Introduction & Historical Context
The agrarian structure formed the backbone of the Mughal Empire. As a pre-modern fiscal-military state, the stability of imperial administration depended upon efficient land revenue collection, agricultural prosperity, and cooperation between peasants, zamindars, and state officials. Land revenue (mal-i-wajib or kharaj) constituted the primary financial resource of the empire, funding its massive military machine, imperial court, and sprawling bureaucracy.
Under early Mughal rulers—particularly Akbar, who instituted the Zabt or Dahsala system with the help of Raja Todar Mal—the state prioritized direct assessment and collection of land revenue. This system aimed to establish a direct relationship between the state and the raiyat (peasantry), limiting the arbitrary exactions of intermediate collectors.
However, during the late Mughal period, particularly in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, increasing fiscal pressures led to the growing use of the Ijaradari System (Revenue Farming). Under this arrangement, instead of directly collecting taxes through state officials (amils), the right to collect revenue from a particular area (khalisa or jagir) was auctioned to private contractors known as ijaradars.
Although intended to provide immediate revenue to the state, the system encouraged excessive extraction from cultivators and weakened administrative accountability. Consequently, it became a major component of the wider agrarian crisis that accompanied the decline of Mughal power.
Multi-Dimensional Causes and Catalysts
The transition from a direct revenue administration to a speculative, contract-based system was driven by a convergence of political, administrative, and fiscal crises.
Political and Administrative Factors
The expansion of revenue farming was closely linked to the growing instability of the Mughal state:
- Aurangzeb's Deccan Campaigns (1681–1707): Aurangzeb’s prolonged military engagements in the south kept the emperor away from Northern India for twenty-five years. This created an administrative vacuum in the core provinces of the empire. Local officials, left unsupervised, engaged in corruption, and central authority over provincial governors (subahdars) weakened.
- Succession Struggles and Court Factions: The frequent succession struggles after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 weakened the moral and administrative authority of the crown. Rival noble factions (the Irani, Turani, and Hindustani groups) sought to monopolize administrative offices for personal gain rather than imperial stability.
- Weakening of Central Supervision: The central diwan lost the ability to audit provincial revenue collections, leading to the collapse of the imperial information network (waqa-i-navis).
- Provincial Autonomy: Provincial governors and local magnates increasingly functioned as autonomous rulers, withholding revenue from the center and seeking short-term extraction rather than long-term agrarian stability.
The crisis was further aggravated by the Jagirdari Crisis, wherein the number of nobles (mansabdars) seeking jagirs increased while available productive lands (paibaqi) declined.
Fiscal Pressures on the Empire
Several factors compelled the state to abandon direct revenue administration in favor of revenue farmers:
- Rising Military Expenditure: Continuous wars, particularly against the Marathas, Rajputs, and Sikhs, drained the imperial treasury.
- Imperial Insolvency: The central treasury was often unable to pay the cash salaries of the ahadis (gentlemen-troopers) and the central bureaucracy.
- Decline in Imperial Tributes: As provinces asserted autonomy, the flow of tribute (peshkash) to Delhi dried up.
- Reduced Efficiency of Traditional Revenue Administration: Local revenue officials (amils, kroris, amin) could no longer enforce tax collection due to rising peasant defiance and the decline of imperial coercive power.
Instead of directly collecting land revenue through state-appointed officials, the government increasingly auctioned revenue rights to the highest bidder to secure immediate cash.
Relationship with the Jagirdari Crisis
The spread of revenue farming was both a consequence and a cause of the agrarian crisis:
- Discrepancy Between Jama and Hasil: There was a growing gulf between jama (the officially assessed paper value of revenue) and hasil (the actual revenue collected). As hasil declined due to agricultural distress and rebellions, jagirdars faced severe revenue shortages.
- Short-Term Outlook of Jagirdars: Because jagir assignments were temporary and frequently transferred (typically every 3–4 years to prevent nobles from developing local roots), jagirdars had no long-term interest in the welfare of their territories. They sought to extract maximum revenue in the shortest possible time.
- Outsourcing to Ijaradars: Unable to manage their estates directly due to peasant resistance, many jagirdars outsourced their revenue collection rights to ijaradars in exchange for a fixed, guaranteed sum.
- Intensification of Peasant Exploitation: The ijaradar, having paid the jagirdar upfront, used brutal coercive methods to squeeze the cultivators, attempting to extract far more than the official jama to maximize his profit margin.