British administration, land revenue & economy

Answer: (a) Aiding the flow of remittances from India and maintaining India's creditworthiness

The Commission fixed the rupee at 1s. 6d., above the pre-war 1s. 4d. The Government of India had to pay large sterling sums in London every year (the Home Charges: interest on debt, pensions, stores), and a dearer rupee meant fewer rupees for each pound remitted while keeping India's sterling credit sound.

• ✓ (a) A high rupee-sterling rate cut the rupee cost of the Home Charges and other remittances to Britain, and a firmly held rate reassured holders of India's sterling debt. The Currency Act of 1927 put 1s. 6d. into law.
• ✗ (b) Cheaper imports were a side-effect that mainly helped British goods; Indian business and later the Congress attacked the ratio for giving imports an unfair edge.
• ✗ (c) An over-valued rupee makes Indian goods dearer abroad, so it discouraged exports such as raw cotton rather than encouraging them.

Remember · Hilton-Young Commission (1926): rupee at 1s. 6d. (Currency Act 1927) to ease sterling Home Charges; also recommended a central bank, leading to the RBI in 1935.

Question and answer: UPSC's provisional GS Paper I (2026, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (a) 2 and 3 only

The British would not tolerate the taluqdars' armed power: right after annexation they were disarmed and their forts pulled down, so statement 1 is wrong. The Summary Settlement of 1856 treated the taluqdars as interlopers and removed them wherever it could, aiming to settle land directly with those who tilled it.

• ✗ 1. The taluqdars were not left their arms and forts; they were disarmed and their forts destroyed immediately after annexation.
• ✓ 2. The first British revenue settlement, the Summary Settlement of 1856, assumed the taluqdars were interlopers who had seized land by force and fraud, with no lasting stake in it.
• ✓ 3. Revenue officers expected that removing the taluqdars would let them settle land with the actual owners of the soil, cutting exploitation of peasants while raising the state's revenue.

Remember · Awadh 1856: taluqdars disarmed, forts destroyed; Summary Settlement called them interlopers and cut their share of villages from 67 to 38 per cent.

📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 12 Themes in Indian History, Part III, Ch 2 (practise this chapter) · Class 12 Themes in Indian History, Part III, Ch 2 (practise this chapter) · Class 12 Themes in Indian History, Part III, Ch 2 (practise this chapter)

Question and answer: UPSC's provisional GS Paper I (2026, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

UPSC dropped this question from evaluation in its final answer key.

UPSC dropped this question from evaluation in its final answer key. On the facts, Statement 2 is correct and Statement 1 is wrong: under the Permanent Settlement a zamindar who missed the fixed date lost his estate, while under the ryotwari system there was no exemption for bad harvests. The stem is also loose, because Cornwallis brought in the Permanent Settlement, not the ryotwari system.

• ✗ 1. Under the ryotwari system in the Bombay Deccan, peasants could not pay when rains failed and harvests were poor, yet collectors extracted the revenue with utmost severity. There was no exemption. Also, ryotwari was developed by Read and Munro in the south, not by Cornwallis.
• ✓ 2. Under the Sunset Law of the Permanent Settlement, if payment did not come in by sunset on the fixed date, the zamindari was liable to be auctioned, so the zamindar lost his estate.

Remember · Permanent Settlement (Cornwallis, 1793, Bengal): fixed revenue, Sunset Law auction of estates. Ryotwari (Read and Munro, south India): revenue settled with the ryot, no relief for bad harvests.

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2024, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (b) 2 and 3 only

An aurang was a place where goods, especially cloth, were made and stored — the Company's weaving depot — not a treasury official. A banian was an Indian broker or agent serving European merchants and the Company, and a mirasidar was the hereditary landholder whom the British recognised as the revenue payer in the Madras region.

• ✗ 1. Aurang (Persian) meant a place where goods were manufactured or stored; in the Company's trading days it was used for its cloth-procurement depots.
• ✓ 2. In Calcutta, 'banian' was the term for Indian brokers attached to European business houses, who handled trade and money matters for the Company and its servants.
• ✓ 3. A mirasidar held hereditary (miras) rights in land; under British settlements in Tanjore and elsewhere in the south, each was given a patta and made responsible for the revenue.

Remember · Aurang = warehouse/manufacturing depot; banian = Indian broker-agent of Europeans; gomastha = Company's paid agent over weavers; mirasidar = hereditary landholder, revenue payer (South India).

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2020, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (a) Indian handicrafts were ruined.

Britain's machine-made cotton goods flooded India in the early nineteenth century while Indian textiles lost their export markets, so traditional handicrafts, especially weaving, were ruined. Mills, railways and tariff protection came only later or not at all.

• ✓ (a) Piece-goods fell from 33 per cent of India's exports in 1811-12 to about 3 per cent by 1850-51, while cheap British cloth captured the Indian market; artisans lost both markets.
• ✗ (b) Large-scale machine production in Indian textiles began only after the first cotton mill in Bombay in 1854, well after the period in question.
• ✗ (c) India's first railway line opened only in 1853; the network spread in the second half of the century.
• ✗ (d) It was the reverse: Britain taxed Indian cloth entering Britain, while British manufactures entered India with little duty.

Remember · Industrial Revolution's early impact on India: de-industrialisation — ruin of handicrafts and weavers as British machine goods flooded in. Railways (1853) and cotton mills (1854) came later.

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Answer: (b) its unprofitability in the world market because of new inventions

Indigo lost its market because synthetic (man-made) dyes were discovered in the late nineteenth century, which made the plant dye unprofitable in world trade. Peasant revolt and political protest hurt the planters earlier, but the final decline was economic.

• ✗ (a) The peasants' Indigo Revolt of 1859-60 collapsed indigo production in Bengal, but the planters simply shifted their operations to Bihar. Resistance did not end the crop.
• ✓ (b) The discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century severely hit the planters' business, since man-made dye competed with the plant-based indigo on the world market.
• ✗ (c) Gandhi's Champaran visit of 1917 was about the cultivators' plight under the planters, not a national campaign against growing indigo, and it came after synthetic dyes had already hurt the trade.
• ✗ (d) Nothing in this history shows the government's control over planters ending the crop; the fall came from the market once synthetic dyes arrived.

Remember · Natural indigo collapsed because synthetic dyes arrived in the late 1800s. The 1859-60 revolt only pushed planters from Bengal to Bihar.

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Answer: (d) he wanted to train British civilians for administrative purpose in India

Lord Wellesley founded the College of Fort William at Calcutta in 1800 as a training centre for the East India Company's British civil servants. Its purpose was to prepare officials for administration in India, not to promote oriental scholarship or to find work for particular individuals.

• ✗ (a) The official record credits Wellesley himself, as Governor-General, with founding the college; it does not present it as an instruction from the Board of Directors in London.
• ✗ (b) The stated role of the college was to train British civil servants. Reviving oriental learning is not given as its purpose.
• ✗ (c) Employment for William Carey and his associates is not the purpose recorded for the institution.
• ✓ (d) The National Archives of India describes it as a college founded in 1800 by Wellesley that served as a training centre for British civil servants.

Remember · Fort William College (Calcutta, 1800), founded by Lord Wellesley, trained the Company's British civil servants for Indian administration.

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Answer: (a) 1 and 2 only

Charles Wood's education despatch of 1854 set up a grants-in-aid system for schools that met government standards and led to universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857. It wanted English for higher education but the vernacular languages at the school level, so statement 3 is wrong.

• ✓ 1. After 1854 the Company began supporting schools, including village pathshalas, with government grants on condition that they accepted its rules, routines and inspections.
• ✓ 2. Steps were taken to build a university system after the Despatch; in 1857, the year of the revolt, universities were being set up in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.
• ✗ 3. The Despatch favoured English as the medium of higher education only; for elementary schooling it pushed improvement of vernacular education.

Remember · Wood's Despatch (1854), Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control: grants-in-aid, education departments, universities (1857), English for higher and vernacular for lower education.

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Answer: (c) Both 1 and 2

Both measures were taken. After the Santhal Revolt of 1855–56 the British carved out a separate Santhal Pargana territory, and special laws there protected Santhal land from passing to outsiders.

• ✓ 1. The Santhal Pargana was created after the revolt, carved out of Bhagalpur and Birbhum districts, in 1855, as a separate territory to conciliate the Santhals.
• ✓ 2. The special laws for the Santhal Pargana barred the transfer of raiyati land: Regulation III of 1872 (Section 7) made the holdings non-transferable, and Regulation III of 1908 declared their non-transferability and empowered the Deputy Commissioner to act against illegal alienation. Santhals had lost land to moneylenders and outsiders. The protection continues today in the Santal Parganas Tenancy (Supplementary Provisions) Act, 1949, which makes a raiyat's transfer invalid unless the right is recorded.

Remember · Santhal Hul (1855–56, Sido–Kanhu) led to the separate Santhal Pargana district and special land-protection laws against transfer to outsiders.

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Answer: (c) commercialization of Indian agriculture

British rule commercialised Indian agriculture: farmers were pushed towards cash crops for the market and for export instead of growing mainly for their own needs. The railways helped this trend, while India's handicraft industries declined.

• ✓ (c) Railways, introduced in 1850, fostered commercialisation of Indian agriculture, and cash crops gave higher yields in some areas. It weakened the self-sufficiency of village economies.
• ✗ (a) The country's world-famous handicraft industries declined under colonial rule. Cheap machine-made goods, such as those from Manchester, replaced native manufactures.
• ✗ (b) India could not build a sound industrial base under colonial rule. No modern industrial base was allowed to take the place of the declining handicrafts.

Remember · 19th-century colonial economy: commercialised agriculture, decline of handicrafts (de-industrialisation), and railways serving colonial interests.

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Answer: (d) Cotton, silk, saltpetre and opium

In the mid-18th century the Company's main exports from Bengal were cotton and silk cloth, saltpetre (used for gunpowder) and opium. Bengal was the Company's source of fine textiles, and after 1765 its revenue was used to buy these goods rather than importing bullion from Britain.

• ✓ (d) The Company bought fine cotton and silk cloth in Bengal, held a monopoly of Indian saltpetre from the middle of the 18th century, and by the late 18th century was expanding opium cultivation.
• ✗ (a) The Company bought finished cotton and silk cloth from Bengal, not raw cotton or oil-seeds; only opium in this list fits.
• ✗ (c) Gold and silver went the other way: before 1765 the Company brought them from Britain to pay for Indian goods.
• ✗ (b) Sugar, salt, zinc and lead were not the Company's staple Bengal exports of this period.

Remember · Bengal exports of the Company in the 1750s: cotton and silk textiles, saltpetre, opium. Before Diwani (1765) it paid for them with bullion from Britain.

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Answer: (c) To secure a fixed income for the Company

Why not the tempting option · UPSC's key is (c). The subsidy an ally paid was a reimbursement for the British force kept in its territory, and rulers who could not pay lost territory instead (Awadh gave up half its land in 1801), so a fixed income for the Company was not an object of the system; its purposes were a large army at Indian expense, exclusion of the French and British paramountcy. In the exam, judge a policy by its stated aims, not by its incidental receipts.

The Subsidiary Alliance was a military and political device. It planted a British force in an ally's territory at the ally's cost, offered the ruler protection against external threats, and tied the states to British control. Securing a fixed income for the Company was never its aim: the subsidy was the price of the troops, and when a ruler could not pay it, territory was taken instead. So (c) is the statement that does not apply.

• ✓ (c) The money an ally paid was the cost of maintaining the British contingent stationed with it, not a revenue for the Company. NCERT notes that if the ruler failed to pay, part of his territory was taken away as a penalty; the object was control, not a steady income.
• ✗ (a) This did apply: the ally had to provide the resources for maintaining the British armed contingent stationed in its territory, which gave the Company a large army at Indian expense.
• ✗ (b) This did apply: NCERT says the British Resident was installed to protect rulers against internal or external threats, and Britannica names Napoleon's Egyptian expedition of 1798-99, which created a new French threat to India, among the immediate causes of the Company's drive towards paramountcy in Wellesley's time.
• ✗ (d) This did apply: an ally could not negotiate with other rulers or go to war without British permission and had to accept a Resident, and NCERT says the system effectively transferred real power to the British, which placed British power above the Indian states.

Remember · Wellesley's Subsidiary Alliance: British troops in the ally's state, paid for by the ally (territory taken if unpaid); foreign relations only through the British, no wars without the Company's consent; protection against external threats. Its aims were military and political, not revenue.

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Answer: (d) 1, 2 and 3

All three were links in one chain. The Charter Act of 1813 first set aside public money for Indian education, the General Committee of Public Instruction (1823) was set up to spend it, and the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy inside that committee ended with Macaulay's Minute (1835) and the English Education Act, which made English the medium of higher education.

• ✓ 1. When the Company's charter was renewed in 1813, a clause required the governor-general to spend not less than 100,000 rupees a year on the education of Indians. This created the funds and the official responsibility for education.
• ✓ 2. The General Committee of Public Instruction, formed in Calcutta in 1823, disbursed the grant. Younger members on it later argued for spreading Western knowledge through English, which led to the controversy.
• ✓ 3. The dispute over funding Oriental learning or Western knowledge was settled for the Anglicists by Macaulay's Minute of 1835, followed by the English Education Act of 1835.

Remember · Route to English education: Charter Act 1813 (Rs 1 lakh grant), General Committee of Public Instruction 1823, Orientalist-Anglicist debate, Macaulay's Minute and English Education Act 1835.

📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 8 Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Part 1), Ch 4 (practise this chapter)

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2018, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (b) 2 only

Only pair 2 is correct: Warren Hastings set up the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781. The Benaras Sanskrit College came from Jonathan Duncan in 1791, and Fort William College was set up by Governor-General Lord Wellesley in 1800.

• ✗ 1. The Benaras Sanskrit College was founded in 1791 by Jonathan Duncan, the British Resident at Benaras. Sir William Jones is remembered for founding the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
• ✓ 2. Warren Hastings founded the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781 to train Muslim gentlemen for posts in the Company's administration; NCERT says Hastings took the initiative to set it up.
• ✗ 3. Fort William College, Calcutta (1800), was set up by Lord Wellesley, the Governor-General, to train Company civilians. Arthur Wellesley was his younger brother, the soldier who later became Duke of Wellington.

Remember · Calcutta Madrasa: Hastings (1781). Benaras Sanskrit College: Jonathan Duncan (1791). Fort William College: Lord Wellesley (1800).

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Answer: (c) 2 and 3 only

The ryotwari system, a settlement made directly with the cultivators, was first tried by Captain Alexander Read in territories taken from Tipu Sultan and then developed and extended across south India by Thomas Munro. Cornwallis is linked with the opposite model, the Permanent Settlement with zamindars in Bengal (1793).

• ✗ 1. Cornwallis was Governor-General of Bengal when the Permanent Settlement of 1793 fixed revenue in perpetuity with zamindars; ryotwari was a move away from that idea.
• ✓ 2. Alexander Read tried the ryotwari system on a small scale in areas the Company took over after the wars with Tipu Sultan.
• ✓ 3. Thomas Munro developed Read's system and extended it over south India, arguing that settlement should be made directly with the ryots who tilled the land.

Remember · Permanent Settlement (1793, Bengal) = Cornwallis, with zamindars. Ryotwari = Read, then Munro (Madras); Mahalwari = village-based, north-west.

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Answer: (d) a system of tribunals and a ban on strikes.

Passed amid the labour unrest of the late 1920s, the Trade Disputes Act, 1929 let the government refer an industrial dispute to a Court of Inquiry or a Board of Conciliation, and it put restraints on strikes and lock-outs in public utility services. Tribunals plus curbs on strikes is option (d).

• ✓ (d) The Act let the government set up Courts of Inquiry and Boards of Conciliation to investigate and settle disputes, and it restrained strikes and lock-outs, above all in public utility services.
• ✗ (a) The Act gave workers no role in management. Even Works Committees of employer and worker representatives came only with the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, which replaced the 1929 Act.
• ✗ (c) Disputes went to bodies the government itself appointed, not to a British court; the 1946 review noted that their findings were not even binding on the parties.

Remember · Trade Disputes Act, 1929: Courts of Inquiry and Boards of Conciliation + restraints on strikes in public utility services; replaced by the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

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Answer: (b) 2 only

The Factories Act, 1881 (passed under Lord Ripon) was a limited measure about working conditions, chiefly of child workers in factories; it neither fixed wages nor recognised trade unions. Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, who founded the Bombay Mill Hands Association in 1884, is hailed as the father of the trade union movement in India.

• ✗ 1. The 1881 Act regulated factory conditions, mainly for children. Laws on wages (Payment of Wages Act, 1936; Minimum Wages Act, 1948) and on registering trade unions (Trade Unions Act, 1926) came decades later.
• ✓ 2. Lokhande set up the Mill Hand Association in 1884, which marked the institutionalisation of the labour movement; his agitation led to the Factory Labour Commission and the Factory Act of 1891.

Remember · N.M. Lokhande: Bombay Mill Hands Association (1884), father of India's trade union movement. Factory Act 1881 (Ripon) = child labour; trade unions legalised only by the Trade Unions Act, 1926.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2017, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (d) Improve the relationship between the Government of India and the Indian States.

The Butler Committee was the Indian States Committee, set up in 1927 under Sir Harcourt Butler to examine the relationship between the Paramount Power (the British Crown acting through the Government of India) and the princely states, including their financial and economic relations with British India.

• ✓ (d) Its brief was the relationship between the Paramount Power and the Indian (princely) States; its 1929 report held that paramountcy must remain supreme and that the states could not be handed over to an Indian government without their consent.
• ✗ (a) Dividing jurisdiction between the Centre and the provinces was the subject of the 1919 and 1935 Government of India Acts and the Simon Commission, not the Butler Committee.
• ✗ (b) The Secretary of State's powers were fixed by Acts of the British Parliament; the Butler Committee dealt only with the princely states.

Remember · Butler Committee = Indian States Committee (1927–29), chaired by Sir Harcourt Butler: relations between the Paramount Power and the princely states.

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2017, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error