ABSTRACT
The high profits of the industrialists in India were mainly due to the full utilisation of capacities installed before the war and the general rise in the price of all commodities. The fragmentary nature of India’s industrialisation could not be changed during the war; this fact became obvious to everybody concerned, as a demand emerged that could not be satisified, whereas in earlier years Indian industry had always suffered from a lack of demand, which had discouraged investment. The main impact of the war was thus a revolution of rising expectations. Most of these expectations were disappointed in the inter-war period. This problem will be discussed in the next chapter. In the present chapter, we shall deal with the wartime experience of Indian industry and agriculture, and with the vagaries
of the Indian currency. In the final section, we shall deal with the problem of stagnating per-capita income-a phenomenon that was in striking contrast with the accumulation of wartime profits.
