It is sometimes said: "Why harp on these figures? We know them." Our
answer is that the fact is ever harping in the stomach of the people,
and while it continues we cannot cease to draw attention to it. And
Gokhale urged that "even this deplorable condition has been further
deteriorating steadily." We have no figures on malnutrition among the
peasantry, but in Madras City, among an equally poor urban population,
we found that 78 per cent. of our pupils were reported, after a medical
inspection, to be suffering from malnutrition. And the spareness of
frame, the thinness of arms and legs, the pitiably weak grip on life,
speak without words to the seeing eye. It needs an extraordinary lack of
imagination not to suffer while these things are going on.
The peasants' grievances are many and have been voiced year after year
by this Congress. The Forest Laws, made by legislators inappreciative of
village difficulties, press hardly on them, and only in a small number
of places have Forest Panchayats been established. In the few cases in
which the experiment has been made the results have been good, in some
cases marvellously good.
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