UPSC Mains 2025 GS1 Q1: model answer
Discuss the salient features of the Harappan architecture.
What the question wants
Describe what made Harappan building distinctive: planning, materials, civic and public structures. Use site examples.
How to structure it
Intro: an urban civilisation of 2600–1900 BCE. Body: town planning, houses, drainage, public buildings, materials, with sites. Conclusion: what it tells us about civic order.
- 1Town planning
- 2Houses
- 3Drainage
- 4Public buildings
- 5Materials
- 6With sites
Model answer
The mature Harappan phase (c. 2600–1900 BCE) produced South Asia's first planned cities. Their architecture was practical rather than monumental.
| Site | Architectural feature |
|---|---|
| Mohenjo-daro | Great Bath, grid streets, covered drains |
| Harappa | Granary-like halls, workers' quarters |
| Lothal | Brick basin (dock?), bead workshops |
| Dholavira | Reservoirs, stone masonry, three-part town |
| Kalibangan | Fire altars, ploughed field |
- Planned layout: a raised citadel on the west and a larger lower town; streets on a rough grid meeting at right angles (Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan).
- Standard bricks: burnt and sun-dried bricks in a fixed 1:2:4 ratio across sites hundreds of kilometres apart.
- Houses: rooms around a courtyard, private wells and bathing floors, doors opening onto lanes rather than main streets, for privacy.
- Drainage: covered brick drains with manholes along streets, linked to house drains. Few ancient cities matched this.
- Public buildings: the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro, waterproofed with bitumen; the so-called granaries at Harappa; the dockyard-like basin at Lothal; reservoirs and stone-cut tanks at Dholavira.
- What is missing: no grand palaces or temples, which suggests a civic rather than royal display of power.
The uniformity points to a shared authority, or at least shared standards, managing water, trade and space. I find the drains say more about Harappan society than any statue.
Keywords, cases and data to drop in
citadel and lower town 1:2:4 brick ratio Great Bath covered drains Lothal dock Dholavira reservoirs no palaces or temples
Where most answers lose marks
- Listing sites without saying what architectural feature each shows.
- Writing about seals, script and trade instead of architecture.
- Calling the granary function certain; it is debated.
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Question text as printed in the official UPSC question paper: https://www.upsc.gov.in/sites/default/files/GENERAL-STUDIES-PAPER%20I-QP-CSM-25-010925.pdf The model answer is original Battle IAS work; use it to learn structure, not to memorise.