Essay on Administrative and other Reforms made in India

The early nationalists were fearless critics of individual administrative measures and worked incessantly for the reform of an administrative system ridden with corruption, inefficiency and oppression.

The most important administrative reform they desired was the Indianisation of the higher grades of the administrative services. They put forward this demand on economic, political and moral grounds.

Economically, the European monopoly of the higher services was harmful on two grounds: Europeans were paid at very high rates and this made Indian administration very costly Indians of similar qualifications could be employed at lower salaries, and, Europeans sent out of India a large part of their salaries and their pensions were paid in England.

This added to the drain of wealth from India. Politically, the nationalists hoped that the Indianisation of these services would make the administration more responsive to Indian needs. The moral aspect of the question was stated by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1897:

The excessive costliness of the foreign agency is not, however, it’s only evil. There is a moral evil which, if anything, is even greater. A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian race is going on under the present system.

We must live all the days of our life in an atmosphere of inferiority, and the tallest of us must bend. The full height of which our manhood is capable of rising can never be reached by us under the present system.

The moral elevation which every self-governing people feel cannot be felt by us. Our administrative and military talents must gradually disappear, owing to sheer disuse, till at last our lot, as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own country, is stereotyped.

The nationalists demanded the separation of the judicial from executive powers so that the people might get some protection from the arbitrary acts of the police and the bureaucracy.

They agitated against the oppressive and tyrannical behaviour of the police and other government agents towards the common people. They criticised the law and the high cost of judicial process.

They opposed aggressive foreign policy against India’s neighbours. They protested ‘his policy of the annexation of Burma, the attack upon suppression of the tribal people in North-Western.

They urged the government to undertake and develop welfare activities of the state. They laid a great deal of emphasis on the spread of primary education among the masses. They also demanded greater facilities for technical and higher education.

They urged the development of agricultural banks to save the peasant from the clutches of the moneylender. They wanted the government to undertake a large-scale programme of extension of irrigation for the development of agriculture and to save the country from famines.

They demanded extension of medical and health facilities and improvement of the police system to make it honest efficient and popular.

The nationalist leaders also spoke up in defense of Indian workers who had been compelled by poverty to migrate to foreign countries such as South Africa, Malaya, Mauritius, the West Indies and British Guyana in search of employment.

In many of these foreign lands they were subjected to severe oppression and racial discrimination. This was particularly true of South Africa where Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was leading a popular struggle in defense of the basic human rights of Indians.