ROYAL COMMISSION UPON DECENTRALIZATION.

113

3 Jan., 1908.

Mr. F. F.
Lyall.

the District Officer and the people ?—I have never
found it to be so in my case, and I have always been
able to converse with everybody ; a District Officer
seldom gets a chance of hearing what his brother
officers do in that way, but I should think it was not a
cause ; at all events it is not so far as I am concerned.
17203. Are there other reasons in Bengal to account
for this want of intercourse ?—Yes. We have really
nothing to do with any settlements of revenue. The
permanent settlement has taken a great deal of revenue
work out of the hands of officers.
17204. Is the amount of office work so great that
officers have not time to tour ?—I would not say that
they cannot tour, but the difficulty is that they do not
get into touch with the people on the points on which
they do in other provinces. For instance, in the
United Provinces they have constant settlements, and
the Settlement Officers are touring round and coming
into contact with the people every day.
17205. Are officers so taken up with business while
they are touring that they have no chance of inter-
course ?—No, I think not ; it is because we have not
the kind of work which brings one into contact with
the people.
17206. Is your district too large for one officer?—■
Yes, very much too large. My remedy would be to
have smaller districts, and a large increase of the cadre,
both in the Imperial and the Provincial Services.
17207; It has been stated that there is a great want
in this province of Joint-Magistrates—do you hold
that opinion?—Yes, I have no Joint-Magistrate, and
have never had one in my district.
17208. Could the Joint-Magistrate relieve you to a
great extent of your work?—No, I should like to
have smaller districts and more District Officers. I
consider that that would be a better remedy than the
appointment of Joint-Magistrates in the existing large
districts.
17209. You are Chairman of the District Board in
your official capacity ? Do you think if a non-official
Chairman was put in your place you would retain an
effective control over the proceedings of the Board ?—■
No.
17210. Would not the submissson to you of the
budget of the District Board enable you still to keep
some effective control over their proceedings ?—I do
not think so. If I was relieved of my duties as
Chairman of the District Board, I should not have
nearly so intimate a knowledge with regard to its pro-
ceedings, nor should I have so much control over
education.
17211. Would you have a control which would be
adequate?—No, my control .over the district would
not be adequate in that case. The district charges
are so large, and the matters for decision are now so
numerous, that the District Officer is the only person
who is able to give any competent opinion as to the
needs of the district as a whole, and if you had a non-
official Chairman he would not have the time, or the
power, to go touring about as a District Officei- does.
The District Officer, therefore, is the only person who
can retain proper control of a district.
17212. If you could divide your work, what pro-
portion of time in a week would it be necessary to
devote to the duties of Chairman of the District
Board? Would it take a man, say, three hours every
day to do adequately the work attaching to the office
of Chairman ?—No, I do not think so, because we
have most competent and helpful Vice-Chairmen who
do a great deal of the office work.
17213. Supposing you had a non-official Chairman
with an official Vice-Chairman, how long would it take
to get through the duties ?—With a really efficient
Vice-Chairman, I think it ought not to take more than
an hour-and-a-half a day, but then the Chairman would
get no local knowledge unless he toured in his district
in addition to doing the work which occupied him
one hour and-a-half.
17214. How often would he have to go on tour?—
He would only tour in the cold weather- once a year,
but the oftener he toured, the better it would be.
17215. Might the duties of District Boards be use-
fully enlarged ?—I do not think so.

17185. Is it the sort of room in which you can see
your visitors with comfort ?—Yes ; I can give them a
chair, but there is not much luxury in it.
17186. There is at present some tendency to give
extended powers to the lowest officers in the chain of
Government. Might that tendency be widened ?—I
think it might, but they are working as hard as they
can on those lines.
17187. Might any further delegation be reasonably
left to the Local Government ?—I think so ; there is
such a mass of detail.
17188. Have you ever sent suggestions to the Local
Government with regard to the delegation of powers
and work ?—Yes, and as a rule they have been, very
favourably received. I have nothing in that particular
direction to complain of.
17189. Why does the sum which is allotted to Com-
missioners for expenditure in such ways as they may
think proper entail an enormous amount of unneces-
sary correspondence?—The entire sum given is very
small, and a Commissioner who has four or five dis-
tricts under his charge has to write to'each Collector
for returns as to what he wants. Of course, each one
wants more than the Commissioner can give, so that
the practice is to deal with them in order of merit,
but after all the amount to be disposed of is so small
that it is hardly worth while troubling about.
17190. Do you prepare a detailed statement each
year ?—No ; we have to find out what is wanted in a
hurry as we go to each place, and until we see what is
wanted we cannot put anything down.
17191. Who actually sends the money—does the
Commissioner remit to you and do you forward it, or
does the Commissioner remit it direct ?—It is in the
treasury ; there is a balance, and we are allowed to
use so much of the money.
17192. Then it is distributed in your name and not
that of the Commissioner ?—Yes.
17193. With regard to the sum of Rs. 5,000 which
you say you would like to have put at your disposal,
would you distribute that direct or at the suggestion
of your Assistants ?—I would do it direct, as far as I
could.
17194. To what extent, or in what direction would
you curtail the right of appeals which at present exists ?
—Peons and clerks on salaries of less than Rs. 100
might safely be dealt with by the District Officer who
appoints in all such cases.
17195. Would it not be advisable to have some
interval between the original authority who pro-
nounced the sentence and the appellate authority ?—•
In theory it is a good thing, but in the case of a peon
in receipt of Rs. 6 or 7 a month, who is habitually
lazy, when there is a good case made out of which you
can be the only judge, I think you might be trusted,
if you are a District Officer, to deal with such cases.
Of course the higher up in the scale you get, it becomes
more difficult to say whether it would be sound to
make the order of a District Officer final. For
instance, I had a clerk at one time who was drawing
Rs. 30 a month, who was absolutely useless ; he did
not know English and to pay him was wasting money
absolutely.
17196. How came you to employ him if he did not
know English ?—He was a relic of the old times.
17197. Is it necessary that all clerks should know
English ?—Absolutely.
17198. Are all cases heard in English, and is all
business done in English ?—Yes.
17199. Is that a satisfactory state of things ?—It is
very difficult to say whether it is satisfactory or not,
but we have got the people so highly educated now
that it is obviously the best way for a Collector to do
his work.
17200. Does the Collector adopt that way of doing
his work because he does not know the vernacular ?—
Yes, probably. That is a very strong reason, and
Deputy Magistrates, too, who are mostly Bengalis,
do not know Hindi.
17201. So that English has practically come to be a
common medium of communication ?—Yes.
17202. Is the lack of knowledge of the vernacular
one of the causes of the want of sympathy between

33263

P