Describe village polity and economy of medieval Deccan.

Answer:

The village was the basic unit of life in the medieval Deccan: a largely self-sufficient community with its own hereditary officers and a subsistence agrarian economy that supported the whole superstructure of the state, from the local deshmukh right up to the distant capital.

Village polity

• Administration rested on hereditary officers, the headman (patel or deshmukh) and the accountant (kulkarni or deshpande).
• Village servants, the balutedars, provided essential artisan and menial services in return for customary shares of the produce.
• The village enjoyed considerable autonomy in its internal affairs, disputes and revenue collection.
• The panchayat regulated communal matters and resolved local disputes.

Agrarian economy

• Agriculture was the mainstay, with land classified by fertility and revenue assessed as a share of produce.
• Cultivators included the mirasdars, or hereditary landholders, and the uparis, or temporary tenants.
• Revenue was collected in cash or kind and passed upward through the deshmukhs to the state.
• Most daily needs were met within the village, giving it a strongly self-sufficient character.

Revenue administration above the village

• Above the village stood the pargana, with the deshmukh and deshpande as hereditary district officers.
• Malik Ambar in Ahmadnagar introduced systematic measurement and revenue assessment.
• Shivaji later curtailed the deshmukhs' power and assessed revenue directly through his own officials.
• The chauth and sardeshmukhi levied on neighbouring territory supplemented Maratha resources.

Interlinkages and stability

• The balutedari and jajmani-type arrangements bound artisans, servants and cultivators in customary exchange.
• Village land was held by the community, with waste land available for extension of cultivation.
• This dense web of hereditary right and obligation gave the village remarkable stability.
• It endured through dynastic change and provided the durable base of the later Maratha state.

The medieval Deccan village was thus a resilient, self-regulating unit knit together by hereditary office and customary service. Its polity and economy, later studied through detailed Maratha records, formed the durable foundation on which successive states, including that of the Marathas themselves, ultimately rested.