The duties of the Sub Divisional Officer (Civil) within his Sub Division are almost similar to

those of the Deputy Commissioner within his district. In all matters of administration, he
has to be the Deputy Commissioner's principal agent.

He is also incharge of various development activities going on in the Sub Division and is
also responsible for co-ordinating the work of various departments. For that he has to
tour the area to keep a watch on the development activities, the revenue administration
as also the law & Order situation in his Sub Division. Besides this he has to look after the
grievances of the public and to attend to the problems arising out of the natural
calamities. He supervises the work of Revenue agency in the Sub Division.

There is no denying the fact that the job of a Sub Divisional Officer (civil) is independent
in character to some extent. He is primarily responsible for everything that happens
within his jurisdiction and must accordingly take his decisions to a large extent,
independently.

Sub Divisional Officer (Civil) is conferred with various powers under the land revenue and
tenancy acts.

He also acts as Assistant Collector under the Punjab Land Revenue Act and Punjab
Tenancy Act. He is also the appellate authority in cases decided by his subordinate
revenue officers.

The Executive Magistrate placed by the State Government as incharge of the Sub
Division is termed as the Sub Divisional Magistrate Under section 20(4) Cr.P.C. and under
section 23 Cr.P.C. the Sub divisional Officer like other Executive Magistrates of the
District is subordinate to the District Magistrate and is responsible for the maintenance
of law and order within the limits of his local jurisdiction. He enjoys very wide powers
under section 107/151,109,110,133,144,and 145 Cr.P.C. etc. He also hears court cases
under these sections.

214. Qualification required for successful district administration. To manage districts

successfully require qualities rarely found united in a single person. No man can properly
represent government to the people who is lacking in sympathy or in the power of
conversing with them easily in their own tongue. But to these qualities must be added
patience and promptitude, tact and firmness, accessibility without familiarity, a
Sherwood appreciation of knowledge of the details of all branches of his duty and great
capacity for personal exertion, with a willingness to hand over to trustworthy
subordinates a large share of the work, while maintaining complete control over the
machinery of administration. One great secret of success is the power of making full use
of assistants in all grades. The collector who insists on doing everything himself is sure to
leave many things undone and to fritter away on small details time that should be
devoted to more important matters. At the same time, he is responsible for and bound
to control, all the doings of his subordinates, and there is nothing they more readily
believe then that this or that official, whose duties bring him much in contact with his
master has an unique influence over him. The work should be carefully laid out the part
of it, which is entrusted, to each officer and the limits within which he may act in his own
authority being explained to him. No one can do this who has not himself a thorough
acquaintance with every branch of district work and of the powers and capacities of his
establishment it may be said that much of the success of district administration depends
on accuracy of judging of how much may suitability be left to others and how much must
be done by the deputy commissioner himself.

215. Aids to rapid acquisition of knowledge of a district. Every deputy commissioner is

bound, when making over charge, to hand to his successor a confidential memorandum
calling his attention to the most important features of the district administration and
supplying him with notes as to the chief matters which are pending and as to the
character and capabilities if his principal subordinates. Much information regarding the
district lies ready to hand in the gazetteer and on settlement and assessment reports. If
diligent personal enquiry and systematic touring supplement these sources of
information, it is possible to obtain a real grasp of the work in a comparatively short
space of time.

217. Extra assistant commissioners and tahsildars. The efficiency of a collectors

administration depends greatly on the extent to which he can get good work out of his
colleagues and subordinates and this in turn depends to large extent on his own conduct
towards them. Under the peculiar social difficulties of the country, the accurate estimate
of character obtainable from the confidences of private intercourse is difficult to secure,
and it becomes ass the more important to give free access to them in all official matters
and to take every step to inspire them with confidence in his judgement, rectitude and
impartiality. Unwarranted suspicion may be as fatal as unwarranted confidence. These
officers are the expectants of the collectors orders, they must be in great measure, the
exponents of his will, and should be to some degree his confidential advisers in cases of
difficulty. It will be found good policy to consult these who are best able to give advice,
and to weight their expressed opinions impartially and dispassionately.

The following considerations should be borne in mind with regard to the matters
mentioned in the preceding paragraph:-
(a) Departmental Examinations- the learner must read booked in his own time. The main
difficulty is with the languages. A pass in the examination does not always mean that
a candidate is intelligible in the field. Assistant commissioners under training should
speak nothing but undue to the tahsildars and revenue assistants with whom they
tour, and these officers should have orders to correct their mistakes. Urdu and
Punjabi are best learned from selected court readers, who are less prone to talk
down to their pupis than the illqualified professional teacher usually available in
small stations. Urdu should be passed in may and Punjab in October.
To fulfil the language test so far as that relates to judicial work, officers should make a
practice of reading through an easy petition or other simple vernacular record every
day from the time they commence to study the language with a munshi, and should
seek to acquire as quickly as possible a knowledge of the translation of the translation
of the commoner terms used in the principal acts which they have to take up, and in
rules under them, particularly those under the land revenue and tenancy acts. Parts
of these should be read with the court reader and a careful record should be made of
the translation of all terms as they are met. As soon as a knowledge of these has been
acquired, officers should commence to practice themselves in re-writing translations
of as judgements, etc., which they will translate from the vernacular as explained
above.
Junior officers should take every opportunity of mixing and talking with all classes of
Indians, and especially the agricultural classes. No one should ever be discouraged at
slow progress in speaking the language. Even in the case of those who find special
difficulty in picking up a language colloquially, experience shows that if only one
struggles on persistently, fluency is bound to come in the long run. It is a good plan to
note under various heads for ready reference all new words that one heads, and it is
an excellent plan for acquiring the accent and run of the language to repeat over to
oneself the words spoken by others as exactly as possible whether they intend to go
in for language reward examinations or not, all junior officers should make a point of
carefully reading through a certain number of good urdu books vocabulary. Those
offices, who, while studying the language, will take the trouble to acquire some
facility in oriental penmanship will find that they will never regret the spent on this
accomplishment.
(b) Contract with the peoplea knowledge of the people and their ways can be
acquired only by systematic touring. Newly joined officers should be told to keep
their eyes open on tour and to add questions about everything that they do not
understand. Administration matters such as crime, medical relief, education, the co-
operative movement, communications, agricultural improvement and public health
should be borne in mind and studied.
(c) Magisterial workas regards training in judicial work, the best plan at first if for a
junior officer to sit some hours daily in the court of another magistrate or judge for a
week or two, and with his codes in his hand learn for by observation something of
the actual practice of procedure and get a flair for the method of reasoning which an
intelligent magistrate employs in arriving at his decisions. In learning this he will
probably also pick up a number of the terms of procedure. He should at the same
time begin to work through evidence and the proceedings as he does so, and
afterwards using these translations for re-translation into the vernacular. After two
weeks of such work an officer will probably have gained sufficient experience to
enable him to try very simple cases which the district magistrate into ordinary
matters. Every officer should continue for some methods to translate his English
judgements into the vernacular so as to acquire increased facility in this respect.
(d) Revenue worka properly arranged program should give the assistant commissioner
a general outline of the routine revenue work of a district. Form his third month the
learner will do 2ndgrade revenue court work. From his seventh or eighth month he
should be given the work of one or two kanungos circles. He should propose the
mode of partition in a few partition grades works in the circle selected including
revenue court work.
(e) Training in treasury, office work, and general administrationtreasury training is
best done in the summer, whether in the plains of hills. The outlines of office
organization should be taught early-say, in the second month; no independent office
work should be given to a pupil until about the eighth month. The best subject to
be entrusted to him then are local bodies and or exercise. Both these subjects
involve the application of acts and rules; vernacular correspondence with
subordinate authorities; and formal English correspondence with superiors. By
general administration is meant those administrative matters which cannot be
grouped under any one head, but which occupy much of a depute commissioners
time, e.g. crime, the activities of the beneficent departments, elections, political
unrest and the like. The learner can best inform himself on these matters by
discussions with his deputy commissioner. He should also spend some days in the
office of the district board, which, when the deputy commissioner is chairman, is not
under the officer-in-charge of local bodies. These several matter require attention on
tour and the assistant commissioner should be instructed accordingly when orders
for each tour are given to him.