‘India Not So Poor''.

IN the course of his speech on Sir William Meyer's resolution, Sir George Lowndes is reported to have said:-- “There had been talk of poverty, but was India so poor?” “So poor” is a relative term, and no one can assert with confidence that India could not have been poorer than she is. But Sir George Lowndes has been long enough in India to know, if his eyes are as open as they should be, that India is one of the poorest countries in the civilised world, and that as compared with the self-governing dominions, not to speak of England, her poverty is simply abysmal. It was a little over a decade ago that the then Viceroy computed the average income of the people of India at about thirty rupees per head which worked out at 2 ½ rupees a month. It is a question whether India has grown perceptibly richer or perceptibly poorer since Lord Curzon made his calculation, which, by the way, was at variance with the calculation made by Indian economists themselves.