Spectrum Summary: Congress Rules in Provinces | History for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Congress ministries were formed in Bombay, Madras, Central Provinces, Orissa, United Provinces, Bihar, and later in the NWFP and Assam also.

Gandhi’s Advice

Gandhi advised Congressmen to hold these offices lightly and not tightly. The offices were to be seen as "crowns of thorns'

Work under Congress Ministries

➢ Civil Liberties

• Laws giving emergency powers were repealed.
• Ban on illegal organizations, and on certain books and journals was lifted.
• Press restrictions were lifted.
• Newspapers were taken out of blacklists.
• Confiscated arms and arms licenses were restored.
• Police powers were curbed and the CID stopped shadowing politicians.
• Political prisoners and revolutionaries were released, and deportation and internment orders were revoked.
• In Bombay lands confiscated by the government during the Civil Disobedience Movement were restored.
• Pensions of officials associated with the Civil Disobedience Movement were restored.

➢ Agrarian Reforms

• The ministries did not have adequate powers.
• There were inadequate financial resources as a lion’s share was appropriated by the Government of India.
• The strategy of class adjustments was another hurdle since zamindars, etc., had to be conciliated and neutralized.
• There was the constraint of time since the logic of Congress politics was a confrontation and not cooperation with colonialism.
• War clouds had started hovering around 1938.
• The reactionary second chamber (Legislative Council) dominated by landlords, moneylenders, and capitalists in United Provinces, Bihar, Bombay, Madras, and Assam had to be conciliated as its support was necessary for legislation.
• The agrarian structure was too complex.

Attitude Towards Labour

The basic approach was to advance workers’ interests while promoting industrial peace. The ministries took recourse to Section 144 and arrested the leaders.

➢ Social Welfare Reforms

• The prohibition imposed in certain areas.
• Measures for the welfare of Harijans taken.
• Attention is given to primary, technical, and higher education and to public health and sanitation.
• The encouragement is given to khadi through subsidies and other measures.
• Prison reforms were undertaken.
• The encouragement is given to indigenous enterprises.
• Efforts taken to develop planning through National Planning Committee set up under Congress president Subhash Bose in 1938.

➢ Extra-Parliamentary Mass Activity of Congress

• launching of mass literacy campaigns,
• setting up of Congress police stations and panchayats,
• Congress Grievance Committees presenting mass petitions to government and states peoples’ movements.

➢ Evaluation

• The 28-month Congress rule was also significant for the following reasons.
• The contention that Indian self-government was necessary for radical social transformation got confirmed. 
• Congressmen demonstrated that a movement could use state power to further its ends without being co-opted.
• The ministries were able to control communal riots.
• The morale of the bureaucracy came down.
• Council work helped neutralize many erstwhile hostile elements (landlords, etc).
• People were able to perceive the shape of things to come if independence was won.
• Administrative work by Indians further weakened the myth that Indians were not fit to rule.
• The Congress ministries resigned in October 1939 after the outbreak of the Second World War.
• The Congress victory resulted in what appeared to be an anti-labor shift in Congress attitudes that led to the Bombay Traders Disputes Act in 1938.