CEREALS 69 



available for export. This might be possible if there were 

 only one food-grain, and if the inducements to exportation 

 "were constant in successive years. But external demand 

 varies greatly, and there are many food-grains. When the 

 supply of one is in defect, this defect may be made good 

 by drafts on another kind of grain of which the exports 

 may thereby be restricted. And, in respect of either of 

 the two grains here spoken of, considerable and seem- 

 ingly unaccountable exports may take place, later on in 

 the season, when the prospects regarding the next crop 

 in one or other of them or in a third grain that can be 

 substituted for them are seen to be good. Another 

 obstacle to such a calculation as we are discussing is 

 that internal consumption in India is not constant. 

 Many of the people are, and more of them were till 

 recently, so poor that they were usually underfed. A 

 rise in price could not very greatly reduce consumption, 

 but it led to resort to cheaper forms of food. A fall in 

 price, on the other hand, induces a more liberal diet; 

 and if every person in Bengal alone were to increase by 

 only i per cent, the average daily ration of a little more 

 than i Ib. of rice per head, the increased consumption in 

 a year would represent an aggregate of no less than 

 84,500 tons. 



When we consider that India has a population of some 

 315,000,000, and that 94 per cent, of her food-grains are 

 required for internal consumption, it will be understood 

 that an increase of 6 per cent, in the production of rice 

 might with a constant internal consumption bring 

 about a cent, per cent, increase in its exports, and that, 

 conversely, a contraction of production on the same 

 scale might wipe the exports out altogether but for the 

 financial exigencies of the cultivator. These facts 

 account in great measure for the violent fluctuations that 

 occur in the foreign trade in Indian grain. Although 

 Burma rice is the standard rice of the world, and although 

 India has in several years supplied the United Kingdom 

 more largely with wheat than any of her competitors, 

 people outside India forget her relative importance in 

 the world's grain trade. 



The ruling factor in the Indian exports is the internal 



