whatever may be the happy accidents that have facilitated the work, the results are there for all to see, and should prove stimulating to all who have the welfare of the cultivator at heart. THE VILLAGE AND THE 425. Next to making some one individual resident in the village itself (v) LINKS BETWEEN responsible for advising the villagers where to go for advice and how best to utilise their own skill and resources in improving the amenities of the village in their spare time, we attach most importance to linking the village with the social life of the towns. It would be a tragedy if, during the period of transition, which, we believe, lies before the Indian cultivator, he received no effective assistance from the educated elements in the country. The work started by the Servants of India Society in the Bhil country in the Panch Mahals district of Bombay, and by such societies as the Poona Seva Sadan Society, to which reference has already been made, is full of promise for the future. But, in the main, the attention of social workers has so far been directed to the towns and their vicinity rather than to the country. We are of opinion that work done by societies has a great advantage over individual effort, however devoted. Continuity of policy and steady pressure over a long period are required if permanent results are to be obtained. For some time to come, it will probably be necessary for the State to interest itself in the work that any societies may start in rural areas. The problem of reaching even a fraction of the 500,000 villages in rural India is so vast that, until these societies increase in number and acquire strength and the self-confidence which success inspires, they will require official encouragement and advice. SITIES. UNIVER 426. The influence for good which the universities can exercise over (vi) THE rural development is, we think, very great, and in our opinion, they have a definite obligation to use that influence. For universities necessarily draw a large proportion of their students from country districts and they should recognise the obligation of instilling in country students an ideal of home service. There are two directions in which the universities can render most valuable assistance; in regard to such technical matters as economic surveys of social conditions and, secondly, in imbuing rural communities with ideals of leadership and of service. The work of the Board of Economic Enquiry in the Punjab, which we describe below, and the economic studies of rural conditions both by official and private investigators which have been published indicate the vastness of the field which remains unexplored and the lack of that precise information without which it is impossible to formulate a sound policy for dealing with such a problem as the burden of indebtedness. Valuable economic data in regard to this and kindred subjects are to be found in government records, more especially in the reports of settlement officers which are a mine of information on many aspects of rural life, and, as we recommended in paragraph 536, Chapter XVIII, bona fide investigators should be given every facility for studying these. There has been a very marked advance, in recent years, in the statistical methods of handling material such as this and it is essential that investigators should be skilled in these methods and that their investigations should be carried out on an ordered plan and in a systematic manner. The universities might themselves initiate and organise economic surveys of this character and the InterUniversity Board appears to be admirably fitted to arrange an agreed programme. Of the part that universities can play in encouraging in the villages a spirit of self-help and progress we shall have more to say in our chapter on Education. (vii) THE CASE FOR ECONOMIC ENQUIRY. 427. The rural reformer will be handicapped by the lack of readily available information as to details of village life and by divergent views on what ought to be readily ascertainable facts; for instance, outside the Punjab, there is no exact information as to the size of holdings actually cultivated per cultivator, nor as to the precise extent of subdivision and fragmentation; there is very little information as to mortgages of agricultural land or of unsecured debt, and practically none as to the extent to which hereditary cultivators, holding direct from the State, as proprietors or ryots, are being reduced to the status of tenants under moneylenders who have bought up their rights. For the systematic promotion of the welfare and prosperity of the agricultural population, exact and detailed information is required of the forces at work tending to produce a decline or an improvement in their economic condition; and it is difficult to frame remedial measures in the absence of accurate data on which the probable effects of such measures could be calculated. Outside the Punjab, there has, apart from a few special studies, been no attempt to survey, village by village, the causes perpetuating poverty or obstructing efforts to promote prosperity. In that province, a Board of Economic Enquiry was formed in 1919, and it has already issued a series of studies sufficient in variety and quality to indicate the great potential value of such permanent machinery. As at present constituted, it is a non-official body; its members are both officials and non-officials interested in economic studies; it is practically dependent on a government grant for funds. This grant is paid to the credit of the Board in the Imperial Bank, so that the Board is free from financial rules except one requiring an annual audit. The funds are mainly devoted to the pay of investigators and the cost of publication of their results. Owing to the increase of work, the secretary now receives a small allowance, but the members are honorary workers. Investigators are carefully selected for their personal fitness for the particular inquiry which the Board has decided to undertake; they are regularly supervised by a member of the Board or by someone specially fitted by experience and knowledge for this work; their results are examined by the Board and every effort is made to secure accuracy and reliability. It is hoped that as experience is gained, the value of the publications will grow; they have already attracted notice throughout India and are beginning to claim attention abroad, and the foundations have been laid of a Bureau of Rural Economic Research. The advantages to be gained from such a board have already been brought to the notice of other provinces by the Indian Economic Inquiry Committee, and we agree that the establishment in all provinces of a permanent institution on similar lines would prove of value. PUNJAB CENTRAL RURAL COMMUNITY 428. We are much attracted by the rural community movement which has recently been started in the Punjab. The Central Rural Community Board, the personnel of which is at present predominantly official, is linked with a rural community council which (i) DESCRIPTIVE. has been set up in each district of the province. The membership of these councils, in contrast to that of the central board, is predominantly non-official. Each council is assisted in its work by the attendance of representatives of the various departments concerned with rural development, namely, educational, agricultural, veterinary and co-operative officers. The Rural Community Board is financed by Government and its chief functions are to distribute funds to the councils and to provide literature. The intention is that each district community council should co-ordinate the propaganda work of all the development departments. With this end in view, lantern lectures are organised for the villages and some councils have fostered an interest in natural history through the circulation of charts. The Rural Community Board has also defrayed the cost of preparing a film on co-operative subjects. The councils have considerable freedom in expenditure. The Community Council in the Gurgaon district, for example, has subsidised dramatic societies in the villages. The secretary of each district council is usually the local district inspector of schools in the employ of the district board and touch is thus maintained with the local administration. Neither the Rural Community Board nor the councils have any concern with village administration, but the councils especially are naturally brought into contact with it at many points in the course of their activities, which are, however, of a purely advisory character. 429. How far this organisation may be suited to the needs of other provinces has yet to be ascertained. It (ii) CONCLUSION. makes considerable demands on the public revenues and on the time of a good many public officials. Time alone can reveal the practical efficiency of these councils in terms of the work done and the cost involved. As in the case of other associations, such as the taluka development associations in Bombay and agricultural associations elsewhere, the work of the councils is reported to be uneven. But the council system certainly combines the advantages of both the official and the private type of organisation. It is more elastic than a purely official organisation can be. A direct grant-in-aid from Government to village dramatic societies might possibly evoke criticism if made by the Minister on the advice of officials only. The inclusion of officials in the organisation, on the other hand, secures continuity of policy and enables agreement with the general aims of the public departments charged with the development of rural areas to be more easily maintained than would be possible if the composition of the Board and councils were purely non-official. The movement will, in our opinion, gain in power for good if it develops a women's side to its activities. A start might be made by establishing, in a few selected villages, an institute for women which would form a centre for educational and co-operative activities as well as for the mother and infant welfare work to which reference has already been made. The existence of such an institution in a village might remove the present obstacles to the employment, in the village school, of women teachers. So far as we are aware, no other province has an organisation of a similar character and we think that the experiment in the Punjab deserves close attention and consideration. Rural community councils are exactly the kind of bodies to be entrusted with the type of work which is being done in the Gurgaon district by an officer of the Indian Civil Service. In promoting such work, the rural community councils will, in fact, become a link between the village and headquarters and will be the medium through which the headman of the village or the "guide" stationed in it will obtain assistance for the villagers in cases where they cannot help themselves. SOCIETIES. 430. The problem of eradicating causes of poverty and encouraging BETTER LIVING everything that makes for rural welfare can be tackled more directly by the organisation of local public opinion in favour of particular measures. In order to secure permanency and create a centre of resistance to lapse, there are advantages in working along co-operative lines. The Better Living societies which are rapidly becoming popular in the Punjab illustrate what can be done. Wherever there is evinced any effective desire to reform old ways, such a society can be organised to strengthen it. Restriction of expenditure on marriage and other ceremonies, the promotion of temperance, or any other reform may be adopted as the object, and due observance is secured by the power to fine recalcitrants conferred upon the committee by the by-laws. Caste is a common and useful basis, but success must depend upon the extent to which the women can be recruited to the cause. They appear to be responding well to the teaching of a special inspectress, but women of all countries are fond of ornaments and jewels, and to wean them from this form of extravagance is not the work of a day. LITIGATION ARBITRATION. AND 431. In all discussions of rural indebtedness, litigation finds mention as one of the chief causes of borrowing. Most litigation in India is of a very trivial nature and a larger proportion of the cases are not really disputed. In 1925, over one million civil suits were valued at less than fifty rupees each, and no less than 1,581,000 (including the foregoing) or 65 per cent were under one hundred rupees. In the same year, 1,645,000 or 77 per cent of the suits decided were settled without contest or without trial. Of alleged crimes not cognisable by the police, nearly 600,000 complaints were unproved and 600,000 persons were proceeded against without being convicted. The figures are repeated year by year with remarkable steadiness, are regularly commented upon and as regularly fail to evoke effective remedy. Of 2,760,000 civil suits before the Courts, only 14,472 were decided by reference to arbitration. The evils resulting are widely appreciated and attempts to reduce them have been made by the revival of panchayats and other means. The Civil Justice Committee in 1925 discussed the history of village tribunals on pages 105 to 117 of their Report; and recommended that "in all the provinces, endeavour should be made to develop this system so as to withdraw all simple money suits of smaller value from the munsiffs and small cause courts." They further considered that exclusive jurisdiction should be given to these tribunals " as and when experience shows it will be safe." The matter appears to us to be of such fundamental importance to rural welfare that we make no apology for inviting urgent attention to the following extracts from this valuable Report. "In the course of our investigation, we were told in the various provinces by some witnesses that communal differences and factions are in the way of any further extension of the jurisdiction of these tribunals. There is some force in this objection, but it is, in our opinion, overstated. In villages where there are common interests to be protected, common services to be rendered and common funds to be administered, it is idle to ignore the common life of the village in which the necessities of neighbourhood have held their own or have prevailed against the divisions of caste. Those who have organised co-operative credit societies assure us that caste or communal differences do not in any way affect the success of the panchayats or committees of those societies which are composed of individuals of different castes as well as those who are outside the pale of caste. Whatever may be the operation of the factious spirit in the matter of social or religious institutions, it has not, so far as we understand, affected the success of the co-operative movement in which members with unlimited liability work in harmony, and punctually and promptly discharge their duties. Indeed, wherever these co-operative societies are constituted, the tendency is for the panchayats to adjudicate on local disputes and determine local quarrels and they do these things promptly and satisfactorily. In some cases, as time goes on, it may become possible to provide, by way of safeguard, that in the election of panchayats the principle of proportionate representation may be employed. Among the other advantages of village courts is the fact that they are close to the residence of the parties. The expense of litigation in them is negligible as pleaders are not allowed and witnesses have not to be brought from a long distance. There is not the same difficulty in seeing that the processes are duly executed and the fact that parties are speaking before their fellow-villagers in their own village makes for a more easy determination of the truth.” A further development in the Punjab has attracted our notice and we describe it also in the words of the Civil Justice Committee. |