India’s War Potential GREAT DEVELOPMENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 9 December 1940, Page 10

India’s War Potential GREAT DEVELOPMENT

The recent conference in Delhi of representatives of the British, Dominion and Colonial Governments to discuss the best possible use of the existing and potential resources of the Empire east and south of Suez in prosecuting the war, has drawn attention to the increasing importance of India in relation to the British war effort. The wide range of modern aircraft has advanced the strategic frontiers of India to the Suez Canal and Singapore, gateways to west and east. Set between the Allied Far Eastern possessions, on one side, and the Middle Eastern countries on the other, India’s key geographical position makes her an ideal supply centre for all points of strategic importance from Egypt to Malaya.

Manpower Resources India’s position as a reservoir of figniing forces is traditional. The peace- — time strength of the Indian Army, apart from British troops stationed there, is about 150,000 men, including the Indian Regiment of Artillery raised in 1035. To these must be added about 15,000 Indian Territorials and the Indian States’ forces, which in 1938 numbered 45,000. Finally, Nepal supplies India with 19,000 men for the Gurkha Brigade and for the military police rifle battalions on the NorthWest Frontier. There is also an Indian Air Force to supplement the R.A.F. squadrons stationed in the country, and India’s extensive coastline is partly patrolled by the ships of the Royal Indian Navy. The new Army expansion scheme aims to recruit upward of 100,000 more men for the Indian Army; to quadruple the existing Air Force; to augment the Territorial Army by new units and to accelerate the provision of officers for these new forces. Indian officers will be posted to all units throughout the Indian Army and will not be restricted to those units already Indianized; and ten training centres for air pilots are being opened to train 300 pilots and 2000 mechanics a year. Even before war broke out, contingents of British and Indian troops were sent to Egypt, to furnish a substantial element in the Allied , forces In the Eastern Mediterranean, to Aden and to Singapore; and regular j troops of the Indian Army played their part at Dunkirk.

India’s War Materials But the chief new need is for materials and industrial products. India is a producer and exporter of food grains and industrial raw materials, and already over a million Indian jute sandbags are cushioning Great Britain against air attacks. Other commodities exported in quantity include cotton, wool, lac, hemp, timber, oilseeds, pig iron and scrap, manganese, chrome and mica. The entire output of the Indian woollen mill industry has been taken over for British military requirements; and Array boots for the United Kingdom are being turned out at the rate of 125,000 pairs a month. But India’s war industries are still only at their beginning. The development of Indian engineering and allied secondary industries in the last two decades lias been slow. India’s potential strength is evidenced by the way in which the iron and steel industry has grown. During the last war it was in its infancy. Now it is capable of producing yearly 2,000,000 tons of pig iron and nearly 3,000,000 tons of finished steel products. Plans formulated, before the outbreak of the war, to manufacture aluminium from alumina, imported duty free in the first instance but eventually from local sources, have recently been started Essential Industries The Indian Ordnance factories are producing munitions In substantial quantities; and the War Supply Board has taken a census of machine tools and other equipment to augment production, and is building up substantial reserves of strategic commodities like pig iron, timber, etc. But, although India now manufactures nearly 90 per cent, of her peace army’s needs of rifles, machine-guns, small arms ammunition, propellants of all sorts, Gin. guns, 6in. howitzers, etc., there is a long way to go before her full potential strength as a central arsenal can be deployed. The task is to establish and expand the manufacture of essential industrial supplies as rapidly as possible, and the key items in such a programme for modern warfare must be aircraft and military vehicles. The Indian Aircraft Company, with a capital of £3,750,000, is erecting a factory at Bangalore to build war planes under expert American supervision. The Indian branches of the General Motors and Ford organizations are expanding their assembly plant to provide the military authorities with an additional 25,000 motor-vehicles a year. Indian shipyards in Bombay and along the Hooghly are busy building naval vessels and merchant ships. And electric cables for demagnetizing British merchant vessels are now produced locally. The Indian chemical industry is turning out a wide range of chemicals of wartime value like sulphuric acid, chlorine, caustic soda, soda ash, and fertilizers. The industrial war effort has started. Important Role An Export Advisory Council has been set up and energetic efforts are lieing made to find new markets for those lost as a result of the spread of war, and the war is likely to foster trade between India and other parts of the Empire. Goods, formerly imported from Germany, Italy, France and other German-occupied territories, India must now either supply herself or obtain from the United Kingdom, the Dominions, the United States and Japan. Both geographically and economically, India must inevitably play a leading part in Eastern theatres of the war. She is in a position to become a centre for the production of munitions of all kinds, and help to render the Allied forces in the East selfsupporting and virtually independent of transport from the West. Thereby British ships could be released for other service and economies in many other ways effected. One tiling is sure. Indian industries must have very largely to forge the weapons for India’s own defence. Indian Nationalists of all views are fully agreed about all this. But they feel that, as a member of the British Commonwealth, with Dominion status, India could do the job bettor.