Vanishing Trick

AS the Calcutta police tightened its measures against the smuggling of potassium chlorate, a potent bomb ingredient, the demand for a popular brand of throat tablets immediately started soaring. The connection between the two was not obvious at first. But it has now been discovered that the tablets, containing a grain of potassium chlorate, found their way to private arsenals. The authorities will not find it easy to ban the manufacture of these tablets when so many throats are going hoarse every day with the lusty shouting of slogans. Any such ban might itself prove an explosive issue. The ingenuity of people to use or abuse things for purposes for which they were not originally intended is well known. People in all walks of life have lately been puzzled by the widespread shortage of small coins. Nobody could tell precisely where they all disappeared all of a sudden. Shopkeepers tried to soothe the frayed nerves of customers by dispensing postage stamps for the balance due to them. Commercial establishments also were forced to have recourse to the postage stamp for settling wages to the last pie. Postage stamps are not legal tender, but their use as such — if not checked — could lead to depletion of all available stocks even in the post offices. One reason for the shortage of coins is that their minting has not kept with the notes in circulation. According to figures culled from the Reserve Bank Bulletin, the total note circulation was Rs. 1,942 crores in 1960-61. The coins in circulation during the year amounted to Rs. 71 crores. The total note circulation in 1969-70 was Rs. 3,799 crores and the coins in circulation Rs. 123 crores. Not all sections of the population are so affluent as to be able to tell the other side to keep the change. In times when everybody has to count his pies, the shortage of small change has also the opposite effect of raising prices to round them off in a bid to avoid transactions in small coin.

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