This chapter discusses the standards of living of the ruling classes to the common people in India during sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Owing to the marked division of seventeenth-century Indian society into classes and strata with great differences in income, customs and patterns of consumption, it will be convenient to treat separately the standards of living of the peasantry, the city poor, the middle strata and the nobility. Famine and epidemics were two major scourges in the lives of the villages. The employment of large numbers of servants and attendants by the upper classes was a characteristic feature of Indian society of the time. The upper classes in Mughal India consisted of the nobles, the autonomous chiefs and rajas, and the wealthy merchants in the towns. There were many rich merchants particularly in the coastal towns who rivalled nobles in luxurious living. Mughal centralization led to the growth of a remarkable degree of cultural synthesis among the upper classes.