Administration in India
| Date | 01 January 1939 |
| Author | John Anderson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1939.tb03021.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1939 |
..
Administration in India
By
The
Rr.
HON.
SIR
JOHN
ANDERSON,
G.C.B.,
G.C.S.I.,
G.C.I.E.,
M.P.
[Inaugural
Address to the
1938-39
Session
of
the Institute
of
Public Administration]
HEN
at
the command of our President, who made it quite clear,
w
I
may say, that he was determined to exact obedience,
I
agreed
to inaugurate the Winter Session of the Institute, my subject,
“
Administration in India,” seemed
a
natural one to choose in
making contact
with
you for the first time since my return.
It
had
also the great advantage from my pureIy selfish point of view that
I
felt
I
should be able to gather the necessary material together with
a
minimum
of
effort by drawing on recollections
still
fresh in my mind.
It
is
perhaps just as well that
I
gave way to these unworthy impulses,
for
I
have been
so
heavily burdened during the recent crisis
in
our
national affairs that if
I
had not done
so,
but had chosen some subject
requiring research,
I
fear there would have been no address for me
to
deliver to you this afternoon.
Now, may
I
begin by giving you some
first
impressions. When
I
amved in Calcutta on
a
brilliant morning
at
the end of March,
with the temparature already, at g a.m., over
IOO
degrees in the shade,
and had struggled through the unaccustomed and rather exacting
formalities of
a
public arrival,
I
felt
as
if in exchanging the
Home
Office
for Bengal
I
had passed, if not from the frying pan into the
fire,
at
any rate from
a
placid backwater into
a
boiling cauldron.
But having changed into a
silk
suit and sat for
a
time under
a
fan
in the lofty well-shaded room which was to be the scene
of
most of
my labours for the next five years
I
began to feel better, and when
presently my admirable Private Secretary made his entrance with
two
armfuls of files
I
soon made myself quite at home. That sharp
contrast between Eastern pomp and ceremony, which has no counter-
part
here, and very ordinary desk slogging was my first impression
of official life in India and its novelty never quite wore
off.
My next
impressions were also of surprise at finding first how closely official
routine had been modelled upon procedure at home and then how
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