Vol. 6 · pages 621–625

606 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES settled upon and all further coinage is stopped, India will be in a position to have an effective gold standard based on a free inflow and outflow of gold. There will be no necessity to reduce the rupee in legal tender and provide for its convertibility. Its value would be maintained intact by sheer force of its quantity being limited, provided the quantity in circulation has been reduced so far as to be always below the minimum demand. Supporters of the existing system of rupee currency have ever since its inauguration held out that the currency is economical and secure. Its claim for security, both in terms of gold and commodities, has been tested, and the grounds of it have been analysed in the course of this and previous chapters, wherein is demonstrated how very much wanting it is in the essentials that go to make up a secure currency. We must now endeavour to assess whether it is economical, for if it were really so, then that might be a point of some value against its opponents. We must therefore scrutinize the economy effected by the rupee currency. Kemmerer says,* “ A convertible money finds its raison d’etre largely in the fact that it economizes the precious metals, and makes possible a saving to the community. If paper money or token money are substituted for primary money, their substitution ruduces the demand for the precious metals by the difference between the amount of metal used in the token money introduced plus that contained in the primary money required for the redemption fund. This economy of the precious metals results in an increased supply being thrown upon the market” [which supply goes abroad and into the arts and increases the non-monetary wealth of the country by an equivalent amount: the gold obtained for the metal economized represents a net gain to the community]. The same kind of gain, says Kemmerer, attaches to the use of inconvertible money, and even on a larger scale, because there is no necessity to use primary money even for a redemption fund, as there is when the money is convertible. Such views as these have led Prof. Keynes to opine that the Indian currency system is a marvel of economy, and that other * Money and Credit Instruments in Relation to Prices, p. 63.

607A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD more advanced countries might usefully follow the lead. We will; not draw from this the uncharitable conclusion that either Prof. Kemmerer of Prof. Keynes would recommend that because an inconvertible paper currency is the most economical currency a country should adopt it without remorse. What we are concerned with is to find out whether the rupee currency is really economical. When the process by which the rupee comes into being is carefully analysed it becomes impossible to take seriously the plea that the Indian currency is economical. First of all, gold is tendered to the Secretary of State in London for his council bills, or gold is tendered to the Government of India in India in payment of taxes or otherwise. Out of this gold the Secretary of State buys silver and coins rupees. As the price of silver is below the ratio, there arises a difference between the cost price of the rupee and its selling price in gold. To the extent of this difference there is, of course, a gain. But this gain or profit on coinage, as it is called, is no benefit to society. It is a hoard, and to that extent represents a useless abstraction of wealth. If the profit is not to be used for any current purposes of society it is as well not to coin rupees. It is therefore obvious that so long as the profits are merely held apart from the revenue resources of India there is no economy in the rupee currency worth naming. From another standpoint the currency of India is a wasteful asset to society. Metallic currency is primarily a capital good representing a form of social investment. Consequently it is necessary to see that the capital value of the currency is maintained. It is a happy circumstance to note that the Government of India is not dead to this aspect of the question with regard to its paper-currency reserve, and has very recently instituted a depreciation fund for the preservation of its capital value.* Now, the considerations that apply to the paper currency should apply also to the rupee currency. Has the rupee currency maintained its capital value ? The gold part of it, called the gold-standard reserve, is invested in interest-bearing securities. Interest is no doubt an additional source of gain, but have the securities maintained their capital value ? Far from it. Turn to the rupee half of the currency. Has the bullion in the rupee maintained its capital value ? There have been endless * Cf. the Speech of the Finance Minister, Mr. Hailey, on the Indian Paper Currency (Amendment) Bill, dated September 16, 1920, S.L.C.P., Vol. LIX, pp. 308-9.

608 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES charts and diagrams drawn by playful economists in which the black line, showing the nominal value of the rupee, has remained up while the red line, showing the bullion value of the rupee, has gone down with the falling gold value of silver. But what does that mean ? Simply that the rupee is a wasting asset and is not worth at a later date what it cost to society when it was manufactured. Surely there was more economy in the project of the mad Chinaman who burnt his house to roast his pig than there is in the Indian rupee currency? The Chinaman’s house must have been very old and uninhabitable. The same cannot, however, be said of this converting of gold money into silver money, because we know that silver is an inferior kind of investment to gold. Thus viewed, the currency is not in the least economical. It appears to be so because people look only to the rupee. But, adding the cost of the rupee currency to that of the gold-standard reserve, can it be said that India would have required more gold if she had a gold currency in place of a rupee currency ? Bearing in mind that with a fixed limit on the issue of rupees there can be no reason for a gold reserve, the only result of a stoppage of rupee coinage would be that gold, instead of being, as now, part reserved as a sinking fund and part transmuted into a rupee currency, would enter into circulation without being subjected to this baneful and wasteful process. No more gold would be required in the one case than in the other. We can therefore conclude without fear of challenge that with a complete stoppage of rupee coinage Indian currency would be truly economical, prices would be more stable, and exchange secure, in the only way in which it can really be said to be secure, and the rupee, although inconvertible, will cease to be a problem, which it has been ever since 1873. But will that be all the advantage to the country ? By no means. In drawing a moral from his comparison of the paper pound of 1797 with the paper pound of 1914, Prof. Cannan* points out that— “there can in these days be no doubt that the experiment of entrusting what no community should entrust to any institution, the power of creating money without limit, to the * The Paper Pound 0/1797—1821, Introduction, p. xxxix.

609A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD Bank of England, compares very favourably with the modern plan of entrusting it to the Government itself or to a State bank completely under the control of the Government. In the comparatively short war of 1914-18 currencies ‘not convertible at will into a coin which is exportable’ were issued by Governments and Government banks in amounts compared with which the 100 per cent, increase in thirteen years, which made the Bullion Committee complain so vigorously in 1810,look absolutely trifling.” There was a time when it could have been said that this indictment did not apply to the Government of India. Few Governments could be said to have been so very anxious to wash their hands of the responsibilities involved in the management of a currency as the Government of India once was. In 1861, when the Government first undertook the issue of paper money in India, the anxiety it displayed was laudable. An impecunious Government, made prostrate by the heavy burdens of the Mutiny, should have welcomed the project of a paper currency as a source of profit. But so great was its sense of responsibility that the Government refused to be content with convertibility as a check on over-issue. One of the principal reasons why the desperate paper-currency scheme, which that straitened financier Mr. Wilson had devised in 1860 to find ways and means for improving the finances of India, was rejected was so well stated by his successor, Mr. Laing, that in these days of frenzied finance his remarks may as well be reproduced in full. He said* :— “There was another important reason why he (Mr. Laing) thought that Sir Charles Wood’s principle was the soundest. All parties were agreed that a paper currency ought to be identical with the metallic currency which it displaced. But the system of issuing against two-thirds of securities and one-third of specie, as was proposed by Mr. Wilson, would not always ensure this identity, and there was considerable risk that in times of buoyancy and speculation the circulation would be unduly extended. He thought that that was a point of considerable importance, because if we looked at what had taken place in India during the last three years, we should find a great increase in the wages of labour and the prices of commodities, which should warn us as to what the * His speech on the Paper Currency Bill dated February 16, 1861, S.L.C.P., Vol. VII, pp. 66—7.

610 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES consequences might be if we were to accelerate the process already going on so rapidly by any artificial inflation of the currency. If you unnaturally stimulated the rise of prices by an over-issue of paper circulation you ran considerable risk of changing the healthy action of commerce into a feverish excitement which was sure to bring about a reaction. If we continued to go on as we had done for the last two or three years, the result would be that many articles of Indian produce might be driven out of the market by the competition of other countries, and he therefore thought that the Government ought to be exceedingly cautious how it took any step that might unduly accelerate the tendency to a general advance, as might be the case under the system of paper currency which to any considerable extent represented securities and not bullion. Such an advance might even reach a point seriously embarrassing to the Government if the general rise in the rate of wages and cost of living made the present scale of salaries and the pay of troops no longer adequate.* For these reasons he thought it by far the wisest course to adhere to the principle of paper currency adopted in England as laid down in Sir Charles Wood’s despatch.” Not only was the Government anxious to put a limit on the issue over and above making it convertible, but it did not want to be vested with the legal authority to issue notes. In a despatch dated April 27,1859,† to the Secretary of State, the Government of the day observed :— “ We believe that the convertibility of the notes on demand would not be a sufficient guarantee against over-issue. When once the paper currency is established in public confidence, the temptation to take dangerous advantage of this confidence will be very great in a time of difficulty, if the power of doing so is left in the hands of the Government of India alone. Restriction by law, either to a certain amount of issue absolutely, or to any amount relative to the balances in India, will, in our opinion, be necessary. We think that such a law ought to be passed by Parliament, and not by the Legislative Council of India.” *During the bank suspension period in England it is to be noted that the Army and the Navy were paid in gold, for fear of causing discontent. †For a copy of it, see Commons Paper 183, of 1860, p. 1.