11.1The office of dewan
The dewan (chief minister) was the pivot of Mysore's administration. The line runs from Purnaiah (1799–1811) through C. Rangacharlu, who convened the Representative Assembly; K. Seshadri Iyer (1883–1901), who oversaw the Kolar Gold Fields and the Shivanasamudra hydroelectric scheme; Sir M. Visvesvaraya (1912–1918); and Sir Mirza Ismail (1926–1941).[1]
Under these administrations Mysore acquired a reputation as India's best-governed princely state, and was described in that period as a 'model state'.[2]
11.2Revenue and the agrarian order
Revenue rested on ryotwari settlement after the nineteenth-century surveys, replacing earlier farming of revenue to intermediaries. Tanks (kere) remained the backbone of irrigation until the Krishnaraja Sagar dam across the Kaveri, completed in 1932 to Visvesvaraya's design, transformed the Mandya–Mysore tract into a sugarcane and paddy belt.[3]
11.3Court, army and symbols
The kingdom minted its own coinage from Kanthirava Narasaraja I's kanthirayi fanams onward, kept a household cavalry and, after 1799, a small state force alongside the subsidiary British garrison. The royal insignia — the Gandabherunda, a two-headed mythical bird — was inherited from Vijayanagara usage and remains the emblem of the Government of Karnataka.[4]
The annual Dasara durbar, in which the maharaja held court on the golden throne, functioned as the kingdom's central political ritual, binding chiefs, officials and subjects to the crown.[5]