§ VISCOUNT MIDLETON rose to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he can make any statement as to the reform in the Sanitary Service of India which has recently been under consideration; what will be the position of the head of the Sanitary Service under the new conditions; and when he will be in a position to lay Papers on the subject.
§ The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in asking the Secretary of State for India the Question which stands in my name, I do not propose to occupy your Lordships' time for more than a minute or two. It would be impossible, of course, to speak on the subject of sanitation in India without speaking at considerable length. The subject is a very difficult one, and I am afraid I must confess that I think it is one in which there are considerable arrears of administration to be made up. There is one point on which I specially hope that the Secretary of State may be able to reassure us, and that is with regard to the position of the head of the Sanitary Department in India. As your Lordships are aware, for many years the head of the Army Medical Department was also head of the Sanitary Service in India. The duties now discharged by the head of the Army Medical Corps are of a very wide character, and the immense improvement in the health of the troops is largely due to the measures which have been taken by successive heads of the Army Medical Department; but it has long been realised that it is beyond the power of any human being to discharge all these duties with regard to nearly 200,000 troops and at the same time carry on the whole Sanitary Service throughout India. It is therefore to be hoped that the change which was made by which the head of the Sanitary Department obtained an autonomy of his own may be restored. In recent years the head of the Sanitary Service in India has been placed for administrative duties under the Education Department of all others, and I confess that I think the time has come when that arrangement, which is difficult to understand on the face of it, should be modified, and when a status should be given to the head of the Sanitary Department equivalent to the vast duties which he has to discharge. I do not move for Papers, but I hope that the noble Marquess may be able to tell us that we may hope to see Papers before long on the subject.
737THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE)My Lords, I Will deal somewhat briefly on this occasion with the matter raised by the noble Viscount, but I shall be able, I hope, to satisfy him to some extent by saving that we hope soon to lay tolerably full Papers on this subject, and it is possible that when the noble Viscount has read them he may desire to go somewhat more fully into this interesting and important question of the Sanitary Service of India. Your Lordships will remember that one of the Directors or Inspectors-General whose office it was proposed at one time to abolish was the Inspector-General of Sanitation. The noble Earl who is not now in the House, Lord Curzon, included this officer in the remonstrance which he addressed to us last year in respect to the proposed abolition, and I was able—I think it was at the beginning of November last year—to reassure the noble Earl and those who agreed with him that we did not propose to carry out the complete amalgamation of sanitation with the Indian Medical Service. I accordingly addressed a Despatch to India not long before I left for that country last autumn, in which I stated that we had decided to retain an independent Sanitary Commissioner, but that his precise relations with the Director-General of the Indian Medical Service would have to be a matter for future consideration.
It may be remembered that one of the particular objections taken to the system as it has existed for the last five or six years was that it was found that more and more divorce was beginning to exist between the research side and the clinical side of the Sanitary and Medical Service. Many of the younger medical officers who were employed for research purposes found that they were losing touch with an important part of their duties in having little or no opportunity of watching cases. We have now reached a conclusion which I hope the noble Viscount will consider to be a satisfactory one. The Sanitary Commissioner will be in future relieved from a great body of office work which fell upon him when he was the independent head of a separate Department, and will have, therefore, more time for touring and for inspection in different parts of India. The research and bacteriological side, which was formerly under the Sanitary 738 Commissioner, will now be placed under the direct authority of the Medical Director-General, but on all purely technical sanitary matters the Sanitary Commissioner will be not a subordinate but an independent officer. He will be able to correspond on such subjects directly either with the Provincial Governments or with the Government of India itself; but on matters of administration, questions of appointments and of personnel, he will be in the position, as it were, of chief of the staff to the Director-General of the Medical Service. We believe that this compromise between the complete abolition of the post of Sanitary Commissioner and its retention as a purely independent post is one which will be found best to suit the peculiarities of Indian conditions.
It is not possible, in our opinion, altogether to divorce the Medical from the Sanitary Service in India, however possible or desirable it may be to do it elsewhere. The Local Governments have naturally to retain a considerable degree of independence in sanitary matters. In the first place, it is they who find practically all tine money. And then in India there is the fact, which is not found, at any rate to the same extent, elsewhere, that a close association exists between sanitation and politics. As noble Lords who know India well are aware, it is possible by unwise or excessive insistence upon sanitary improvements to run counter to deep-seated beliefs and prejudices of the population in many parts of the country, and on such subjects it may be presumed that the Local Government is the best guide that could be found. Consequently there will remain a great deal of local control, and for many purposes the Inspector-General will therefore not be an officer who gives orders so much as an inspecting and advising official, but his position, as will be clear from what I have already said, will be one of no little importance and dignity. On this subject I shall hope to be able to submit Papers before very long, and also I hope at the same time further Papers dealing with the important question of the local sanitary services.
After a great deal of discussion between the Government of India and the Local Government; a scheme has been prepared which was submitted to us at the India Office this year and which has been 739 approved. It embodies some of the recommendations of the Plague Committee of 1898, and it also deals with some of the recommendations which were made to the noble Viscount opposite when he was Secretary of State by the College of Physicians, if I remember rightly in the year 1905, when he received a deputation on the subject. The object is to strengthen, if possible, the local sanitary staffs. It is proposed to add, among superior officers, nine Deputy Commissioners of Sanitation, and for those posts Indians will be eligible as well as Europeans. It is proposed also to strengthen and enlarge the sanitary staffs of big towns. It is hoped that all the more considerable towns in India in clue course will have a Health Department presided over by a really capable officer, which will place them in these matters on something of the same level as the great urban communities in this country and in other countries in Europe. It will, I am sure, have occurred to the noble Viscount that these things will cost money and that provincial funds are not easily forthcoming even for such excellent objects as these. Therefore it has been arranged that the Government of India will come forward with money to a certain extent pro rata to that which is locally provided, and in that way, as I should hope, no little improvement will be possible.
The Papers, I think, will also touch on the malarial conferences which have been held, one in Bombay and also others, for dealing with this terrible scourge which still devastates India to so great an extent, and, as I hope, for continuing to educate the people of India in the methods of combating the pests through which malaria is spread. As noble Lords are aware, there are many facts in Indian conditions which make the destruction of the malarial mosquito a greater difficulty in India than it has been found to be in some other parts of the world, such as, for instance, in the West Indies or in West Africa. On the other hand, there have been some notable successes in Bombay and other places, and it may be trusted in time that steps will be taken all over India to diminish to a great extent, although it may not be possible quite to eradicate, this painful and disabling disease of malaria.
§ VISCOUNT MIDLETONI am much obliged to the noble Marquess for his 740 statement. Might I ask when we may hope to have the Papers in our hands, and also whether there will be any sanitary representative on the Commission of which we heard last week appointed for the examination of the Civil establishments in India?
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEAs regards the first question, I am afraid I am not able to give the noble Viscount the precise date for the laying of Papers, but it will not be long deferred. We have at command all the necessary Papers, and it is therefore only a question of obtaining the final agreement of the Government of India and the actual selection of the Papers. I am not sure that I quite apprehend the full meaning of the noble Viscount's second question. I understood him to be referring to the Royal Commission, the appointment of which has been approved by His Majesty's Government, in relation to the Indian public services. It was on that Commission, I think, that the noble Viscount asked whether a sanitary expert would be placed.
§ VISCOUNT MIDLETONI did not mean to imply a sanitary expert necessarily, but a medical or sanitary representative.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI am not in a position to give the names at this moment, but I think the noble Viscount will find that the arrangements by which the Commission will work and the manner in which it will be formed for the purpose of taking evidence in relation to particular subjects will meet the point he has raised.