Economics: CUET Mock Test - 5 - Commerce MCQ

Foreign travellers defined the finest quality of muslin as Malmal Shahi or Malmal Khas implying that it was worn by, or fit for, the royalty

Life expectan cy during the British rule was as low as 44 years with the present of 69.42 years.(source: World Bank)

British enabled India to be an exporter of primary products and an importer of finished goods.

ttempts were made by all of the above personalities, however Rao’s estimates were considered as most significant.

Zamindars did nothing to improve the condition of agriculture and focused on the collection of rent which caused immense misery and social tension for the cultivators.

India was characterised as a stagnant economy due to its low growth rate of GDP and GDP per capita; a backward economy as evident through its poor performance of demographic indicators and a colonial economy as British exerted their political and economic will over India.

Indian farmers were forced to shift to commercial crops (Indigo, in particular) from the traditional food crops (like wheat and rice).

Under land settlement system, zamindars and colonial government did nothing to improve the productivity of land and were focused towards collection of land revenues.

Heavy export duties were imposed on the handicraft products with a meagre duty on British manufactured goods resulted in low demand for Indian handicrafts.

The decline in the handicraft industries resulted in unemployment on a large scale wherein the consumer demand in the domestic market was met by the foreign produced goods.

British followed discriminatory tariff policy wherein import of British goods were made tariff free and heavy export duties were imposed on Indian handicrafts.

The de-industrialisation policy followed during colonial period has two major objectives: first to reduce the status of India as an exporter of primary products and second is to turn India into the sprawling market for the finished products produced in Britain.

The role of the public sector was confined to railways, power generation, communications, ports and some other departmental undertakings.

India maintained a huge export surplus but it did not resulted in inflow of gold or silver into India because the country had to make large foreign payments to England on account of administrative and war expenses.

British restricted the direction and flow of India’s trade wherein more than half of India’s foreign trade was restricted to Britain while the rest was allowed with other countries like China, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Persia (Iran).

Mortality rate was as high as 218 per thousand and often results due to lack of food availability and affordability, poor sanitation and public health facilities.

Provincial and district barriers (cordons), speculation and hoarding were the main factors responsible for the spectacular rise in prices and resulting in shortages.

British monopolised the foreign trade to shift the direction of trade policy in their favour by encouraging tariff free imports and imposing heavy duties on exports.

Agriculture accounted for nearly 70-75% of the workforce, whereas the share of manufacturing and service sector was 10% and 20-25% respectively.

The industrial sector was in dismal state with hardly any capital goods industry and lack of support from the government.

The traditional handicraft industries were ruined due to discriminatory tariff policy pursued by the British.

It means utilisation of nation’s resources across different development activities in accordance with the national objectives.

Long-term plans have general goals and well defined objectives to be achieved and are referred to as ‘perspective plan’.

In socialism goods are produced on the basis of needs of the people and not on the basis of their ability to pay for the goods.

There has been a strong reliance on the public sector before 1991 wherein the entry of the private sector was restricted and subjected to licensing system.

Frequent droughts, famines, hunger and poverty led the policy makers to aim for a strong agrarian economy.

Self-reliant movement under Modi administration has been termed as ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ which focuses on 5 major pillars- Economy, Infrastructure, System, Demography and Demand.

The ‘structural change’ theory argues that with development, the share of agriculture sector declines and that of industry becomes dominant and at higher levels of development, the service sector contributes more than the other two sectors. However in context of India, there has been a jump directly from agriculture to services in context of GDP contribution.

It was argued that eliminating subsidies would increase the inequality between the small and large farmers, thus fertiliser subsidies which benefitted fertiliser industry and big farmers should be substituted with agricultural subsidies.

Under IPR (1956), private sector had to obtain the license from the government for establishing industrial units and state provided concessions and tax benefits for encouraging private units in the backward regions.