Do you think that the economic measures introduced by the Sultanate rulers were beneficial to the common people as well? Illustrate with examples.

Answer:

The economic measures of the Delhi Sultans were designed principally to serve the state, its army and its capital. Some incidentally benefited the common people, but the burden of the system fell most heavily on the peasantry, so the gains were unequal and often temporary.

Measures that benefited the common people

• Alauddin Khalji's price control made grain, cloth and necessities cheap in Delhi.
• Punishment of hoarding and profiteering protected consumers from manipulation.
• Firoz Shah's canals from the Yamuna and Sutlej greatly extended irrigation.
• Firoz abolished some twenty-three vexatious cesses (abwabs) on the peasantry.
• He advanced taccavi loans for wells, seed and cattle and established a charitable department.
• Sarais, hospitals (dar-ul-shifa) and employment bureaux served the urban poor.
• New towns such as Firozabad, Hissar and Jaunpur created employment.

Measures that burdened them

• Alauddin raised land revenue to half the produce, the highest yet demanded.
• The grazing tax (charai) and house tax (ghari) extended the burden beyond the field.
• Price control was enforced by requisitioning grain from cultivators at low fixed rates.
• Barani records that peasants were left with nothing beyond bare subsistence.
• Muhammad bin Tughlaq's Doab enhancement during famine caused flight and revolt.
• The token currency experiment ruined those holding the debased coin.

Whom the measures were meant to serve

• Price control existed to maintain a large army on low cash salaries.
• The beneficiaries were the soldiery and the population of the capital.
• Rural intermediaries were crushed to reach the surplus, not to relieve the peasant.
• Measures lapsed when the ruler's purpose changed, as Alauddin's did after his death.

Assessment

• Irfan Habib emphasised that the system was designed for maximum extraction.
• Firoz Shah's measures were the most genuinely welfare-minded of the period.
• Even his relief was aimed at restoring the revenue base rather than at social justice.
• Benefits were concentrated in Delhi and the areas of direct administration.

Longer-term effects

• Monetisation and market exchange spread through the countryside.
• Firoz Shah's canals permanently extended cultivation in the Punjab and Haryana.
• Technological diffusion, the charkha and Persian wheel, raised productivity.
• These structural gains outlasted the reigns that produced them.

The economic measures of the Sultans therefore brought real but limited benefit to the common people, chiefly through cheap grain in Delhi and Firoz Shah's canals and remissions. As Irfan Habib demonstrated, their governing purpose was the maximum extraction of the agrarian surplus for military and imperial ends, so popular advantage was incidental rather than intended.