THE INDIA OF TO-DAY.*
IT may be doubted whether the Anglo-Indian who has spent half a lifetime in the study of Indian problems will eve; welcome the conclusions of even so conscientious and benevo- lent a cold-weather visitor to India as Mr. Meysey-Thompson. Probably his most lenient judgment of a book necessarily based on random inquiries and passing impressions will be that it might have been worse. Perhaps some trace of this attitude may be detected in what Mr. Meysey-Thompson himself says of the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, with whom be spent a memorable and instructive day or two. •'I cannot help contrasting," he says, "the modesty with which he put forward his views, deeply versed as he was in his subject after occupying for many years responsible positions in the country, with the cocksure statements and theories of those who can•have at most only a very superficial grasp of the circumstances." It may be that Sir Denzil Ihbetson's modest); was intended to inculcate caution.
It can, however, be said of Mr. Meysey-Thompson that he kept an open mind; that he was as willing to learn from shikaris and ryots as from the Governor-General, the Com- mander-in-Chief, and other official magnates with whom it was his privilege to associate. Amongst other valuable facts, be learnt the existence and the functions of the district officer, and discovered that British India is divided into two hundred and sixty-seven districts, each of which has its own Treasury, Budgets, Law Courts, and separate administrative existence, collecting its own taxes, and capable, if need be, of dispensing with external aid save in the matter of military force. 'There are even border districts the officer in charge of which has at his disposal the services of a battalion of military police, equipped and armed as if it were in name, as it is in fact, a part of the King-Emperor's Army. Mr. Meysey-Thompson has learnt that the spread of rapid means of communication, the growth of centralized control, the inevitable ambitions of controlling and appellate officers, together with other causes, have diminished the authority and influence of the district officers, who in a simpler time were held responsible for main- taMing law and order among a population with which they were in intimate and familiar contact. In modern India the work of administration is conducted more and more in the English language, and its results are criticized by the English- speaking Indians at headquarters. The district officer remains, and is still in close and often affectionate relations with the cultivating classes who form the bulk of the population. But his prestige and authority are grievously impaired, arki much of his time is wasted in reports, returns, explanationa for the benefit of the secretariats, which tend more and more to become the real rulers of the country. It is the secretariats
and the supervising authorities generally who represent Government in the new Councils and are the butt of the interpellations and criticisms of non-official members. Hence
well-meant attempts at decentralization fail, since they do riot reach as low as the real administrative unit, the two hundred doLTotefs.....135 E. C. IdersepTliompeon, Loiiien; exit*,
and sixty-seven districts, which range from a population of three millions to half a million or less.
Whether the old authority of the district officer, the true pater patriae of the cultivating classes, can be restored, or should be restored under existing conditions, is a difficult question. But it is well that we should realize how and why the system of administration in India is being altered, and in what respects the new methods further the ambitions of the new school of indigenous politicians and lawyers. Of these and other such matters Mr. Meysey-Thompson speaks with the authority and intelligence of an old Parliamentary band. His remarks on local public works and their finance are of special value and interest.
But Mr. Meysey-Thompson's book is not merely a treatise on current administrative problems ; it is also the record of a successful and agreeable cold-weather tour. It treats of sport and social experiences in a style which is none the less agreeable because it is simple and unpretentious. The author's optimism is manly, and based upon a just confidence in the manly qualities of his countrymen in exile. His book is one which will give pleasure as well as instruction to those who continue to believe that the present administration in India, if capable of improvement like all other human institu- tions, is by far the best government that the peninsula has ever known, kiiadly, jest, and impartial, an administration of English gentlemen filled with a high sense of public and private duty.
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