Swarajya, July 22, 1961
What is this horrible business of selling our sugar abroad at Bs. 35 per bag, while our people have to buy it at Rs. 115 per bag? What extraordinary theories of welfare economy have brought about this strange disparity? One can understand it if our Government party preached the use of gur in place of sugar, as Gandhiji pleaded for khadi to replace mill-cloth and wanted all our mill-cloth to be exported abroad. It would have some meaning if we saved a manufactured commodity for selling abroad and ourselves lived a simple life discarding that commodity. But there is no such propaganda, not to speak of success in it. And why give a subsidy for this sugar export at Rs. 200 per ton on ex-factory price of Rs.780, so that the State Trading Corporation may have the monopoly of this export trade of sugar? This subsidy is, as every schoolboy knows or ought to know, a tax on the people of India. Must we put paddy-land under sugarcane to carry on this kind of business? We are - it has been calculated - paying Rs.10 crores subsidy to earn Rs.16 crores foreign exchange. This, and the disparity in price between sugar sold abroad and sugar bought by our own consumers gives us a real indication of what our rupee is worth now. Our great plans and loans, and payment problems, have robbed the rupee to this extent and concealed the crime.
