2025 CSAT — Q13

Locate. This asks for the central idea, so find the sentence the rest of the passage exists to support. Here the load-bearing claim is stated outright: “insecurity, more than poverty, is the most acutely felt economic problem,” and the closing line ties it to policy: “Many Government policies are actually intended towards mitigating these insecurities.” That pairing is the anchor.

Test (thesis-vs-detail + scope-fit). The key must keep two distinctions the passage draws: (i) insecurity ranks above poverty, and (ii) it is an economic problem (the passage separates the “social” problem, inequality, from the “economic” one, insecurity). Only (d) holds both: “insecurity, more than poverty, is the main economic issue that Government policies must address.”

Eliminate by anatomy. (a) is half right, half wrong and offers a supporting detail as the main point — it lifts “social problem” but the passage names insecurity an economic problem, mis-sorting the central claim. (b) invents a cause the passage doesn’t state — it makes poverty the cause of inequality and insecurity, a causal claim the passage never makes (it ranks them, it does not link them by cause). (c) makes a claim the passage never actually makes and over-states the case — “intricately linked… unmanageable crisis” imports a linkage-and-doom verdict absent from the text. Key: (d).

“insecurity, more than poverty, is the most acutely felt economic problem… Many Government policies are actually intended towards mitigating these insecurities.” The passage’s critical message is that economic insecurity (not poverty) is the key economic problem and the target of policy — exactly (d).

The passage sets up a parallel: social inequality is “the most acutely felt social problem”; insecurity, “more than poverty, is the most acutely felt economic problem.” It then notes that even those just above the poverty line face insecurities, and that “Many Government policies are actually intended towards mitigating these insecurities.” The critical message is that economic insecurity — ranked above poverty — is the key economic problem and the proper target of Government policy.

(d) states exactly this. Answer: (d).

This passage deliberately separates a social problem (inequality) from an economic one (insecurity), and the trap options blur that line — (a) calls insecurity “social,” (b) collapses the two into a cause-effect chain. The scoring move is to honour the author’s own categories: the economic problem the author elevates above poverty, and that policy targets, is insecurity. The option that preserves both the ranking and the economic framing is the key.