UPSC 2022 History · 15 marks · 250 words
Assess the view that the Mughal state in the seventeenth century was primarily an extractive war-state.
What “Assess” demands
weigh the significance or extent of something and state how much it matters, with justification.
The characteristic failure: asserting importance without establishing degree.
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”.
- Extractive case: zabt at ~one-third to half of produce (Ain-i-Akbari norms), mansab-jagir military fiscalism, Deccan wars' fiscal strain
- Irfan Habib's agrarian-crisis thesis; Athar Ali on the crisis of jagirdari
- Counterview: Muzaffar Alam/Sanjay Subrahmanyam on negotiated sovereignty; karkhanas, road security, sulh-i-kul legitimacy
- Tirthankar Roy / Parthasarathi on monetisation and craft prosperity as non-extractive evidence
- Assessment: war-state fiscalism real but 'primarily extractive' flattens a layered polity
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