Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/302

 '88 BE VIJ W,5 01' 1300K,5 Finance Committee of 1886, and.indeed of other Commis- sions before and after appointed to effect reduction of expenditure? Long since sucked into the vortex of more costly and ambitious schemes and the ever increasing needs of the administration. The true remedy as it seems to me is not to handicap Government, retard public improvements, starve public vorks and even jeopardise the safety of the Empire by a misconceived policy of retrenchment; but to devise new and expand existing sources of income and to be ever on the alert to harness the discoveries of science to tapping great natural resources which an .fall-wise Creator has placed within our reach. The philosophy of the school from which I differ is, if I may say so with all humility, one of Fessimism; the philosophy which I would advocate is, if I may say so withou egotism, one of optimism. "Agriculture, it may be truly said, is India's most ancient heritage; and amidst the galaxy of potentialities on the horizon of he future there is none of brighter or more assuring promise. Interests and activities outwardly more dazzling have hitherto absorbed too large a share of the attention oi the more enlightened of my countrymen, and if I can succeed in placing agriculture i its true importance before their minds I shall consider myself amply rewarded." The body occupying only of the book is divided into ten chapters 57 pages, which are followed by statistical tables of considerable value filling nearly 100 pages, and very largely the result of original computations from official documents. The first nine chapters cover an extraordinarily wide range of questions--economic and statistical from a scientific point' of view, administrative and financial, and practical; and they suffer from being disconnected. Th.e author first attacks the question of the poverty of India from the agricultural statistics, and estimates from the amount of food required per head per day of different classes of he population at different ages wha would be the necessary consumption for the whole of India, assuming all the people to have sufficient food. Adding to human consumption an estimate for he grain requirements of cattle and horses, and allowing for wastage and seed, and expors, he finds that 77 million tons of grain foods were required in India in 1919-15, whilst he harvests of 1912.18 produced 76,$60,000