Q.Read the passage given and answer the questions: i. Why do you think the maliks were able to use the power of the state to advance their own interests? ii. Why did labourers have harsh working conditions?
The maliks used state power to advance their own interests because they controlled land revenue collection and local administration, while labourers faced harsh conditions due to their lack of legal rights and the state’s reliance on forced labour.
The passage you’ve referred to likely describes the Mughal or a similar pre-colonial Indian state, where the maliks (landholders or revenue collectors) occupied a pivotal position between the imperial authority and the peasantry. The state, whether under the Mughals or regional kingdoms, depended on these local elites to collect taxes, maintain order, and supply military contingents. In return, the maliks were granted considerable autonomy over their territories, including the right to keep a portion of the revenue and to exercise judicial and police powers. This arrangement meant that the maliks could use the state’s coercive machinery—its soldiers, tax collectors, and legal authority—to extract more from the peasants than officially required, to settle personal scores, or to expand their own landholdings. The state, being far away and often weak at the local level, had little choice but to turn a blind eye, as long as the maliks delivered the expected revenue and loyalty. Thus, the maliks effectively privatised state power for their own enrichment.
This pattern was not unique to India. In many pre-modern empires, from the Roman to the Ottoman, local elites acted as intermediaries, using state authority to build personal power bases.
As for the labourers—whether they were peasants tilling the malik’s personal lands, artisans in state workshops, or forced labourers on public works—their harsh conditions stemmed from a fundamental imbalance of power. Labourers had no legal or political rights. They could not bargain for wages, refuse work, or leave the land without the malik’s permission. The state itself often demanded begar (forced labour) for building roads, forts, or irrigation canals, and the maliks could compel labourers to work on their own fields without payment. Additionally, the revenue system was designed to extract the maximum surplus from agriculture, leaving peasants with barely enough for subsistence. In years of drought or flood, they had no buffer—no savings, no state relief—and fell into debt bondage to the malik or moneylender. The harshness was not accidental; it was the deliberate result of a system where the labourer’s only value was as a producer of surplus for the state and the elite.
The key point is that the maliks’ power and the labourers’ suffering were two sides of the same coin: the state’s need for revenue and control was met by empowering local elites, who in turn crushed the labour force to maximise their own gains.
In short, the maliks could use state power for personal gain because they were indispensable to the state’s revenue collection, while labourers endured harsh conditions because they had no legal protection and were seen merely as tools for production.
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