314 



INDIA. 



431,230 rupees were in the Government railroads, 

 443,002,150 rupees in the lines built by the state 

 and leased to companies, 523,116,040 rupees in 

 the guaranteed railroads, 154,825,880 rupees in the 

 lines of assisted companies, 150.719,150 rupees in 

 the lines belonging to native states, 17,590,320 

 rupees in the lines belonging to foreign govern- 

 ments, 2,897,540 rupees in coal-mines, and 5,102,- 

 710 rupees were the cost of surveys. The capital 

 raised by the guaranteed companies amounted to 

 47,237,405 sterling, and the capital raised for 

 state lines leased to companies was 29,892,027. 

 The gross receipts of ail the railroads in 1899 were 

 294,318.280 rupees, compared with 274,642,350 in 

 189.8. The number of passengers carried in 1899 

 was 1(52.944.807, paying 92,258,550 rupees; tons 

 of freight. 40.598.520, paying 192,374,860 rupees. 

 The operating expenses were 140,194,090 rupees, 

 being 47.63 per cent, of the gross earnings. The 

 net earnings amounted to 154,124,190 rupees, pay- 

 ing 5.36 per cent, on the capital of lines in opera- 

 tion. On May 1, 1901, the total length of open 

 railroads was 25,125 miles, 4,037 miles having been 

 added since the beginning of 1898. The number 

 of passengers rose to 175,000,000 in 1900, and the 

 freight traffic to 43,500,000 tons. The Govern- 

 ment for the first time realized a surplus revenue 

 over expenditure, which amounted to 8,375,000 

 rupees. Expenditure is still heavily weighted by 

 the terms of the contracts with guaranteed com- 

 panies, whose lines will gradually be taken by the 

 state as these contracts expire. One important 

 line, the Great Indian Peninsular, was absorbed 

 by the Government in 1900. 



The number of letters, postal cards, and money- 

 orders that passed through the post-office of Brit- 

 ish India during the year ending March 31, 1899, 

 was 431,012,691; newspapers, 32,122,502; parcels, 

 3,040,236; packets, 23,039,424. The revenue was 

 19,140,670 rupees; expenses, 17,254,130 rupees. 



The telegraph-lines belonging to the Indian Gov- 

 ernment had at the end of 1899 a length of 51,769 

 miles, with 160,650 miles of wire. The number of 

 paid despatches during the fiscal year was 5,448,- 

 600; receipts, 10,808,200 rupees; expenses, 10,269,- 

 600 rupees. 



Legislation and Government. The reforms 

 with which Lord Curzon seeks to mark his ad- 

 ministration are a sound frontier policy which is 

 not the policy of inaction followed by Lord Law- 

 rence, nor the forward policy of later viceroys; 

 the constitution of the best form of administra- 

 tion for the frontier districts; the remedying of 

 the abuse of frequent transfers of civil officers 

 under the rules regarding leave, good administra- 

 tion being impossible without continuity, intelli- 

 gent administration with local, knowledge or 

 popular administration without personal interest, 

 hence a reform of the leave rules will tend greatly 

 to mitigate the evils resulting from the constant 

 shifting of officers before they have acquired the 

 confidence of the people; the correction of the 

 abuse of interminable writing which divorces the 

 officer from his proper work, the tyranny of the 

 pen being more to be feared in India than tyranny 

 by the executive authority; the reform of the cur- 

 rency system, which seems already to have 

 brought stability; the railroad policy, railroads 

 being the most unifying agency in India and a 

 blessing to the country, for arguments that they 

 carry off food supplies and raise prices involve 

 a fallacy; irrigation that will insure for each 

 province the sources of water-supply best suited 

 to its demands, which the Government is ready 

 to proceed with as soon as engineers investigate 

 and report whether it shall be by canals, tanks, 

 or wells; the remedying of agricultural indebt- 



edness, a problem which meets the Government 

 everywhere in increasing volume and seriousness, 

 a beginning being made with the Punjab land 

 alienation bill which a part of the native press 

 has censured, although it was based solely on 

 considerations for the public interest; the reduc- 

 tion of the telegraphic tariff between India and 

 Europe to Is. a word, which will probably come 

 when Great Britain is mistress of her own prin- 

 cipal lines of cable communication; the new rules 

 to govern the relations between soldiers and na- 

 tives, in framing w T hich the civil and military au- 

 thorities were in perfect accord, their object being 

 to draw closer the bonds of friendly feeling be- 

 tween the two races. 



The report of the Indian Famine Commission 

 approves the basis of the famine code of 1880 and 

 holds that the more liberal wages and freer exten- 

 sion of gratuitous relief recommended by the com- 

 mission of 1898 tended toward extravagance, and 

 the object of saving life and giving protection 

 from extreme suffering may be better secured if 

 care be taken to prevent the abuse and demorali- 

 zation which are the consequence of ill-directed 

 and excessive distribution of charitable relief. 

 The last famine resulted in the loss of 4,000,000 

 head of cattle. The expense of relief exceeded 10,- 

 000,000, and in May,, 1901, the Government still 

 had 400,000 persons on its hands. To induce peo- 

 ple to return to their ordinary vocations the relief 

 commission under Sir Antony Macdonnell raised 

 their tasks and ceased the distribution of gratui- 

 tous relief to the able-bodied after the break of 

 the monsoon. The early monsoon in 1901 was not 

 abundant, though sufficient to enable agricultural 

 operations to be canned on ; the late monsoon was 

 almost a failure. The number of persons who died 

 during the famine year in British India was 1,000,- 

 000, three-fourths of them in the Bombay Presi- 

 dency, and in native states 250,000. The terrible 

 mortality in Gujerat was partly due to an epi- 

 demic of cholera, that in Ajmere to virulent au- 

 tumnal fever. The mortality both from cholera 

 and starvation could, however, have been kept 

 within bounds if the local officers had distributed 

 gratuitous relief as soon as the existence of fam- 

 ine was recognized and had seen that all re- 

 ceived it who \vere entitled to it when it was dis- 

 tributed. The liberal distribution of relief saved 

 a great number of lives in the Central Provinces 

 and kept the rate of mortality low in the autumn. 

 Village relief will in the future be the chief means 

 of using famine labor. The Government will 

 not adopt a lower scale of wages unless the local 

 administrations concur. The commission does 

 not advise the Government to relinquish any of 

 the land revenue, which is considered low com- 

 pared to the share of the produce to which the 

 Government is entitled by the tradition of the 

 country. It is estimated at from 5 to 7 per cent, of 

 the average value of the crops, exceeding the lat- 

 ter figure only in some parts of the Punjab and 

 in the richer districts of Bombay, where 20 per. 

 cent, is collected by the Government. In- seasons 

 of deficient crops the people have to borrow to 

 pay their land tax in cash because they spend 

 their income in favorable seasons. Elasticity in 

 the collection of land revenue is recommended, 

 also the establishment of agricultural banks, the 

 encouragement of land improvements, expenditure 

 of state funds in irrigation works, and attention 

 to measures for increasing the knowledge and 

 thrift of cultivators. The Government has al- 

 ready studied the development of village credit 

 associations, and a wide extension of irrigation 

 works. The question of irrigation extension has 

 been studied in each province by engineers spe- 



