INDUSTRY IN INDIA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 473, 6 March 1933, Page 2

INDUSTRY IN INDIA

VERY BACKWARD SIR ALFRED WATSON LAYS BLAME DN THE BRITISH. MISSED OPORTUNITIES. London, Saturday. Sir Alfred Watson, editor of v the Statesman and Calcutta correspondent of The Times, spoke on the industrial future in India at a luncheon of the Royal Empdre Society, and dwelt on the great possibilities of the development by Indians, with British assistance, of the resources and the capacity for manufaeture of their country. Sir Alfred Watson said that industrially India was a land of missed opportunities; and that the main blame for this rested heavily on the British. He yielded to none' in recognition of what had been accomplished, but he measured the achievements against the possibilities and found the gap appalling. Though India possessed in abundance all the conditions for a great industrial country, she was today one of the backward nations of the world eeonomically, and was very backward in industry. The fault was primarily in the failure to raise the level Of the agriculturist, who must be, directly or indirectly, the main consumer of Indian industrial products. If the income of the Indian peasants was raised by one rupee (ls 6d) per head per year, their buying capacity would be increased by £20,000,000 a year. We should not pride ourselves overmueh on what we had done in India in the way of capital investment. There were varying estimates of the extent of present holdings, ranging from £600,000,000 to £1,000,000,000; but whatever the exact figure might be, our Indian investments were smaller than those we had made in Argentiha, which was not a part of the British Empire. We had never tackled seriously the problem of developing India's undoubted capacity for industry, being content to confine ourselves to particular corners of the industrial field. Perhaps that was natural, for the problem of finding work and sustenance for an ever-growing population was the dilemma of the Government, not of the British commercial man. It promised to be the nightmare of future Governments, having regard to the increase of population by over 32,000,000 since 1921. Unless India could provide in the coming years a wholly unprecedented industrial development based on growth of demand by her vast population, the level of subsistenee of the country, which was now appalling low, would fall below the starvation point. Such efforts as had' been made by the Government to foster industries by special legislation — for instance, cotton and steel — were not exactly happy in their results. Yet if India was to have adequate industries of its own they must be built up behind tariff walls or with Government .financial aid. She came late into the industrial field and started with' that initial handicap. The last few years had made' it plain that if Indian industry was to be dependent on Indian capital its growth would be altogether too slow to avert disaster.