The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c9.s3.6

c9.s3.6

However, on a study of the records of medieval times, when autocracy was the order of the day, we find that corruption was quite well-grounded, and people and the government were unabashedly cheated. Cheating of the people and the government are almost synonymous. In the fourteenth century too, those who cheated the people could not rest at that, and they took every opportunity of defrauding the government whenever an opportunity presented itself. One such opportunity came when Muhammad bin Tughlaq introduced his famous token currency. Another, when he struck upon the novel (now commonly practised) idea of having large-scale farm cultivation. An area of about 45 miles square (30 *krohs*) was set aside for intensive farming in which not a patch was to be left uncultivated at any time by changing crops constantly. A hundred *shiqdars* were appointed to supervise the project. They promised to cultivate thousands of *bighas* of land and also to reclaim waste land. Each one of them received fifty thousand *tankahs* in cash as advance (*sondhar*) from the State. But they turned out to be greedy and dishonest persons. They cheated the government, squandered the money on personal needs and did not care to cultivate the allotted area. In this way the State lost not less then 70,00,000 *tankahs* in all. Of the advance not even a hundredth or a thousandth part could be recovered and the avaricious *shiqdars* embezzled the whole amount.⁴⁵ And all this callousness was there about a measure which had been undertaken to ameliorate famine conditions.