418 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
All this additional burden was due to the enhanced cost of meeting the gold payments, and “would not have been necessary but for the fall in the exchange.”*
Along with this increase of resources the Government of India also exercised the virtue of economy in the cost of administration. For the first time in its history, the Government turned to the alternative of employing the comparatively cheaper agency of the natives of the country in place of the imported Englishmen. Prior to 1870, the scope of effecting economy along this line was very limited. By the Civil Service Reforms of 1853† the way was cleared for the appointment of Indians to the posts reserved by the Statute of 1793† for the members of the covenanted Civil Service. But this reform did not conduce to any economy in the cost of the administration, because the Indian members carried the same high scale of salaries as did the English members of the Civil Service. It was when the Statute of 1870 (33 Vic. c. 3) was passed permitting the appointment by nomination of non-covenanted Indians to places reserved for the covenanted Civil Service on a lower scale of salary, that a real scope for economy presented itself to the Government of India. Hard pressed, the Government of India availed itself of the possibilities for economy held out by this statute. So great was the need for economy and so powerful was the interest of the Government in reducing its expenditure that it proceeded, notwithstanding increased demands for efficient administration, to substitute the less expensive agency of non-covenanted civilians in place of the more expensive agency of the convenanted civilians. The scale on which this substitution was effected was by no means small, for we find that between 1874 and 1889 the strength of the convenanted service recruited in England was reduced by more than 22 per cent., and was further expected to be reduced by about 12 per cent., by the employment of unconvenanted Indians to the posts usually reserved for covenanted civilians.§ Besides substituting a cheap for a dear agency in the administration, the Government also sought to obtain relief by applying the pruning knife to the rank growth in departmental
- J.E.O’Conor, Report of the Indian Currency Committee, 1898, App. II, p. 182.
† Cf. Report of the Public Service Commission, C 5327 of 1887.
‡ This provision of the Act has been re-enacted by the Act of 1861.
§ Cf. evidence of Mr. Jenkins, Q. 12. Mil. of Evid. of the Select Committee on East India (Civil Servants), H. of C. 327 of 1890.