UPSC 2022 GS-I · 10 marks · 150 words

Why was there a sudden spurt in famines in colonial India since the mid-eighteenth century? Give reasons.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this question — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

Rigid cash land-revenue regardless of harvest — Bengal 1770 under the Company's dual government as the opening case
Forced commercialisation (indigo, opium, cotton) displacing food grains; grain exports amid scarcity
Collapse of traditional buffers (village grain banks, ruler remissions); railways draining deficit regions on price signals
Laissez-faire relief doctrine (Lytton, 1876-78); Amartya Sen's entitlement failure as the analytical frame

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Why was there a sudden spurt in famines in colonial India since the mid-eighteenth century? Give reasons.

What a top answer must contain

Now write it, and find out what you actually scored

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