As regards the
condition of agriculture in India and the poverty of the agricultural
population, the Bureaucracy is inefficient.
The application of Mr. Gokhale's first test to Indian handicrafts, to
the strengthening of weak industries and the creation of new, to the
care of waterways for traffic and of the coast transport shipping, the
protection of indigo and other indigenous dyes against their German
synthetic rivals, etc., would show similar answers. We are suffering now
from the supineness of the Bureaucracy as regards the development of the
resources of the country, by its careless indifference to the usurping
by Germans of some of those resources, and even now they are pursuing a
similar policy of _laissez faire_ towards Japanese enterprise, which,
leaning on its own Government, is taking the place of Germany in
shouldering Indians out of their own natural heritage.
In all prosperous countries crafts are found side by-side with
agriculture, and they lend each other mutual support. The extreme
poverty of Ireland, and the loss of more than half its population by
emigration, were the direct results of the destruction of its
wool-industry by Great Britain, and the consequent throwing of the
population entirely on the land for subsistence.
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