GIPE-PUNE-OIIOI2 - DSpace@GIPE

THE RAILWAY INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE OF INDIA 209
(For the formulae representing these three types of
equations see the chart on the frontispiece) .
. Thus, in regard to the subject of railway efficiency,
we find that in 1913, the pre-war year, Japan, for instance,
possessed 10,610 km of route-mileage. At that
time the japanese. population was numbered at
53,363,000. In other words, the railway facilities for
every 10,000 japanese could be evaluated at 1·9 km.
This; then, yields the following equation:
India.(1925} 1'9=japan(1913) 1'9.
That is, in 1925 the railway efficiency or density
of India or India's industrial and ~ther "preparedness"
in regard to the railway factor was identicpl with that of
Japan in 1913. This is another way of saying that in
1925 India was 12 or 13 years behind Japan.
In comparison with Germany or France the chronol­
:>gical distance of railway-India would have to be
measured by not less than half a century. And by this
standard the "railway age" may hardly be said to have
.commenced in India.
From the standpoint of dynamic economics such as
might exactly bring out the depth of primitiveness
in India's railway and other items of economic life during
the epoch of the "second industrial revolution" and
"word-economy", as the epoch in which we are living
happens to be, nothing would be more suggestive and
.significant than this third type of equations. These and
other equations are to be interprete.d always, of course,
with ~aution as regards the lilnitations 15 to which almost
15 In regard to the limitations to be observed in the interpretation of
international statistics Ece the se=t:on on the meaning of India' s banking
equations, Supra, pp. 158·162.