614 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
wanted or not, and thus tends to bring about its depreciation. That such a depreciation is possible cannot be denied even by those who maintain that rupees are issued only in response to trade demand, otherwise why should they be so very anxious for an increase of the gold reserves of the country. But the danger to the rupee currency does not merely arise from the possibility of indiscretion on the part of the Government. Besides the Government there have been statesmen in India so interested in the welfare of their fellow-subjects that they have rebuked the Government on several occasions for not making the profits on rupee coinage available for the advancement of the moral and material progress of the country.* and in 1907 the profits on rupees were actually employed in the extension of railways. It must fill every one with horror and despair to contemplate the consequences sure to emanate from the manipulation of currency for such ends. Is it not time this source of danger and temptation be removed by depriving the Government of this power to manage the rupee currency ? But what is the means of bringing this about ? If it is desirable to do away with the management then convertibility is an insufficient measure; for with convertibility the rupee will still remain a managed rupee. Only the complete stoppage of rupee coinage will remove the governmental interference in the management of Indian currency; and it is this that we must therefore ask for.
Queer as it may seem, SAFETY LIES IN AN INCONVERTIBLE Rupee with a fixed limit of Issue.
���
- Such a sober politician as the late Mr. Gokhale took the lead in this matter. Cf. his speech in the Financial Statement for 1907-8, pp. 203-4 ; and the same indiscretion is repeated by Prof. V. G. Kale in his Currency Reform in India,
1919, p. 65.