WAR PRODUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 17, 21 January 1944, Page 4

WAR PRODUCTION

INDIA'S PART

INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION

The capacities of Indian industries ■have been greatly increased, by development of their present resources, by importation of new equipment, and by rapid training of personnel. They have made a deep impression on the industrial fabric of the country, and what advantages India will derive from these changes depe % nd, in the last resort on the skill * and enterprise of industrialists in the post-war era.1 In the field of labour, opportunities have been created and new avenues i opened which cut across the traditional grooves of employment. A firm in India which formerly made weighing machines now makes steam presses, l sugar mills use spare capacity to make ambulance stretchers or cure potatoes. Jute mills make shell cases; cotton mills make machine-gun belts; a telephone company makes air-raid sirens. Among workers, jewellers accustomed to gold and silver now try their hand at drawing fine lengths of the base copper for motors and dynamos. Watchmakers apply their knowledge to repair of the more compli- | cated instruments of aircraft which guide pilots in the fathomless ether. College students learn to rely equally on their hands as on science and are picking up a valuable trade as precision instrument makers. In many small rubber factories, apparently crude instruments now turn out finished rubber gloves and vai'ious rubber stores such as hose pipes. In the villages, women help men to make knives or forks or sandals by the million. WHAT IS PERMANENT. The output of many things made in India before the war, from steel to pith hats, has been very greatly increased by multiple shift working and redistribution of plant and personnel and actual additions to plant. Advances of this kind are due quite as much to independent industrial enterprise as to official assistance. The overall increase of nearly 50 per cent, in the output of steel, the considerable stimulation of the non-ferrous metals industries, and the increase in the output of leather goods, chemicals, and drugs are examples of quantitative expansions. But there have been expansions in kind as well as in quantity and many things are being made in India now which were not made at all before the war. Some of .these are military specialties—military lorry bodies for armoured fighting vehices, minesweeping trawlers, new types of weapons and ammunition, and various items of personal and other equipment. Others are likely to be permanent additions to industrial output. Thus India is, for the first time, making or planning to make a number of special steels, and when the war ends should be able to meet a- considerable proportion of her own demands for tool steel, taps, dies, and small tools. The use of plastics has been developed and the technique of die-casting has been improved-. Machine tools are being made not only in larger quantities but in better qualities, and five leading manufacturers are participating in an expansion scheme to be carried out with the aid of modern technical staff. Buildings and extensions to workshops are almost complete, and the bulk of the parent machine tool plants is beginning to arrive and is being installed. Three objects in mind in this expansion are:—(l) Increase India's contribution towards the war effort; (2) reduce the necessity of importation and save valuable shipping space; and (3) establish on a firm foundation a machine tool industry for peacetime India. Similar basic improvements are being found in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and, in fact, over a great part of the industrial field. New chemical plants are coming into production and further development is contemplated for basic chemicals and power alcohol.