302 



INDIA. 



Ex 1,758,766 on foreign lines, Rx 486,651 on sur- 

 veys, and Rx 294,900 on coal mines. The guaran- 

 teed companies had raised Rx 46,955,105 of capital 

 and the companies leasing Government railroads 

 Rx 29,491,022. The gross receipts of all the rail- 

 ways during 1898 were Rx 27,464,235, of which 

 Rx 8,689,220 were from passengers and Rx 17,885,- 

 888 from freight. The number of passengers carried 

 was 152,584,321; tons of freight, 36,350,900. The 

 operating expenses of all railways was Rx 13,064,- 

 353, being 47.57 per cent of the gross earnings, 

 and the net earnings were Rx 14,399,882, giving 

 a net return on the capital of 5.37 per cent. 



The number of letters, postal cards, and money 

 orders that passed through the British Indian 

 post office in the year ending March 31, 1898, was 

 408,797,236; of newspapers, 31,891,484; of parcels, 

 2,965,990; of packets, 21,364,415. 



The Government telegraph system at the end of 

 the fiscal year 1898 had 50,306 miles of line, with 

 154,824 miles of wire. The number of private tele- 

 grams was 5,713,227 during the year. The re- 

 ceipts were Rx 1,309,330, and expenses Rx 1,051,- 

 494. 



Currency. By the act passed on Sept. 15, 1899, 

 on the recommendation of a committee of British 

 financiers appointed by the Secretary of State in 

 London, the legal standard of value in British 

 India is the gold sovereign. The British sovereign 

 is legal tender, the mints have been declared open 

 to the free coinage of gold, and measures are taken 

 by the Government with a view of introducing a 

 gold currency. Since Sept. 11, 1897, sovereigns 

 have been received at the reserve treasuries at the 

 exchange rate of 15 rupees for the sovereign, the 

 rate at which by the act of June 26, 1893, closing 

 the Indian mints to the unrestricted coinage of 

 silver, gold coin of full weight and gold bullion 

 were declared receivable at the two Government 

 mints in Calcutta and Bombay in exchange for 

 rupees and by the Government in payment of 

 dues, and also in exchange for currency notes 

 issued in Calcutta and Bombay. The mints were 

 closed to the free coinage of silver in accordance 

 with the recommendations of a committee, of 

 which the Lord Chancellor was chairman, in con- 

 sequence of the fall of silver which brought the 

 exchange value of the rupee below Is. 3d., entail- 

 ing a loss by exchange so serious as to embarrass 

 the Indian Government and render the estimates 

 of expenditure extremely uncertain. Fluctuations 

 continued after the closure of the mints, and the 

 Government withheld remittances to arrest the 

 fall of the market rate, until this gradually ap- 

 proached the ratio fixed by the Government of 

 1. 4d. for the rupee or 15 rupees for the sovereign. 

 From 1835 to 1893 the legal standard was the 

 silver rupee, and before the ratio of 15J to 1 be- 

 tween silver and gold began to vary in 1873 the 

 exchange rate of the rupee remained steady at 2s. 

 During the whole period the Indian mints coined 

 Rx 373,774,632 of silver, all rupees excepting Rx 

 11,863,641 worth of British dollars intended for 

 the Straits Settlements and Hong- Kong. Gold 

 mohurs were coined, but not to an appreciable 

 amount. Since the closing of the mints to free 

 coinage the Government has coined rupees to the 

 amount of Rx 94,595 in 1895, Rx 292,713 in 1896, 

 Rx 573,353 in 1897, Rx 985,692 in 1898, and Rx 

 698,365 in 1899. The Bombay mint has also struck 

 British dollars for use in China and the silver- 

 paying colonies of the value of Rx 752,445 in 1896, 

 Rx 1,392,230 in 1897, Rx 4,830,083 in 1898, and 

 Rx 4,888,883 in 1899. The Government has issued 

 a paper currency since 1861, the amount of notes 

 in circulation in January, 1899, being Rx 28,203,- 

 275, of which Rx 15,670,000 were covered by coin, 



silver rupees mainly, gold to the extent of Rx 

 480,000, and the remainder was covered by Gov- 

 ernment securities. The metallic reserve changed 

 from silver into gold after the proclamation of the 

 gold standard, so that on May 1, 1900, it consisted 

 of Rx 14,000,000 of gold and Rx 4,500,000 of silver. 

 The Government was obliged to buy silver with a 

 part of the gold, sufficient to coin rupees to the 

 amount of Rx 4,400,000, in order to have a suf- 

 ficient silver reserve to meet the demands; and to 

 supply a deficiency of silver coin in the country 

 Rx 16,890,000 in rupees were added to the circula- 

 tion between April 1 and July 1. 



Famine. Agriculture is the chief occupation 

 of the people of India, and it is carried on under 

 conditions that render it peculiarly difficult and 

 precarious. The soil is remarkably fertile in most 

 of the agricultural districts, but the taxes im- 

 posed on the cultivator are more severe than in 

 any European country and more rigorously col- 

 lected than in any Oriental country. In the south- 

 western Punjab and in Sind a system of irrigation 

 canals is maintained as essential to successful agri- 

 culture. In the Central Provinces and immedi- 

 ately north of them wells, tanks, reservoirs, and 

 canals have been made and kept up both at public 

 and at private expense to store water against the 

 hour of need. In the narrow' coast strip between 

 the Ghats mountains and the Arabian Sea from 

 Bombay southward to the extremity of the penin- 

 sula rains never fail, and on the eastern side, in 

 Bengal, Assam, and Burmah, a failure of the au- 

 tumnal rains is of rare occurrence, though partial or 

 local droughts may occur. In all other parts of 

 India the crops depend on the monsoon, which may 

 be deficient or unequally distributed in any year, 

 and at periods which seem to recur every ten or 

 twelve years may fail entirely over expanses of 

 hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the fail- 

 ure may be repeated in the following year, or may 

 extend over a period of three or four years with 

 good years intervening. Such repeated widespread 

 droughts are the cause of Indian famines. Drought 

 is never universal even in the endangered territory. 

 A surplus of food products in some of the provinces 

 is usually available for the partial but ready relief 

 of the stricken area. The average annual rainfall 

 in India is 41 inches. In 1896 there was a de- 

 ficiency of 5 inches, and as a result an area of 

 205,000 square miles with a population of 40,000,- 

 000 was affected with famine by May, 1897. Be- 

 fore the disastrous Orissa famine of 1860 India 

 had enjoyed immunity from serious scarcity for 

 many years. Since that year, from causes ascribed 

 variously or collectively to the periodicity of sun 

 spots, to increasing pressure of the population 

 on the land, or to the denudation of forest areas, 

 India has passed through a long series of lean 

 years and a number of famines. Since 1880 14 

 scarcities have occurred, of which that of Ganjam 

 in 1889 and that of Madras in 1892 were grave, 

 down to the serious calamity of 1897. The famine 

 code first promulgated in 1883 and the local codes 

 devised to suit the conditions of the various prov- 

 inces were revised in accordance with the recnm- 

 mendations of a commission appointed in 1898. 

 The Government of India as early as 1874 ac- 

 knowledged its responsibility for the saving of 

 lives, and in the serious famine that began in thai 

 year spent Rx 17,953,000 to relievo distress, an 

 unregulated and wasteful expenditure, which 

 taught the lesson that to borrow for direct famine 

 relief was a disastrous financial expedient and 

 that it was necessary to reserve in ]>n>s|>orou- 

 years a substantial surplus of income which should 

 be devoted to reducing debt or preventing the in- 

 crease of debt for productive public works, so that. 



