Read the statements (A) and (B) carefully: (A): In 1770, a terrible famine…

Concept: A statement-evaluation question that presents two independent claims, (A) and (B), and asks which true/false combination is correct requires checking each claim separately against the documented historical record before selecting one of the four possible pairings offered as options.

Application: The 1770 Bengal famine (remembered locally as ‘Chhiattorer Monnontor’) struck early in East India Company rule and is one of the most thoroughly documented demographic disasters of that period. Its death toll is consistently placed at around ten million people, confirming statement (A). Its demographic impact is separately recorded as wiping out roughly one-third of Bengal’s population at the time, confirming statement (B). NCERT’s Class 8 chapter on early Company rule (‘Ruling the Countryside’) states both figures together, and the CBSE/CTET official answer key for this exact item selects the same combination. Since both claims independently hold up, the correct evaluation is ‘Both (A) and (B) are true’.

Cross-check: Checking the three alternatives individually against the historical record for this specific famine settles each one:

• ‘Both (A) and (B) are false’ would require both the death-toll figure and the population-loss estimate to be wrong — but neither figure fails independent verification for this famine.

• ‘(A) is true but (B) is false’ accepts the death-toll figure while wrongly treating the one-third population-loss estimate as an overstatement.

• ‘(A) is false but (B) is true’ accepts the population-loss estimate while wrongly doubting the specific ten-million death-toll figure.