Why, according to this ruler, did people settling a new place not nee…

A student reads the memoirs of a sixteenth-century ruler who came to north India from Central Asia. The ruler was struck by how quickly people in the plains left a town and set up a new settlement somewhere else. He also wrote about how farming was carried on there and how water reached the fields and orchards. The student wants to understand what this account shows about farming in northern India at that time.

Why, according to this ruler, did people settling a new place not need to dig water courses?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 1

The correct answer is Option (1) → Their crops were rain-grown

Option (1) Their crops were rain-grown — Correct. Babur wrote that new settlers need not dig water courses because their crops are all rain-grown. This is why a village could come up so quickly.

Option (2) Rivers flowed close to the new settlements — Incorrect. Babur said the opposite: Hindustan nowhere has running waters. Nearby rivers were not the reason.

Option (3) Old tanks built by the state supplied water — Incorrect. Babur wrote that the settlers make a tank or a well themselves. State-built tanks have no part in his account.

Option (4) Wells fitted with wheels watered their fields — Incorrect. Babur saw wheels used to water young trees, as in Lahore and Dipalpur. Crops in general grew on the rains.

NCERT (2026-27): “1.3 Irrigation and technology …
This was a feature of agrarian society which struck a keen observer like Babur, the first Mughal emperor, forcefully enough for him to write about it in the Babur Nama, his memoirs: In Hindustan hamlets and villages, towns indeed, are depopulated and set up in a moment! If the people of a large town, one inhabited for years even, flee from it, they do it in such a way that not a sign or trace of them remains in a day and a half. On the other hand, if they fix their eyes on a place to settle, they need not dig water courses because their crops are all rain-grown, and as the population of Hindustan is unlimited it swarms in. They make a tank or a well; they need not build houses or set up walls … khas-grass abounds, wood is unlimited, huts are made, and straightaway there is a village or a town! Ü Describe the aspects of agricultural life that struck Babur as particular to regions in northern India.”