A Bureaucrat on the Bureaucratic ideal

MANY of our readers are aware of the sensation which Sir Pherozeshah Mehta caused in his speech as Chairman of the Reception committee of the Congress of 1904, by describing the bureaucratic ideal in India in the words of a famous character in a famous book. Who could have anticipated at the time that within less than a decade the same words would be used in describing the same ideal by one of the most unsympathetic among the bureaucrats themselves?  Addressing Rangoon Traders’ Association, Sir Reginald Craddock said:-“We have been doing for the people of Burma everything ourselves, leaving them to do nothing. They grow up under that system, and the longer they stay under it, the less likely they are ever to come forward.”