LABOUR AND INDIA
SIR,—Sir William Barton's article on Labour and India in your issue of November 2nd appears to reveal an astonishing ignorance of the provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935, and recent developments in India. Are not such matters as the settlement of soldiers on the land, the reduction of rural debt, and the relations of landlord and tenant, all matters which can only be dealt with by provincial Governments, and not by the Central Government? Of the 16,00o,000 million acres covered by the new irrigation schemes, how niany are at present under cultivation and not available for the settlement of soldiers? In the United Provinces of which I can claim recent knowledge, new irrigation schemes will bring under cultivation very little land that is not at present under cultivation by occupancy or statutory tenants. Is the rural debt £1,300 millions? The exceptionally high prices which agriculturists have obtained for agricultural commodities during the war years, combined with the lack of other commodities on which to spend their surplus funds, have enabled many agriculturists to pay off most, if not all, of their debts. Has Sir William ever heard of the United Provinces Tenancy Act, 1938, which was passed by a Congress Ministry, which provided a uniform law for both Agra and Ouda, which did "interfere between landlord and tenant" and certainly not to the advantage of -the landlord, and which certainly did not split the Congress "party from top to bottom "?—Yours faithfully,
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