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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“The recurring famines in the 19th century were the inevitable consequence of the British policy and expose the real character of the paternal solicitude for the peasantry on the part of the British administration.” Examine this statement critically.

  • UPSC 2002
  • Economic Impact of British Colonial Rule

Between the Bengal famine of 1770 and the reforms of the early twentieth century, nineteenth-century India endured a nearly unbroken sequence of subsistence crises that colonial rhetoric could not adequately explain away as mere acts of nature.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Scale of the Calamity
  • Structural Causes Rooted in Colonial Policy
  • Laissez-Faire Dogma and the Refusal to Intervene
  • The Famine Codes: Paternal Promise, Administrative Practice
  • The Nationalist Critique: Naoroji and the Exposure of "Paternalism"

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