BY DEWAN BAHADUR K. KRISHNASWAMI RAU, C.I.E. N October 1914, the Government of India appointed a committee consisting of seven gentlemen including the President. Four of these gentlemen, including the President, are European members of the Indian Civil Service and the remaining three are non-officials (one Hindu, one Mussalman and one European). This committee was assisted by a secretary who is also a European member of the Indian Civil Service. The committee visited several important centres in India; examined a very large number of gentlemen engaged or interested in the co-operative movement; and have submitted to the Government of India a voluminous and interesting report. Copies of this report have been sent to the local Governments and administrations for an expression of their views on certain matters and for issue of necessary orders on others. Neither the Government of India nor the local Governments have yet passed any final order on the report. The Registrar of Co-operative Societies has been largely quoting passages from this report in support of his theories and has been issuing instructions on the strength of such passages. It is a matter for serious doubt whether the report can be treated as authoritative until the Government of India or local Governments pass their final orders thereon. Our readers need not be specially told that most of the recommendations of the Decentralization Committeea committee more influential than the Co-operative Committee-made a decade ago, are still held in abeyance, if not virtually set aside. We can not therefore be certain that all the suggestions of the Co-operative Committee will be accepted by all Governments. As the success of the co-operative movement depends mostly on local conditions, the Government of India have to leave much to the discretion of the local authorities to decide to what extent they may guide themselves by the recommendations of the committee. It is the duty of the public to submit to local Governments, their views on the committee's report before final orders are passed thereon. The committee are not satisfied with the present staff, pay, local and travelling allowances and prospects of Registrars of Co-operative Societies. They seriously think that the present remuneration does not present sufficient attractions; and that if willing service is to be secured, the pay and allowances should be increased. Their proposals are:-(1) That the pay of the Registrar should not be less than that of a first class Collector, viz., Rs. 2,500; (2) that his local allowance should be raised from Rs. 150 to Rs. 250 per mensem; (3) that his travelling allowances should be fixed at a rate not less than that allowed to a first class Collector; (4) that his headquarters should be a hill station; (5) that he should be allowed to visit other provinces to learn the systems outside his own jurisdiction; and (6) that his work as Registrar should be recognized as entitling him to promotion to the higher branches of the executive service........ .The Committee are also of opinion that the Registrars do not at present possess sufficiently competent assistance; and recommend the creation of Joint-Registrars at the rate of at least one for each province; and add that the officers selected for this newly created office should be of the status of a Collector; and that in provinces where the number of societies is large. additional controlling officers at the rate of one for each 1,000 societies should be sanctioned From the proposals and recommendations made by the committee, it is evident that thrift, which is considered as the most important element of co operative movement, has no place in so far as the remuneration of the higher officers of the Co-ope rative Department is concerned. What is mos astonishing in this connection is that the com mittee do not seem to believe that the liberal proposals they have profusely made as regard Registrars and their assistants will secure th maximum of efficiency; for they recommend th creation of a new office in each province under th name of Development Commissioner to supervis the departments of co-operation, industries an agriculture, and also of an All-India Office in th Government of India to advise His Excellency th Governor-General in Council on matters relatin to co-operation. The pay and allowances of th provincial officers must of course be equal to thos of a Commissioner or a member of the Board d Revenue; and those of the All-India officer mus approximate those of a member of the Executiv Council of the Viceroy. The Local Governments who, as a rule, hesitate to sanction a few hundred rupees for the emplo ment of additional Inspectors on salaries of R 30 to 50 per mensem, and urged on the Regi trars to induce the financing Co-operative Ban to arrange at their (Banks') own cost, supervise of rural societies, to whom they grant loans, mu be astonished at the proposed creation of a re large number of highly lucrative offices which in ordinary course could be held only by the members of the Indian Civil Service. Under the name of progress and efficiency, such appointments may in all probability be sanctioned. As far as one can see, no additional advantages proportionate to the extravagant expenditure on the salaries and allowances of the Registrars, Joint-Registrars, Development Commissioners and the Co-operative Adviser to the Government of India and their establishments (which must keep pace with those of the officers to whom they are attached) are likely to accrue to the co-operative movement in India. On the other hand, there will be a curtailment of the departmental work under the proposals contained in the report. The Committee would absolve the department from all responsibility for the soundness of the societies started by them, throw the duty of detailed supervision and control of the borrowing societies on the financing Co-operative Banks and would not even allow the officers of the Department to approach the defaulting societies to advise them to be regular and punctual in their payments. The success that has hitherto attended the movement, is the general belief that the Department supervises the work of the societies and helps in the recovery of loans by all legitimate means short of actual coercion. The procedure followed by the Department hitherto afforded ample ground for this belief. Even with the supervision of Government Department, the number of societies which have proved unsatisfactory has been increasing. One has simply to read the annual reports of the Registrars to realize the magnitude of the amount of care and supervision that has to be exercised over the rural societies in the present condition of India. By far, the largest number of co-operative societies are rural; and poor and illiterate peasants are mostly the members of such societies. To introduce in India, systems that prevail in Europe where the education of masses has been general and even compulsory for centuries, cannot but do harm to the movement. Illiterate peasantry can be induced to be regular and punctual in the performance of their obligations, only by an appearance of Government control of a more substantial nature than the very superficial control advocated by the committee. The moment that the real supervision of rural societies is transferred to the financing Co-operative Banks or Unions, even the little regard for punctuality and regularity that now exist, may gradually disappear, The proposal of the Committee that the financing Co-operative Banks should satisfy themselves of the soundness of the Societies to whom they grant loans, will, if sanctioned, put a stop to the further of the movement. progress The societies are started by the Registrar; and their by-laws are passed by him. The present practice is that the department prepares property statements, values the property of members with reference to local conditions, fixes the limit of their borrowing power, and recommends loans within such limit. For the preparation of an accurate and reliable property statement, the hearty co-operation and assistance of the village officers is indispensable. The Department which is headed by an officer in the Collector's grade, finds it easy to obtain such co-operation and assistance. Those who have experience of village officers as a class, could form some idea of the difficulty of non-official agencies such as financing Co-operative Banks, in procuring such assistance from the village officers. When an officer of Government makes a statement to a Government officer of higher grade, there is every probability of the former being more careful and accurate lest the discovery of any serious flaw therein may expose him to heavy punishment on the report of the latter. Will the village officer be in the same condition of mind when he makes a statement to the Agent of a Co-operative Bank, supposing he condescends to help an unofficial institution? The Co-operative Act (Section 19) gives no priority to loans made by the Co-operative Banks, on the property of the debtors, except a second charge in Government villages and a third charge in the zamindary villages, on crops, cattle, and manufactured articles which can be traced to the use of the loan specially made on their account. The Committee have very rightly characterized this charge as illusory. If under these conditions, the proposal of the Cooperative Committee be accepted and carried out, the Co-operative movement will surely begin to count the days of its existence. It is hoped that the Government of India, and local Governments will take a more practical view in the interests of the great movement which has not yet arrived at the stage when the grand ideals of self-help graphically sketched by the Committee, can be carried out in practice. INDIA'S PRAYER. "Give me a blessing, for thou hast given me a south land." JUDGES I, PART OF VERSE 15. BY C. C. WILSON. PROLOGUE. "Give me a blessing!" Caleb's daughter cried A goodly dower bequeathed by thee and Heaven, INDIA'S PRAYER. And, as I pondered o'er this ancient tale, per cent. Stationery 31 per cent. Free, Cotton Twist hosiery grey piece goods goods, other various Making a total of 443 618 182.359 18 015 1,388,365 of articles in which we are already more or less equipped to compete in the near future, and to which, accordingly, we should devote our special attention to see how and where we can ourselves provide for our own wants in these directions, The most important in point of value, and at the same time the most striking item, is that of cotton goods which, as will be seen, accounts for a total altogether of £725,677 already by far eclipsing silk goods, matches, etc., that we used to think of as the specialities of Japan. I say * N.B.-The percentages on the left of the items 5 per ce t.- 3 per cent, etc. show the import duty chargeable on these goods in India. 14,817 81,685 that this item is the most striking. Why? Because, if there is any industry that we may claim to have developed on a scale to at all count in the industrial world it is cotton manufacture. How is it that the Japanese are making daily and rapid inroads in a field that should be specially our own? As you are all aware, this fact has struck many of our public men, and attempts have been made to find the reasons. The most common argument put forward is that it is the boun ies paid by the Japanese Government to cotton manufacturers that is enabling them to, so to say, beard us in our own homes. But, is this the right explanation? I have tried to find out and -the result of my enquiries is that bounties are paid occasionally on cotton goods for export, but it is not the Government that pays. The Japanese have a Mill-Owners' Association as we have here, but, unlike us, it is a body that can and does act as one man, where the interests of the mill industry require to be taken care of in any way. It is a trite saying that union is strength, but it has been our unfortunate experience in Bombay that it has been found most difficult to make the majority of our mill-owners agree upon a common action for the general good. We have had short-time movements proposed amongst us at almost every depression in the industry, but while we fail to agree, the Japanese have known how to use this most potent instrument for the regulation of supply and demand, and though, of course, it has not averted depressions, which are generally due to world causes, it has most certainly taken a good deal of the bite out of them, and enabled mills in Japan to tide over hard times better than we do here. Such a short time is actually in practice in Japan even to-day and is very carefully enforced, the result being to prevent an over-supply of yarn or goods beyond what the markets can bear, and keep prices from falling to disastrously low levels. Here, as we all know, such movements generally fail, and we wait till one or two of the weakest mills go to the wall, and thus adjust the supply to the reduced demand, but, in the meanwhile, all mills have to suffer from the low prices that prevail. But the most remarkable result of the ability of the Japanese mills to act together as one man, is their arrangement to carry cotton to Japan at extremely cheap rates. The mills, acting as one man, had so many lakhs of bales of cotton to offer to the steamship companies, and the weight of the cotton was sufficient to make the companies take the business at rates that they would not otherwise have looked at. It may be news to most of those present here that cotton has been carried all the way to Japan at Rs. 84 or less per ton for the past few years while for our yarn to Shanghai-a shorter voyage-we paid Rs. 12. On an average export of, say, 3 lakhs of bales of yarn, this means that we paid about Rs. 3 lakhs to the steamer companies that could have been annually saved if we only knew how to combine. Even this very year we have had the rate increased by another Rs. 3 per ton, which means another three lakhs of rupees annually lost to our mills. Perhaps, some may argue that the Japanese get these low rates only because there are Japanese liners on the Bombay-Japan route. Well, these same liners run to Honkong and Shanghai on their way to Japan, and yet we pay more freight for yarn than is obtained by them on cotton. But we have before our very eyes another instance of what union can do in the matter of reducing freights. I refer to the arrangement that our Native Piece Goods Dealers' Association has with certain liners for Manchester goods. By uniting to give all their business only to that line which offered the lowest freight, these Kapadias have for years benefitted by very low freight, and saved lakhs and lakhs of rupees, and, in this year of war, while our yarns had to pay Rs. 3 per ton more (say 250% more) freight, the Kapadias, thanks to their arrangements, benefitted by low rates even this year, and the steamer company's claim to a higher rate owing to war conditions, was turned down by competent arbitrators. Cannot our mill-owners, many of whom are in the most advanced walks of life, do what these poor and often illiterate Kapadias have done? Can they not see that lower freights is one of the essentials that will enable us to compete with Japanese yarns in China? We hear the common wail that it is with our own cotton that the Japanese beat us in China, but we fail to see that the Japanese, by combination and negotiations, have neutralised this disadvantage, and the freight they pay on cotton to Japan and on the yarn back to China, is not more than what we pay on yarn alone. Now, the arrangement is that shippers of cotton calculate freight at Rs. 17 per ton and the rebate Rs. 8 to 9 per ton is collected from the companies by the Mill-Owners' Association in Japan. This fund, after outgoings have been paid for, is distributed by the Association to each of its members in proportion to the number of bales imported in the year by such member, |