Why did the colonial state see pastoral mobility as an administrative challenge?

Correct answer: Because mobile communities were hard to record, tax and control

The colonial state preferred people who lived in fixed villages because officials could count them, record their land and occupations, collect taxes, and supervise them more easily. Pastoralists moved with their animals according to seasons, water, fodder, and weather. Their movement did not fit the fixed boundaries and registers that colonial administration tried to create. Therefore, mobility itself became an administrative problem, not because pastoralists were automatically disobedient or harmful.

Option A is correct because it includes the three main difficulties: recording mobile groups, taxing them regularly, and controlling their movement. Option B is wrong because pastoralists were not always forest officials. Option C reverses the relationship: colonial officials, not pastoralists generally, collected taxes. Option D is plainly opposite to their mobile way of life. Thus the answer follows from the conflict between seasonal movement and fixed colonial administration.