Elections in India
Two announcements were made last Tuesday which are of good augury for political progress in India. Lord Wavell is to vis:t London for consultations with the Government, and general elec- tions for the central and provincial legislatures are to be held as soon as possible. Thus all India is invited to prepare for a re- sumption of full political life, and to do so in an atmosphere immensely improved by the Viceroy's efforts to bring Indian leaders into an interim Government, even though those efforts were un- successful. Indian politicians are once more given a chance to grasp the opportunity open to them, if they will take it, to prepare for a system of self-government in the fullest sense of the term. The provincial elections, even with a limited franchise, will bring demo- cratic machinery once more into action, and provide a needed test of the real strength of the different political and commercial associations. It is to the interest of all the parties to organise themselves for this political trial of strength, and con- centrate their attention on the real problems of India and the tasks that await its rulers ; and the Cabinets which will be formed in each of the provinces will be gaining experience and discovering new problems, social and economic, which sooner or later will be seen to be at least as important as communal differences. Moreover, it will be for these provincial legislatures collectively to determine the character of an all-India Assembly which will ultimately have the duty of creating the con- stitution of a self-governing India. The legislatures worked well down to 1939. They should work well again.
