Indian poverty and foreign trade

INDIAN trade statistics show that this country largely depends on foreign countries for her manufactured goods. The chief manufacturing nations of Europe and North America have sent commercial agents to study the Indian market and suggest how their exports can be increased. The United States Department of Commerce has issued a bulletin for the benefit of American exporters, which contains some interesting remarks regarding the economic condition of India and the classes which buy foreign goods. The investigators who have written the bulletin say: “The only impression one can draw from a study of data is that these people live in abject poverty and that their purchasing power for goods of foreign manufacture must be negligible,” that is to say, as compared with the large population of India its purchase and use of manufactured goods is very small. Cheapness and not quality is the main requisite for the few items that the people require, and it is worthy of note that Japan, Germany and similar countries have been exporting cheap articles in abundant quantities. Though it is thus clear that 90 per cent of the people have no money except to purchase the bare necessities of life, foreign merchants are impressed by the wealth and luxury of some of the town and city dwellers whose requirements of foreign goods are increasing daily. Though the average agriculturist and the factory labourer are struggling to provide themselves with the barest necessities of life, signs are not wanting to show that there is an annual increase in the wealth of the upper class which spends it on its comforts and luxuries.