Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎469r] (62/238)

The Progress of the Municipal Idea in India. 275
other reasons the Commissioner’s report does not specify.
In the Southern Division, out of 375 meetings adjourn
ments took place in 103, but it is not stated for what reasons.
It is seen from the Collectors’ reports, however, that there
was considerable laxity in this particular. The Collector
of Dharwar had seriously warned the non-attending mem
bers that they should attend more frequently or resign their
seats, and the number of special meetings in five other
municipalities is said to have been inadequate. In Gokdk
all four quarterly meetings, and in nine other places three
out of four, were adjourned for want of a quorum, while in
twenty-two municipalities there was a falling off in the
attendance at general meetings. In the twenty-one muni
cipal towns in Sind (inclusive of Karachi, Hyderabad,
Sukkur, and Shikarpur), 139 out of the 353 Councillors
failed to attend two-thirds of the general meetings.
Looking at the matter as a whole, it appears that about
one-third of the members of the municipal committees in
the two Presidencies are inefficient and two-thirds efficient ;
but the latter, it must be remembered, include the officials,
whose attention to business and interest in the prosperity of
their charges is in a manner guaranteed. This, considering
the outcry that British administration has deprived the
people of every opportunity for regulating their own local
affairs, is distinctlydisappointing. And this remark cannot be
confined to the two presidencies under immediate considera
tion. Sir Macworth Young, the lately retired Lieutenant-
Governor of the Panjab, has recorded his opinion on the
subject of the advancement in local self-government in that
province in the last eighteen years, during which Lord
Ripons policy in that respect has been in force, to the effect
that the people rarely manifest any interest in the election
of their representatives, and the elected representatives
rarely represent the real interests of their constituents. If
any position on the Board is coveted, it is that of the nomi
nated, not of the elected, members, and District Boards
in general are merely consultative, not executive, bodies,
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