The Congress Party in India" has taken a wise step in putting agrarian reform in the forefront of its programme.- The successive efforts of Britisty administrators in India have been directed toward that objective and although there is room for much improvement for the simple reasom—as. the new Ministers will find—that reformers cannot always proceed as rapidly as they would like, there is every ground for asserting that if the problem is tackled with statesmanlike attention to realities the welfare of the people will be, advanced. Tt is by no means certain that Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru is properly seized of the difficulties involved, for in talking of axing agricultural income and abolishing the zamindari system in one breath he is not only presenting his Party with a task of consider~ able magnitude but he is linking up two mutually destructive projects. The new Ministers belonging' to the Congress Party have this advantage: generally they are in power in Provinces where agrarian reform is particularly sing and. where, consequently, there is much scope for practical measures of amelioration. It is also to be expected that in the accumulated experience of the revenue secretaria will have valuable support in framing legislation for the relief of. the peasant. As their predecessors in office, albeit Officials and not politicians, discovered the path is not easy,.for India, like other countries, cannot entirely rid herself of the checks imposed by tradition, custom and, with all due respect to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, vested interests which, of course, are predominantly Indian,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.