Appendices

APPENDIX A

Extract from an article by A. Yusaf Ali, a retired Indian Civil Servant, published in The Nineteenth Century and After for February, 1917:

“The Indian Income Tax brings within its net only 332,000 persons out of a population of 244 millions in British India, the exemption limit being as low as 66 pounds (that is $330). Only 13,000 persons have an income of 666 pounds ($3,330) or over in British India.”

The following remarks are made in regard to the Government policy of control of the price of wheat during the war:

“Government policy in the matter was directed towards two objects: (1) to divorce India prices, which by themselves would have been lower, from the world prices. (2) To secure the surplus of India’s bumper wheat production last year for lowering the prices of wheat in the United Kingdom. In 1915 the prices broke famine records and went as high as six seers for one rupee in a year when the wheat crops had been splendid and the prices would, in normal times, have been very low.”

Mr. Yusaf Ali gives the following figures about the military expenditure of the different parts of the British Empire and its proportion to the total Budget of Revenue:

Military Budget for 1913-1914

APPENDIX B

Extracts from an article by Mr. Manohar Lal, B. A. (Cantab), late Minto Professor of Economics in the University of Calcutta, published in the Indian Journal of Economics for July, 1916:

“The average income per head has remained the same (that is $10 a year) during the last thirty years and more. . . . It is a fact that deserves careful study at the hands of all students that with signs of growing prosperity everywhere, with an undoubted advance in the whole apparatus of industrial life, the average Indian income has remained stationary. How far this fact involves that a vast proportion of our population can have taken no share in the general urban rise in India, and in view of the undeniable fact of large increases in prices how far it probably has entailed some depression in the economic status of her masses — these are enquiries that must present themselves to every student of economics in the country, and thoughtful Indians have not been able to interpret their bearing in a sense favourable to the country’s prosperity.

“Poverty, grinding poverty, is a tremendous fact of our economic, and therefore national, position, and it is to the mind of the present writer an immeasurably more potent fact than even the ignorance and illiteracy that prevails among our masses. This poverty exposes us to the havoc of disease and pestilence, famine and plague and it makes advance at every step difficult.”

Mr. Manohar Lal then compares the food budget of an English workingman’s family, that of a railway carriage washer with that of an Indian field labourer as given by Mr. Keating, an Englishman, in his very careful work on rural economy in the Deccan and observes:

“It is a picture of literal starvation mentally, and all but so physically; it can represent the life of no unit of civilised humanity.”

Further on, summarising the present situation, he remarks:

“Indian population grows, her earning power per head is stationary, such increase in her industries as has taken place is nothing compared to the growth of her population. The inference is irresistible; life in India continues on the lowest plane, untouched by all the movements and progress that is in the air.”

APPENDIX C

How the Villagers Live in the Madras Presidency — An Article from the Tribune of Lahore of January 19, 1917.

In England and other European countries the study of the condition of the working classes has led to their improvement. A similar study of the condition of the Indian people is necessary to devise measures for their economic improvement. The Government were asked several times to hold such enquiries in villages exposed to frequent famines. But they thought that it would serve no useful purpose to do so. In England private individuals and public associations have aroused sympathy for the working classes and Government have readily adopted necessary reforms. It would be useful if similar work was undertaken by individuals and associations in India. A good example has been set in this direction by Mr. S. P. Patro, who read an interesting paper at the Madras Economic Association on the 11th instant. His Excellency the Governor presided. The enquiries were held in 15 villages of the Ganjam District and the places selected were those in which the conditions were alike as far as possible. The people living in the villages were asked certain questions regarding their income and expenditure as also their debts. And care was taken to prevent exaggerated or incorrect answers by verifications of facts supplied by others. After going through the details of assessment, population, number of agriculturists, the income of a typical family, the food consumed, etc., Mr. Patro found that in a particular village the budget of the ryot showed a deficit of Rs. 22-9-0 every year and it was not possible to obtain a full meal every day. Dealing similarly with a typical village in the Chicacolo division, Mr. Patro found that the annual income of a family of a typical zamindar, who had wet and dry lands, was Rs. 129-8-0, and that the expenditure, including cost of rice, oil, clothing, etc., was Rs. 181-8-0, leaving a deficit of Rs. 52 a year. For marriage and litigation the head of the family raised a loan of Rs. 380 in 1907 and discharged the same in 1913 by sale of rice and by living on inferior corn and the profits of rice-pounding. The family had full meals only from January to the month of May according to the statement of the ryot. In a zamindari village the annual income of a typical family was Rs. 316 and the expenditure Rs. 321-6-0 and there was a debt outstanding against the family. In another zamindari village, the income of a typical family was Rs. 786 and the expenditure Rs. 698-4, leaving a balance of Rs. 68 to the credit of the family whose affairs were conducted in a most economic way. That was not a profit, but it represented the wages which the members of the family earned for their personal labour on the land at Rs. 14 a head per year. On these facts Mr. Patro made the following remarks:

“I tried to place before you actual conditions observed in my investigation into some of the villages in the Ganjam district. The investigation commenced more than a year ago, and I do not attempt to discuss the many problems to which the studies give rise. Others will have to draw conclusions and advocate remedies. From the sketches it will be seen how the population is increasing and the actual cultivating owners are decreasing; how the holdings are split up, and the landless labourers are growing, how little improvement is made in agricultural methods and how little possibility there is for improving agricultural methods owing to the growing poverty, physical deterioration and indebtedness of the agriculturist; how the cultivation of the present holdings can never pay and the ryots are sinking lower and lower. The rations available for the agriculturist in some cases are poorer than the diet given to the prisoners in jails. That large number of agriculturists and labourers emigrated to Calcutta, Burma, Straits Settlements and other places is a common factor in all these villages. In the last named village about one hundred out of a population of about 878 have gone out in search of better wages and to work in non-agricultural work. There is therefore pressing need for full enquiry into the economic conditions of the agricultural population in this Province.”

These enquiries are very interesting and show the desirability of conducting similar enquiries in other provinces and districts. Punjab is not much different from Madras in regard to the land tenure and general conditions of the agricultural population. We think that the enquiries made by Mr. Patro are of particular interest to us and the fact that the people are sinking lower and lower in poverty is particularly distressing. That some of them receive poorer diet than the jail population is a statement which should suggest the adoption of urgent remedies. Mr. Patro, it will be seen, does not want Government to accept his conclusions but invites further enquiries of the kind. Throughout India educated people are pressing for the reform of land laws so as to improve the condition of the masses, and experienced men have shown how deeply the ryots are sunk in poverty and indebtedness. Mr. Patro’s enquiries go to confirm these opinions and to contradict the official theory about the prosperity of the peasantry. In the typical village homes whose family budgets were examined the people had an annual deficit in three out of four cases — a fact which cannot but show the pitiable condition of the agriculturists. His Excellency the Governor expressed his appreciation of the enquiries made by Mr. Patro and admitted that the facts ascertained must be fairly accurate, though no general conclusion could be drawn from them alone.

APPENDIX D

WAGES IN INDIA

The reports and publications of the Government of India do not give sufficient data to enable one to fix the exact position of the wage earner in the national economy. In the latest report on prices and wages the only retail prices given are those of food grains, only one kind of dal (pulse) and salt. The report gives wholesale prices of staple articles of export and import, but they are of no help in fixing the wage earner’s budget. As regards wages there is also a great deal of confusion. For some districts the wages are given up to 1906, for others up to 1907, 1909, and 1912. In some cases the wages given are monthly ones; in others weekly or daily, rendering it impossible to make comparisons. However, some approximate idea of wages can be gathered from the following tables compiled from the above mentioned report. The Indian currency unit is a rupee. This is divided into 16 annas. Roughly three rupees are equal to an American dollar and an anna is equal to two cents. We give the approximate equation in dollars of the Indian rupee in the table. The wages are given for the various towns mentioned in the report, omitting all reference to Burma.

Postal Runners. Only in one division, that of Sindh, do the postal runners in the service of the Government get one dollar a week. In others they ordinarily get two-thirds of that amount. In some places they receive even less than that. These are the figures for 1914.

Postmen. Postmen, who are also in the employ of the Government and are supposed to be literate, get salaries ranging in amount from $.90 to $1.33 per week (1914).

Railroads. In the railroad service (1914) we find the following figures:

Average daily wages paid on canal work, foundries, and workshops: from 7¢ to 16¢ for skilled labour, ordinarily below 7¢ for unskilled labour.

Weekly wage paid in a paper mill in Bengal, 1914: Blacksmiths and Machine men $2.50.

Weekly wages in a brewery in the Punjab:

Weekly wages paid in an army boot factory at Cawnpore:

Average weekly wages in a cotton mill in Northern India, 1914:

Average weekly wages in a cotton mill, Bombay:

In the sizing department the wages range from $.84 to $4.00 a week, the sizer and the weaver getting from $1.33 to about $4.00, all the other hands getting about one-half that amount.

Average weekly wages paid in a woollen mill in Northern India, 1914:

Unskilled labour: $ .66

Skilled labour:

Card room:

Mule room:

Finishing department:

Weaving department:

Engineering department:

Average weekly wage in a jute mill in Bengal, 1914:

Weekly wage in a Cawnpore Saddlery Establishment, 1913-14:

There has been no increase in these wages since 1879 in the case of some of these workmen, and none since 1889 in that of others.

WAGES IN GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHMENTS

In government offices most of the menials, ushers, and orderlies are paid from $.50 to $1.00 a week.

A Police Constable in 1914, got from $.66 to about $1.00 a week. An officer in the Police Department started with a weekly salary of about $1.00.

Primary School Teachers in some cases start with a salary of $.66; in others they get from $.82 to $1.00 per week.

Clerks in Government Offices start with $1.33 a week.

The disparity between the salaries of the lowest servants and those higher up, and between Indian and European governmental employés may better be studied from the figures given in the next appendix.

APPENDIX E

THE COST OF ADMINISTRATION IN INDIA, JAPAN, AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The President of the United States, who ranks with the great royalties of the world in position, gets a salary of $75,000 without any other allowance. The Prime Minister of Japan gets 12,000 yen, or $6,000. The Viceroy and the Governor General of India get 250,000 rupees, or $83,000, besides a very large amount in the shape of various allowances. The cabinet ministers of the United States get a salary of $12,000 each, the Japanese 8,000 yen, or $4,000, and the Members of the Viceroy’s Council $26,700 each.

In the whole Federal Government of the United States there are only three offices which carry a salary of more than $8,000 a year. They are:

All the other salaries range from $2,100 to $8,000. In the State Department all offices, including those of the secretaries, carry salaries of from $2,100 to $5,000. In the Treasury Department, the Treasurer gets $8,000, three other officers have $6,000 each. All the remaining officials get from $2,500 to $5,000. In the War Department there are only two offices which have a salary of $8,000 attached to them: that of Chief of Staff and that of Quarter Master General. The rest get from $2,000 to $6,000. In the Navy Department besides the President of the General Board mentioned above, the President of the Naval Examination Board gets $8,000 and so does the Commandant of the Marine Corps. All the rest get from $6,000 downwards. In the Department of Agriculture there is only one office carrying a salary of $6,000. All the rest get from $5,000 downwards. The Chief of the Weather Bureau, an expert, gets $6,000. In the Commerce Department four experts get $6,000 each, the rest from $5,000 downwards. These are the annual salaries.

In Japan the officials of the Imperial Household have salaries ranging from $2,750 to $4,000. Officials of the Higher Civil Service get from $1,850 to $2,100 a year; the Vice-Minister of State, $2,500; Chief of the Legislative Bureau, $2,500; the Chief Secretary of the Cabinet, $2,500; and the Inspector General of the Metropolitan Police, $2,500; President of the Administrative Litigation Court, $3,000; President of the Railway Board, $3,750; President of the Privy Council, $3,000; Vice-President of the Privy Council, $2,750, and so on. All these salaries are yearly.

When we come to India we find that the President of the Railway Board gets from $20,000 to $24,000, and that two other members of the Railway Board get $16,000. Secretaries in the Army, Public Works, and Legislative departments get $14,000. Secretaries in Finance, Foreign, Home, Revenue, Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry departments get $16,000. The Secretary in the Education Department gets $12,000; Joint Secretary, $10,000; Controller and Auditor General, $14,000; Accountant General, from $9,000 to $11,000; Commissioner of Salt Revenue, $10,000; Director of Post and Telegraph from $12,000 to $14,000.

Among the officers directly under the Government of India there are only a few who get salaries below $7,000. Most of the others get from that sum up to $12,000. The fact that the population of the United States consists of people of all races and that there is a constant flow of immigration makes the work of administration very difficult and complex — far more so than the administrative problems in India.

PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION

The United States Government has under it 48 States and Territories. Some of them are as large in area, if not even larger than the several provinces of India. The Governors of these States are paid from $2,500 to $12,000 a year. Illinois is the only State paying $12,000; five States, including New York and California, pay $10,000; two, Massachusetts and Indiana, pay $8,000; one pays $7,000, and three pay $6,000. All the rest pay $5,000 or less. There is only one territory under the United States Government, the Philippines, which pays a salary of $20,000 to its Governor General. In India, the Governors of Madras, Bombay, and Bengal each receive $40,000, besides a large amount for allowances. The Lieutenant Governors of the Punjab, the United Provinces, Behar and Burma get $33,000 each besides allowances. The Chief Commissioners receive $11,000 in Behar, $18,700 in Assam, $20,700 in the Central Provinces, and $12,000 in Delhi. The Political Residents in the Native States receive from $11,000 to $16,000, besides allowances. In Japan the Governors of Provinces are paid from $1,850 to $2,250 per year, besides allowances varying from $200 to $300.

The provincial services in India are paid on a far more lavish scale than anywhere else in the world. In Bengal the salaries range from $1,600 for an assistant magistrate and collector to $21,333 to Members of the Council, and this same extravagance is also true of the other provinces.

Coming to the Judiciary, we find that Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States get a salary of $14,500 each, the Chief Justice getting $15,000; the Circuit Judges get a salary of $7,000 each, the District Judges $6,000. In the State of New York the Judges of the Supreme Court belonging to the General Sessions get from $17,500, and those of the Special Sessions from $9,000 to $10,000 each. City Magistrates get from $7,000 to $8,000 each. In India the Chief Justice of Bengal gets $24,000; the Chief Justices of Bombay, Madras, and the United Provinces, $20,000 each. The Chief Judges of the Chief Court of the Punjab and Burma get $16,000 each, and the Puisne Judges of the High Courts the same amount. The Puisine Judges of the Chief Courts receive $14,000. In the Province of Bengal the salaries of the District and Session Judges range from $8,000 to $12,000. District Judges of the other provinces get from about $7,000 to $12,000. The Deputy Commissioners in India get a salary in the different provinces ranging from $6,000 to $9,000 a year. The Commissioners get from $10,000 to $12,000. In Japan, the Appeal Court Judges and Procurators get from $900 to $2,500 a year. Only one officer, the President of the Court of Causation, gets as much as $3,000. The District Court Judges and Procurators are paid at the rate of from $375 to $1,850. It is needless to compare the salaries of minor officials in the three countries. Since the Indian taxpayer has to pay so heavily for the European services engaged in the work of administration, it is necessary that even the Indian officers should be paid on a comparatively high scale, thus raising the cost of administration hugely and affecting most injuriously the condition of the men in the lowest grades of the Government service. The difference between the salaries of the officers and the men forming the rank and file of the Government in the three countries shows clearly how the lowest ranks in India suffer from the fact that the highest governmental officials are paid at such high rates.

THE POLICE

In New York City, the Chief Inspector gets $3,500 a year; Captains, $2,750; Lieutenants, $2,250; Sergeants, $1,750, and Patrolmen, $1,400 each. In Japan the Inspector General of the Metropolitan Police gets $2,500. The figures of the lower officials are not available, but the minimum salary of a constable is $6.50 per month, besides which he gets his equipment, uniform and boots free. In India, the Inspector Generals get from $8,000 to $12,000, Deputy Inspector Generals from $6,000 to $7,200, District Superintendents of Police from $2,666 to $4,800, assistants from $1,200 to $2,000, Inspectors from $600 to $1,000, Sub-Inspectors from $200 to $400, Head Constables from $60 to $80, Constables from $40 to $48 per year. We have taken these figures from the “Indian Year Book” published by the Times of India, Bombay. We know as a fact that the Police Constables in the Punjab are paid from $2.67 to $3.33 per month, that is from $32 to $40 per year. The reader should mark the difference between the grades of salaries from the highest to the lowest in India, as compared with the United States and Japan. While in India the lowest officials are frightfully underpaid, the highest grades are paid on a lavish scale. In the other countries of the world this is not the case.

EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT

In the United States (we quote the figures of New York City), the lowest school teachers get a salary of $720, rising to $1,500 a year. In the upper grades salaries range from $1,820 to $2,260. Principals of elementary schools receive $3,500, and assistants $2,500. In the High Schools, salaries range from $900 to $3,150, in Training Schools from $1,000 to $3,250. Principals of High Schools and Training Schools receive $5,000 and the same salary is paid to the District Superintendents. The Commissioner of Education in New York gets $7,500. In Japan the Minister of Education, who is a Cabinet Member, gets $4,000, and the lowest salaries paid to teachers range from $8 to $9 per month. In the United States, college professors make from $5,000 to $7,000 per year. In Japan they range from $300 to $2,000. Coming to India, we find that while the administrative officers and even the college professors get fairly high salaries, the teachers in the schools are miserably underpaid.

CONCLUSION

We don’t believe there is a single country in the world where the difference between the remuneration allowed to the highest and the lowest officials is so disproportionally marked as in India. Yet we find that there is a tendency still further to increase the salaries of the high officials, European and Indian, while even very slight increase in the salaries of the underpaid lowest servants of the State are most grudgingly given. Moreover, the high officials get allowances almost equal in amount to their salaries. This is not true in the case of the lower officials. The fact is that the British Government in India does not attach enough importance to the common man; his needs are often overlooked in the desire to please the high officials and keep them contented. Considering that every man in India is supposed to have a family, the condition of the lowest officials is most miserable, in some cases almost necessitates corruption. The Government of India must know this, yet they do nothing to remedy the state of affairs. A rise in prices is claimed as a good ground for raising the salaries of the highly paid civilians, but the same weight is not attached to that reason when the question of increasing the salaries of the lower grades arises.

The figures relating to military services in India are not available, but we know that the above remarks and comparisons have as much force in the case of the Military Service as they have in the ones we have cited above.

Note. The Royal Commission on Public Services has actually recommended a substantial increase in the salaries of European officials by the incorporation of what was temporarily allowed to them as exchange compensation allowance, in their salaries as also otherwise.

PROPORTION OF INDIANS IN HIGHER SERVICES — LATEST FIGURES

Total of appointments with a salary of Rs. 200 a month or upward ($66) 11,064. Held by Indians, 42 per cent.

Total of appointments with a salary of Rs. 500 per month ($166) = 4,986. Held by Indians, 19 per cent.

Total of appointments on Rs. 800 per month or above = 2,501. Held by Indians, 10 per cent.

APPENDIX F

FURTHER NOTES

Gold Value of Rupee. Until 1871 the gold value of the rupee except in one year always exceeded 1s. 11d. In 1872-3 it fell to a little over 1s. 10 3/4d. and thenceforward downward until in 1894-5 it reached 1s. 1d. The difference it made to India may be judged from the fact that the sterling value of the bills paid in England, in 1894-5, was £15,770,533. The rupee equivalent actually paid by the Government of India was 28-9 crores (or 280-9 millions) of rupees while at the rate prevailing in 1872-3 it would have amounted to only 16-6 crores. In this way India suffered a high financial loss. The sterling debt contracted at the time when the value of the rupee was about 2s. was afterwards converted into a rupee debt when the value of the rupee had fallen to 1s. 4d.

Says Mr. A. J. Wilson (“An Empire in Pawn”), p. 26:

“The Indian people pay altogether more now than ever they did. More of the net proceeds of their labour goes every year to pay the foreign debt charges under one head or another, because the aggregate of these charges increases.”

. . . . . .

“The official mind has created a cloud-world of its own and looks at all Indian affairs from a point of view so far above everything native, so conventional and entirely bureaucratic, that it is easily able to demonstrate to us a priori that Indian populations are happy and flourishing, though millions of them be dead of starvation or to gush about loyalty with a mutiny and massacre hanging on their heads.”

(P. 28.) “The Stracheys and men of that official set present only the outside of the sepulchre to view. There is an official India where all is well, an India serenely indifferent to the toiling India, and there is an India composed of nearly 200 millions of toiling and suffering people.”

(P. 28.) “The truth of the matter is, that the natives of India are in no sense their own masters in the conduct of their trade any more than in the conduct of their government. Our system of land revenue alone would bring, and does bring them into a state of slavery and abject dependence, almost whether we like it or not.”