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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Critically examine the price control measures of Alauddin Khilji. What was the main objective behind them and how far was he able to put them into effect?

  • UPSC 1987
  • The Fourteenth Century

Price control under Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316) is remembered as an isolated act of despotic will, but it is better read as a piece of fiscal-military engineering: a deliberate mechanism built to let the state field an enormous standing army on a treasury that could never have paid market-rate wages to it. Understood this way, the…

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What the full answer covers

  • The Core Objective: Cheap Prices as the Precondition for an Affordable Army
  • Building the Machinery: Markets, Officers, and Regulations
  • Provisioning the Grain Market: Procurement from the Doab
  • Regulating the Cloth and Horse Trades
  • Enforcement Through Fear and Its Immediate Effectiveness

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