Signed gift inscription by the author on the front end-paper reads: "To the sister-in-law of a former ICS district officer with every good wish from the co-editor Roland Hunt - December 1980". Roland Charles Colin Hunt CMG (19 March 1916 – 24 March 1999) was a British diplomat. 'The District Officer in India' is a close-up and human study of the workings of the administrative system in India in the last seventeen years of British rule. It stems from a project initiated through the India Office Library and Records. In 1976 a questionnaire was circulated among ex-members of the Indian Civil Service (from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as from Britain) in which the respondents were asked to give an account of the nature of their service, how they were recruited, what their attitudes and assumptions were about their work, India and the major political matter of self-government, what their work consisted of and the conditions in which it was carried on, how they witnessed the war years, and other matters designed to provide as complete and as representative a picture as possible of the administration in its final stages. The responses to the questionnaire form the basis for this readable and first-hand account of the district officer's life in all parts of the sub-continent and in Burma. The framework is the history, the three main phases being the pre-war period with the Government of India Act 1935, the war, and the rapid changes of the pre-independence period 1946-7 with the very acute problems arising in areas near the lines of partition between India and Pakistan. Within this framework the book deals in detail with the district officer's life and work, as man, magistrate, tax-collector and representative of the King-Emperor, with systematic coverage of all the Provinces and special tracts of India and Burma. It is also a vivid personal report, since the questions were of sufficient length to reveal the personalities and responses of the contributors on whose memories it draws. This major study will be essential reading for anyone interested in India. A glossary, maps and biographical notes on contributors are included.