HAPPY INDIA 47 



Indian gentlemen who wish to bring about reform 

 agree with Mr. Digby in this respect, and consider 

 that the money payments made to England for 

 pensions for civil and military services and for 

 interest on capital advanced, amounting in all to 

 something like 30,000,000 a year, is a drain which 

 India cannot afford, and is one of the chief causes 

 of the poverty of the Indian people. They, Mr. 

 Digby and those Indian gentlemen who sympathise 

 with his views, do not admit that India derives any 

 corresponding benefit for the money which they pay 

 to England for the pensions above mentioned or 

 for interest on the railways. I gather they do not 

 admit that the railways have been any benefit to 

 them. I know that some of them think the railways 

 have been an injury. It is, of course, difficult for 

 an English engineer like myself to admit such a 

 statement as that. One would think that railways 

 could not fail to be a benefit, reducing the cost 

 of transport, but the Indian says that this facility 

 of transport has caused the Indian farmer to send 

 his surplus corn to some seaport to get exported 

 to Europe, whereas before railways came he put it 

 into a granary, and had it to live upon when there was 

 a failure of the crops. To this, of course, the British 

 railway engineer would reply that he has no objec- 

 tion to their building granaries in which to store 

 their corn if it will keep for any length of time, and, 

 of course, the true answer is that the Indians would 

 not export their corn more than was prudent, unless 

 their poverty compelled them. 



