INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

AND PRESS CRITICISM,
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wages, and the collective amount realised is
sufficient to feed every member, not indeed on
rice, but on some cheaper food-grains that are
offering in the market," These extracts, taken
with the criticism already made on the telegram,
require no further commentary.
I again join issue with the "carefully prepared
basis of personal observation" on which
the correspondent rests another of his statements.
We have in one letter, of the date of
which I have no note, a poetical sketch of the
once busy Indian village of quaint picturesqueness,
now idle; the tendrils of parched creepers
clinging to walls and roofs, which, but for the
drought, should have" smothered the humble
homes in flowering brightness:" Ina succeeding
letter we have now the actual village
described: "The reader must by no means
imagine that a village in India bears any resemblance
to English villages, with which we are
so familiar. Here there are no pretty porches
or latticed windows, with flowering creepers
clustering thick about them. An Indian village
consists of a casual cluster of hovels, some made
of mud, some only of straw, walled with bam-