334 



INDIA. 



office, telegraphs, and mint, 33,477,000 rupees; 

 interest, 31,490,500 rupees; refunds and compensa- 

 tion, 18,625,000 rupees; and the famine insurance 

 fund, 15,000,000 rupees. The capital expenditure 

 on railroads and irrigation works, which is not 

 included in the accounts of revenue and expendi- 

 ture, was 27,750,000 rupees in 1901 and 40,291,500 

 rupees in 1902. In addition to this 88,836,000 ru- 

 pees were applied in 1901 to the redemption of the 

 debentures of the Great Indian Peninsula Rail- 

 load, which was transferred to the Government on 

 June 30, 1900. 



The debt of British India on March 31, 1900, 

 amounted to 3,066,652,854 rupees, of which 1,124,- 

 747,010 rupees were permanent debt in India, 

 1.7!>4,666,015 rupees permanent debt in England, 

 and 147,239,829 rupees unfunded debt. The total 

 has increased in ten years from 2,184,260,690 

 rupees. 



One of the main causes of famine in India has 

 been supposed to be the land tax. The Govern- 

 ment in 1902 promised to allow for improvements, 

 to make no assessments on prospective values, to 

 revise local taxation, to impose large enhance- 

 ments only by degrees, to adjust collections to the 

 variations of crops and the circumstances of the 

 people, to reduce assessments in declining locali- 

 ties. No change of system was considered neces- 

 sary, and the land revenue was officially reported 

 to be more lenient now than at any former period. 

 The development of industrial resources is held by 

 the Government to be the best safeguard against 

 famine, and therefore it is intended to devote a 

 part of the surplus to promote industry. 



The capital outlay for 1903 is 9,809,000, con- 

 sisting of 8,152,000 of direct expenditure on rail- 

 roads and irrigation works, 979,000 of deposits 

 and advances, 341,000 advanced to companies 

 by the Imperial and provincial governments, and 

 the difference between 16,837,000 paid on Coun- 

 cil bills and 16,500,000, the amount drawn. The 

 addition to the permanent debt for the year is 

 1,041,000, of which 1,000,000 was raised in 

 India; increase of unfunded debt, 543,000; cap- 

 ital raised through companies for state railroads, 

 2,200,000; deposited by railroad companies, 1,- 

 613,000; imperial surplus, 838,000; remittances, 

 562,000; reduction of cash balances, 3,011,000; 

 leaving balances of 14,883,000 in India and Eng- 

 land on March 31, 1903. The expenditure for rail- 

 road construction is estimated at 7,334,000, and 

 for irrigation the sum appropriated is 927,000. 

 Two-thirds of the surplus was devoted to the 

 building of railroads, the rest to reimbursing 

 provincial treasuries for their losses from famine, 

 while the collections of arrears of land revenue 

 from the famine-stricken districts, already sus- 

 pended for the -years of total drought, were writ- 

 ten off as a permanent loss to the treasury. The 

 grants to the provinical governments, to be spent 

 largely upon education, amounted to 866,000, 

 remission of arrears of land revenue to 1,320,000. 

 Currency. The money standard was the sil- 

 ver rupee from 1835 till 1893. When the price of 

 silver bullion fell below 39rf. an ounce and the 

 exchange value of the rupee below Is. 3d. the 

 Government on June 26, 1893, closed the mints to 

 the free and unrestricted coinage of silver for the 

 public. Gold coin and bullion was received at the 

 mints in exchange for rupees at the ratio of Is. 4d. 

 per rupee or 15 rupees for the English sovereign. 

 On Sept. 15, 1899, the gold sovereign was de- 

 flared legal tender in India and the mints were 

 opened for the free coinage of gold. The amount 

 of silver and copper coined from 1835 down to 

 March 31, 1901, was 4,030,695,874 rupees. This 

 includes 92,496,821 British dollars coined since 



1894 at Bombay and Calcutta for the Straits Set- 

 tlements and Hong-Kong, of the valua of 209,883,- 

 703 rupees. The coinage of silver by the Gov- 

 ernment, aside from these dollars, almost ceased 

 until the recent famine came. In the year ending 

 March 31, 1897, the coinage of silver was 19,655,- 

 830 rupees, of which 13,922,299 rupees represent 

 British dollars; in 1898 it was 58,157,750 rupees, 

 including 48,300,826 rupees in the form of dollars; 

 in 1899 it was 55,872,480 rupees, of which 48,- 

 888,833 rupees were in dollars; in 1900 it was 92,- 

 018,798 rupees, of which 69,759,048 rupees were in 

 dollars; in 1901 it rose to 194,136,972 rupees, the 

 heaviest coinage of any one year since the mints 

 were established, the value of the British dollars 

 included in this amount being 21,488,248 rupees. 



The Army. The established strength of the 

 military forces as provided in the estimates for 

 the year ending March 31, 1900, was 228,887 of all 

 ranks, comprising 73,638 British and 155,249 na- 

 tive Indian troops. The British army in India 

 consisted of 346 staff -officers, 4 cavalry and 31 

 infantry generals, 26 general officers unemployed,. 

 509 officers and 13,198 men of the royal artillery,. 

 211 officers and 5,355 men of the cavalry, 324 of- 

 ficers and 171 men of the royal engineers, 1,277 

 officers and 52,174 men in the infantry regiments,, 

 and 5 officers and 7 men belonging to the veteran 

 and invalid establishment. The native army con- 

 sisted of 4,010 artillery, 25,316 cavalry, 3,904 sap- 

 pers and miners, and 122,019 infantry, including 

 61 European officers in the artillery, 482 in the 

 cavalry, 64 in the sappers and miners, and 1,561 

 in the infantry. The number of European and 

 Eurasian volunteers on May 1, 1901, was 30,830 

 enrolled, of whom 26,583 were counted as efficient. 

 The Imperial Service Corps, consisting of picked 

 contingents from the armies of the native chiefs 

 trained by 19 British officers, numbered 16,451 in 

 1901, comprising 6,399 calvary, 298 artillery, and 

 9,754 infantry. In October, 1902, Lord Kitchener 

 succeeded Gen. Sir A. Power Palmer as command- 

 er-in-chief. The Indian army has been rearmed 

 w r ith a quick-firing rifle, transport has been organ- 

 ized, the present system of frontier defense is re- 

 garded as vastly^ superior to the schemes that 

 preceded it, the artillery has been rearmed, and 

 factories have been established to supply muni- 

 tions and materials of war. The reduction of the 

 army to the extent of the troops lent to Great 

 Britain for the South African War saved for the 

 Indian Government the sum of 2,180,000, which 

 was applied to military reorganization and equip- 

 ment. India sent 13,200 British officers and men 

 to South Africa, with 9,000 natives, principally 

 followers, and to China were sent 1,300 British 

 officers and men, 20,000 native troops and 17,500 

 followers. 



Commerce and Production. Out of 732,285,- 

 223 acres surveyed in British and native territory 

 reports were made of 545,069.496 acres in 1900, of 

 which 65,843,924 acres were forest, 135,506,014 

 waste, 106,404,704 acres available land not culti- 

 vated, 57,163,761 acres fallow, and 180.151.093 

 acres bearing crops. The area under rice was 72,- 

 808,952 acres; tinder wheat, 16,104,779 acres; under 

 other grains, 75,965,064 acres; under oil-seeds, 10,- 

 327,641 acres; under cotton, 8,375,841 acres; under 

 sugar-cane, 2,693,029 acres; under indigo, 1,046,434 

 acres; under tobacco, 915,321 acres; under tea, 

 493,187 acres; under jute, 2,070,668 acres; under 

 other fibrous plants, 404,478 acres; under coffee, 

 132,565 acres. Reckoning double land cropped 

 twice in the year, the total area under crops was 

 203,895,561 acres, of which 33,096,031 acres were 

 irrigated. The actual surface irrigated was 18,- 

 611,106 acres, of which 11,409,528 acres were ir- 



