Institute of Pacific Relations

Crescent and Green. A Miscellany of Writings on PakistanReview by: Stanley MaronFar Eastern Survey, Vol. 26, No. 5 (May, 1957), p. 79Published by: Institute of Pacific RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3024541 .

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Gandhi and Nehru were not prevented from being what they are. The most stirring impression the book leaves is that in

spite of former degradation at the hands of the British and

great veneration from his own people, Nehru is conducting internal politics in a democratic manner and external poli- tics with neither bitterness nor malice. Only a truly great man can do that.

University of Minnesota werner levi

STRUCTURE OF INDIAN INDUSTRIES. By M. M. Mehta.

Bombay: Popular Book Depot. 1955. 340 pp. Rs. 22/8.

This monograph presents the results of a study of the

size, location and integration of industrial units in seven se- lected industries of India (cotton, jute, sugar, iron and steel, coal, paper and cement). Part I deals with the trends in the size of industrial units, the relation between size and rate of profit, and the relation between size and cost of produc- tion. The purpose was to determine whether smaller units were less efficient, their cost of production higher and their

mortality rate greater, than large units. Part II is concerned with the degree and incidence of lo-

calization, and the nature and extent of inter-regional and inter-unit differences in the rate of profit and cost of pro? duction. An attempt was made to determine whether the lo- cational trends suggest the shifting of productive activity from regions of high to those of low labor costs and whether it is possible to find out the relative locational importance of different centers and regions through an analysis of costs and profits.

Part II, the most interesting section of the book, discusses the managerial, financial and administrative integration of industrial units in Indian industries. Dr. Mehta finds that a few managing agency houses exercise extensive control over a large sector of Indian industry: at the time of his re- searches more than 250 industrial establishments were con- trolled and managed by the nine leading British managing agencies, while eleven Indian houses controlled and managed 220 industrial enterprises. The activity of managing agents is not confined to one or two industries but ranges over a wide

gamut. Thus one managing agency controls 50 companies, of which 10 are in jute, 17 in tea, 10 in coal, 2 in transport, 2 in electricity, 1 in sugar, and 7 in miscellaneous industries. The extent of managerial integration that exists is revealed even more when one looks at individual industries. Thus in cotton textiles, out of 408 mills, 81 were controlled and managed by a group of 15 managing agents and accounted for more than one-third of the productive capacity of the industry. In the case of jute, tea, coal, cement, iron and steel and matches, managing agency control was very extensive.

There exists in India a system of multiple directorships which results in a concentration of business power in a few hands. About 100 persons hold 1,700 directorships of impor- tant concerns, 860 of these being held by 30 persons. Of these 30 persons, 10 hold between them no less than 400

directorships. Dr. Mehta concludes that "for ali practical pur- poses a few leading families in India control and guide the industrial destinies of the country. Fresh and young blood seldom find an opportunity to enter the industrial oligarchy." This, of course, applies only to the private sector and has no bearing on the rapidly growing and extensive government sector.

College of The City of New York jerome b. cohen

CRESCENT AND GREEN. A Miscellany of Writings or Pakistan. London: Cassell & Company. 1955. 170 pp. 10s

A collection of previously published articles on Pakistan is brought together in this volume. The authors include Arnold J. Toynbee, V. Gordon Ghilde, Mortimer Wheeler and W Norman Brown. The topics range over archaeology, history, art, literature and philosophy. Toynbee, in his article "Pakis? tan as an Historian Sees Her," regards Pakistan as a symbol of the encounter and strife characteristic of the contemporary world. He stresses the unifying power of Islam, but urges that "it would be a calamity if Pakistan were ever to be- come a Muslim state in an exclusive and intolerant way, for then Islam might become a far more disruptive force than the racial and linguistic differences which Islam at present overrides." Ghilde discusses the relations between "Pakistan and the West" in terms of the ancient Harappan civilization and its probable influence on the development of European culture. Wheeler, in a vivid description of Mohenjo Daro, tells us something about "Pakistan Four Thousand Years

Ago." Norman Brown, in his essay on "Pakistan and Western

Asia," traces out the important changes which have taken

place in the Indus valley since the times of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa.

An interesting survey of "Muslim Painting" is given by S. Amjad Ali and a discussion of "Art in Pakistan" by Jalaluddin Ahmed. The humorist and diplomat, A. S. Bokhari, ruminates on "The Urdu Writer of Our Times." Other con- tributions include "The Oldest Baluchistan," by Leslie Alcock; "Pakistan in Early Sasanian Times," by Sprengling; "Pilgrim- age Through Time," by Emily Polk; "Gulbadan Bano

Begum," by Winifred Holmes; "The Treatment of Nature in

Mogul Painting," by Eric G. Dickinson; and "Three English Novelists and the Pakistani Scene," by Benjamin Gilbert Brooks. The volume concludes with three essays on Iqbal, two by Alessandro Bausani and one by J. J. Houben. New Haven stanley maron

BARE FEET IN THE PALACE. By Agnes Newton Keith. Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown. 1955. 370 pp. $5.00.

Anyone expecting from the title to find in this book a

careful, if journalistic, account of the "Jacksonian era" in

Philippine politics will be disappointed. Only five out of

twenty-five chapters mix a significant proportion of political commentary with the diary-like personal anecdotes of the author. Mrs. Keith, who was tremendously impressed, and

rightly so, with the honesty and courage of the man she saw elected in November 1953, says (p. 245): "Ramon Magsay- say knows that the greatest thing any President can do for the Philippines at this moment in history is to give the people faith in their own government". Because he did create this

faith, the fact that Magsaysay's tragic death left unfinished his constructive program for reform does not detract from his greatness. Mrs. Keith visited an EDCOR farm, Magsaysay's first reform project. But little did she know that her descrip- tion of the casual and fatalistic attitude of the Filipino army pilot who took her to Mindanao toward what are considered in America customary air safety precautions would help to

provide an understanding of the events surrounding this year's plane disaster on a Cebu mountainside.

The real value of the book is not in its political commen?

tary or in its attempt to describe Filipino life, which exhibits

MAY 1957 79

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