HAPPY INDIA 25 



The subject which I have tried to study and on 

 which I desire to write is the simple economic problem, 

 India's wealth and India's poverty, India's health 

 and India's diseases. I consider that it is disgraceful 

 to the British Empire that there should be any large 

 body of its citizens who are continually hungry. 

 I do not think that the Government can be blamed 

 for occasional famines. When the monsoon fails 

 the crops fail, and there must be great hardship 

 and shortage of food, and I do not say that occa- 

 sional hardships are necessarily a great evil to a 

 great people, but if I am told that fifty millions 

 of the subjects of the Emperor of India never have 

 a full meal from the ist January to the 3ist December, 

 that when they have an occasional feast, as at the 

 marriage of a daughter or a son, that feast is paid 

 for with borrowed money, which leaves the father 

 in debt for the rest of his life, then I think that 

 something is wrong in the State, and that the first 

 effort of any ruler should be to see if it is possible 

 to improve the economic position of the people so 

 that under average conditions of climate the people 

 shall be well fed, well clothed and well housed, 

 and live in sanitary conditions which give them 

 the enjoyment of good health. These are the first 

 conditions of national welfare. 



If I were the Governor-General of India, I should 

 not bother about Tibet or the Pamirs of the North- 

 West, neither should I trouble the Ameer of Afghan- 

 istan nor feel the least bit anxious about Persia, 

 but I should try first of all to see if the resources 



