INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT. 191
find out the lower classes; and these will accept
relief in any shape which is not patently and
peculiarly obnoxious. Food, cooked or uncooked,
is acceptable to these people; but it is
only when the pinch is very severe that it will
bring out the majority of the better classes: till
then they will refrain from resorting to the poorhouses
for relief, or to the works for employment.
And it is only aftBr a house-to-house
visitation-undertaken with many scruples and
misgivings-that the suffering higher classes
are found out. To effect this, it is generally
found expedient to form a committee of the
influential men of a town, or to employ the
head - men of the villages, whose duty it will
be to work in co-operation with Government
officials. In this way only can the condition
of the" purdah-nusheen" women be found out
and relief administered. It is, of course, difficult
to comprehend such a state of society in
England, where we sometimes understand our
neighbours' affairs better than our own: but in
the East it is the custom of the Muhammadan
population to refrain from making the slightest
allusion, in any respect. to one's wife; even her