ts would seem to be bound up with the maintenance
of order and public tranquillity, Bombay _Banias_ and Calcutta
_Marwaris_, have thrown themselves into the "Non-co-operation" movement
out of sheer bitterness and loss of confidence in British good faith,
boycotting British imported goods and supplying a large part of the
funds without which even a Mahatma cannot carry on a prolonged political
agitation.

CHAPTER XIV

SHOALS AND ROCKS AHEAD

Unless the economic situation improves again with a rapidity beyond even
sanguine expectations, Government will have to lay before the Indian
Legislature next winter a budget scarcely less unpleasant than the last
one. Even if expenditure does not outrun the estimates, revenue can
hardly fail to fall short of them. Mr. Hailey, with perhaps forced
optimism, seems to have reckoned upon taxation old and new continuing to
yield at much the same rate during a year which began and is likely to
end in great depression as during the preceding year, a great part of
which had been a "boom" year. In the same way he budgeted on a 1s. 8d.
rupee, though the rate of exchange for the rupee was then under, and has
only quite recently[4] risen above, 1s. 4d. This means an inevitable and
considerable loss to the Government of India on all the home charges
which it has to remit to London. Another deficit to be met by another
increase of taxation would be a strain upon the Assembly far more trying
than that to which this year's Budget subjected it. Indian opinion will
press for further steps towards complete fiscal autonomy. Scarcely a
single Indian is a convinced free trader. In the old Indian National
Congress the desire not to estrange the sympathies of the Liberal party
in England, and the lack of interest then taken by Indian politicians in
economic questions, kept the issue somewhat in the background until the
Extremists raised it in the form of _Swadeshi_ and in an attempt to
organise a boycott of British imported goods. The immense development of
Indian industries during the war has made protection once more a very
live issue, for if that development is arrested or languishes as the
result of the general economic situation, the louder will be the demand
for protection. Even the outcry at first raised last winter in
Lancashire against the increase of the Indian import duties as an
intolerable blow to British textile industries, though at once firmly
checked by the Secretary of State, pr