Which land revenue system covered the largest area of British India?

The correct answer is B, Dadabhai Naoroji. In Poverty and Un-British Rule in India Naoroji gathered his estimates of India's national income and set out the theory of the drain of wealth, showing that a part of the country's wealth was carried to Britain every year without any return, through home charges, the salaries and pensions of British officials and the profits of British capital. He was called the Grand Old Man of India and was the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons. A is wrong because A. O. Hume, a retired civil servant, helped to found the Indian National Congress in 1885 but wrote no such work on Indian poverty. C is wrong because W. C. Bonnerjee presided over the first session of the Congress and was a lawyer, not an economic writer. D is wrong because S. Subramania Iyer was a Madras judge and public figure associated with the early Congress.

The correct answer is A, industrial goods. The Great Depression that began in 1929 pulled down the prices of primary produce such as wheat, cotton and jute far more sharply, and for far longer, than the prices of the manufactured goods the peasant had to buy. Because his revenue demand and his old debt were fixed in money terms, the Indian cultivator had to sell much more grain to pay the same sum, and rural indebtedness rose. B is wrong because opium was a government monopoly crop of the China trade and not the general standard against which farm prices are compared. C is wrong because agricultural inputs of that time, mainly seed, bullocks and manure, came from within the village and were themselves farm produce, so they fell with other agricultural prices. D is wrong because indigo had already lost its market to synthetic dyes well before 1929.

The correct answer is B, Lord Cornwallis. Cornwallis, Governor-General from 1786 to 1793, made the settlement permanent in 1793 on the advice of John Shore, recognising the zamindars as proprietors of the soil against a revenue demand fixed for ever. A is wrong because Warren Hastings experimented earlier with the farming system, auctioning the revenue of districts for five years, which the Permanent Settlement replaced. C is wrong because Lord Wellesley is remembered for the Subsidiary Alliance system and the expansion of British territory, not for revenue settlement. D is wrong because Lord William Bentinck came much later, from 1828 to 1835, and is associated with the reform of the Mahalwari settlement in 1833 and with social legislation such as the abolition of sati. A common trap is to mark John Shore, who advised on the scheme but did not introduce it.

The correct answer is B, Thomas Munro. Munro, with Captain Alexander Read, worked out the Ryotwari settlement in the Baramahal and Madras region, and extended it widely after he became Governor of Madras in 1820; the state dealt directly with the ryot, the individual cultivator, who held the land so long as he paid the assessment. A is wrong because Holt Mackenzie framed the Mahalwari settlement for the North Western Provinces in Regulation VII of 1822. C is wrong because John Shore advised Cornwallis on the Permanent Settlement and later became Governor-General himself. D is wrong because Robert Mertins Bird carried out the revised Mahalwari settlement of the North Western Provinces under Lord William Bentinck in 1833. Pair each name with its system, since matching questions on these four officers are set almost every year.

The correct answer is B, one-eleventh. The settlement required the zamindar to pay ten-elevenths of the rental he collected from the peasants to the state and to retain one-eleventh for himself, which is why the demand pressed so heavily and so many estates changed hands in the early years. A is wrong because a quarter share has no basis in the Bengal settlement. C is wrong because a half share is closer to the proportion of the gross produce the state claimed under the Ryotwari assessment on dry land, a figure candidates often confuse with this one. D is wrong because a third share belongs to older Indian practice, such as the Mughal demand on produce, and not to the Permanent Settlement. Remember the ratio along with the Sunset Law, since the two together explain the ruin of the old zamindari families.