The result is that the boards always try where possible to keep projected works within the Rs. 2,500 limit so as to retain the control of design and construction in their own hands.

§ 45. It will thus be seen that all these functions assigned to and paid for by the boards are in fact administered, for the most part, by government officials, in their discipline responsible to government departments. It must always be remembered that the chairman of the board is in all cases, at present, the district officer. It remains to be seen whether the system would work if once this nerve, which now connects the elective boards with the government departments, were severed. It is not unlikely that the dispensaries, vaccination, and veterinary stations would have to be staffed by officers subject to the discipline of the boards. The government officials would then be confined to inspecting and reporting to government how far the boards were discharging their functions. The normal means exercised by governments elsewhere in keeping the local authorities up to the mark, is by threatening to withhold grants-in-aid, or, in the last resort, by suspending the local authority in default and administering the district itself for a time.

C

MODIFICATIONS OF THE PROPOSALS OUTLINED IN III AS A RESULT OF THE FOREGOING ANALYSIS AND ALSO OF CERTAIN CRITICISMS RECEIVED

§ 46. In these pages and in IV we now have before us information in sufficient detail to see how far some of the proposals contained in III need to be revised in order to make them workable. I also have before me a mass of criticism from a number of correspondents upon these proposals. By several of these gentlemen it is weightedly urged that education, or at any rate primary vernacular education, ought to be included in the first group of functions transferred from the present provincial governments to the ministers of a legislature responsible to a provincial electorate.1 An important question arises whether the control of primary vernacular education is in practice

1 A commissioner notes: 'I see no reason why the control of vernacular education should not be separated from English education and transferred to the responsible government.'

separable from that of secondary and university education. In order to suggest an answer to that question, a study of the system of higher education will be necessary, which I have not yet made. In the meantime it will be useful for the purpose of the notes contained in this study to assume that, as the administration of vernacular schools has been delegated to local boards, the ultimate control of those schools (including of course the normal schools) could be separated from the control of the English schools and universities. For the purpose of discussion let us assume then that, as a temporary measure, the existing government could transfer the control of vernacular education to a provincial ministry, while retaining for subsequent transfer the control of the higher educational system.1

§ 47. From the foregoing analysis one feature clearly emerges. In the very imperfect list of functions printed on pp. 113-4 of III, the following functions are grouped together: Public Health. Local Government. Hospitals.2 Education. Dispensaries.

As observed on a previous page, these functions are so nearly 'interconnected that they would all have to be transferred together. Certainly that is true so far as vernacular education is concerned, for local government is simply the control of the local bodies which administer vernacular education. For the same reason it is true of dispensaries and also of such aspects of public health as are now administered by the boards.

§ 48. In this matter of dispensaries and public health we are faced by one of those curious administrative tangles

1 Parliament eventually decided, on the recommendation of Mr. Feetham's committee, to transfer education as a whole, including Universities, to ministers responsible to electorates, with the temporary exception of Calcutta.

2 A commissioner notes:

Hospitals. In each district one hospital and staff and the civil surgeon must be retained by the provincial government. The civil surgeoncies must be retained for the following reasons:

6

(1) They form the reserve for the army in time of war.

(2) They are required for medico-legal work.

(3) They are required for the jails and lunatic asylums.

(4) They are required for the medical treatment of the officers of the imperial and provincial governments.

'Each civil surgeon should have one good hospital under him in order to give him regular work and experience. If it cares to do so the Responsible Government could also open a hospital at head-quarters, but in many cases it would not be necessary.'

which arise from the centralized nature of Indian government. The district surgeons in charge of the hospitals, dispensaries, and sanitary services administered by the boards are subject to the chief inspector of hospitals as their disciplinary head. He, of course, is a member of the Indian medical service. In small stations the prison is also controlled by the district surgeon, who in that capacity is responsible to the inspector-general of prisons, who is also a member of the I.M.S. All prisons are controlled by members of the I.M.S.; but, where a prison is large enough to monopolize the time of one doctor, he does not combine with it the work of district surgeon, but is responsible only to the chief inspector of prisons. Now prisons must obviously be included amongst the very last group of functions which could be transferred to elective authorities. They would have to be reserved to the old executives until those executives ceased to exist.

The procedure suggested in paragraph 37 of III provides a way out of this difficulty. Under this procedure the new ministry would take into their service from the old executive so many members of the medical service as were required to administer the dispensaries and rural sanitation. This is but one illustration of the truth that the present machinery of government is adapted to a bureaucratic system which has its mainspring outside India. In establishing organs of representative government, those organs must be allowed to construct new machines out of materials selected from the old services, on principles which have regard to the fact that each self-governing organ has a separate mainspring in its own electorate. The new ministries could then decide for themselves whether it would be possible to continue the present system under which their officials do the medical work paid for by the boards, or whether the boards, as in other countries, should have separate officials of their own. It need hardly be added that the existing rights and privileges of officials would have to be guaranteed. Presumably ministers would have to offer terms good enough to induce Indian officials to transfer their services from the old government to the new. And, so far as the medical services are concerned, the process would be greatly facilitated by the fact that plenty of Indian officials are available.

The same conditions apply to the veterinary service administered by the boards. Here, however, the whole problem would be solved automatically if it were decided to transfer the agricultural department to the ministry

at the same time as the control of local government and vernacular education.1

§ 49. We now come to roads and buildings. So far as provincial trunk roads are concerned, these might either be retained by the old executives or handed over to the ministries together with the first batch of powers, as might seem desirable. Such roads are already scheduled and separated from those entrusted to the boards, and if desirable in the earlier stages of the process, the two sets of roads could easily be administered by two different authorities.2

§ 50. As to the public works department there can be no question of transferring the department en bloc. It goes without saying that a ministry to whom any important functions were assigned would have to organize a public works department of their own from the personnel of the public works department controlled by the existing provincial government. Under self-governing institutions a public works department is, like a printing and stationery department, correlative to any administrative authority of importance. It must have a body of constructional experts under its own direction, through whom to construct its buildings, roads, or any other part of its physical plant. Even the Government of India has such a department for the construction of the new capital at Delhi. Otherwise it depends upon the public works departments of the provincial governments. At Simla, for instance, the public works department of the Punjab looks after the government buildings. Such an arrangement is possible because provincial governments are merely local departments of the Government of India. Their mainspring is not in themselves but in the Government of India, and they are in every detail under its orders. But the moment you create a real organ of provincial self-government responsible to an electorate, its mainspring is in that electorate. For discharging the functions assigned to it, it is answerable to its own electorate and not to the Government of India, and it must therefore

1 A commissioner notes: The veterinary service forms a branch of the agricultural service, and it will be better to keep it with the agricultural service and take it away from the responsible government till the whole agricultural department is transferred."

2 A commissioner notes: 'I do not anticipate any harm from the transfer of the trunk roads. They have not the same importance from a military point of view since the advent of railways, and even if the responsible government allowed its roads to get bad, no irreparable damage would In this matter public opinion would probably keep the responsible government up to the mark.'

ensue.

have a public works department of its own through which to construct and maintain the physical works assigned to its care.

§ 51. Assuming then that my critics are right, and that the first group of powers transferred to elected legislatures should include vernacular education, we are now in a position to see what other functions would have to go with it. The following may be regarded as the smallest possible family of functions with which the experiment could begin :

Vernacular education.

Medical relief.

Rural sanitation.

The veterinary service.

Roads, other than provincial trunk roads.

A public works department.

Control of all other functions already delegated to boards, The general control of district and municipal bodies.

To these could be added at will, either to begin with, or later on, as experience proved that a fresh transfer of powers was justified, any of the provincial powers shown in § 33 of III and in § 5 of IV, that is to say—

Registration of deeds.

I

Local railways.
Forests.

Irrigation.

Higher education.

Famine relief.1

Provincial trunk roads and bridges.

1 A commissioner notes: In my opinion provincial roads and bridges should go with the other roads, and the veterinary service should remain with agriculture.

The remaining powers fall into the following groups:

Group 1 Agriculture

Co-operative credit

Veterinary

Group 2 Industries

Chiefly spending and administrative departments.

Y