PROHIBITION IN INDIA
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,-Mr. Chirgwin's interesting article on " Prohibition in India " paints a very rosy picture of the immediate benefits from the experiment in a limited area. All who have India's welfare at heart must hope that it is not an exaggerated one. There are several questions, however, which occur to anyone acquainted with the Madras Presidency.
Is prohibition being applied to all alcoholic liquors or only to the spirituous ones ? There is a world of difference between arrack and toddy, as great as that between cheap whiskey and good beer. The drinkers of arrack are very few in numbers compared to toddy drinkers. The former is in the main a townsman's drink, while toddy is the agriculturist's. Arrack is almost always harmful, while toddy is rarely so by itself, and, being a food as well as a drink, is in moderation helpful if not entirely beneficial in the very hard conditions in which most agricultural labourers work.
It is not clear how prohibition has improved the Salem water supply sufficiently to enable such an extended use of personal ablutions, and unless there has been an extraordinary fall in the price of cloths four months is hardly enough on the ordinary millworkers' wages to permit their indulging in such additions to their wardrobe as the director of the spinning mills depicts.
The Collector of Salem writes of thousands of homes rendered miserable by drink. Unless drinking conditions have got very much worse in the last few years, the poverty and distress he refers to are far from being solely attributable to the drinking habit.
As in this country, the drunkards and excessive drinkers are in the minority in India. The removal of the drink temptation will not go far to raise the condition of the wage-earners. It must be accompanied by a great improvement both in wages and conditions of employment if they are to have a life worth
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