Cochin is a small State, dense with men, short of resources, but full of ambition. The means of development hardly keep pace with the State’s eagerness for it and administrative reports have often to record something like a sliding scale of self-satisfaction. Mr. Vijiaraghavachariar commenced his term of Diwanship with ebullient hopes of rapid and large achievement and, full with meliorist dreams, he sketched out a programme. He now admits disillusion. He concludes the annual report of 1095 M. E. with an apologetic confession that “with the very best will in the world it is not always possible to translate intentions into action as quickly as one would wish”. He therefore claims nothing more than that a “strenuous endeavour has been made to execute the programme sketched out in my first Administration report”. In view of the recent disturbances at Trichur, which needed external forces to control, one is tempted to scrutinise, before all, the protection departments of the State administration.
