Indian Currency and Finance

Chapter 2: PREFACE

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About This Book

An analytical study of Indian monetary arrangements from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, examining the rupee's shift away from silver, implications of a gold-exchange standard, and the role of paper currency. It assesses administrative practices that have stabilized the rupee's gold value, debates proposals for a gold coinage, and evaluates instruments such as council bills, remittances, government reserves, and banking operations. The work considers effects on trade, prices, and public finance, discusses proposals to secure convertibility for foreign payments, and analyses discount rates and banking structure to recommend policy adjustments for currency stability and efficient financial administration.

PREFACE

When all but the last of the following chapters were already in type, I was offered a seat on the Royal Commission (1913) on Indian Finance and Currency. If my book had been less far advanced, I should, of course, have delayed publication until the Commission had reported, and my opinions had been more fully formed by the discussions of the Commission and by the evidence placed before it. In the circumstances, however, I have decided to publish immediately what I had already written, without the addition of certain other chapters which had been projected. The book, as it now stands, is wholly prior in date to the labours of the Commission.

J. M. KEYNES.

King’s College, Cambridge,
12th May 1913.