A History of Agriculture in India v2.c74.s10.1

v2.c74.s10.1

As regards the role of the *zamindars*, Moreland states that while some of them performed valuable economic functions in helping and supporting their peasants, others were parasites pure and simple. The political and social environment was unfavourable to the fruition of the idea of agricultural development. The high pitch of the revenue demand, approximating to the full economic rent, could be justified from Islamic texts by anyone who might care to take the trouble, but its actual motive was to be found in the needs of successive administrations and their officers; and its influence was necessarily increased by the miscellaneous exactions, prohibited from time to time but recurring regularly after each prohibition. The direct result was to take from the peasant whatever he could be made to pay, and thus to stereotype a low standard of living; but in addition there was the further effect of requiring the peasant who was making money to conceal his good fortune from everyone outside the village, and perhaps even from his neighbours. Thus the normal position was a contest between the administration and the peasants, the former endeavouring to discover and appropriate what the latter endeavoured to retain and conceal—an environment in which agricultural development could not be expected to make much headway.⁴