This is helping the capitalist and killing the Farmer. No lands have been reserved by the Government as open pastures for each village. Consequently it has become uneconomical to keep herds of milch cattle, this has led the farmer to adulterate his ghee with hydrogenised oils. If people could be helped by grants of large tracts of lands as pastures all over India, the home industry of ghee making would pay better than khaddar. They would have plenty of milk to drink. It is better to go nude but well fed. When they are well fed, khaddar making certainly can be an additional advantage and the women folk could spin like old Eve, and the poor masses could again throw up some coppice of life.
The very foundation of the society and the Government the Indian tiller is being sapped. The permanent settlement system in Bengal has wreaked havoc. The Taluqdars of Oudh and the United Provinces are a kind of ransacking “permanent settlement of Bengal”. The Taluqdars are the middle men between the tillers and the Government, They overtax them and overwork them. Practically the middle class which should be consisting of the tillers and the farmers in this most agricultural country in the world, as we happily yet find a little in the Punjab, has practically disappeared in Bengal, in Bihar and in the United Provinces. I am afraid it is also fast disappearing from the Punjab. Consciously or unconsciously the Government has helped the rise of men of the type of the late Sir Ganga Ram in the Punjab, who are engines of destruction of the real middle class of wealth creative labourers who form the back bone of all nations of the world. And why have such men made millions? Because the Government is so hopelessly devoid of true experts. The experts of the Government gaped like wax toys in utter astonishment finding men like Sir Ganga Ram succeeding in lift irrigation which they had not even imagined as profitable.
Thus, when the flood is sweeping on the very foundation of the Government and society, the farmer and the tiller of the soil, will you sit to define the rights of the people or first save them from death?
The economic condition of the Indian farmer can be improved by the future Indian Constitution siding with the farmers and the tillers of the soil and not with the capitalistic combines and influences working in India or in England. Real improvements in Indian agriculture would come through the Constitutions and special Legislations and not through the so called agricultural experts till the economic condition of the farmer goes up to a certain standard. The Agricultural expert is of very little use to him. The application of modern agriculture knowledge which is so far advanced and has become popular knowledge in other countries is a matter of propaganda for a long time yet in India. This propaganda reaches home through commercial concerns better than through these huge and luxurious Imperial departments of the Government of India. The very first thing is to abolish the Imperial Science Services and reorganise the Scientific Research. The Government Services should be reduced and expenditure on the remaining few and essential few must be cut down to very minimum, The Japanese Prime Minister is getting less pay than that of an ordinary Deputy Commissioner of India!
All salaries of the Government services form a part of the general plunder of the farmer and the tiller on whom the only addition to services, the class of lawyers, the Government contractors and suppliers should be considered parasites living on the revenues of the country. As said above, the Government servants and this class of people constitute an artificial middle class in India who keep up a show prosperity. They are consumers and not the producers thereof All the fire work of prosperity is being displayed at the grim cost of the Farmer’s body and soul. A contractor who may not be able to earn by his own power even one hundred a month does manage by some fluke to make hundreds of thousands from the Government. The Government muddles up things when they find themselves being looted in broad daylight. For example, they start stores purchase department, not knowing that this service would add another middle man to the numerous middle men between the Government and the manufacturers. So any remedy made out by the Government is generally worse than the disease. The Government is run on files which are mostly very clean and well written | All is well with the files, but the broad daylight waste is rampant.
Again the centralization of all commercial concerns… the Railways, forests, store purchase, construction, building’s and roads…as Imperial services and departments is hopelessly costly and inefficient. The bulkiness of the country and its requirements needed splitting up of work, giving commercial concerns to commercial people or to public companies. Failing to find English and Indian experts commercial boards of international experts of all nations can be asked to come in and run these concerns in a pure business like way. The policy of not bringing in foreign experts whenever required apparently either for political reasons or for reasons of jealousy to provide high billets only to Englishmen, tends to inefficiency that can never be found out by any Government however well-meaning and anxious for the welfare of the people. But there is something rotten in the State of Landmark, These very countrymen of yours manage things so well, say in Australia. One is driven to the conclusion split up India, reduce the cost of administration, and increase the efficiency of the men who work in the systems. Ring out policy of false prestige and waste and ring the Policy of Honest Work for the uplift and development of the people. The greater the number of Government services, the more costly and less efficient the general administration. The hugeness of office work takes away the genius of Government for the efficient management of the State affairs. To use a military metaphor, the present Government of India with its variety of Services is like the army in the trenches without the general staff behind. The Government looks like an emergency Government even in times of peace. The Government shows huge profits of these departments, but never considers at what comparative cost, It is wrong to be satisfied with the declared profits. Can those profits be made still more and at a very much less cost? Could not the land tax be decreased and the tillers of the soil given relief. What is the meaning of a policy that makes profits and spends on the consuming and unproductive artificial middle class?
In commercial departments, to lend the security and prestige of the Government service leads to excessive corruption as in the case of Railways and to neglect of duty and general inefficiency as in the case of the so called Research departments in India. Scientific Research should never be departmental. It should be surrounded by the whole world’s critical atmosphere where no third class mediocre be able to breathe, To make Imperial Departments of science and scientific enquiry is immoral, considering that no Government can well criticise its experts. Research should be handed over to the Universities. The Universities should not be merely examining bodies as they are at present in India but great cultural world centers. They should be not Indian but International in the greatness of their teachers and in the quality of their work done by their laboratories and their luminaries. The staff should rise or fall by their international reputation. The merest tyros are put in charge of the Research Departments.
My plea is that you should define in the new Constitution the real and limited function of the Government. Running business concerns as Imperial Departments should be discouraged. Scientific Research, as said above, of India should be under the Universities of fame, under the governance of men whose reputation for honest, scientific work is beyond doubt. What use is any Scientific Council of Government officials? The great men can bear no yoke. It is men of true scientific independence and of the unbiased scientific mind that shall control research. Surely not the mere file makers and Imperialistic experts.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 10, 1990
