\ SOCIAL SCIENTIST degree of [existing] responsible government".1 The appointment of this commission was now advanced by two years, and on 8 November 1927 the announcement was made of the commission that was to be headed by the "liberal", Sir John Simon. India's fate could now be determined firmly by seven men representing the different components of the Imperial establishment,2 while the Indians bickered and quarrelled among themselves. In the event, the step proved to be a gross miscalculation, turning out to be a provocation rather than a coup. This was because its authors ignored the basic reality that despite nationalism's recent discomfitures, the two fundamental factors had not changed, namely, India's continuing impoverishment under British rule, and the Indian people's urge for freedom. What else could represent the continuing poverty of India more dramatically than the average expectation of life at birth, estimated at less than 25 years over the decade 1921-31; it had practically remained stagnant, since four decades earlier (1881-91), when it was 25.5 years.3 Only nine per cent of the population was returned as literate in 1931, which reflected the acute cultural backwardness from which India suffered, after some 150 years of British rule. Each sector of the Indian economy was under pressure. The Royal Commission of Indian Agriculture, reporting in 1928, drew a sombre picture of land-exhaustion, for which it could offer only trivial remedies,a prudent government having placed outside the scope of its enquiries, the two major drains on the peasant's essential resources, viz., rent and taxation. At the same time the 1931 census found only one Indian out of nine living in the towns, showing how little employment outside agriculture was available. A 'free trade' policy had been relentlessly followed to throttle Indian industry in the interests of imports from Britain. The 1923 Fiscal Commission's scheme of 'discriminating protection' (with which all its Indian members dissented), left the bulk of Indian industrial sector unprotected. In order further to encourage British imports the rupee was statutorily pegged at ls.6d. (up from ls.4d.) in 1927. Every class of Indians, except, perhaps, the large land-owners, had reason to nurse deep-set grievances, which no constitutional jugglery could sweep away. It was not only that the ground for the grievances existed: political consciousness was also spreading at different levels and in divergent forms, which necessarily undermined and restricted the authority commanded by the loyalist and collaborationist camps. First of all, after his release