Then there is another peculiarity or a mishap to which I want to draw the attention of this House. The recent partition has retarded the pace considerably. The East Punjab was economically much backward. An ordinary cultivator there has got only one acre or even less than that. That holding is not economical and that cultivator cannot afford to provide higher education to his children. About seventy per cent of the students in the United Punjab used to come from West Punjab which is now included in Pakistan. With this partition those schools and colleges have been lost. Parents and guardians have been rendered destitute and they cannot afford to provide education for their wards now. You must have seen that the children of school-going age are hawking in the bazars and in the streets with arched gram or cigarettes on their heads. Their education has been arrested and in spite of the best intentions nothing has been done to rehabilitate them. The young and the old are struggling for their bare subsistence. With such handicaps is it possible for these Punjabis to compare favourably in any open competition with candidates from other provinces which are more advanced and which had a considerably early start? What would be the result then? Already the Central Secretariat is full of Menons, Swamis and Ayyangars. And in a few years we will see the provinces would be flooded with ambitious young men who would not be so familiar with the local usages or customs. Local problems would not be appreciated. The sons of the soil would be squeezed out and there would be fresh prejudices. In backward areas such as the Punjab growth will be stunted, and development arrested. There would not be harmonious progress of each component part of the country.
