if not active, opposition to such remedies for willingness to take his share in the campaign against disease. Plans are required for the supply of serum in very large quantities; it may be that additional sub-stations to Muktesar will be called for. Again, the whole subject of training qualified veterinary surgeons in India must be examined afresh; for the needs of an expert staff of the dimensions we contemplate could not be met by continuing the practice of sending students to other countries to obtain a full training in veterinary medicine and surgery. There is thus much to be done before anything approaching adequate provision can be made for dealing with the diseases of Indian livestock. But the work is of a kind which can, indeed must, be dealt with in stages, if it is to be handled effectively, and we have already marked out the first stage for action. This is immediate recourse to the serum-simultaneous method of inoculation in combating outbreaks of rinderpest. Experience in Mysore has shown how much can be done with a staff hastily improvised and trained and what is possible in Mysore is not impossible in British India.

251. We now turn to the consideration of the manner in which the

ORGANISATION OF

THE VETERINARY

SERVICES.

(i) THE SUPERIOR

SERVICES.

enlarged veterinary services we contemplate should be organised. We would suggest that the chief veterinary officer in a province should be styled Director of Veterinary Services. We would further suggest that the present arrangement under which the Veterinary Department in the Punjab is under the administrative control of the Director of Agriculture should be terminated. We are unable to regard an arrangement under which the head of one. technical department is in charge of another as a satisfactory one. The additional work which will be thrown upon directors of agriculture by the recommendations we make elsewhere in our Report furnishes an additional reason for making the Veterinary Department in the Punjab independent of the Agricultural Department. We consider that the principal of the veterinary college should stand in the same relation to the Director of Veterinary Services in his province as does the principal of an agricultural college to the Director of Agriculture. The posts both of Director of Veterinary Services and of principal of a veterinary college should be scheduled as selection posts outside the cadre of the provincial veterinary services. It is most important that the holders of these posts should be officers of ability and strong personality as they will be responsible for carrying out the large expansion of veterinary activities which we propose. If officers of the requisite capacity for these posts are not forthcoming in the veterinary department of a particular province, we think that the local government should, in the first instance, turn to the veterinary department of another province. If suitable officers cannot be spared from any of the provincial departments, the local government should, we considér, be prepared to recruit an officer from outside the country.

Both the present heads of the veterinary departments in the provinces and the principals of the veterinary colleges receive pay on the ordinary

time scale plus a personal allowance, unless they are in the selection grade, in which case they receive the pay of that grade only. We consider that the pay of both posts should be reconsidered and that a scale should be fixed commensurate with the responsibilities which will attach to them if our recommendations for the expansion of veterinary activities are accepted.

Under the Director of Veterinary Services, there would be deputy directors in charge of circles. In present conditions, all the major provinces, except Bombay, are divided into such circles, which vary in number from two in Bengal and Bihar and Orissa to six in Madras and the United Provinces. These are in charge either of members of the Indian Veterinary Service, an all-India service, or of the provincial veterinary services, except in Assam, where they are in charge of veterinary inspectors. Recruitment for the Indian Veterinary Service, as for other all-India services working in the transferred departments, has now ceased and the duties of that service will ultimately be taken over by the new superior provincial veterinary services. The main change in the present system involved in our proposals is that they provide for a qualified veterinary surgeon for each district and, in these circumstances, we consider that it will be sufficient if each province is divided into two or three circles only, each of which would be in charge of a deputy director who would be a member of the Indian Veterinary Service, so long as any member of this remains in service, or of the new superior provincial veterinary services. We suggest that an appropriate scale of pay for these services would be the existing scale of the Indian Veterinary Service. We contemplate that vacancies in it will ordinarily be filled by promotion from members of the provincial veterinary services, but direct recruitment should be resorted to whenever an officer with the requisite abilities is not available from this source. The duties of the deputy directors will be responsible, and care should be taken to appoint to these posts men who are in all respects well qualified for the work to be done.

So far as district work is concerned, the Provincial Veterinary Service in each province will consist of the qualified veterinary surgeons we suggest for each district who might be designated "district veterinary surgeons.' The primary duty of this service will be the control of epidemic diseases. While we recommend that provincial governments should aim at providing as many veterinary surgeons as there are districts in the province, we think it unlikely that at first these officers could always be stationed in the districts of which they were in charge. The headquarters of the district staff would be settled by the Director of the department, and would depend on local conditions. In the early stages of rinderpest control, while this disease was prevalent, veterinary surgeons would frequently be called upon to leave their districts, but, at a later stage, when epidemics were less prevalent, we hope that they would be able to spend the greater part of their time within their districts where there would be much for them to do. The work of the veterinary assistant surgeons would require inspection and guidance. The veterinary surgeon would

act as a consultant, helping assistant surgeons with difficult cases. The efficiency of the inexpensive service which we propose for enabling cultivators to get treatment for their cattle would depend largely on the qualification of the district veterinary surgeon. Moreover, in most cases he would be the only officer having experience in the treatment of other animals than cattle. For the provincial veterinary services, we consider that the present rate of pay, viz., Rs. 250 to Rs. 750, would be suitable. Complaints have been made of the difficulty of obtaining sufficiently well qualified candidates for these services and higher salaries have been suggested as the remedy. The crux of the matter appears to us to lie in the nature of the training required. It is natural that a student who has to meet the great expense and personal inconvenience involved in proceeding to Europe to qualify himself for employment and who, since the total number of appointments is small, has no certainty, in present conditions, that employment will be forthcoming, should expect a high initial salary when he does receive an appointment. If, however, training were provided in India and a large and expanding service, offering some degree of certainty of employment, were forthcoming, the position would be very different. In these circumstances, we consider that the scale we suggest should be sufficient to attract suitable candidates, provided that a good training, qualifying candidates for admission to the service, is given in this country. Any higher scale would make this service so expensive as to check the rapid expansion which we consider so important. We deal with the question of training in paragraph 257 below. The safeguards which we recommend in our chapter on The Agricultural Services, paragraph 556, in regard to the recruitment, discipline and conditions of service of agricultural officers are equally desirable in the case of veterinary officers. 252. The subordinate veterinary services employed in district work (ii) THE SUBOR- ordinarily consist of veterinary assistants who are, DINATE VETERINARY for the most part, lent to local bodies and of a smaller number of veterinary inspectors, promoted from the ranks of the assistants, who are directly under the control of the chief veterinary officer of the province. In Madras, there are no veterinary inspectors. We do not contemplate the continuance of this grade under the proposals we have outlined above as their inspection work would, in course of time, be taken over by the veterinary surgeon in charge of each district. Men of ability, who now rise to be inspectors, could, in future, be encouraged to take the full veterinary qualification. Should the prevalence of disease in a province make this course necessary, veterinary assistant surgeons might be employed under district veterinary surgeons as inspectors. The enlarged staff of veterinary assistants would continue to work under local bodies. There is no question in connection with the organisation of the veterinary departments to which we have given more anxious consideration than the relations between the veterinary departments and local bodies in regard to these assistants. We have stated our view that the provision of veterinary aid for diseases not scheduled as contagious and for injuries should be the direct concern of local bodies, whilst the

SERVICES.

control of contagious diseases and the maintenance of the efficiency of the local staff should be the concern of the provincial governments. We have pointed out that this distinction is not clearly recognised in present conditions and that the veterinary staff in the employ of local bodies may be called upon to deal with outbreaks of contagious disease outside their own districts. We have mentioned the unsatisfactory character of the arrangement under which local bodies have no control over the veterinary assistants employed by them in regard to appointments, transfers, promotions, punishments and dismissals though, in some provinces, weight is given to their views in this respect. There is a considerable body of opinion which holds that local bodies would take a far greater interest in veterinary matters if they possessed full powers of control over the veterinary assistants working under them, as they would then realise that they were responsible for the success or failure of a veterinary dispensary or of the touring work done by an assistant. On the other hand, it has to be recognised that, if inspection and advice remained with the provincial veterinary services, the absence of any powers of control over the staff in charge of dispensaries or engaged in touring work might lead to a decline in efficiency. The funds at the disposal of local bodies are far from adequate to all the demands on them and, if the subordinate veterinary staff were handed over to their complete control, it is possible that the provision for veterinary aid might figure to an even smaller extent in their budgets than it does at present. Again, it can hardly be doubted that service in a provincial department is ordinarily regarded as offering better prospects and greater security of tenure than employment under local bodies. and that this consideration may weigh with those who are contemplating taking up veterinary work and may affect admissions to the veterinary colleges. There is also the risk that local bodies in remote or unhealthy districts might find it difficult to recruit men.

We are not in favour of the complete provincialisation of the veterinary departments as in Madras. In existing conditions, the considerations mentioned above appear to us to show that the disadvantages of an immediate transfer to local boards of complete control over veterinary assistant surgeons would outweigh the advantages. We look forward, however, to the time when local bodies will come to realise to the full their responsibilities for providing veterinary aid and when the control of all veterinary work, apart from that connected with the control and prevention of epidemic disease, can be entrusted to them. When that time comes, the assistance given by all local governments to this branch of veterinary aid would take the form of a conditional grant-in-aid which might be given on a pro rata basis. The change in the direction of transfer of greater responsibilities to local bodies in respect of veterinary matters can only be made gradually and the rate of progress will differ in different provinces. Once complete transfer is effected, we have no doubt that it would be made a condition on which a grant-in-aid would be given that local bodies should look to the provincial veterinary services for advice and inspection and should consult the directors of veterinary services in regard to all

appointments. In the meantime, we consider that the system at present adopted in some provinces under which local bodies are consulted in regard to appointments, transfers, promotions, punishments and dismissals should be extended to all provinces. We would suggest that, when an appointment of a veterinary assistant to a dispensary or for touring work under a local board is made, the Director of Veterinary Services should supply the local board with a panel of three or four names from which it might make a selection.

SURGEONS.

253. We contemplate that the provincial staff to be employed to control VETERINARY RESERVE contagious and infectious diseases should ultiCORPS OF ASSISTANT mately consist exclusively of qualified veterinary surgeons. It will, however, be obvious that, even if the full number of officers we have postulated were available, they would require more assistance with inoculation work than could be given by veterinary assistant surgeons in the affected districts when operations were being conducted on any large scale. The question therefore arises as to the manner in which this assistance should be provided when the complete control over the staff of veterinary assistant surgeons has been transferred to local boards. We think that the method likely to prove most successful would be to establish in each province a "Veterinary Reserve Corps" of selected veterinary assistants who could be called up for duty in any part of the province when an epidemic occurred. Experienced veterinary assistants would be selected for membership of this corps by arrangement with the local boards under which they were working. Selection for service in it should be regarded as a distinction and provincial governments should grant members of it personal allowances which might take the form of a fixed annual grant or of an addition of, say, ten to fifteen per cent to salaries.

A possible objection which may be raised to this scheme is that district boards would regard it with disfavour inasmuch as their dispensaries might from time to time be left without a veterinary assistant in charge. Where a single officer only is available for a dispensary, it would be undesirable to take him away except in cases of special urgency. We have, however, suggested that the aim should be to provide two or more officers for each dispensary, one or more of whom would be mainly engaged in touring work. Where such provision is made, the surplus officer or officers could be spared temporarily without difficulty for work on contagious disease. If disease actually occurred within the district itself, no question of freeing officers for local work would arise; and, in many cases, it could be claimed that no more useful service could be rendered to the stockowners of a district by its veterinary assistants than they would give by sharing in an attempt to prevent contagious disease from entering their own district from adjacent areas. Our scheme thus is that a veterinary assistant should be wholly under the control of a local board until called up to combat an outbreak of disease; he would not be called up for service outside his district unless, with the consent of the board, his name had previously been entered on the roll of the Veterinary Reserve Corps and he would return to his