_Sugar._--Sugar is manufactured both from the sugar-cane and from the bastard date-palm, but the total production is inadequate to the local demand. The best cane is grown in the United Provinces, on irrigated land. It is an expensive crop, requiring much attention, and not yielding a return within the year; but the profits are proportionately large. The normal area under sugar-cane in India is generally about 3 million acres, chiefly in the United Provinces, Bengal, and the Punjab. A large share of the produce is consumed in the form of _gur_ or unrefined sugar, and the market for this preparation is independent of foreign competition. The total import of sugar in 1905-1906 was valued at £5,182,000, chiefly from Java and Mauritius.
_Indigo._--Owing to the manufacture of synthetic indigo by German chemists the export trade in indigo, which was formerly the most important business carried on by European capital in India, has been almost entirely ruined. In the early years of the 19th century there were colonies of English planters in many districts of Bengal, and it was calculated that the planters of North Behar alone had a turnover of a million sterling. The industry suffered depression owing to the indigo riots of 1860 and the emancipation of the peasantry by the Land Act of 1859; but in the closing decade of the century it received a much more disastrous blow from the invention of the German chemists. In 1895-1896 the area under indigo was 1,570,000 acres, and the value of the exports £3,569,700, while in 1905-1906 the area had sunk to 383,000 acres, and the value of the exports to £390,879. The only hope of rescuing the industry from total disappearance lies in the fact that the natural indigo gives a faster dye than the manufactured product, while an effort has also been made to introduce the Java-Natal seed into India, which gives a much heavier yield, and so may be better able to compete in price with synthetic indigo.