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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Write short essay: Estimates of population of Mughal India.

  • UPSC 2009
  • Economy and Society in the 16th and 17th Centuries

Reconstructing the population of Mughal India is an exercise entirely in inference, since no census was ever conducted before 1872, and every figure historians cite is a modern estimate built on indirect data.

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

  • Moreland's Pioneering but Flawed Estimate
  • Kingsley Davis's Upward Revision
  • Ashok Desai's Consumption-Based Method
  • Shireen Moosvi's Refined Estimate
  • The Rate and Meaning of Population Growth

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