CHAPTER III.

A RADICAL CHANGE OF POLICY.

WHILE the Viceroy was travelling from Simla to Southern India during the month of August, most distressing scenes were being witnessed in the streets of Bangalore. No measure of precaution sufficed to keep 'wanderers' from flocking into the streets and thronging the relief kitchens for food. The mortality which prevailed in all relief camps was only too notorious: in the kitchens no shelter was provided, and the paupers being fed only once a day and turned adrift, the mortality was transferred from the sheds of a poor-house to the streets and purlieus of a city. Scenes which were a grave scandal to British rule were occurring in the chief town of a province which had long been administered by English officials. Whichever way the eye turned, dead bodies were to be seen. During August the average number of dead picked up daily in the streets of Bangalore was twenty. From September 1 to 10 the number had increased to forty-one. When troops were marched to the shooting butts for rifle practice the soldiers were horrified with the sight of bodies of men, women, and children, lying exposed and partly devoured by dogs and jackals. People argued, not unnaturally, that if such things occurred at headquarters, most terrible scenes were necessarily to be witnessed in the interior. On any spot in the streets of Bangalore where there was temporary shelter, the poor starved creatures would creep to die on the pials

(verandahs) of houses, under the shadows of trees and walls, or in a depression in the roadside. Early in the morning the bodies were supposed to be collected by the police, but sometimes they were allowed to lie about uncared for till late in the day. A European gentleman visited the market on a Sunday morning in September, and learned that two dead bodies had been found that morning one he saw himself, at half-past seven, lying uncared for within a few yards of a stall where vegetables were being laid out for sale. The feeding which was going on at the relief kitchens was of a character that needed a sharp controlling hand, as much for the sake of the people, who were being demoralised, as in the interests of the State, which provided the money for expenditure. Rain had commenced falling in appreciable quantity, and this made matters worse for the 'wanderers,' upon whom the chilliness of the atmosphere and the dampness of the air told with fatal effect.

From the day when the south-west monsoon was due, the ryots did all that men could do to obtain crops from their lands. Showers of rain fell at intervals, and the persistence with which the agriculturists endeavoured to secure a ragi crop in many taluks cannot be too highly commended. In several places they sowed the land no less than three times, the pauses between each downpour of rain having been so prolonged that the previous sowing had either withered or been destroyed by insects before rain to nurture it again fell. The patience and persistence displayed by the Southern India ryot, not in Mysore alone but in all the districts of the Madras Presidency, deserved a better fate than they encountered. In addition to the elements being pitilessly against them, the people must have been shocked by the numerous deaths of relatives and friends, and have been depressed accordingly. In the Nundy

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droog division the total number of reported deaths (only a portion of the whole) from July 15 to August 15, was 11,262, 'a rate of mortality,' remarked Colonel Pearse, which, were it continued, would clear off the whole existing population in this division in about fourteen years.'

There were not wanting officers in the Mysore administration who saw, before the Viceroy's arrival, the true principles upon which the famine should be fought. Reference was made to one of these in a previous chapter. Another may be mentioned here. Colonel Pearse, writing in August to the chief commissioner, said :-'The numbers on the relief works have been found to fluctuate according to the rainfall, showing that the cultivators who came to relief works are ready, instead of holding on to Government works, to return to their villages, and endeavour to obtain a crop as soon as there is any appearance of a change in the season, whereas in the feeding establishments the case is different. The numbers are rising, and will continue to rise, until large works are started, when every man, woman, and child who is able to carry a basket should be relegated somewhat relentlessly to work; but this cannot be done in the absence of continuous work on large projects. Small ones are good in their way, especially when the distress is moderate, but they last only a short time, whereupon the gang is broken up; and therefore the only plan is to have continuous large projects to supplement the small ones, and to which the people can either be sent, or from which they can be withdrawn, as may seem most advisable.' The remark of the chief commissioner upon this very proper suggestion was feeble and querulous. Says the order thereon: 'The commissioner alludes to the necessity of starting large projects

to afford continuous employment to the famine-stricken people, but does not specify the works of the kind which he would propose.' To do this was not a commissioner's duty, but Colonel Pearse could well have replied that, many months previously, he had laid before the commissioner a large scheme of works, which scheme was not approved. There was no need, however, to make reply. About the time that the chief commissioner's order was penned, the Viceroy arrived at Bangalore. Mr. C. A. Elliott and Major Scott Moncrieff had preceded his Excellency by several days, had made themselves acquainted with the difficult task to be undertaken in bringing things back to their normal standard, and were ready to endeavour to put matters on a better footing.

When the Viceroy reached Bangalore he received a report of the condition of affairs from Mr. Elliott and Major Scott Moncrieff. From their statement and from the communications his Excellency held with the chief civil officers of the province, as also from what he himself saw at Bangalore, he was forced to the conclusion that matters were even worse than he had anticipated; that the provision of proper relief works had been entirely neglected; that gratuitous relief, which had increased to an inordinate extent, had been administered in a lax and unsystematic manner; that crime had greatly increased; that people were wandering from Mysore into other districts in vast numbers; and that the mortality, both in hospitals and among the wanderers, was terrible.

The particulars published in Chapter II. of this narrative will show how the numbers relieved respectively on works and under the system of gratuitous relief varied during the previous six months, and how utterly disproportionate was the former to the latter class. But even this statement did not adequately represent

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the whole evil. Lord Lytton found while at Bangalore that the people employed on works under the organisation of the Department of Public Works were not, properly speaking, relief labourers at all. The works were not special relief works, but were those sanctioned in the ordinary way under the annual Budget allotment; and the labourers employed on them were the ordinary able-bodied coolies, paid by piece-work and engaged by the ordinary petty contractors of the department. That these works kept a number of the labourers so employed from the necessity of applying for relief cannot be doubted, but in no other sense could they be called relief works; and the system under which they were employed had been already emphatically condemned by the Government of India in its communications with the chief commissioner of Mysore.

Lord Lytton was anxious to introduce an improved system of management without any undue interference with the ordinary administration of the country, and his Excellency found that the chief commissioner was fully prepared to accept and carry out the views of the Government of India. Mr. Saunders had in fact previously issued instructions in accordance with the general policy of the Government of India; and these instructions, had he seen that they were being carried out, would probably have insured the timely introduction of a proper system of relief works.

The chief engineer of the province, Colonel Sankey, however, had objected to the employment of the Public Works establishment otherwise than on the ordinary contract system, and had omitted to provide any special works for relief purposes. Even on the brief extension of the Bangalore railway, which had already been sanctioned by the Government of India, the department had declined to employ more than three hundred per