The box asks four questions. Take them in order — and remember the honest ending the book gives it: “Archaeologists also discuss these questions, and the answers are not always final!”
1. Who organised the work and gave precise instructions?
Nobody digs six rock-cut reservoirs by accident. Somebody had to decide where they should go, at what depth, and how the underground drains would connect them so that water flowed the right way. That means the city had:
- a planner or engineer who understood levels and slopes;
- supervisors who could direct hundreds of workers at once;
- an authority — a ruler, a council, or a body of officials — whose instructions people actually obeyed, year after year. Reservoirs like these take many seasons to build.
2. How were the workers paid, with no money?
Almost certainly in kind. The likely forms:
| Form of payment | Why it is plausible here |
|---|---|
| Grain and food | The chapter says the cities depended on agricultural produce arriving from villages daily, and that some large buildings were warehouses. A city that stores grain can pay in grain |
| Other goods | Cloth (they wove cotton), pots, tools, beads, bangles — all things the city's own craftspeople made |
| Barter and exchange | Trade “to exchange all sorts of goods” is one of the seven characteristics of a civilisation. Wages could work the same way |
| Shared duty for a shared benefit | Everyone in a dry region needs water. Some of the work may have been done as a community obligation, not as paid labour |
3. Was there a local authority for maintenance?
Very probably yes. Cleaning is the real proof of administration. Building something once can be done in a burst of enthusiasm; cleaning it every year for centuries needs a permanent body that assigns the job, checks it is done, and pays for it. The same argument applies to the covered street drains — a drain nobody clears blocks within a season, yet these drains served the cities for hundreds of years.
4. What does all this tell us about the ruler and the municipal administration?
| Clue | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| Six large reservoirs, connected by underground drains | Long-term planning and technical skill; an authority that could think decades ahead |
| Streets oriented to the cardinal directions; standard bricks and stone weights | Rules that applied across the whole city — a real administration, not just a strong man |
| Drains and wells serving ordinary houses | The administration worked for the common people too, not only for the elite |
| Same quality of construction for small and big houses | Power that did not show itself off — B.B. Lal's “well-balanced community … not of exploitation, but of mutual accommodation” |
| No palace, no royal tomb, no army, no weapons | Whoever ruled did not rule mainly by force or display. This is the great puzzle of Harappan history |