Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

by William Wilson Hunter

Lord Mayo also found that the extravagance in Public Works was due in a large measure to the practice of constructing them out of borrowed money. He therefore laid down a strict rule that all ordinary works, that is works not of the nature of a reproductive nature, and paying interest, must be constructed out of current revenue.

'Any further increase to our debt,' he decisively wrote, 'cannot be made without incurring danger of the gravest kind. I will incur no responsibility of this sort, and nothing will tempt me to sanction in time of peace the addition of a rupee of debt for the purpose of meeting what is really ordinary and unproductive expenditure. It is a policy which, acting on my own strong convictions, and in full concurrence with Her Majesty's Government, I am determined to reverse.'

The long series of measures by which Lord Mayo reorganised the Public Works Department lie beyond the scope of this volume. It must suffice to say that by stringently applying his principles 'of first finding the money, and improved supervision,' he not only effected a large saving during his own Viceroyalty, but rendered possible the subsequent expansion of the Department without financial disaster to the country.

Having thus reduced the expenditure to the utmost limit compatible with good work, Lord Mayo directed his earnest attention to the protection of the people against famine. He rejected at the outset a proposal which a Commission had made, of something very like a Poor Law for India. 'Having been engaged all my life in the administration of a Poor Law in one of the poorest countries in Europe, I may say ... first, that ordinary poverty in India does not need for its relief a poor-law system; secondly, that any sum which could be locally levied to relieve such famines as have from time to time occurred, would be ludicrously inadequate.'

At the same time he solemnly accepted the responsibility of the British Government to prevent wholesale death from starvation. He believed, also, that the Government had in its hand the means for accomplishing this object. 'By the construction of railways and the completion of great works of irrigation,' runs one of his earlier notes, 'we have it in our power, under God's blessing, to render impossible the return of those periodical famines which have disgraced our administration and cost an incredible amount of suffering, with the loss of many millions of lives.'

On Lord Mayo's arrival in Calcutta, he found awaiting him an elaborate Minute which Lord Lawrence had lately placed on record regarding the past history and the future extension of Indian railways. The narrative which the great civilian Viceroy thus left for his successor was full of encouragement, but by no means one of unmingled self-complacency. From the end of 1853, when we had twenty-one and a-half miles of railway in India, until the beginning of 1869, when Lord Lawrence left the country, only about 4000 miles of railway had been opened. These lines had been constructed by private companies, under a guarantee from the Indian Government. 'The money'—to use the words of the Duke of Argyll—'was raised on the credit and authority of the State, under an absolute guarantee of five per cent., involving no risk to the shareholders, and sacrificing on the part of Government every chance of profit, while taking every chance of loss.' In the absence of any inducements to economy, the guaranteed railways had cost £17,000 a mile, and were worked under a system of double supervision—expensive, dilatory, and complicated. It was become evident that the costliness of this plan rendered an adequate development of railways in India financially impossible.

Lord Mayo, assisted by General Strachey, resolved to supplement the expensive system of guaranteed lines by a network of State railways. Instead of guaranteeing five per cent. interest, the Government has raised the capital for these State railways at three to four per cent. Instead of an initial cost of £17,000 per mile for broad-gauge lines, it determined to construct narrow-gauge lines, at about £6000 per mile. For the old costly double management, the new system substituted a single firm control. Into the vexed question of the break of gauge it is not needful for me here to enter. It must suffice to say that Lord Mayo perfectly realised its disadvantages. His plan was to construct a system of narrow-gauge railways on a sufficient scale to allow of long lengths of haulage without break of gauge. Later experience has affirmed the practical convenience of the broader gauge. But, excepting in a few isolated spots, the system of State railways dates from Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty; and it is the system which, under various modern developments, is now absorbing within itself the whole railway system of India.

Lord Mayo's other great engine of internal development in the battle against famine was irrigation. A bare list of the works which he inaugurated, advanced, or carried out, would weary the reader. The Ganges Canal was extended, and, after seventeen years of deficit, took its place as a work no longer burdensome to the State. A new irrigation system, starting from the Ganges opposite Alígarh, and designed to water the whole lower part of the Doáb, from Fatehgarh to Allahábád, was commenced. The eastern half of Rohilkhand and the Western Districts of Oudh were at the same time being placed beyond peril of drought and famine by the Sárda Canal. Similar works for western Rohilkhand were being carried out by a canal from the Ganges. Plans were prepared, and the sanction of the Secretary of State partially obtained, for a project which would bring the waters of the Jumna to the arid tracts on the west of Delhi. While the Western Jumna Canal was thus to receive a vast extension, the Lower Jumna Canal was being pushed forward in the districts to the south-east of Delhi.

Proceeding farther down the Gangetic Valley, we find works of equal promise being carried on from the Son (Soane) river through the Province of Behar—the province destined in 1874 to be the next Indian tract which was to suffer dearth. On the seaboard, Orissa (the Province of Lower Bengal which had last passed through the ordeal) saw its districts placed beyond the peril that has from time immemorial hung over them, by a vast system of canals and the development of means of communication with the outside world. Still farther south, the Godávarí works were going forward. In the far west, projects for the drought-stricken districts of Sind were drawn up and investigated; while in Bombay, Madras, and other Provinces, many works of great local utility, although of less conspicuous extent, were initiated, pushed forward, or matured.