ABSTRACT
The ‘old Indian’ lays blame on the ’policy of mingled laissez-faire and obstructiveness’, a curiously apt reminder of how Britain derided ‘interference’ (supplying rice) while its civil servants excelled at dragging their feet in response to calamitous conditions. The awful sufferings which the famine, now raging in India, is inflicting on a great part of its population, recalls to one’s memory Boccaccio’s brief yet terribly comprehensive description of the plague in Florence. The great pestilence of the fourteenth century spread ‘like fire when it comes in contact with large masses of combustibles,’ till its victims were daily numbered by thousands. Government after government has recognized the truth of the views [that irrigation works are the answer to famine]; and government after government has neglected to carry them into operation. The inaction is defended on the ground that the surplus revenue is not large enough to enable Government to construct such works.
