MUNICIPAL WORK IN INDIA.

CHAPTER I.

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regimen is subject but the secret lets and difficulties which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider."-Hooker..

As the improvement of our Municipalities is the main object of this book, it will not be out of place if a few introductory pages are devoted to a consideration of what our municipal system is, how far it is suited to the circumstances of the country and the idiosyncracy of the people, and the causes why municipal bodies generally do not succeed better in their attempts to improve the condition of the towns and villages over which they preside. It is not uncommonly asserted that municipal institutions are foreign to and unsuited to the country, but those who thus argue ignore alike tradition, history, and facts. On the contrary, municipal institutions, pure and simple, were amongst the fundamental systems of Government laid down by Menu, the earliest of Hindu lawgivers.

The following description of a Hindu township in early ages, its privileges and administration, is given by Elphinstone in his History of India (Hindu Period) :—

A township is a compact piece of land, varying in extent, inhabited by a single community. The boundaries are accurately defined and jealously guarded. The lands are divided into portions (analogous to the holdings of the present time), the boundaries of which are as carefully marked as those of the township: and the names, qualities, extent, and proprietors of which are minutely entered in the records of the community (i. e., the assessment registers). "Each township conducts its own internal affairs. It levies on its members the revenue due to the State, and is collectively responsible for the full amount" (a fact which Sir John Strachey, no doubt, had in remembrance when he provided for the levy of the Imperial License Tax of 1878, through the agency of the Municipalities). "It manages its own police, and is answerable for any property plundered within its limits. It administers justice to its own members as far as punishing small offences and deciding disputes in the first instance. It taxes itself to provide funds for its internal expenses, such as the repairs of the walls and the temple, and the cost of public sacrifices and charities, as well as of some ceremonies and amusements on festivals. It is provided with the requisite officers for conducting these duties and with various others adapted to the wants of the inhabitants, and though entirely subject to the general government, is in many respects, an organised commonwealth complete within itself. This independence and its concomitant privileges, though often violated by the government, are

Municipal Self-Government.

3

never denied; they afford some little protection against a tyrannical ruler, and maintain order within their own limits, even when the general government has been dissolved."

Now in the above we have the unmistakable essence of municipal institutions, of the body corporate, selfelected, self-taxing, self-governing, the Municipium, or free town, governed by its own laws, but possessing equal rights of citizenship with the rest of the State.

In the above we find a proof of the truth of the remarks made by Sir George Campbell, when Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and President of the local Legislative Council: "I am myself convinced," said he, "that, in spite of difficulties and objections, municipal self-government is not foreign to this country, but inherent to it, being the ancient rule and habit of the Hindu race. But times change and old institutions become extinct, and before the advent and passage of successive waves of conquest, the ancient Hindu forms of civil government disappeared, and the municipal body corporate was a thing unknown in our day until revived on western models by that liberal-minded administrator, the late Sir Cecil Beadon, during his lieutenant-governorship of Bengal.

#

It is not the purpose of these pages to trace minutely the causes which have contributed to render the municipalities in the mofussil at the present day something very different to what their name implies; but that such is the case is patent to every one acquainted with their present constitution. How far the undoubtedly repressive legislation of recent years, and its interpretation by the powers that be,' are responsible for this state

4

Sir George Campbell's Municipal Bill.

of things, I am not prepared to say; but there are other causes which must be remedied before these restrictions can safely be relaxed.

Those who desire to see a liberal measure of selfgovernment granted to the citizens of our Bengal townships, will consider it perhaps unfortunate that Sir George Campbell's Municipal Bill for Bengal was vetoed by the then Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, being as it was a bill which had for its object" the enlargement of the powers of municipal commissioners, to lay less municipal work and responsibility on the shoulders of Magistrates, to make municipal commissioners elective, and in other ways to make more scope for municipal self-government." This was a measure framed by a truly liberal statesman, whose object, to use his own words, was "not an increase of taxation, but the introduction of a system of self-government.” "I hold," said he, “very earnest views on the subject of local selfgovernment. I believe that the position of foreigners like ourselves in India is a somewhat false one. I believe it is our duty to educate the people, so far as is in our power, to govern themselves. I believe that the power and the habit of self-government must come from below upwards, that it must come from municipal institutions first going upwards to higher and larger institutions." "If municipal commissioners are to have no power but to consult and advise, you cannot expect the people will take a real interest in representative institutions." "If you are gradually to bring the people to appreciate the system of self-government, to lead them to take an interest in their own affairs, they must have real and practical power in their own affairs;" and in a com

munication to the writer in 1880, Sir George repeats : "I have always been very anxious to promote self-governing institutions beginning from below and working upwards." But, unfortunately for the carrying out of these views, Sir George Campbell was, as he himself said, a stranger and a sojourner in the land," and his utterances are now pronounced in the same legislative chamber to be the "views of a somewhat doctrinaire Lieutenant-Governor in the first flush of provincial independence, political cant,' 'shibboleths' of so-called progress, which may prove. to be mischievous when they cease to be only meaningless." It is there declared that, "whatever may be the future of this country, it is absurd to pretend that as yet any such theories hold good; that Bengal is an advanced province in many ways, but it is not after all quite on the same platform as Great Britain yet," and that "the people must learn to walk before they can be allowed to run." It must be confessed that these arguments are somewhat on a par with the action of the faded maternal beauty who clings to her youth and keeps her grown up daughters in short frocks, for fear people should guess how old they are and draw conclusions; but still I fear we must admit that they have reason, as things are at the present. Before any change can be hoped for in the present regime, before the Government can safely loose the reins of control, a radical change must come over the spirit of the dreain. Purely ornamental commissioners, whose line of business goes not beyond saying "ditto to Mr. Burke," as well as noisy agitators, meddlesome self-seeking intriguers, and flatulent orators, must give way to honest, intelligent business-men, who will meet to work, to