SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 18 of 97

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

The Permanent Settlement came into operation in which of the following years?

(a)1793
(b)1890
(c)1789
(d)1790

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The Permanent Settlement was brought into operation by Lord Cornwallis in 1793. It fixed the land revenue demand of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha in perpetuity and recognised the zamindars as proprietors of the land.

The neighbouring dates are the trap. The Decennial Settlement of 1789-90 had fixed the demand for ten years first, and it was that arrangement 1793 made permanent.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
1890 — A century too late. By 1890 the argument in Bengal had moved to tenant protection — the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 — not to fixing the revenue demand.
(c)
1789 — 1789 opens the Decennial Settlement, the ten-year experiment that came first. Cornwallis made the demand perpetual only in 1793.
(d)
1790 — 1790 belongs to the same ten-year settlement as 1789, not to its perpetual version. The word to read in the stem is permanent, and that is 1793.

Concept

The Permanent Settlement was a wager: fix the demand forever and the zamindar, secure in his claim, will invest in the land.

The demand was set high and the Sunset Law enforced it — an estate whose revenue was unpaid by sunset on the due date went to auction. Estates changed hands heavily, and the burden was passed down to the cultivator.

Two rival systems followed elsewhere: the Ryotwari settlement, in which the state dealt with the cultivator directly, and the Mahalwari, which took the village or mahal as the revenue unit.

The question asks when the settlement came into operation, which is 1793 — the year of the regulations, not of the earlier ten-year experiment or of any later tenancy law.

Key facts

The Permanent Settlement of 1793 was introduced by Lord Cornwallis in Bengal, Bihar and Odisha.
It recognised zamindars as proprietors and fixed the state's revenue demand in perpetuity.
It replaced the Decennial Settlement of 1789-90, which had fixed the demand for ten years.
The Ryotwari settlement dealt with the cultivator directly, while the Mahalwari settlement took the village or mahal as its unit.

Study next

Ryotwari and Mahalwari settlements and the regions they coveredThe Sunset Law and the auctioning of zamindari estatesNineteenth-century tenancy legislation in Bengal

Common traps

Choosing 1789 or 1790, which belong to the Decennial Settlement
Attaching the Permanent Settlement to Warren Hastings instead of Cornwallis

Cornwallis is asked through his administrative measures as much as through the settlement itself.

His 1792 Daroga system of policing is the stem at 18 Sep 2024, 12:30, General Awareness Q.19, keyed to Cornwallis.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.