HAPPY INDIA 33 



Karachi, he would speak of the Peace which we 

 maintain in India, and compare the condition now 

 with that when Northern India was fighting with 

 Central India and Central India was fighting with 

 Southern India, and he would show that in the time 

 before the British made the railways, when the 

 monsoons failed in one part of India it was im- 

 possible to convey to that part the superabundance 

 of the crops in another part, whereas now with the 

 aid of our railways we could always supply the parts 

 where the monsoon had failed with sufficient food 

 to keep the people alive. He would say that in 

 ordinary years the people of India produced more 

 corn than they could consume, which they exported 

 to European countries, and with the price they got 

 for that were able to import articles of great value, 

 but that when there was a famine year the export 

 of corn was stopped and the surplus of the district 

 where there had been plenty of rainfall was diverted 

 to the district that was short of food, and thus we 

 have mitigated the terrible destruction of life and 

 ruin of the people to which they were subject 

 in times of famine in former days. And in all 

 these statements he would be telling the simple 

 truth. 



On the other hand, the critic would observe that 

 it was unfortunate that after the people, the cultiva- 

 tors of the soil, had had many years of favourable 

 monsoons when there was plenty of rain, they had 

 not been able to save sufficient money to enable 

 them to buy food supplies from other parts of India 



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