Economy of the Kingdom of Mysore

The Wodeyar dynasty ruled the Southern Karnataka region until Indian independence in 1947, when the kingdom was merged with the Union of India.

The agrarian population consisted of landlords (gavunda, zamindar, heggadde) great and small who tilled the land by employing a number of landless labourers.

[2] It was due to the availability of these landless labourers that kings and landlords were able to execute major projects such as palaces, temples, mosques, anicuts (chack dam) and tanks.

In this system, when work ceased to exist in a land, the labourers were free to find employment elsewhere, but were bound to come back whenever required by the landlord.

Instead, the labourer was required to pay back the principal amount only if he wished to free himself permanently from his bond to the landlord and seek employment elsewhere.

[9] Unhappy with the loss of their traditional revenue system and the problems they faced, peasants rose in rebellion in many parts of south India.

This class consisted of four occupational groups; the trading and merchant class consisting of agents, brokers, shopkeepers; the landlords created under the Zamindar system and Janmi system of land tenure; the money lenders; and the white collared lawyers, teachers, civil servants, doctors, journalists and bankers.

[14] The 19th century brought about the so-called "backward classes movement", a direct result of the hegemony in employment (in educational and government sectors) by the wealthy few and the loss of jobs across southern India due to the Industrial Revolution in England.

For example, Bangalore was known to have had a flourishing textile industry prior to 1800 and the gunny bag weaving business had been a monopoly of the Goniga people, a state of events that changed significantly when the British began ruling the area.

[16] This economic fallout led to the formation of community based social welfare organizations such as the Lingayat Vidyavardhakara Sangha in Dharwad in 1883, the Vokkaligara Sanga in Bangalore in 1906 and the Praja Mitra Mandali in Mysore in 1917.