Helping India Out

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1009, 27 June 1930, Page 11

Helping India Out

COMMISSION'S GREAT TASK

Survey By Chairman

SIMON SCHEME AIDS SELF-RELIANCE

British Official Wireless Received 12.10 p.m. RUGBY. Thursday, a broadcast speech last evening, Sir John Simon, Chairimm of the Indian Statutory Commission, emphasised that the Commission’s recommendations were those not of one individual, hut of seven, representing all parts and drawn from both Houses of Parliament. r The proposals were not a bundle of vague expressions, i Jie> constituted a detailed and connected scheme, dealing with every aspect of the Indian Government.

The recommendations, Sir John said, were based on important principles, of which the first was that there should he no more commissions. They represented a scheme which was designed to meet present practical necessities, while leaving room for later adjustments and developments. _ The proposals for the provincial Government and the Commission's treatment of the central executive were illustrations of the method of providing now for the possibility of future growth. Part of the Indian comment had entirely missed this point. Parliament could not possibly abandon all its responsibility for the Central Government of India at this stage, but the extent to which this responsibility could be handed over would depend on the future. The proposed method of reconstituting the Central Legislature had three great advantages. it provided at the centre a body of reasonable size that would be really representative of the numerous inhabitants of vast areas. HELPING PROVINCES Secondly, the plan of representing provinces rather than individual states in a Federal Assembly permitted of the adoption of a scheme which would give much-needed assistance for the provincial exchequers and enable Provincial Ministers to go forward with plans for improving the education, public health and other services in the provinces which were now starved for want of money.

Thirdly, the plan gives the best prospect of associating the Indian States more closely with the affairs of India as a whole. Turning to some concrete matters, Sir John Simon paid a high tribute to the police force, which, however, tended to be regarded as an agent of alien bureaucracy, although, in fact, the whole neighbourhood would without it fall into utter anarchy. Only by the abolition of anarchy and by making the Government as a whole responsible for the administration of all departments with safeguards against abuse, could the cause of this distrust be removed. DISCUSSION BEFORE ADOPTION Sir John Simon then dealt with the plans for the protection of minorities, and proceeded to discuss them. The iirst would be the October conference, to which various bodies of opinion in India would be invited for the free expression of opinion before the proposals were laid before Parliament. He believed the recommendations would satisfy all tests which must be applied to any constitution before its ultimate adoption. The lesson to be learned from the analogy of the Dominions was that in every case the ultimate form of Dominion Government had been the result of natural growth. They had arisen not because an act of Parliament said so, but because in the life of a growing organism a stage had been reached when it had been found that this was the way to express the responsibilities of citizenship.