THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE AS A CAREER. [To THE EDITOR
OP THE " SPECTITOR."] SIR,—Since I wrote my letter of February 7th on " The Indian Civil Service as a Career " the Secretary of State for India has announced his intention of aiming at fixing the exchange value of the rupee at one-tenth of the gold content of the sovereign, and the current rate of exchange has in consequence risen to over 2s. 8(1. per rupee. These changes necessitate a revision of the calculations I made in that letter as to the value in British currency of salaries paid in India in rupees. The paragraph I wrote on that subject should now read as
follows :— •
" Salaries in India are paid in runees, and their value in British currency varies according to the exchange value of the rupee. For a number of years before the war the rupee was worth is. 4d., or, in other words, the pound was worth 15 rupees; so that a man who had to send home £100 had to pay 1,500 rupees for it in India. At present the exchange value of the rupee is about 2s. 8d., and any one in India can now send home £100 at a cost of about 750 rupees. If the new scale of salaries be turned into British currency at the present rate of 2s. 8d. to the rupee, it may be said that the young civilian of twenty-three to twenty-five will, in his first year of service in India, draw a pay in rupees equivalent to .2960 a year in British currency; while the man who has risen to one of the appointments of which the pay is 3,000 rupees a month is now drawing the equivalent of £4,800 a year. It seems unlikely, however, that the rupee will long remain at its present very high value in exchange, which is due partly to the extraordinary increase in the world's demand for silver owing to the effects of the war, and partly to the depreciation in the value of the British paper pound.caused by the excessive issue of British paper currency. On the other hand, it is also unlikely that its value will for a number of years fall to anything like its pre-war rate of ls. 4d. The Secretary of State has recently announced his intention to aim at stabilizing the exchange value of the rupee at the rate of 10 rupees to the gold sovereign (that is, 2s. to the rupee reckoned in gold). If this policy proves permanently successful, and if the value of the British paper pound is restored to that of the sovereign, then the permanent equivalent in sterling of the Indian salaries paid in rupees will be in the civilian's first year of service, £720 a year; in his fifteenth year of service, at least £1,920 a year; and in his twenty-third year of service, almost certainly £3,000 a year. And if he is a good man and stays on after he, has earned his pension by twenty-five years' service, he will probably, before he retires, be drawing the equivalent at 2s. to the rupee of £3,600 a year."
Ochilview, Crie/J.
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