The Indian Deadlock Though The Times correspondent at Simla reports
a general conviction that hopeful developments in the Indian situation are at hand, there is no very obvious ground for his optimism. Lord Brabourne, just in transition from the Governorship of Bombay to that of Bengal, made a speech last week in which he reaffirmed the desire and intention of Governors to co-operate in every way with their Ministers, and Congress is evidently becoming uneasy at its continued, if deliberate, absence from office. Congress members of the Legislatures may find themselves in a real dilemma. The existing Ministries are framing practical advanced social reform programmes ; they cannot carry them, for as soon as the Legislatures are summoned- to pass the Budget the minority Ministers will be defeated by the Congress vote. But Congress then, faced with the alternatives of taking office with its own social reform programme, and of refusing office and thus frustrating the passage of any measures of social amelioration at all, will have a difficult choice to make, for the electorate has begun to be observant, and a party whose sole achievement is the overthrow of a Ministry which is attempting to benefit the masses can expect small sympathy from it. On that ground there may be some hope of a change of attitude, but the deadlock will not break itself, and no one as yet is taking any steps to break it.
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