Vol. 6 · pages 586–590

571A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD committed in attributing the extraordinary rise of prices in India to the existence of a gold standard, when, as a matter of fact, it should have been attributed to the want of a gold standard. How can she become a gold-standard country ? The obvious answer is, by introducing a gold currency. Prof. Kenyes scoffs at the view that there cannot be a gold standard without a gold currency as pure nonsense.* He seems to hold that a currency and a standard of value are two different things. Surely there he is wrong. Because a society needs a medium of exchange, a standard of value, and a store of value to sustain its economic life, it is positively erroneous to argue that these three functions can be performed by different instrumentalities. On the other hand, as Professor Davenport insists.† “all the different uses of money are merely different aspects or emphasis of the intermediate function. Deferred payments …… are merely deferred payments of the intermediate. So again of the standard aspect; whatever is the general intermediate is by that fact the standard. The functions are not two, but one ….., Clearly, also, the intermediate may be a storehouse of purchasing power. The second half of the barter may be deferred. The intermediate is generalized purchasing power. Delay is one of the privileges which especially the intermediate function carries with it.” Thus the rupee by reason of being the currency is also the standard of value. If we wish to make gold the standard of value in India we must introduce it into the currency of India. But it may be asked what difference could it make to the price level in India if gold were made a part of the Indian currency ? To answer this question it is necessary to lay bare the nature of the rupee currency. Now it will be granted that a standard of value which is capable of expansion as well as contraction is likely to be more stable than one which is incapable of (such a manipulation. The rupee currency is capable of)‡ easy expansion, but is not capable of easy contraction by reason of the fact that it is neither exportable nor meltable, nor is it * Op. cit., p. 29. † Op. cit., pp. 255-56 ; cf. also F. A. Walker, Money in its Relation to Trade, p. 27 ; and C M. Walsh, The Fundamental Problem in Monetary Science, p. 304. ‡The portion in the bracket is missing in the Evolution of Provincial Finance—Ed.

572 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES convertible at will. The effects of such a currency as compared with those of an exportable currency were well brought out by the late Hon. Mr. Gokhale in a speech in which he observed.* “Now, what is the difference if you have an automatic self-adjusting currency, such as we may have with gold or we had with silver before the year 1893, and the kind of artificial currency that we have at present ? Situated as India is you will always require, to meet the demands of trade, the coinage of a certain number of gold or silver pieces, as the case may be, during the export season, that is for six months in the year. When the export season is brisk money has to be sent into the interior to purchase commodities. That is a factor common to both situations, whether you have an artificial currency, as now, or a silver currency, as before 1893. But the difference is this. During the remaining six months of the slack season there is undoubtedly experienced a redundancy of currency, and under a self-adjusting automatic system there are three outlets for this redundancy to work itself off. The coins that are superfluous may either come back to the banks and to the coffers of Government, or they may be exported, or they may be melted by people for purposes of consumption for other wants. But where you have no self-adjusting and automatic currency, where the coin is an artificial token currency, such as our rupee is at the present moment, two out of three of these outlets are stopped. You cannot export the rupee without heavy loss, you cannot melt the rupee without heavy loss, and consequently the extra coins must return to the banks and coffers of the government or they must be absorbed by the people. In the latter case the situation is like that of a soil which is water-logged, which has no efficient drainage, and the moisture from which cannot be removed. In this country the facilities for banking are very inadequate, and therefore our money does not swiftly return back to the banks or Government Treasuries. Consequently, the extra money that is sent into the interior often gathers here and there like pools of water turning the whole soil into a marsh. I believe the fact cannot be gainsaid that the stopping of two outlets out of the three tends to raise prices by making the volume of currency redundant.” Had gold formed a part of the Indian currency it would have not only met the needs for expansion but would have permitted * Supreme Legislative Council Proceedings, Vol. L. p. 642.

573A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD contraction of currency in a degree unknown to the rupee. Gold would be superior to the rupee as a standard of value for the reason that the former is expansible as well as contractible, while the latter is only expansible but not contractible. This is merely to state in different language what has already been said previously, that the Indian monetary standard, instead of being a gold or a gold-exchange standard, is in all essentials an inconvertible rupee standard like the paper pound of the Bank Suspension period, and the extra local rise of prices which in itself an inconvertible proof of the identity of the two systems, is characteristic of both, is, to use the language of the Bullion Report* “the effect of an excessive quantity of a circulating medium in a country which has adopted a currency not exportable to other countries, or not convertible at will into a coin which is exportable.” Therefore, if some mitigation of the rise in the Indian price-level is desirable, then the most essential thing to do is to permit some form of “exportable” currency such as gold to be a counterpart of the Indian monetary system. The Chamberlain Commission expended much ingenuity in making out a case against a gold currency in India.† The arguments it urged were : (1) Indian people will hoard gold and will not make it available in a crisis: (2) that India is too poor a country to maintain such an expensive money material as gold ; (3) that the transactions of the Indian people are too small to permit of a gold circulation ; and (4) paper convertible into rupees is the best form of currency for the people of India as being the most economical, and that the introduction of a gold currency will militate against the popularity of notes as well as of rupees. The bogy of hoarding is an old one, and would really be an argument of some force if hoarding was something which knew no law. But the case is quite otherwise. Money, being the most saleable commodity and the least likely, in a well-ordered monetary system, to deteriorate in value during short periods, is hoarded continually by all people, i,e, treated as a store of value. But in treating it as a store of value the possessor * Prof. Cannan’s Reprint, p. 17. † Report, pp. 15-19. The same arguments will be found in Chap. IV of Mr. Keynes’s treatise.

574 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES of money is comparing the utilities he can get for the money, by disposing of it now, with those he believes he can get for it in the future, and if the highest present utility is not so great as the highest future utility, discounted for risk and time, he will hoard the money. On the other hand, he will not hoard the money if the present use was greater than the future use. That being so, it is difficult to understand why hoarding should be an objection to a gold currency for the Indian people. If they hoard gold that means they do not care to spend it on current purchases or that they have another form of currency which is inferior to gold and which they naturally like to part with first. On the other hand, if they do wish to make current purchases and have no other form of currency they cannot hoard gold. There are instances when precious metals have been exported from India, when occasion had called for it,* showing that the hoarding habit of the Indian peoples is not such an unknown quantity as is often supposed, and if on some occasions† they hoarded an exportable currency when they should have released it, it is not the fault of the people but of the currency system in which the component parts of the total stock of money are not equally good as a store of value. The argument from hoarding, if it is an argument, can be used aginst any people, and not particularly against the Indian people. The second argument against a gold currency in India has no greater force than the first. If gold were to disappear from circulation then the cause can be nothing else but the over-issue of another kind of money. In the nineties, when the question of establishing a gold standard in India was being considered, some people used to point to the vain efforts made by Italy and the Austrian Empire to promote the circulation of gold. That their gold used to disappear is a fact, but it was not due to their poverty. It was due to their paper issues. Any country can maintain a gold currency provided it does not issue a cheaper substitute. Again, if gold will not circulate because transactions are too small the proper conclusion is not that there should be no gold circulation but that the unit of currency should be small enough to meet the situation. The difficulties of circulation raises a problem of coinage. But the considerations in respect of coinage *See the Memorandum by Mr. Dalai to the Chamberlain Commission Appendices, Vol. III, No. XXXIII, pp. 673-75, for this and other cognate topics. † In the crisis of 1907-8 the Indian people were accused of this. Yet it must be noted that in that crisis some gold was exported on private account.

575A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD cannot be allowed to rule the question as to what should be the standard of value. If the sovereign does not circulate it cannot follow that India should not have a gold currency. It merely means that the sovereign is too large for circulation. The case, if at all there is one, is against the sovereign as a unit and not against the principle of a gold currency. If the sovereign is not small enough the conclusion is we must find some other coin to make the circulation of gold effective. The fourth argument against a gold currency is one of fact, and can be neither proved nor disproved except by an appeal to evidence whether or not gold currency has the tendency ascribed to it. But we may ask, is there no danger in a system of currency composed of paper convertible into rupees ? Will the paper have no effect on the value of the rupee ? The Commission, if it at all considered that question, which is very doubtful, was perhaps persuaded by the view commonly held, that as the paper currency was convertible it could not affect the value or the purchasing power of the rupee. In holding this view it was wrong ; for, the convertibility of paper currency to the extent it is uncovered does not prevent it from lowering the value of the unit of account into which it is convertible, because by competition it reduces the demand for the unit of account and thus brings about a fall in its value. Thus the paper, although economical as a currency, is a danger to the value of the rupee. This danger would have been of a limited character if the rupee had been freely convertible into gold. But the danger of a convertible paper currency to the value of a unit of account becomes as great as that of an inconvertible paper currency if that unit is not protected against being driven below the metal of ultimate redemption by free convertibility into that metal.* The rupee is not protected by such convertibility, and as the Commission did not want that it should be so protected it should have realized that it was as seriously jeopardizing the prospects of the rupee being maintained at par with commodities in general, and therefore with gold, by urging the extension of a paper currency, be it ever so perfectly convertible, as it could have done by making the paper altogether inconvertible. But so observed was the Commission with considerations of * For an illuminating discussion on this topic, cf. Money: Its Connection with Rising and Falling Prices, by Prof. Cannan, 3rd ed., pp. 47-8.