Village-planning

SOME attention is being paid in Madras and Bombay to town-planning. The other provinces are yet inactive in the matter. Prof Gaddes' lectures are nearly ready in print. The Madras Government has appointed a whole time officer to attend to town-planning schemes in the large towns. As regards villages of over 8,000 population some instructions are issued. Village-planning is as important as, if not more than, town-planning. In Great Britain the authorities had to pay in the aggregate from £10 to 20 millions for the folly of neglecting roads in rural areas. Indian villages have no roads to speak of and no plans of building cottages or extensions. It is computed that to allow for natural increase of population and to make for the deficit caused by destruction of old or unfit cottages, nearly 80,000 new cottages should be built in England and Wales every year.