Madhusudan_Das

50 Madhusudan Das :
; they appreciated the fact that the public health organisation of the
province was defective and inadequate to deal with the constantly
recurring epidemic of cholera, malaria and plague; while not
depreciating the value of Western system of medicine they wished also
to develop and improved the indigenous system. In dealing with these
problems they had a keen and enthusiastic leader in their Minister,
Mr. Das. Political critics tend to overlook and to deprec ate the work
of the Councils set up by the British Government, as the first step
towards responsible Government and the services of the Ministers who
undertook the duty of administering the transferred departments have
often not received adequate recognition. Historians of the future will,
I feel sure, see the events of these years in their true perspective and
will recognise that it was not those who followed the barren and sterile
policy of noncoopetation. who paved the way for further advance, but
those who like Mr. Das and his supporters recognised the treat
opportunities which they had of furthering the political progress of
India. Their work also had practical results and from my experience
of these years I can assert that in the province of Bihar and Orissa
great advances were made and much was done to deal with that terrible
problem, the alleviation of human suffering.
3. It will be out of place for me to describe at length the long
discussions which took place over the two Bills which were introduced
by Mr. Das to amend the Municipal and Local Self-Government Acts.
This, again, was no easy problem ; on the one hand there were those
who in their anxiety to make local self-governing bodies completely
responsible wished to free these bodies from all control even control
,by responsible Ministers ; on the other hand, there were those who
viewed with the gravest apprehension the transfer of power to untrained
and inexperienced administrators. The Acts, as finally placed on the
Statute Book, speak for themselves, and I think those who study them
will say that they are a satisfactory compromise between these two
opposing views. Much of the credit for this useful legislation must
be given to Mr. Das.
4. To strike a more personal note, I shall always remember with
the greatest pleasure my association with Mr. Das. Difference of
opinion between a Minister, trained in the school of politics, and a
Secretary, brought up to regard "efficiency" as all important, are
inevitable ; in fact such differences are healthy. But I always found