From Bombay to Burma and Simla to Ceylon.
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Mails for the Hills Calcutta's Housing Question -The Bullock and the Motorvan.
From Our Own Correspondent in India.) For Health Resorts and Hill Stations.
Burma ie one of the most rising and wealthy of the Provinces under the sway of the Indian Empire, and in 1912 it has distinguished itself by provnung many fortunes out of its huge exports of rice for which it, owing to the rice famine in China and other parts of the r ar East, received record prices. But there is one drawback about Burma, which it is now sought to rectify by means of a motor service. In India and most other tropical countries there are health-giving stations in the mountains, and to these the jaded worker in the hot plains has recourse at frequent intervals to regain lost vitality and so keep himself up to concert pitch, so to speak. In Burma there has hitherto not been much in the hill station line, and those in search of a complete change have had to reek it in Singapore, Ceylon, Japan or England.
A fine hill station has now been found at Thandaung, and so the Government of Burma has called for tenders for a motor service for passengers anel .mails from Toungoo to Thandaung for a period of four years from is'. January, 191a. For part ot the year the service is to be a daily one (from 15th February to 15th May and during the October and Christmas holidays); and for the remaining part of the year the service will be tri-weekly. Tenderers had to state the amount of the monthly subsidy they required from the Government and to address their correspondence to the Commissioner. Tenasserim Division, Burma.
Burma is in Great Need of Roads.
Burma is in sad need of commercial motors .fee her great rice, oil and teak exports, not to mention her various imports, but the absence of proper roads stands in the way of much development just yet. it is hardly creditable to the British or Indian Government that our flag has now flown for eighty long years over parts of Burma, and yet there he an afmost entire absence of roads to assist commercial development, while many of those -that are in existence are in about the same state of preservation as they probably were when man first commenced to roam the earth. Steps are now being taken by the Government of Burma, aided by the Burma Chamber of Commerce,. to compel the Government of India to alter this disgraceful state of affairs. I venture to prophesy that, as soon as there are suitable roads, there will he an abundance of orders for commercial motors, for no country is in more urgent need of them to serve as railway feeders. Of course Burma has commercial-motor services of sorts even now, but they are as nothing compared with what is to come when the Government of India has been awakened tothe merest sense of its duty to Burma, which is one of its most desirable provinces and callable of great development, not only within itself, but with Siam and China, which are Burma's next-door neighbours.
Coming Orders for Calcutta's New Suburbs.
The commercial-motor trade is bound to benefit largely by the operations of the Calcutta Improvement Trust, which, after years of talk, has now come into actual being and proposes to improve the eongested parts of the city at a cost of several millions sterling. One of the immediate results of the work of this trust will be to displace large number of people who now live in the insanitary areas which it is the duty of the trust to demolish. The people so displaced will be located in many suburbs which have not yet been created. Life is only possible in suburbs when means of communication with the city
are frequent and cheap, and the suggestion is that the motorbus will answer the purpose admirably. It is felt, here that tramway lines are a serious obstacle to the swift progress of other traffic ; and, in winding and narrow streets, such as prevail in Calcutta, tramways constitute a real danger to carriages and pedestrians alike. Hence the desire for motorbuses. it is realized now more than ever here that the motordriven vehicle must come more and more into evidence, as the years roll by, and the desire now seems to be to create an opening for it. It is not expected. of course, that the commercial motor will completely oust the electric-tramway service, but there is a strong conviction growing that there is room for both, in handling what, should prove to be a very profitable businees. The streets are already in perfect order for a motorbus service.
The Horror of the Bullock Cart.
Another effect of the Impiovernent Trust's work will be the dethroning of the bullock cart with all its attendant slowness, unfitness for commercial transactions in the present age, and above all the horrible cruelty now associated with the bullock-cart service, which even the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is powerless to blot out. Bullock carts will be quite unsuited to and perfectly. out of joint with the new suburban life that is to come, and they will be very largely displaced by the more useful commercial motor.
The Motor Must Liberate the Bullock.
After a very long residence in parts of India, I can assure you that the disappearance of the bullock cart will be hailed with delight by the people, especially the Hindus, who regard the bullock as a sacred animal because one of their gods rode on it. They consider it to be rather a blot on British rule in India that Government does not put down with a strong hand all ciuelty to cows and bullocks. The Government reply is that they do what they can, but the Hindus retort that a Government that. cannot put a stop to the grossest cruelty possible, practised daily in even the largest cities, cannot be up to much, er fitted for greater things. If you will just strongly bear in mind that the bullock is really a sacred animal with them, you will understand their resentment against the Government and also against magistrates, who not infrequently inflict a fine, instead of a long term of imprisonment, on a human fiend who has been caught red-handed flaying an animal alive: There is a sort of superstition in India that this kind of flaying, especially of goats, adds to the value of the skin ; but I am assured by skin merchants that it does nothing of the kind. It is a horribly brutal practice and there can be hardly any doubt that Government could stop it pretty quickly if they were to issee the necessary orders to the police and magistrates. But we are far too busy out this way just now erecting an unnecessary capital at Delhi (we already have a beautiful capital at Simla. a few hours away by train) and planning frontier expeditions, which never yet have resulted in any permanent good, to attend to everyday matters of urgency, such as the inhuman cruelty to animals and the improvement of transport in the interests -of trade and commercial development. In this wilderness we sadly require another energetic Moses, like Lord Curzon, to open up routes and afford transport facilities ; hut it is seldom that an efficient Moses heaves in sight, and only now and then is a country favoured with a go-ahead Viceroy of the
Curzon type.
A. OF C.