and bringing them to the ground. Through a magical process, the aeroplanes were bringing plenty to the white people and making them happy. The Melanesian people concluded that they would need to place objects that simulated the aeroplane on the ground and attract them from the air. Baudrillard believes that the cargo myth holds an important analogy for the ways in which consumers engage with objects of consumption.
According to Baudrillard, the modern consumer "sets in place a whole array of sham objects, of characteristic signs of happiness, and then waits for happiness to alight". For instance, modern consumers believe that they will get happiness if they buy the latest available version of a mobile phone or automobile. However, consumption does not usually lead to happiness. While consumers should ideally be blaming their heightened expectations for their lack of happiness, they blame the commodity instead.
They feel that they should have waited for the next version of a mobile phone or automobile before buying the one they did. The version they bought is somehow inferior and therefore cannot make them happy. Baudrillard argues that consumers have replaced 'real' happiness with 'signs' of happiness. This results in the endless deferment of the arrival of total happiness.
In Baudrillard's words, "in everyday practice, the blessings of consumption are not experienced as resulting from work or from a production process; they are experienced as a miracle". Modern consumers view consumption in the same magical way as the Melanesian people viewed the aeroplanes in the cargo myth. Television commercials also present objects of consumption as miracles. As a result, commodities appear to be distanced from the social processes which lead to their production. In effect, objects of consumption are divorced from the reality which produces them.
- AIt is an irrational process.
- BIt is a positive process.
- CIt is a utilitarian process.
- DIt is an egalitarian process.
Answer & solution
Answer: Option A
Line in the passage
Whole passage — sham objects, waiting for happiness to alight, blaming the commodity instead of one's own expectations, and experiencing consumption as a miracle rather than as the result of production.
How to reach it, step by step
Step 1. Separate two things the passage carefully separates: commodities (the objects) and consumption (what consumers do with them and believe about them).
Step 2. On commodities, line 1 says they are not inherently negative. On consumption, every description given is of belief without basis: sham objects set out like decoys, happiness awaited as though it will land on its own, the purchase blamed when the let-down comes, the whole thing felt as a miracle rather than as the output of work and production.
Step 3. Belief held in the face of repeated disconfirmation, with the wrong thing blamed each time, is the definition of an irrational process.
Step 4. The cargo-myth analogy seals it: he compares the modern consumer to people performing a ritual in the belief it will summon aeroplanes. That comparison only makes sense if his verdict on consumption is 'irrational'. Choose (a).
Why the other three fall
(b) The planted trap. Line 1 says commodities are not inherently negative — and 'not negative' is not the same as 'positive'. It is also about commodities, not about consumption. Baudrillard's whole point is a critique of how people consume (see Q43), so 'positive' cannot be his verdict on the process.
(c) Utilitarian means valued for usefulness. The passage says the opposite — consumers chase signs of happiness, not the use of the object.
(d) Egalitarian is never suggested. If anything the cargo myth is built on inequality: aeroplanes came down for one group and not the other.
Teaching point: This is the hardest question in the set and worth a full board discussion. Teach the 'scope swap' trap: the option borrows the subject of line 1 (commodities) but the question asks about something else (consumption), and it upgrades a negative-cancelling phrase ('not inherently negative') into a positive claim ('positive'). Two separate illegitimate moves in six words.
More RC Tone and Attitude questions
- Q32The writer's conclusion is that information available on social media is linked toIPMAT Indore 2025 · Verbal Ability · RC Tone and Attitude
- Q36How does Baudrillard engage with the cargo myth?IPMAT Indore 2025 · Verbal Ability · RC Tone and Attitude
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