A historian studying a seventeenth-century village in north India notes that land fit for cultivation was plentiful, and new fields were being cleared close by. Yet some households in the same village stayed very poor and owned almost nothing, generation after generation, while their neighbours prospered. No count of the village population survives from that time, so she has to work from a few scattered records to judge what share of the village these poor households formed.
Which of the following best explains why these households stayed poor even though cultivable land was plentiful?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and so relegated to poverty.
Option (1) Repeated famines and droughts destroyed the crops they sowed. — Incorrect. Famines and droughts are not the cause tied to this poverty. Poverty that lasted generation after generation, beside prospering neighbours, came from a fixed social position: these groups were bound to menial work by caste.
Option (2) Heavy revenue demands by jagirdars took away most of their harvest. — Incorrect. Jagirdars did press peasants for revenue, but that fell on those who had harvests. These households owned almost nothing to tax.
Option (3) Certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and so relegated to poverty. — Correct. Land was not the problem. Certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and thus relegated to poverty, and their place in the caste hierarchy held them there.
Option (4) Moneylenders seized their fields when they failed to repay loans. — Incorrect. Debt could cost a peasant his land. The poverty of these groups, however, came from their caste position.
NCERT (2026-27): “2.1 Caste and the rural milieu … |