Polaj

Topic: Mughal Agrarian Society and Economy · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Peasants, Zamindars and the State"

Meaning

Polaj was land that was cultivated every year, crop after crop, and never left fallow (never rested without a crop). It was the best of the four classes of land that Akbar's revenue system recorded in the Ain-i-Akbari. It matters because the Mughal state fixed its revenue demand by land class. Polaj was the most regularly farmed and most dependable land, so it was the base of the state's claim on the peasant.

Explanation

Background: why the state sorted land into classes

• Land revenue was the economic mainstay of the Mughal Empire. The state ran on what it took from farming.
• The state first collected facts, then assessed and collected revenue.
• Step 1: officials gathered details of the land and what it produced.

• Step 2: they fixed the jama (revenue assessed on paper) and then collected the hasil (revenue actually received).

• Land is not equally fertile, and it is not farmed equally often. A single flat rate would be unfair and hard to collect. So Akbar's administration sorted land by how regularly it was cultivated.

• The whole system was run from the daftar, the office of the diwan (finance minister).

Main features: polaj among Akbar's four classes

Class	How often cultivated
polaj	every year, never left fallow
parauti	left fallow for a short time so the soil could recover
chachar	fallow for 3–4 years
banjar	uncultivated for 5 years or more

• Polaj is at the top of this scale, because it was farmed without a break.
• Only polaj and parauti were further graded good, middling and bad. Chachar and banjar were not graded this way.

How it worked: fixing the revenue on polaj

• The state's share was one-third of the medium (average) produce. According to the Ain, it was worked out like this:
• Officials added together the produce of good, middling and bad polaj land.
• One-third of that total gave the medium produce (the average yield).

• One-third of the medium produce was taken as the royal dues.

• The collection method depended on the region.

• In north India, polaj fed into zabt, a cash-rate system. Under it, Todar Mal surveyed crop yields, prices and area cultivated over ten years. A fixed cash rate was then set at about one-third of the average produce, turned into a cash value [3].
• Land was measured in bighas (a unit of land area), and crops were classified and priced [3].

• Where measuring was hard, share-of-crop methods were used, such as kankut (estimating the grain yield) or batai (dividing the harvested crop in front of everyone).

• The amil-guzar (revenue collector) was told by Akbar's decree to prefer cash, but to let the peasant pay in kind (in grain) if they chose.

Results and limits

• Polaj gave the state a stable revenue base. Land farmed every year produced a dependable yearly demand.
• What the state claimed was more than it could collect.
• On paper, the state recorded land, classes and rates in fine detail.

• In practice, local conditions limited what it could collect. This is the jama–hasil gap.

• Classification did not mean the state measured all land. Forests were left unmeasured, so the survey stopped at the edge of the fields.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: 16th–17th centuries, under Akbar (Mughal Empire).
• Region: the scheme was imperial. But measurement-based assessment such as zabt worked best in north India, and was not workable in Gujarat and Bengal [3].
• Key people:
• Akbar, who ordered the classification.
• Abul Fazl, who recorded it.

• Todar Mal, Akbar's finance minister, who ran the land and price surveys [3].

• Main evidence: the Ain-i-Akbari of Abul Fazl, the third volume of the Akbarnama. Its third section records the methods of land survey and the duties of Todar Mal [2][4]. The Ain also gives province-by-province totals of cultivated and cultivable land.

• Later continuity: Aurangzeb's order of 1665 asked for cultivation records village by village and peasant-wise (asamiwar). This shows the state still wanted detailed land records long after Akbar.

Don't confuse with

• Parauti — also graded good/middling/bad like polaj, but it was left fallow for a short time. Polaj was never left fallow.
• Chachar and banjar — the two lower classes. Chachar was fallow 3–4 years; banjar was uncultivated for 5+ years. Neither was graded good/middling/bad.
• Zabt — a method of assessment (a cash rate based on Todar Mal's ten-year survey) [3]. Polaj is a class of land that was assessed under such methods.
• Jama — the revenue assessed on land such as polaj. It is not the land class. It is also not the hasil, which was the revenue actually collected.

Prelims Hooks

• Akbar's four land classes, from most to least cultivated: polaj → parauti → chachar → banjar.
• Polaj = cultivated every year, never fallow; banjar = uncultivated 5 years or more.
• Only polaj and parauti were graded good, middling and bad. Trap: chachar and banjar were not.
• Royal dues = one-third of the medium (average) produce.
• The classification is recorded in the Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl, the third volume of the Akbarnama [2][4].
• Forests were not measured in the Mughal land survey.

Mains Points

• Polaj shows how the Mughal state turned farming into revenue it could plan for.
• Land was sorted by how often it was cultivated.
• Polaj and parauti were graded by fertility.
• A fixed share (one-third of medium produce) was then applied.

• This shows a centralised, data-driven system under Akbar and Todar Mal [3].

• Strong on paper, limited in practice. The detailed classes in the Ain, and later Aurangzeb's 1665 asamiwar order, show the state's maximum claim. The jama–hasil gap, and the failure of zabt in Gujarat and Bengal [3], show that local conditions limited what the state could actually collect.

• The burden fell on the peasant. Polaj land, farmed every year, carried a regular yearly demand. The push to pay in cash made peasants sell grain in the market. This links land classification to the spread of money in the rural economy, and to peasant distress during recurrent famines.

Related concepts

• Mughal land revenue system
• Jama
• Hasil
• Amalguzar
• Kankut
• Batai
• Khet-batai
• Lang batai
• Classification of lands under Akbar
• Parauti

Read more

• The land revenue system