British administration, land revenue & economy

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.

📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 10 India and the Contemporary World – II, Ch 4 (practise this chapter) · Class 10 India and the Contemporary World – II, Ch 4 (practise this chapter) · Class 11 Indian Economic Development, Ch 1 (practise this chapter)

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2020, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

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.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2020, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

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.

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