INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

174 ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT
boo-splits. There is no furniture in any of the
huts, the" mud floor is the common bed, and
the cooking is done outside. Somewhere about
the village is the common tank, which serves at
once as a reservoir of water, a bathing-place, and a
cesspool." But I suppose special correspondents,
like poets, are allowed to indulge their fancy.
I cannot in these pages point out all the
inconsistent and hasty assertions made by the
press on the subject of the present famine. I
have confined my remarks to the letters, &c., of
one paper. In doing so, I do not wish it to be
understood that I consider the remarks there
made the most calling for criticism. If anything,
it is rather from the opposite point of view that
I have thus limited myself. The few further remarks
which I will make, with reference to the
same source, are made in the hope that greater
care in future will be bestowed in making
assertions on abstract subjects. What grounds,
for instance, had the correspondent for his
lament over the want of harmony between the
Government of Bengal and the supreme Government
1 of the assertion that Lord Northbrooke
invested three millions for the relief of Bengal