Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/469

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uously grow when the salaries of its highly paid officials are spent outside it. Surely it must be India's keen poverty that compels its people, during cold weather for want of woollen clothing, to burn their precious manure, in order to warm themselves. Throughout my wanderings in India I have rarely seen a buoyant face. The middle classes are groaning under the weight of awful distress. For the lowest order there is no hope. They do not know a bright day. It is a pure fiction to say that India's riches are buried under ground, or are to be found in her ornaments. What there is of such riches is oi no consequence. The nation's expenditure has increased, not so its income. Government have not deliberately brought about this state of things. I believe that thoir intentions are pure. It is their honest opinion that the nation's prosperity is daily growing. Their faith in their Blue Books is immovable. It is only too true that statistics can be made to prove anything. The economists deduce India's prosperity from statistics. People like me who appreciate the popular way of examining figures shake their heads over bluebook statistics. If the gods were to come down and testify otherwise, I would insist on saying that 1 see India growing poorer.

What then would our Parliament do V When we have it, we would have a right to commit blunders and to correct them. In the early stages we are bound to make blunders. But we being children of the soil, won't lose time in setting ourselves right. We shall, therefore, soon find out remedies against poverty* Then our existence won't be dependent on Lancashire goods. Then we shall not be found spending untold riches on Imperial Delhi. It will, then, bear some

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