IPMAT Indore 2025 · Verbal Ability · RC passage 2: Passage

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.

Line in the passage

Para 4 — Baudrillard argues that consumers have replaced 'real' happiness with 'signs' of happiness.

How to reach it, step by step

Step 1. The stem asks what Baudrillard argues, so you need his claim, not the Melanesians' belief and not the passage's background detail.

Step 2. Find the sentence where the author uses the word 'argues'. It sits in paragraph 4: real happiness has been swapped for signs of happiness.

Step 3. A swap of the real for the sign means the sign is now what people pursue — they value it more. That is option (d) exactly.

Step 4. Cross-check against the earlier line about an array of sham objects, characteristic signs of happiness. Same claim, stated twice. Confirmed.

Why the other three fall

(a) Near-miss. The passage says consumption is experienced as a miracle, i.e. it feels magical. Baudrillard does not argue that it is magical — the gap between feeling and being is his entire critique.

(b) Television commercials are offered as one illustration of objects being presented as miracles. An example is not the heart of the argument; the heightened expectations of the consumer are.

(c) Colonialism and coping are the reader's own inference. The passage uses the cargo myth only as an analogy and never explains it as a coping strategy.

Line in the passage

Para 2, last sentence — the cargo myth holds an important analogy for the ways in which consumers engage with objects of consumption.

How to reach it, step by step

Step 1. The stem asks about use, not about content. So skip the retelling of the myth in paragraphs 1 and 2 and find the line where the author states its purpose.

Step 2. That line closes paragraph 2: the myth is an analogy for how consumers relate to objects of consumption.

Step 3. 'Analogy' in the passage and 'metaphor' in the option are being used in the same sense — a comparison carried over to a second subject.

Step 4. Then ask what the comparison achieves. It likens a modern consumer to someone waiting for cargo through ritual. That is unflattering, therefore a critique. Option (d) captures both halves: metaphor + critique.

Why the other three fall

(a) Melanesian suffering is never described. They are described as observing, concluding and imitating, not suffering.

(b) 'More serious objects' is nowhere in the passage. Baudrillard's quarrel is with expectations, not with the seriousness of the goods.

(c) A lifted phrase used wrongly. 'Blessings of consumption' appears in the passage, but inside a line saying those blessings are merely experienced as a miracle — the passage is reporting a feeling, not endorsing it.

Line in the passage

End of para 4 — this results in the endless deferment of the arrival of total happiness.

How to reach it, step by step

Step 1. The phrase 'total happiness' appears exactly once in the passage. Go straight there instead of reasoning from memory.

Step 2. It appears in a sentence saying the arrival of total happiness is endlessly deferred.

Step 3. 'Endless deferment' and 'perpetually delayed' are the same statement in different vocabulary. Deferred = pushed to a later date; endless = it never stops being pushed.

Step 4. Trace the mechanism in the previous lines so students see why it never arrives: the buyer is let down, decides the next version is the one that will satisfy, buys that, is let down again. The loop has no exit. Option (b).

Why the other three fall

(a) Ethical consumption is never mentioned anywhere in the passage.

(c) It confuses this question with Q45. Production versus consumption belongs to the final paragraph's point about commodities being cut off from how they are made.

(d) The direct reversal trap. Patience and waiting are exactly what fails — the consumer waits for happiness to alight and it does not.

Line in the passage

Final two sentences — commodities appear distanced from the social processes which lead to their production, so objects of consumption are divorced from the reality which produces them.

How to reach it, step by step

Step 1. Note that the stem asks for a remedy, but the passage never states one outright. So you must find the diagnosis and reverse it.

Step 2. The diagnosis is in the closing lines: consumption is experienced as a miracle rather than as the result of work and a production process, so goods end up divorced from the reality that produces them.

Step 3. Reverse it. If the fault is that the link to production is hidden, the repair is seeing that link — stop treating the object as something that fell from the sky and recognise it as something made by labour.

Step 4. That reversal is option (d), the only option that names production at all.

Why the other three fall

(a) Too wide and not in the text. Colonialism and economic oppression are the reader's extrapolation from the Melanesian example.

(b) A banning remedy is never proposed, and the passage's complaint is that the commercials promise a miracle, not real happiness.

(c) The reversal trap. Believing commodities work miracles is the disease the passage describes, so it cannot be the cure.

Teaching point: A useful rule to give the batch: when the stem asks 'how can X be improved' and the passage offers no solution sentence, locate the cause and flip it. The flipped cause is the answer roughly every time.

Line in the passage

Para 3, last sentence — consumers should ideally be blaming their heightened expectations for their lack of happiness, but they blame the commodity instead.

How to reach it, step by step

Step 1. The stem asks for a cause, so find the sentence in the passage that assigns blame.

Step 2. It is the closing line of paragraph 3, and it draws a sharp line between the real cause (heightened expectations) and the misplaced one (the commodity).

Step 3. 'Heightened expectations' and 'exaggerated expectations' are the same idea. Option (c).

Step 4. Confirm with the following lines: the buyer decides the version purchased was inferior and the next one would have delivered. That reaction only makes sense if the expectation was pitched too high to begin with.

Why the other three fall

(a) The passage shows commercials creating too much hype, not too little.

(b) Improved functionality is never discussed. The chase is for the sign of happiness, not for better features.

(d) There is no such law. The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility exists; 'Diminishing Marginal Commodities' is invented, and nothing from economics is applied in the passage.

Teaching point: Option (d) is an authority trap — an official-sounding term that students accept because it looks technical. Tell them: if a named law or theory appears in an option but never appears in the passage, it is decoration, not evidence.