Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c6.s1.10

c6.s1.10

An important factor in the economic life of the people was the administrative machinery. It shared the fruits of peasant labour and employed industrial labour on a small scale. In its turn, it gave some sort of security for the peaceful pursuit of agricultural vocations and incidentally gave certain facilities for the transport of goods from one part of the country to another. On the whole, any big improvement in the method of production, a more equitable distribution of the economic wealth or a better adjustment of the economic position of the various social classes, was outside the policy of the State. On the other hand, as has been shown above, the State was interested in perpetuating the low standard of economic life of the masses of the people. The economic framework of society worked as best it could within the limits of its productive capacity. It involved division into classes, disparity of incomes and a general degradation of the status of the productive labourer, but all these social factors had been adjusted into the system, over which a structure of culture and artistic developments was raised which still endears itself to all sorts of social dreamers and political philosophers. There was no economic revolution, for none was wanted. The land was almost limitless in potential wealth and resources and equally vast in extent which set serious limits to administrative exactions and to the domination of the ruling classes as a whole. Finally, there was no established standard of comfort, a fact which made matters easier for the ruling classes.