Abstract Effective governance, regardless of historical period, is reliant and enabled by efficient communication and timely information flow. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj established this very organised system of administration and communication with concrete communication networks and intelligence in the seventeenth century. Even with the limitations of available technology, his administration was able to transmit military, financial, and administrative information quickly across a geographically dispersed and diverse region. This research paper focuses on the nature, structure and effectiveness of communication networks and information flow based on Shivaji Maharaj Swarajya and in some ways acts like a pre-modern (Indic) political governance model. Drawing on secondary historical material bakhars, gazetteers, colonial writings, and modern historical analyses the study illustrates how messenger systems, fort-based communication nodes, intelligence units, and decentralised administration facilitated faster decision-making, thereby facilitating crisis response.
Gaikwad et al. (Sat,) studied this question.