Name the forerunner of Akbar? Highlight any two measures introduced
by him in his administration.
Answers
Previous Indian governments had been weakened by two disintegrating tendencies characteristic of premodern states—one of armies being split up into the private forces of individual commanders and the other of provincial governors becoming hereditary local rulers. Akbar combated those trends by instituting comprehensive reforms that involved two fundamental changes. First, every officer was, at least in principle, appointed and promoted by the emperor instead of by his immediate superior. Second, the traditional distinction between the nobility of the sword and that of the pen was abolished: civil administrators were assigned military ranks, thus becoming as dependent on the emperor as army officers.
Those ranks were systematically graded from commanders of 10 persons to commanders of 5,000 persons, higher ranks being allotted to Mughal princes. Officers were paid either in cash from the emperor’s treasury or, more frequently, by the assignment of lands from which they had to collect the revenue, retaining the amount of their salary and remitting the balance to the treasury. Such lands seem to have been transferred frequently from one officer to another; that increased the officers’ dependence on the emperor, but it may also have encouraged them to squeeze as much as they could from the peasants with whom their connection might be transitory. Politically, the greatest merit of the system was that it enabled the emperor to offer attractive careers to the able, ambitious, and influential. In that way, Akbar was able to enlist the loyal services of many Rajput princes.
Akbar’s reforms required a centralized financial system, and, thus, by the side of each provincial governor (sūbadār, later called nawab) was placed a civil administrator (dīwān, or divan) who supervised revenue collection, prepared accounts, and reported directly to the emperor. As a further safeguard against abuses, Akbar reorganized the existing network of newswriters, whose duty it was to send regular reports of important events to the emperor. Akbar also seems to have instituted more-efficient revenue assessment and collection in an effort to safeguard the peasants from excessive demands and the state from loss of money. But such efficiency could only have been enforced in the areas directly administered by the central government. That excluded the lands under tributary rulers such as the Rajputs and also the lands assigned for the maintenance of Mughal officers.