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Changing India.
THE SOCIAL SERVICES IN INDIA.
By Jospeh Martin.
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During the last eighty years conditions in India have been changing
rapidly. The public health departments have achieved great successes
in their attempts to prevent epidemic diseases, and there has been a
consequent acceleration in the increase of population.
This in itself
has raised new problems, for in some areas the pressure of population has become more than the soil can bear, and new means of subsistence
must be provided. But all the time the British Government have been
developing social services to meet the needs of the people.
What has been accomplished in this direction may now be read in a volume issued by the British Government, SOCIAL SERVICE IN INDIA, price 10/ôd. It is a collection of chapters written by specialists, all of whom have spent many years in India, dealing with the various problems
about which they write. It serves mainly as a text-book for the
is/ younger members of the Indian Civil Service, but it also a record of the
great events that are now taking place in India, and of what is being done to improve the conditions of the people.
Before the establishment of British rule, the welfare of the individual in India was the concern of the caste-brotherhood into which
he was born. In-so-far as his conditions could be humanly controlled, he expected the brotherhood to control them; but he was conscious of few needs, and he had never heard of many of the social services now regarded
as necessary for the maintenance of public health and welfare.
Outside his caste, and its influence on his life and destiny,were the Gods and the King. Of the Gods he asked deliverance from pestilence and famine; of the King he hoped that whatever wars might be waged
should be fought over the fields of his neighbours. Such associations
as there were outside the caste for instance, for the sinking of a well-
were mainly temporary arrangements to be dissolved as soon as their
object was achieved.
With the establishment of the King's peace throughout India the
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