120 HAPPY INDIA 



many people, though that is bad enough, but that 

 they lower the physique of the survivors who live 

 in malarious districts, and make them weak and 

 unable to work ; and when they are not able to work 

 hard, they cannot earn enough food to eat, and that 

 makes them weaker still, and consequently a prey 

 to disease of every kind. Consequently it makes 

 their lives comparatively miserable and useless. 



I propose to deal with these diseases very briefly. 

 Cholera is always in India. Taking the ten years 

 ending 1919, the number of deaths in a year varied 

 from 280,000 up to 578,000. Cholera is caused 

 through drinking impure water. In the dry weather 

 the inhabitants often move from their regular huts 

 and camp on the bed of a dry river and get water 

 from holes dug in the sand. There are no sanitary 

 arrangements, and human excreta is all about. 

 Consequently the water gets polluted, and the result 

 is cholera. I was told by an English engineer in 

 charge of an important province that he could stop 

 cholera in any district whenever he liked by putting 

 up a water-works by which the inhabitants could 

 have a supply of pure water all through the dry season. 

 I asked him why he didn't stop all the cholera in 

 the province. He said it was simply a question of 

 money. The Indian Government would not spend 

 more money on these works than it had to spare in 

 any particular year. If he was to stop cholera over 

 the whole country he would have to borrow money 

 for that purpose. 



This contrasts strangely with the method pursued 



