Editorial Notes

The first stage of our independence has completed its first year through unprecedented events which the country will take years to forget. The communal slaughter in the two Punjabs, the colossal efforts of Mahatma Gandhi in freeing Bengal from communal strife, and ultimately his assassination at the hand of a religious fanatic, and then the aggression of the North-Western frontier tribesmen on Kashmir, have kept our leaders in the Government fully occupied and left very little breathing time for them to think of ways and means for ameliorating the condition of our people. Yet in the field of engineering gigantic projects have been undertaken for harnessing our rivers and thus for growing more food for our people and for getting more power for our industries. It is however a regrettable state of affairs that in the field of the existing industries, production has fallen to an alarming extent. This dearth of production is the cause of most of the ills and hardships we have now to undergo. It is the shortage of production that is responsible for the scarcity of consumer goods which causes high prices, encourages black-marketing and raises the cost of living. To meet high cost of living, higher wages are demanded and have to be provided for, but the benefit of such higher wages is lost if prices are correspondingly increased by further shortage of supply caused by stoppage of production that inevitably occurs whenever strikes take place. Strikes can bring about increase of wages but no reduction of prices. That can only be brought about by increase of production.