2021 CSAT — Q2

Locate. This is a valid-assumption question — find the unstated premise the argument needs. Run every statement through three fit checks — does it stay inside the passage’s actual things, its stated cause-and-effect, and its level of certainty? — and on the first check it fails, the statement is out; keep only what stays inside the passage. The passage’s load-bearing claims: pollination underwrites “a wide variety of food” and “at least one-third of the world’s agricultural crops”; it is “the result of intricate relationships between plants and animals, and the reduction or loss of either affects the survival of both”; and “effective pollination requires resources, such as refuges of pristine natural vegetation.”

Test (boundary test + negation). St3 — natural-vegetation refuges are needed for effective pollination. The passage states it almost verbatim; negate it and the passage’s own requirement is broken, so cultivated areas devoid of natural vegetation lose pollinators. VALID. St4 — insect diversity induces plant diversity. The passage makes plants and animals mutually dependent (“loss of either affects the survival of both”) and bees “crucial to more than four hundred crops,” so within the text’s own entities/mechanism the diversity of pollinators supports plant diversity. VALID (fair inference). St1 — adds two entities the passage never names (“India,” “cereal food grains”) and hardens to “impossible”; cereals are wind-pollinated, so this is outside-the-text and over-strong. INVALID. St2 — “monoculture of horticultural crops” is nowhere in the passage. INVALID.

Eliminate by anatomy. (a)/(c) seat St1 — it brings in things the passage doesn’t and over-states them: a global claim about pollination narrowed to “India’s cereal grains” and stiffened to “impossible.” (b)/(c) seat St2 — a claim the passage never makes: “monoculture” is a plausible real-world worry the passage never raises. The transferable rule: a valid assumption stays inside the passage’s nouns, channels, and hedges — St3 and St4 do; St1 and St2 each cross a boundary. Key: (d).

Statement 3 — “Effective pollination requires resources, such as refuges of pristine natural vegetation”: negate it (pollination needs no natural-vegetation refuges) and the passage’s own requirement collapses, so cultivated land stripped of natural vegetation loses effective pollinators → VALID. Statement 4 — “Pollination is… the result of intricate relationships between plants and animals, and the reduction or loss of either affects the survival of both,” with bees “crucial to more than four hundred crops”: animal (insect) diversity and plant diversity are mutually load-bearing, so insect diversity supporting plant diversity is a fair inside-the-text inference → VALID. Statement 1 fires the ENTITY/QUALIFIER boundary — it adds “India’s cereal food grains” (the passage names neither India nor cereals; cereals are largely wind-pollinated) and the over-strong “impossible” → INVALID. Statement 2 fires the ENTITY boundary — “monoculture of horticultural crops” appears nowhere in the passage → INVALID. → (d).

The passage establishes that pollination (mainly by insects, dominantly bees) underwrites a large share of food and crops, that plants and pollinators are mutually dependent, and that effective pollination needs refuges of natural vegetation.

• St3 is the assumption behind “effective pollination requires… refuges of pristine natural vegetation”: remove the natural vegetation, lose the pollinators. Valid.
• St4 follows from the mutual plant–animal dependence and bees being crucial to 400+ crops: insect diversity supports plant diversity. Valid.
• St1 imports “India” and “cereal food grains” (cereals are wind-pollinated) and overstates to “impossible.” Invalid.
• St2 invokes “monoculture of horticultural crops,” absent from the passage. Invalid.

Answer: (d) 3 and 4 only.

The whole item turns on resisting two real-world-plausible statements (St1 “India’s food security,” St2 “monoculture harms insects”) that a well-read aspirant knows are true in the world — and that is exactly the trap. Validity here is not “true in agriculture”; it is “inside this passage’s words.” St1 and St2 each name an entity the passage never mentions; St3 and St4 stay inside its stated plant–animal-pollinator relationship. Worth noting (a close call): St4 (“insect diversity induces plant diversity”) is a fair inference you compose from the passage — it gives mutual plant–animal dependence and bee-criticality and lets you read the direction — rather than a single quoted line. So the (d)-over-(b) call rests on accepting St4 as inside-the-text. If you hesitated there, the instinct is sound; the discipline is that St4 stays within the passage’s own relationship, while St2’s “monoculture” imports a term the passage never uses.