The political timetable remained unforgiving. Elections were approaching, and the Sandalbar programme required scale if it was to alter the province's expectations before the ballot. A handful of machines might demonstrate technical competence, but they would not transform the political map of Punjab.
Chhotu Ram understood the thought without being told.
"We do not need two hundred identical machines delivered on the same day," he said. "We need a system capable of delivering the next installation more efficiently than the previous one."
He took the list of the twenty priority locations and marked several entries.
"Examine these first. If the engineers reject them, they must tell us why. If they require smaller equipment, we shall use smaller equipment. But once the appropriate standards are established, I want the rest of the programme moving without every district having to begin the discussion anew."
Bennett looked at the list.
"That is a reasonable engineering approach."
"It is also a reasonable political one," Chhotu Ram said.
Jinnah considered the marked locations.
The plan had not become smaller. It had acquired stages.
That was different.
As the meeting drew towards its conclusion, Whitcombe returned to the question that had interested him since luncheon.
"Your investment arrangements are attractive in principle," he said, "but I confess I see considerable difficulty in securing British capital unless investors can satisfy themselves regarding legal control, management and the security of their interests."
Jinnah had expected this.
"We shall place the appropriate instruments before them."
"Under whose authority?"
"The enterprises will be constituted under the applicable law, and the necessary permissions will be sought through the proper channels."
"His Excellency's support does not extend to the private concessions you have described?"
"His Excellency is familiar with the industrial development programme and its employment objectives. The precise commercial arrangements are still being formulated."
Whitcombe was silent for a moment.
Then he said, "You are asking us to examine an opportunity before the government has settled the conditions under which it may operate."
"Yes."
"That is a considerable uncertainty."
"So is purchasing equipment for a market that has not yet been developed," Jinnah replied. "We propose to reduce these uncertainties in the proper order."
Whitcombe continued to study him.
The Governor's letter lay between them.
It carried prestige, but it was not a guarantee. Whitcombe knew better than to mistake one for the other.
At length he nodded.
"I should be willing to examine the matter further. Our engineers can prepare a preliminary assessment of the first sites, provided the necessary information is supplied. We can also explore quotations for suitable equipment, including certain reconditioned units. But no one here can commit the company to an undertaking of this magnitude without technical examination and board approval."
"That is understood," Jinnah said.
Whitcombe hesitated.
"There may also be people in the City interested in the larger commercial proposition."
Jinnah said nothing.
"Men with industrial interests, some of them rather dissatisfied with their present opportunities."
Chhotu Ram glanced at him.
"Men with idle money?"
"Not precisely idle."
"Money earning less than they would prefer?"
Whitcombe smiled.
"That description would offend them less."
"Then perhaps they will understand our farmers. Their land also earns less than it might."
The director's laughter was genuine this time.
He stood and offered his hand.
"I shall make some inquiries."
Jinnah rose.
"And we shall provide the engineering records."
They did not exchange promises of extraordinary wealth. No one spoke of transforming Punjab in a year. No equipment contract was signed, and no investment was secured.
But Whitcombe retained copies of the commercial accounts.
Bennett kept the site list.
Bell took away the hydraulic records available for preliminary examination.
And the company's commercial department had agreed to investigate how an initial sequence of orders might be structured.
For a first meeting, that was substantial.
The rain had ceased by the time they emerged from the works.
The sky was still grey, but the western clouds had separated enough to allow a weak light to spread across the factory yard. A shift was ending. Men in dark coats passed through the gates, some laughing, others walking silently towards the tram stop.
Chhotu Ram watched them.
"What did you think of Whitcombe?" Jinnah asked.
"A businessman."
"That is a description, not an opinion."
"He will want to make money. He will try to obtain more favourable terms than we wish to give him. He may become a useful partner provided we never confuse his interests with ours."
Jinnah smiled.
"That is remarkably close to my own assessment."
"Then why did you allow him to believe we might entertain exclusivity?"
"Because I wished to discover what he would offer in return."
"And if he had offered enough?"
"Then we would have examined the terms."
Chhotu Ram stopped walking.
"Be careful with that, Jinnah."
The tone was not hostile. It was the tone of a man speaking to someone whose judgment he respected sufficiently to challenge.
"We are building this system to release the productive strength of Punjab. It would be a strange victory if we succeeded only by placing the next twenty years of machinery purchases in the hands of one English firm."
"I have no intention of doing so."
"I know. But you are a lawyer. You see how an agreement can be made fair through clauses and safeguards. I have spent my life watching powerful men find their way around those safeguards."
Jinnah regarded him thoughtfully.
"And I have spent mine pursuing them when they do."
"Yes. But you cannot appear in every village court in Punjab."
There was a pause.
Then Jinnah nodded.
"Point taken."
They resumed walking.
For some distance neither spoke. The noise of the factories followed them down the road.
At last Chhotu Ram said, "I liked Bennett."
"The engineer?"
"He argued with us honestly. He did not care who introduced us. He cared whether the canal could turn his machine."
"He was rather severe about our estimates."
"He should have been. If a man tells me my figures are wrong, I want him to explain why. I do not want him to agree because the Governor has written a flattering letter."
Jinnah glanced towards the factory gates.
"Then we must invite him to Punjab."
"Yes. And I want some of our young men trained here before the first installations arrive."
"That can be arranged, if the company agrees."
"Not merely trained to operate buttons. I want them opening the machines, examining the bearings, understanding why something breaks. We cannot make an English engineer travel from Manchester every time a Punjabi mill loses power."
Jinnah looked at him.
"You are thinking beyond our immediate programme."
"Of course. Are you not?"
"I am."
"Good. Because one day we should manufacture some of these things ourselves."
Jinnah slowed.
There was nothing particularly theatrical about the remark. Chhotu Ram had spoken as though suggesting that a village should eventually repair its own carts rather than sending them to another district.
Yet the implication was enormous.
They had travelled to England to purchase machinery.
Chhotu Ram was already thinking about the day Punjab might no longer need to purchase all of it from England.
Bilal stirred.
Now there's a man who understands technology transfer.
Jinnah answered inwardly.
"He understands independence."
Without using the word.
"Precisely."
That evening they returned to their rooms.
The day's papers occupied most of Jinnah's writing table. He worked through the engineers' notes, marking the questions that would require immediate attention in Punjab.
Chhotu Ram sat opposite him with the canal map spread over his knees.
For a while the room was silent except for the scratching of Jinnah's pen and the occasional sound of traffic from the wet street below.
Then Chhotu Ram looked up.
"There is another matter."
Jinnah continued writing.
"I suspected there might be."
"The dividend arrangements."
Jinnah put down his pen.
"What about them?"
"I want the productive societies protected before you invite the financiers."
"They will be."
"Not only through ownership rules. Through the way profits are calculated."
Jinnah waited.
Chhotu Ram folded the map.
"Suppose a British company invests in five centres. It also becomes a principal buyer of their products. It purchases mustard oil from one, cloth from another, flour from a third. What prevents it from obtaining its profits by paying the cooperatives too little?"
"Commercial contracts."
"And who negotiates them?"
"The cooperative management, subject to the safeguards we establish."
"And when an English merchant offers a village chairman an attractive personal arrangement?"
Jinnah said nothing.
Chhotu Ram leaned forward.
"Do you see my concern? A cooperative can be destroyed while its constitution remains perfectly sound. All that is required is a few dishonest accounts, a manager with expensive tastes, and farmers who cannot read the figures."
Bilal was listening intently.
He's talking about governance failure, sir. Not legal failure. Different problem.
Jinnah considered the matter.
"We shall require independent audits."
"And members who can understand what the auditors have written."
"Then the Faraabi training programme must include cooperative accounting."
"And the societies must have the right to replace their managers."
"Within defined procedures."
"And the investment company must not be permitted to dictate purchasing or selling prices merely because it holds shares."
"Agreed, subject to whatever commercial rights we explicitly negotiate."
Chhotu Ram sat back.
"Good."
Jinnah reached for a fresh sheet of paper.
He began outlining the principles. Separate books. Independent audits. Clear rules for distributions and reserves. Defined investor rights. Producer representation. Limits on conflicts of interest. Commercial contracts subject to examination rather than personal favour.
It was not a completed legal structure.
That would require considerably more work.
But something important had changed. The capital-raising programme was no longer being designed merely to attract investment. It was being designed to survive the arrival of investors.
As Jinnah wrote, Chhotu Ram returned to the map.
"The first centres should be in districts where we can obtain reliable management," he said. "Not merely where we can make the best political impression."
"We require both."
"Then choose both. But do not send a turbine to a village whose cooperative chairman cannot account for a sack of wheat."
Jinnah smiled.
"That may considerably reduce our immediate selection."
"Then train better chairmen."
Outside, Manchester's evening settled around the building.
Somewhere beyond the dark rooftops, the machinery they had examined that afternoon stood waiting for its next shift. British workers would return in the morning, and their directors would continue searching for orders.
In Punjab, young men were registering for work that did not yet exist. Their names were entering files beside proposed industrial sites, while clerks recorded their education, skills and willingness to undergo training.
Between these two worlds lay a commercial opportunity large enough to interest British capital and a political opportunity large enough to alter the future of Punjab.
But there was no natural law requiring the two interests to cooperate fairly.
That would have to be constructed.
Jinnah studied the paper before him.
There were moments when he wondered whether Bilal's peculiar way of thinking had begun to infect his own. Every problem now appeared to conceal another problem beneath it. A machine required a trained operator. The operator required a school. The school required an administration. The administration required trustworthy accounts. The accounts required rules. And the rules, unless they were defended, would eventually become instruments in the hands of whoever possessed the most money.
What had begun as an industrial undertaking was becoming a design for an entire system of economic power.
Bilal spoke quietly.
Sir, we should remember something about today's meeting.
"Which is?"
Whitcombe doesn't need to believe in our political objectives. He only needs to believe that dealing with us will be profitable.
"Yes."
And that can work both ways.
Jinnah looked towards Chhotu Ram, who was marking another location on the map.
"I am aware."
You know what the interesting part is?
"What?"
We aren't asking them to give up capitalism. We're giving them a blank canvas to practise it. But we're drawing the boundaries first.
Jinnah considered the observation.
Outside, a tram bell sounded in the distance.
"Boundaries, Mr. Game Developer, are useful only when someone has the means to enforce them."
That's why you're here, sir.
Jinnah returned to his papers.
Across the table, Chhotu Ram looked up.
"What are you smiling about?"
"Nothing of consequence."
"Then stop smiling and tell me whether you intend to approach the other manufacturers before returning to London."
"Yes. I want an independent assessment of the turbine requirements. Then we shall speak to the machinery brokers."
"And afterwards?"
"The financiers."
Chhotu Ram nodded.
"Good. Let the engineers tell us what is possible. Let the manufacturers tell us what it costs. Then let the financiers explain why they deserve a share of it."
Jinnah laughed softly.
"You have already decided to dislike the financiers."
"Not at all. I have known some excellent moneylenders."
"That is not ordinarily a compliment in your vocabulary."
"It depends upon whether the man remembers that a borrower is still a human being."
Jinnah returned to his correspondence.
Chhotu Ram bent over the map once more.
Neither man imagined the task ahead would be simple. They had scarcely begun to understand what the manufacturers might demand, much less what the City would insist upon before releasing capital. The Governor's letter had opened a door, but beyond that door stood an entire industrial establishment with its own fears, habits, rivalries and expectations.
Yet the afternoon had yielded something more substantial than courtesy.
The machinery manufacturers had examined Sandalbar's accounts and found them worthy of further scrutiny. Their engineers had begun considering Punjab's canals as possible sources of productive power. They had agreed to investigate an initial group of installations, and the possibility of commercial orders had become serious enough to enter the company's own calculations.
The next challenge would be capital.
Jinnah knew how to raise it, or at least how to make a proposition attractive to those who possessed it.
Chhotu Ram knew what would happen in Punjab if the men supplying that capital were permitted to dictate the terms of rural life.
Between them, an agreement would have to be made.
Not merely between India and Britain.
Between capital and production.
Between the investor and the cultivator.
Between the profit expected in London and the wages required in Punjab.
It was nearly midnight when Jinnah finally put down his pen.
Chhotu Ram had fallen asleep in the chair, the canal map slipping from his hand.
Jinnah rose quietly, rescued the sheet before it reached the floor, and placed it upon the table.
For a moment he looked at the marked locations.
Twenty had been examined.
Two hundred were intended.
The difference between those numbers was not a matter of drawing more circles on a map.
It was a matter of money, machinery, men, institutions and time.
Most of all, time.
The elections would not wait for engineers to finish their calculations.
He extinguished the lamp.
Tomorrow they would continue their search for machinery.
After that, they would begin the more difficult business of persuading British capital to enter a system it had not designed and would not be permitted to command.
For the moment, Jinnah had one advantage.
The British manufacturers wanted orders.
Punjab wanted industry.
And both wanted something the other could provide.
That was enough to begin a negotiation.
Not enough to conclude one.