Education. 



350 



April, 1912.] 



asked the Principal of the College to re- 

 commend them a scientific expert in 

 dyeing. Without any hesitation the 

 Principal recommended this young Indian 

 lad, and the firm, after making further 

 enquiries, engaged him at a salary of 

 £200 to £300 a year. That is not a very 

 princely salary atfter several years of 

 hard work, but the point of the story is 

 that the employment of this young 

 man in England by an English firm is 

 in no way a " prelude to the industrial 

 development " of India, and is a very un- 

 satisfactory return for the money which 

 the Indian taxpayers have lavished on 

 the boy's education. 



If anyone ask why this Indian boy 

 finds employment in England and not in 

 India, the answer is very simple. In 

 England industrial development has 

 reached a high level, and therefore there 

 is a demand for scientifically trained 

 experts ; in India industrial undertak- 

 ings of the modern type are extremely 

 rare, and must iemain rare until more 

 capital and more enterprise are forth- 

 coming. Industries are not started be- 

 cause a number of class-room trained 

 experts are clamouring for employment. 

 Before an industry can be started, 

 somebody must have the enterprise and 

 energy to organize its beginnings ; and 

 that somebody must either have capital 

 of his own, or else must be able to 

 persuade other people to supply the 

 capital required. These are the primary 

 essentials to the establishment of any 

 new industry, and, if they can be 

 secured, the remaining difficulties can 

 be faced with some hope of success. 

 But unless the spirit of enterprise ex- 

 ists and capital is forthcoming, nothing 

 can be done. In India there is very 

 little enterprise, and if capital exists 

 its owners decline to invest it in Indian 

 enterprises. Therefore, for the Govern- 

 ment to spend large sums on technical 

 education would be not only a waste 

 of the taxpayers' money, but a cruel 

 wrong to the boys who had been deluded 

 into acquiring knowledge for which 

 there was no market. The matter can 

 easily be put to a test. Let the Govern- 

 ment, before launching out on any big 



schemes of technical education, ascer- 

 tain how many firms there are in the 

 whole of India who want an expert 

 chemist or an expert dyer or any other 

 kind of expert that it is proposed to 

 turn out from the technical schools. 

 Let the Government further enquire 

 what salaries these firms propose to pay, 

 and to what extent they are willing to 

 employ Indians in place of Europeans.- 

 When this iuformationhas been collected 

 and published, I suspect that there will 

 be very little further demand for tech- 

 nical education on a wholesale scale. 



These considerations, of course, in no 

 way effect the altogether different pro- 

 blem of providing tution for boys who 

 look for employment in the subordinate 

 branches of industry or commerce. 

 There is certain to be iu the larger 

 towns a steady demand year in and 

 year out for skilled mechanics and for 

 clerks who can write shorthaud and 

 use a typewriter, and who have some 

 knowledge of the elements of account- 

 ancy. Doubtless the education author- 

 ities already have given attention to 

 these points, but when a native gentle- 

 man talks enthusiastically of the bless- 

 ings of technical education, he is evid- 

 ently thinking of something very 

 different from the training of clerks 

 and mechanics. He has in his mind 

 the conception that the sons of gentle- 

 men can be taught in school class 

 rooms how to become great captains of 

 industry. That is the wildest delusion. 

 Even in Europe the school-trained indus- 

 trial expert can, as a rule, only look 

 forward to a very modest salary as a 

 paid servant in some big firm. I am 

 told that in Germany first-class chemists 

 are to be had for little over £100 a 

 year. In India, there is not even this 

 outlet for the talents of the industrial 

 expert, and a boy who had devoted 

 precious years of his early life to master- 

 ing the technical details and scientific 

 principles of some particular trade would 

 find when he left school that, from the 

 point of view of earning money all his 

 time had been wasted. 



If it is asked— How then is India to 

 develop industrially ? the answer is ; She 



