The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-01 00:00:00

REAL STATE OF INDIA.

ON the 10th of December last the Bombay
Association forwarded a petition to the Go-
vernment of India on the subject of Public
Works. It is a great deal toe long to admit of
our transferring it in extenso to our columns,
but we shall recapitulate some of the princi-
pal points which it contains. The Directors
are so perpetually assuring us that they
govern India entirely for the benefit of the
natives, that tir'ere can be no harm in laying
before the public what is said on►the subject
by the natives themselves. In doing so, we
shall quote as nearly as possible their own
words.

They begin then by saying that until very late
years (that is, until the attention of the
Legislature to the question was somewhat
aroused) British India had been left almost
entirely without assistance from Government
in respect of public works of utility, a few lines
of road for military purposes being all that it
was thought advisable for the State to con-
struct. Tanks, works of public utility, works
of irrigation, ports, and quays, were for the
most part neglected, as out of the province of
Government; and even the superb structures
whose ruins attest the benevolence of former
rulers, were allowed to fall into decay. They
go on to state that it must now be considered
as beyond dispute that all those works which
in England would be constructed by private
enterprise, or provided for by local rates, must
in India be undertaken out of its own funds.
This proposition is self-evident in the condi-
tion to which the Company have reduced
landed property iu India by the annihilation
of all independent proprietary rights, but it
would no longer be tenable if those measures
were taken to re-establish them which we
have so often pointed out. An independent
proprietary, with the consequent transfer
of the construction of public works to private
enterprise and local rates, is the only sure
foundation on which the prosperity of any
country whatever can be made to rest.
The petitions proceed to submit that, while
the population of Western India is vast, peace-
able, and industrious, its soil fertile, and its
productive capabilities great and various, its
resources from the want of the first necessi-
ties of a civilised country are almost wholly
undeveloped. With some trifling exceptions,
they observe that nothing has been done for
its improvement since it became a possession
of the British Crown. Its ancient construc-
tions, most of them the works of native and
so•called barbarous rulers, have for the most
part been suffered to decay, and nothing has
been substituted for them. Most of its rivers
are without bridges, and sand is left to choke
up their channels; its roads mere fair-
weather tracks, impassable after a day's rain ;
its ports are without piers or quays; its rich soil
is allowed to remain waste for the want of
irrigation. There is not a single port in
the Gulf of Cambay, to which converge all
the productions of the rich cotton districts
of Western India, that has the ordinary
accommodation for traffic that in other
countries would belong to a mere fishing
village A hundred years ago the mercantile
navies of France, England, and Holland, might
ride in the Taptu river—now the mouth of it
is, from the neglect of our Government,

195

almost entirely filled up. The condition of
Broach, a great cotton emporium, is still
worse than Surat. Gogo, Dundooka, and the
other so called ports of the Gulf of Cambay,
are in the same state, and will probably in a
few years be completely destroyed ; yet the
value of annual imports and exports at these
places ranges from three to four millions ster-
ling. The petitioners refer for a description
of the roads leading to these ports to the work
of the late Mr. MACKAY, the Commissioner
whom the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
sent out, and to whose complete accuracy they
bear witness, notwithstanding that by India-
house organs it has been so unblushingly im-
pugned. They further allege that it is con•
firmed by the statements of official persons in
India, notwithstanding their natural disin-
clination to tell their masters in Leadenhall-
street disagreeable truths. They also quote
from the Trade Circular of one of the most
eminent cotton firms in India, who state em-
phatically that nowhere else in the world
would this want of means of transit to, from,
and within regions of great natural resources,
be tolerated. Candeish, this firm says, yields
a gross revenue of nearly a quarter of a million
sterling, of which so small a pittance is allowed
for outlay on roads, that it has been insufficient
even to keep in repair those fair-weather tracks
which have from time to time been made.

Berar is said to have produced last year a
magnificent cotton crop, and the quantity
might be indefinitely increased, but it is use-
less, because there are no means of conveying
it to the coast. In America, they aver that the
cotton crop has nearly' doubled within the
last eleven years—in India it has been nearly
stationary for all that time. Why? it is asked.
Because in America eleven thousand miles of
railway have been made in the period, while
in all India there have not been completed
one hundred miles. It is impossible they say
to increase the cultivation of cotton if the
growers can find no sale for it, owing to the
want of means of conveying it to the coast.
With proper means of communication opened,
they state that, not only in cotton, but in
wool, hemp, linseed, and many other articles,
they would be prepared to compete with
America or any other country in the world.
Even the few miles of road that have been
made are stated to be utterly useless in a
commercial point of view, having been con-
structed solely for the convenience of the
Governors and their staff in their transit to
their country seats, or for the passage to
military stations of troops and military stores.
Yet even on these the expenditure has been
less than one per cent. of the revenue from
the period since we first obtained possession.
From the report of the Government's own
revenue servants, the result is shown to be
that the only effect of a good year to the far-
mer is to destroy his profits, the price falling
proportionately; while the surplus corn over
local consumption is inconvertible into cash
in consequence of his being unable to trans-
port it to a more distant market. The expen-
diture on works of irrigation, roads, bridges,
&c., over an area of nearly sixty-eight thou-
sand square miles, had been shown by a late
Parliamentary return to be less than forty
thousand pounds yearly for the four years
preceding 1851—an outlay not much exceed-
ing that made by the Municipal Board of
Bombay for roads, drains, and conservancy at
the capital, within a space not exceeding nine-
teen square miles ! Could a more forcible
contrast of the state of things in the interior,
compared with that at the Presidency capitals,
be by any possibility furnished ?
Such are the main allegations of this impor-
tant petition of the Bombay Association, a
paper well worthy the study and attention of
every public man. The remedies they propose,
though good in themselves, are however
wholly inadequate to meet the evils they
point out, which it is very clear can only be
combated by putting all India on the footing
of the Presidency capitals, by establishing
competent and incorruptible legal tribunals,
and a permanent well-secured property in the
land. These are what have really raised
Bombay to its present high state of civilisa-
tion and wealth. These are what induce its
public to lay out voluntarily in roads, drainage,
&c., for its nineteen square miles of area, as

196

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much as can he squeezed out of the Govern-
ment for the sixty eight thousand square
miles of district property which it retains so
jealously in its own hands. There are millions
of accumulated capital in India available for
investment in any place by which profit can
be realised ; but the people do not consider it
profitable to waste their fortunes in making
roads and other improvements to benefit the
Company's lands. In India, as at home, they
think it desirable to obtain a permanent title
to property before sinking their money in
giving to it a higher value. This it is that
induces them to leave the Mofussil to Nature
and the Company, while in Bombay itself a
rich Parsee has no hesitation in laying out
on lands and gardens and houses a hundred
and fifty thousand pounds. Let the tenure of
the sixty-eight thousand square miles of dis-
trict be made the same as that of the nineteen
square miles of Presidency, with a court
equally independent and honest to guard the
possessors against future resumption, and it
will be very soon found that there is as much
money available for improvements in the one
circle as in the other. How indeed could it
be otherwise, wheu soil, and climate, and
people, and habits, are within both circles
precisely the same?