436 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
It is obvious that if silver was falling faster than commodities, and if silver prices in India were lower than silver prices in England, we should have found it evidenced by an inflow of silver from England to India. What were the facts ? Not only was there no extraordinary flow of silver to India, but the imports of silver during 1871-93 were much smaller than in the twenty years previous to that period.* This is as complete a demonstration as could be had of the fact that the silver prices in India were the same as they were outside, and consequently the Indian producer had very little chance of a bounty on his trade.
Although such must be said to be the a priori view of the question, the Indian producer was convinced that his prosperity was due to the bounty he received. Holding such a position he was naturally opposed to any reform of the Indian currency, for the falling exchange which the Government regarded a curse he considered a boon. But however plausible was the view of the Indian producer, much sympathy would not have been felt for it had it not been coupled with a notion, most commonly held, that the bounty arose from the export trade, so that it became an article of popular faith that the fall of exchange was a source of gain to the nation as a whole. Now was it true that the bounty arose from the export trade ? If it were so, then every fall of exchange ought to give a bounty. But supposing that the depreciation of silver had taken place in India before it had taken place in Europe could the fall of exchange thus brought about have given a bounty to the Indian exporter ? As was explained above, the Indian exporter stood a chance of getting a bounty only if with the silver he obtained for his produce he was able to buy more goods and services in India. To put the same in simpler language, his bounty was the difference between the price of his product and the price of his outlay. Bearing this in mind, we can confidently assert that in the supposed case of depreciation of silver having taken place in India first, such a fall in the Indian exchange would have been accompanied by a penalty instead of a bounty on his trade. In that case, the exporter from India would have found that though the Indian exchange, i.e. the gold price of silver, had fallen, yet the ratio which gold prices in England bore to silver prices in India had
- Cf. figures for imports of silver in Chap. I. It will, however, be noted how closely the flow of silver into India between 1872 and 1893 followed the fall in gold price of silver.