Economic and Administrative Problems

The number of amirs and their ranks or mansabs had increased sharply over time; there was little land left to be distributed among them as jagirs. Aurangzeb tried to solve the problem of acute shortage of jagirs or bejagiri by showing enhanced income from the jagirs on record. But this was a short- sighted measure as the amirs tried to recover the recorded income from their jagirs by pressurising the peasantry. So both the amirs and the peasantry were antagonised. Then there were the wars, the luxurious lifestyles of the emperors and amirs alike, the reduction in khalisa land, all of which burdened the state. The result was that the expenditure of the state much exceeded its income.

There was, moreover, no significant scientific and technological advance that could have improved a stagnant economy. The once flourishing trade did not enrich the empire’s coffers even as the inroads by European traders grew along coastal India.

These economic and administrative problems only multiplied following the death of Aurangzeb. The empire had become too vast to be efficiently administered by a centralised system when the rulers were weak and incompetent.